Veterans in rural communities face unique challenges, who will step up to help?
Beginning with a brief scenario of a more gentle view of rural life, the book moves through learned information about families, children, and our returning National Guard and Reserve civilian military members. Return experiences will necessarily be different in rural and frontier settings than they are in suburban and urban environments. Our rural and frontier areas, especially in Western states with more isolated communities, less developed communication and limited access to medical, psychological and social services remain an important concern. This book helps provide some informed direction in working toward improving these as a general guide for mental health professionals working with Guard and Reserve members and families in rural/frontier settings. An appendix provides an in-depth list of online references for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
Specific areas of concern include: Morale, deployment abroad, and stress factors Effects of terrorism on children and families at home Understanding survivor guilt Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and suicide Preventing secondary traumatization Resiliency among refugee populations and military families Adjustment and re-integration following the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Vicarious trauma and its effects on children and adults How rural and remote communities differ from more urban ones following war experiences in readjusting military members Characteristics important in therapists/counselors working with returning military
Doherty's second volume in this new series "Crisis in the American Heartland" explores these and many other issues. Each volume available in trade paper, hardcover, and eBook formats.
Learn more at www.RMRInstitute.org
PSY022040 Psychology: Psychopathology - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
SOC040000 Social Science: Disasters & Disaster Relief
HIS027170 Military - Iraq War (2003-)

Significant changes lie ahead for U.S. security strategy in the Persian Gulf after almost a decade of stasis. In the decade between the Gulf War and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the strategy of dual containment of Iraq and Iran was a key driver of American military planning and force posture for the region. During these years, the overriding U.S. concern was preserving access to Gulf oil at reasonable prices; both Iran and Iraq possessed only a limited ability to project power and influence beyond their borders; the Persian Gulf states acquiesced to a significant U.S. military presence on their soil despite the domestic costs; and the United States was reasonably successful, at least until the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000, in insulating its relationships with key Gulf states from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the end of the Clinton administration, it seemed safe to assume that the regional security environment would continue to evolve more or less on its present trajectory and that the challenge confronting the United States was how to manage U.S. forward presence for the long haul under increasingly stressful conditions. This premise is no longer valid. The strategy of dual containment, which is just barely alive, will expire in one way or another in all likelihood because the United States decides to end Saddam Husayn's rule. American success in engineering a regime change in Baghdad will require a substantial increase in U.S. forward deployed forces followed by a multinational occupation of Iraq that is likely to include a significant U.S. military component. At the same time, even if regime change does not occur in Iraq, other factors are likely to put pressure on the United States over the next decade to alter the shape of its military posture toward the region. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implications of these political, strategic, security, and military factors for U.S. military presence and force posture, defense and security relationships, and force planning for the region. Specifically, the chapters that follow seek to frame the issues, options, and tradeoffs facing U.S. defense planners by focusing on the following questions: To what extent does the emerging security environment-that is, the changing nature of U.S. interests and threats to those interests- require changes in the size and composition of forward deployed forces, peacetime engagement activities, military operations, and force protection? Does the United States need to reconfigure its security and military relationships with regional friends and allies to take account of their changing security perceptions and policies? Are there trends in the strategic environment that are likely to generate new demands and requirements for the Armed Forces? How can the United States reconcile the call in the Quadrennial Defense Review 2001 for greater flexibility in the global allocation of U.S. defense capabilities with the harsh reality that, for the foreseeable future, forward defense of the Persian Gulf will remain dependent on substantial reinforcements from the United States? The main conclusion of this study is that, with or without regime change in Iraq, the United States will need to make significant adjustments in its military posture toward the region.

