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$30 Million Scheme To Defraud Government

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By Debbie Gregory.

An alert customs inspector unraveled a cross-border scheme to defraud the federal government of more than $30 million. The inspector’s observation set in motion a criminal investigation that led to the owners of Barrier Wear forfeiting $2.1 million to the federal government, and facing probation.

Loose tags on a 2009 shipment of trousers at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, AZ had loose country-of-origin labels. Permanently affixed labels are required by federal law.

The loose labels read “Assembled in Mexico of U.S. components” and identified the trousers as “Official Army Use.” According to the invoice, the shipment left a factory in Sonora run by Barrier Wear de Mexico, bound for the Colorado-based company’s facility in Nogales.

On December 9, 2015, Barrier Wear owners Paul Grillo and Raymond Lawson pleaded guilty to one felony count of obstructing a federal auditor.

From 2008 to 2012, the company was a subcontractor for Atlantic Diving Supply in Virginia, which holds a contract with the Department of Defense to supply cold-weather trousers and jackets.

According to the DoD’s Criminal Investigative Service, Barrier Wear “falsely certified that the Army’s purchase of the clothing complied with the Berry Amendment,” which requires the DoD to buy clothing and other goods produced domestically.

The Berry Amendment is a statutory requirement that restricts the Department of Defense (DoD) from using funds appropriated or otherwise available to DoD for procurement of food, clothing, fabrics, fibers, yarns, other made-up textiles, and hand or measuring tools that are not grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the United States.

The Berry Amendment has been critical to maintaining the safety and security of our armed forces, by requiring covered items to be produced in the United States. With respect to textiles and clothing, the Berry Amendment has been critical to the viability of the textile and clothing production base in the United States.

Barrier Wear employees were ordered to remove the country-of-origin labels after normal business.

Grillo and Lawson agreed to forfeit the $2.1 million and to serve a term of probation, not to include any form of confinement. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 7.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

More Money and Boots on the Ground to Fight ISIS

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By Debbie Gregory.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has confirmed that the Pentagon plans to sharply increase spending on the fight against the Islamic State group and potentially put more American “boots on the ground” in Iraq and Syria in an “enabling” role.

“We have 3,700 boots on the ground in Iraq today, and we’re looking to do more. We’re looking for opportunities to do more,” Carter said.

Carter acknowledged there are about 50 U.S. Special Forces troops serving as advisers in Syria to local forces opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in addition to the American troops serving as trainers and advisors to the Iraqi Security Forces.

“We’re not looking to substitute for local forces in terms of governing the place and policing the place,” Carter said. “That’s why we put Special Forces in Syria. They’re tremendous force multipliers. They’re the ones who connect them to the great might of our military. The strategic concept is not to substitute but to enable” local forces, he said.

The new campaign will focus on helping local forces retake the militants’ two main strongholds, Mosul, Iraq and Raqqah, Syria.

“We need to destroy them in those two places, and I’d like to get on with that as soon as possible,” he said.

Carter said he hopes that other countries will offer troops as well. “It won’t just be Americans. This is crucial. It has got to be the other members of our so-called coalition,” he said.

While in talks with defense ministers from allied nations in Brussels, Carter will coordinate future plans for the anti-ISIS fight.

“What I’m going to do with them is to say, all right, here are all the capabilities that are needed — boots on the ground, airplanes in the air, more prosaic things, logistics, bridging, training for those police that are going to patrol cities like they’re patrolling Ramadi now once the cities are retaken,” he said.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Military Looking at 1.6% Pay Increase for Troops in 2017

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By Debbie Gregory.

Five evolving challenges drive the Pentagon’s planning for the 2017 defense budget request, including Russian aggression in Europe, the rise of China in the Asia Pacific, North Korea, Iran, and the ongoing fight against terrorism, especially the Islamic.

The annual budget request the Pentagon sends to Congress will include a 1.6 percent pay raise for troops in 2017, aimed at reducing military personnel costs, according to defense officials.

The 1.6 percent pay raise will be half of the projected increase in private-sector wages, which is likely to be 3.2 percent.

If approved by Congress, the modest pay increase would mark the fourth consecutive year that military basic pay has not kept pace with the growth in most civilian wages,.

The budget request also includes efforts to ratchet up Tricare health care fees for military families.