Recent proliferation surprises in the Middle East-the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, Libya's decision to eliminate its WMD, and evidence of significant progress by Iran toward a nuclear weapons capability-underscore the need for the nonproliferation community to reassess some of its key assumptions about WMD proliferation and the nature of the evolving international landscape. Such a reassessment must be highly speculative. Much about Iraq's WMD programs is likely to remain a mystery due to the destruction of records and the looting of facilities following the fall of Baghdad, as well as the continuing silence of many Iraqi weapons scientists and former government officials.1 Likewise, the calculations driving key proliferation-related decisions by Libya and Iran remain murky. This lack of knowledge, however, should not inhibit attempts to grasp the implications of these developments for U.S. nonproliferation and counterproliferation policy. Although this paper focuses primarily on Iraq, it also seeks to draw lessons from recent experiences in Libya and Iran to understand better how proliferators think about WMD; the challenges in assessing the status and sophistication of developing world WMD programs; the contours of the emerging international proliferation landscape; and the efficacy of various policy instruments available to the United States for dealing with these so-called ultimate weapons.

This monograph is an account of the role of communications within the I Marine Expeditionary Force and the Marine Forces Afloat during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War. It is one of a series covering the operations of the I Marine Expeditionary Force; the 1st Marine Division; the 2d Marine Division; the 3d marine Aircraft Wing; Marine Combat Service Support; Marine Forces Afloat; and Marines in Operation Provide Comfort.

The focus of air planners was to envision the use of air power in achieving coalition objectives and military strategy. This report begins with the genesis of that plan with some background to place it within an historical perspective and traces in development through what existed on 16 January 1991.

This report brings together analyses of three crucial determinants of an armed force's overall capability: - weapons-the tools used by the soldier, sailor, and airman. - tactics-the way in which the tools are used to produce desired effects. - training-the way in which the individual soldier, sailor, and airman acquires the skills required to combine weapons and tactics into the operation art of warfare.

A very Australian story of heroism and healing. In 2004 Garth Callender, a junior cavalry officer, was deployed to Iraq. He quickly found his feet leading convoys of armoured vehicles through the streets of Baghdad and into the desert beyond. But one morning his crew was targeted in a roadside bomb attack. Garth became Australia's first serious casualty in the war. After recovering from his injuries, Garth returned to Iraq in 2006 as second-in-command of the Australian Army's security detachment in Baghdad. He found a city in the grip of a rising insurgency. His unit had to contend with missile attacks, suicide bombers and the death by misadventure of one of their own, Private Jake Kovco. Determined to prevent the kinds of bomb attacks that left him scarred, Garth volunteered once more in 2009 - to lead a weapons intelligence team in Afghanistan. He was helicoptered to blast zones in the aftermath of attacks, and worked to identify the insurgent bomb-makers responsible. Revealing, moving, funny and full of drama, Garth Callender's story is one of a kind.

"Surprise" is a familiar term in military writings: the achievement of tactical surprise has such obvious benefits that it is enshrined in the military doctrine of most nations. Surprises that emerge in tactics, however, can also operate at the strategic and operational levels. These surprises are particularly dangerous, because they can test the relevance and adaptability of military forces and the "institutional" defense establishments that create, develop, and sustain them. A military establishment that is too slow to recognize and respond to such surprises places its nation's interests at grave risk. In the bipolar strategic environment of the Cold War, deep knowledge of a known adversary reduced the likelihood of such surprises. The same is not true now. This monograph thus comes at an important time, as Western nations contemplate major reductions in defense spending with consequent limitations on force structure. The range of enemy capabilities that a force will be able to match, qualitatively and quantitatively, will become smaller; hence the potential for operational and strategic surprise will increase. In this monograph, Brigadier Andrew Smith uses the improvised explosive device threat as it manifested itself in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 as a case study of such a surprise and how defense establishments responded to it. He argues that, although tactical in itself, this threat posed an operational and strategic threat in a modern "war of discretion" that demanded institutional responses from both the U.S. and Australian institutional militaries, including major equipment, training, and budgetary changes within iv time frames that circumvented the normal peacetime force development cycles of those countries. There are disappointments in the way both countries met this challenge. A key conclusion from this analysis is the critical role of strategic leadership in recognizing the scale of surprise and in forcing the necessary institutional response. At a time when budgets will not allow surprise to be addressed by maintaining large and technically diverse forces at high readiness, the ability to recognize and respond adroitly to operational and strategic surprise may be a critical requirement for a modern defense establishment.

The United States' (US) invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the subsequent removal of the Taliban regime are considered monumental successes. In the wake of this success remained the challenge of developing an Afghan National Army (ANA) in order to defend the democratically elected Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA). This monograph proposes that international assistance, the development of internal Afghan industrial capacity and improved strategic level mentorship are the critical components in forming a self-sustaining ANA. The approach to analyzing ANA development centered on four areas within this research. ANA logistics culture was studied by reviewing the current, past and a desired logistics system to determine its potential for self-sufficiency. Regional neighbors were analyzed to identify their relationships with Afghanistan that could enhance partnered efforts in order to improve internal capacity. The analysis then explored the role of US advisors in Afghanistan as they seek to train and mentor Afghan leaders for the purpose of planning and executing strategic level logistics operations. Finally, the US success in developing a self-sustaining Greek National Army (GNA) following World War II offered some lessons learned that could be applied to the ongoing advisory effort in Afghanistan.

For three years, beginning in June 1950, air and ground crews of the United States Air Force (USAF) conducted bombing operations with Boeing B-29 Superfortresses in support of the United Nations (U.N.) forces engaged on the peninsula of Korea. Powered by four large radial piston engines, the propeller- driven Superfortress had been the most advanced very long-range heavy bomber developed during the Second World War. But such had been the pace of aeronautical development since the Second World War that it was now, at the time of Korea, considered but a medium bomber, and one outclassed by early jet aircraft at that. Manned principally by officers and men from the Strategic Air Command (SAC), the B-29 units carried out missions very different from the task for which SAC was trained. Instead of striking at the homeland of a major industrial power with ATOMIC weapons, the crews at- tacked targets of many types, showing the variety of functions that air power could perform. The bombers carried out battlefield support, interdiction, and air superiority (counter airfield) missions. They hit industrial targets of the type normally classified as strategic and also took part in an effort to utilize air power to pressure the enemy to agree to a cease-fire. This study traces the war fought by Far East Air Forces (FEAF) Bomber Command (Provisional), the B-29 force created to attack targets in Korea from bases in Okinawa and Japan. Consisting of units belonging to FEAF and others from SAC assigned on temporary duty, Bomber Command cooperated with other USAF organizations to support operations in the Korean peninsula. The B-29 crews earned credit in all ten of the recognized campaigns of the Korean War. Politically, the war had three phases. From June 25, 1950, when North Koreans attacked South Korea, until November 2, 1950, U.N. forces defended the south and defeated the invaders. From November 1950 until July 1951, the U.N. had to deal with the intervention of Communist China and the most desperate fighting of the war. Beginning on July 10, 1951, fighting continued even as negotiations for a cease-fire between the opposing military commands were under way. This third phase, and the war, ended when the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. As for actual combat operations, however, Bomber Command experienced the war in terms of the opposition it encountered. Following a brief but intensive air superiority war in the summer of 1950, North Korea posed negligible air opposition, but when the Chinese entered the war in November, assisted by Soviet fighter pilots flying MiG-15 jet fighters, the limitations of the obsolescent B-29s became apparent. Communist air resistance was so heavy that by the end of October 1951 the B-29s had switched to a remarkable night campaign that continued for more than a year and a half. By 1953, SAC was well on the way to removing the B-29s from its inventory. Thus, for one last time, the B-29, a workhorse of the air campaign in the Pacific in World War II, flew into combat. Often called a "police action," or the "Korean conflict," the fighting in Korea was undertaken under the leadership of the United States on the authority of the U.N., to defend the Republic of Korea against the Communist North Koreans and Chinese and their Soviet supporters. Thus, it differed significantly from previous conflicts, which had been typified by formal declarations of war by the Congress. This semantic uncertainty well reflects the unprecedented situation that American fighting men faced in the Far East. For Bomber Command, the contrast between what a strategic bomber like the B-29 had been designed for and what it actually did clearly illustrates the anomalies.