Overall personnel costs have begun to decline, partly because of the continued troop drawdown. The current active-duty force is down about 7 percent, standing at 1.33 million, down from 1.43 million in 2011.

Defense officials say that reducing personnel costs is vital in order to ensure funding for high-tech research, weapons modernization and training.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said investments in new technologies include advanced navigation, swarming autonomous vehicles, self-driving networked boats, gun-based missile defense, and an arsenal plane that turns one of the department’s older planes into a flying launch pad for a range of conventional payloads.

Carter added that the Pentagon is investing to build the force of the future, highlighting opening all remaining combat positions to women and strengthening support to military families to improve their quality of life. Monies will also be spent on cyber training, tools and infrastructure, and in space to identify, attribute and negate all threatening actions.

“With so many commercial space endeavors, he added, “we want this domain to be just like the oceans and the Internet: free and safe for all.”

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Cost of VA’s Electronic Claims System Worries Congress

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By Debbie Gregory.

The good news is that the VA’s claims backlog, a major source of embarrassment for a number of years, has fallen impressively. The bad news is the price tag that goes along with the accomplishment.

The cost of VA’s paperless electronic claims network, called the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS), has already cost $1 billion. The cost will soon reach $1.3 billion, more than double the VA’s original estimate of $580 million.

The VBMS gets a software upgrade every three months, which, of course, is not free. And apart from quarterly upgrades, the VA is planning major innovations to the system, starting in 2018.

The size of the backlog peaked in March, 2013 at 611,000. Today the backlog is somewhere between 75,000 and 80,000, said Beth McCoy, VA’s deputy undersecretary for field operations. A VA claim is said to be in backlog status if awaiting a decision beyond 125 days of being filed. McCoy credited the decline in large part to the increasing effectiveness of the VBMS.

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-FL, complained that the backlog wasn’t eliminated by 2015, as promised by VA. Miller questioned how much credit VBMS deserves for the backlog’s sharp decline, noting that the Veterans Benefits Administration had hired 7,300 more full-time employees from 2007 to 2014.

In VA’s defense, McCoy said, “Scope and cost increases were planned, essential and approved to move beyond just an initial electronic repository functionality.”

She added that to better serve veterans as well as veteran service organizations and VA claim processors, VA steadily is increasing “automation functionality,” something they will probably never finish.

Miller has tried to make the case that paperless claims resulted in decisions of lesser quality, which accounted for a ballooning of claims on appeal.

McCoy disputed that, arguing that overall, claim accuracy scores had climbed from 83 percent in 2011 to 91 percent last year.

“Veterans are much better off because of the electronic system,” McCoy said. “We were outdated [and] should have done this years ago.”

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

 

How Big Should the Army Be?

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By Debbie Gregory.

As the U.S. winds down the Afghan war, the government has been eyeing a much reduced military force, with numbers at the lowest level since World War II. The downsizing is also due to defense cuts mandated by Congress.

The 2011 Budget Control Act required $500 billion in defense cuts over a decade, on top of $487 billion already planned.

The Army had drafted plans to reduce its troop size to 420,000 by 2021. But when the plan to reduce troop levels to that number was drafted, it did not take into account a sizable continuing force in Afghanistan and the need to defend against ISIS.

According to a report by a congressionally appointed commission, the size of the Army should not fall below 450,000 active-duty troops and 530,000 reservists for the foreseeable future.

The commission has also recommended that the Army add an armored brigade in Europe and leave an aviation brigade in South Korea.

“An Army of 980,000 is the minimally sufficient force to meet current and anticipated missions at an acceptable level of national risk,” said an executive summary of the report by the National Commission on the Future of the Army.

Former senior Army and Pentagon leaders who took part in the commission included: retired generals Carter Ham, Larry Ellis, and James D. Thurman, former assistant secretary of the Army Thomas Lamont, retired Sgt. Maj. Raymond Chandler, former Pentagon comptroller Bob Hale, former deputy under-secretary of defense for policy Kathleen Hicks, and retired Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz.

Lawmakers reached a two-year agreement that would reduce the level of cuts for 2016 and 2017, but the cuts are slated to return in 2018. But even if the cuts remain in place, the Army may still reduce to 420,000 personnel.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

DoD’s Proposed 2017 Budget Comes in at $583 Billion

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By Debbie Gregory.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter submitted a proposed $583 billion Defense Department budget for 2017 that focuses more on high-tech future conflicts and less on counterterrorism operations against militants such as the Islamic State group. But the budget does include a significant increase in funding for the fight against Islamic State, also known as IS, ISIS, or ISIL.

“The [fiscal year 2017] budget reflects recent strategic threats that have taken place in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe,” the Pentagon said in a statement accompanying the budget documents released on February 9th.

The budget request includes a quadrupling of the funds to support NATO’s effort to counter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, raising the current amount of $789 million to $3.4 billion. This increase will allow for the rotation of more U.S. units in Europe, additional training, and the pre-positioning of gear.

“All of this together by the end of 2017 will let us rapidly form a highly-capable combined arms ground force that can respond theater-wide if necessary,” Carter said.

Fiscal year 2017 begins on October 1, 2016.

Carter called Russia, along with China, “our most stressing competitors,” which “reflect a return to a great power competition.”

With Russia’s seizing of Crimea from the Ukraine and China’s claims on disputed islands in the South China Sea, Carter said “we cannot blind ourselves to the actions they appear to choose to pursue.”

The Defense Department budget will shift in focus away from one potential enemy to multiple threats.

“We don’t have the luxury of just one opponent, or the choice between current fights and future fights — we have to do both. And that’s what our budget is designed to do,” Carter said.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

A Growing Army of Caregivers

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By Debbie Gregory.

Family caregivers provide crucial support in caring for veterans. The Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act was signed into law in May, 2010. The law acknowledges the critical role of caregivers for seriously injured post- 9/11 veterans, and establishes a national program that addresses the wellness and training of family caregivers.

Due to advances in combat medicine and technology, more troops are surviving injuries that would have been fatal in past conflicts. But when they return home, they face life with devastating physical and psychological injuries.

The post-9/11 era produced 1.1 million caregivers, with about 20 percent of them caring for veterans.

The Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act offers caregivers a monthly stipend, as well as healthcare coverage, training, respite care and mental health counseling.

Eligibility for the stipend is evaluated annually and ranges from $650 to $2,300 a month, based on the severity of the injuries and the geographic location of the caregiver and veteran. It is currently only available to those who care for Post 9/11 veterans. About 20 percent of these veterans have traumatic brain injury, and 64 percent struggle with mental health or substance abuse.

The VA has since partnered with Easter Seals to provide caregiver training in several formats: classroom, workbook and online. Overall, about 30,000 caregivers have received training.

The Elizabeth Dole Foundation commissioned the first evidence-based study focused on the needs of military caregivers. Hidden Heroes, conducted by the RAND Corporation, found that almost half of the post-9/11 caregivers are between 18 and 30 years old, without a lot of financial stability and with no previous training in caregiving. And the commitment is taking a toll: More than one-third meet the criteria for probable depression.

“Our nation has a clear responsibility to better support America’s military and veteran caregivers,” said former Sen. Elizabeth Dole. “This is not a short-term problem in need of a quick solution. . . . Our nation cannot let these caregivers take on this role alone.”

If you think you fit the criteria for these services, please follow the link to answer some preliminary questions and download an application at http://www.va.gov/healthbenefits/resources/Caregiver_Eligibility_Check.asp

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

AF Space Command Colonel Facing Numerous Sexual Charges

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By Debbie Gregory.

Col. Eugene Caughey, currently assigned to Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, has been charged with rape, assault and adultery, dating back to 2013, according to court documents.

Caughey is accused of raping a woman at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado, in late 2014 or early 2015 while “holding her against the wall and floor using physical strength or violence.” If found guilty, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

The 23-year Air Force veteran is also charged with six counts of committing adultery, taking obscene “selfies” of his exposed genitals while in uniform, and groping women on two occasions.

Caughey was formerly second in charge of the 50th Space Wing at Schriever. The unit oversees navigation and communication satellites. He was responsible for running a 22-nation missile defense wargame in 2014 for U.S. Strategic Command.

Caughey has been in the Air Force for 23 years, and is one of the 9/11 Pentagon survivors. “I was a captain inside the Pentagon that morning when a plane crashed into the west side of the building,” Caughey wrote on the Schriever Air Force Base website.