Before the Korean War, the primary mission of Lt. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer's Far East Air Forces was air defense of the Japanese homeland. Most of the aircraft constituting Stratemeyer's inventory were interceptors, not designed for the type of combat that would be required now that the United States was joining in the UN effort to end the war in Korea. The Joint Army/USAAF doctrine of 1946, known as Field Manual 31-35, Air Ground Operations, was also considered outdated in the present circumstance. A new approach to warfighting had to be developed in response to the strong influence of General Douglas MacArthur and other of his air officers in the Army-dominated General Headquarters Far East Command. Close air support of the ground forces as provided by Fifth Air Force came at some cost, and tempers flared in the process, but the air commanders in Korea never deprived the ground commanders of close air support if it was needed. Indeed, without the close air support provided to the airmen, the ground campaign would have been a much more bloody and difficult affair than it was.

Remarkably ambitious in its audacity and scope, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) irregular warfare and "nation-building" mission in Afghanistan has struggled to meet its nonmilitary objectives by most tangible measures. Put directly, the alliance and its partners have fallen short of achieving the results needed to create a stable, secure, democratic, and self-sustaining Afghan nation, a particularly daunting proposition given Afghanistan's history and culture, the region's contemporary circumstances, and the fact that no such country has existed there before. Furthermore, given the central nature of U.S. contributions to this NATO mission, these shortfalls also serve as an indicator of a serious American problem as well. Specifically, inconsistencies and a lack of coherence in U.S. Government strategic planning processes and products, as well as fundamental flaws in U.S. Government structures and systems for coordinating and integrating the efforts of its various agencies, are largely responsible for this adverse and dangerous situation. As a rationally ordered expression of the ways and means to be applied in the protection of vital national security interests, strategy is supposed to represent a careful analysis and prioritization of the particular interests at stake. In turn, these interests are linked to feasible methods and the resources that are available for their protection, all placed within the context of competing global security demands and a serious consideration of risk. In the case of Afghanistan, however, U.S. Government strategic guidance has been disjointed-- or inconsistent and lacking coherence--while interagency efforts have been "disunified," with agency outputs too often fragmented, inadequate, or internally at odds with one another. As a result, U.S. strategic supervision of the Afghan operation has been muddled and shifting at best, even as our government's interagency processes and available agency capabilities have fallen far short of what is needed to carry out the complex and broad requirements of irregular warfare and "nation-building." Given the breadth, length, and expense of the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan, these strategic and operational shortfalls also carry with them potentially dire consequences for U.S. national security interests around the globe, considering potential first- and second-order effects and other associated risks. U.S. Government disjointed ways, coupled with a corresponding disunity of means, represent the proximate cause of our struggles in Afghanistan, and these deficiencies must be addressed if this mission and other similar future endeavors are to succeed.

The Combat Studies Institute provides a wide range of military, historical, and educational support to the Combined Arms Center, Training and Doctrine Command, and the United States Army. The Combat Studies Institute researches, writes, and publishes original interpretive works on issues of relevance to the US Army. The Combat Studies Institute (CSI) publication collection contains reports and books pertaining to American history, military guidelines, foreign affairs, and more. Titles featured in this collection include: Art of War Papers: Protecting, Isolating, and Controlling Behavior, Law of War: Can 20th Century Standards Apply to the Global War on Terrorism? and Traditions, Changes, and Challenges: Military Operations and the Middle Eastern City. This title is one of many in the Combat Studies Institute collection.

This report discusses logistics in the Persian Gulf war as it applies to all military operations and in particular to air operations. Simply put, how did the United States equip its forces for Desert Shield and Desert Storm? Logistics also includes fictions for maintaining an air base and support services. These aspects of logistics will be covered in the two parts of this volume.