He is currently assigned to Air Force Space Command.

Of course, this is not the first time a military officer has been accused of sexual misconduct. In another high profile case, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, the Army general at the center of a sexual misconduct case that put the military justice system itself on trial, was spared prison and sentenced to a reprimand and a $20,000 fine, a shockingly light punishment. If Sinclair had not announced his retirement, an Army disciplinary board would have almost certainly forced him into it.

Caughey’s hearing is scheduled for a March 17th, at which time it will be determined if there is sufficient evidence for a court-martial.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

Green Beret-UFC Fighter Tim Kennedy on ISIS Threat List

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By Debbie Gregory.

Following credible threats against him by followers of the Islamic State, Special Forces soldier and UFC fighter Tim Kennedy responded with four words: “Let those cowards come.”

Kennedy served in 7th Special Forces Group, and is now a sergeant first class with the Texas National Guard.

Threats are nothing new to Kennedy. He says that the majority of them come from what he calls “military trolls” who target high-profile military figures.

The FBI reached out to Kennedy, asking him if he was aware of the threats. Kennedy said he was. According to the mixed martial artist, the reason nobody has tried to kill him is simple.

“That’s because they are nothing but cowardly and impotent murderers who prey on the weak. They look for soft targets who don’t know how to defend themselves. They seek out the most defenseless in order to make themselves appear stronger than they really are. I’m not a soft target and they hate that.”

When Kennedy isn’t taunting terrorists into trying to kill him he can usually be found training for MMA, where he holds an impressive 18-5 record.

Kennedy enlisted in 2003 under the 18X (Special Forces candidate) program. He attended basic training and Airborne school at Fort Benning GA as an 11B (Infantry), before he continued Special Forces training at Fort Bragg North Carolina.

“What’s the definition of terrorism?” Kennedy said. “It’s to achieve an objective through the use of force and fear. These are just nasty, evil, disgusting human beings who disrespect human life. I teach people how to live with threats like this. Who would I be to be cowering to a bunch of gutless cowards acting like a bunch of tough guys online?”

Kennedy is currently assigned to Special Operations Detachment (A) as a Senior Special Forces Weapons Sgt.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.

US Weighs Ramifications of Targeting ISIS Hackers

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By Debbie Gregory.

The killing of two Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) hackers is raising new questions about whether the Pentagon is targeting the group’s tech-savvy members.

In August, a U.S. drone strike killed ISIS hacker Junaid Hussain, who was tied to a number of hacking incidents over the past few years. Hussain was believed to be the head of the so-called CyberCaliphate, one of several informal ISIS hacking groups, and was linked to the release of personal information on over 1,300 U.S. military and government employees.

Hussain was also known as a prominent online recruiter, encouraging western sympathizers to carry out “lone-wolf” attacks.

Then, in early December, another U.S. drone strike took out a lesser-known ISIS hacker, Siful Haque Sujan.

Army Col. Steve Warren described Sujan as a Bangladesh-born, British-educated computer systems engineer who worked on hacking efforts and anti-surveillance technology.

“Sujan was an external operations planner and a United Kingdom-educated computer systems engineer. Sujan supported ISIS hacking efforts, anti-surveillance technology and weapons development. Now that he is dead, ISIL has lost a key link between networks.”

Focusing on ISIS hackers could be one way to counteract the extremist group’s online recruitment.

But the U.S. could be on a slippery slope going after these “hackers,” who some describe as more digital pranksters than actual cyber threats, according to Robert Lee, a former cyber officer in the Air Force and co-founder of Dragos Security

“The fact that someone’s involved in hacking or cyber anything should never be the justification for the strike,” Lee said. “But if they’ve made the kill list, applying some sort of prioritization based on that [skill] absolutely could be a very good consideration.”

CyberCaliphate has vowed to take revenge for Hussain’s killing, posting a picture that features several ISIS fighters holding rocket launchers with the words “Revenge,” “Gazwa” and “Abu Hussein” superimposed over the top.

While experts agree that ISIS’s hacking skills remain rudimentary, the group’s digital vandalism has boosted the terrorist organization’s robust online propaganda and recruitment efforts.

Military Connection salutes and proudly serves veterans and service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Guard and Reserve,  and their families.


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