MiTT Week 1 - Lots of New Gear

I'm always nervous anytime I sign in to a new unit.  My degree of apprehension is largely related to my knowledge of the unit and the job.  My confidence is high if I am familiar with the installation and the unit mission.  To say I was a bit apprehensive about reporting to a new job of which I know very little is an understatement.  Like any good Soldier, I began preparing for my Military Transition Team assignment months in advance.

I studied a wide variety of books, both military and civilians.  My reading consisted of Field Manuals, Economics, Anthropology, Culture, Leadership, Interpersonal dynamics, etc.  I tried not to limit the scope of my research to any one topic, choosing rather a wide variety of materials.  I figured the success of my team was dependent on: interpersonal relationships, cultural awareness/anthropology, talent.  It could not hurt to expand my education on all three.

Anyway, back to Fort Riley.  We received our gear, lots and lots of gear.  This is my first time receiving a Rapid Fielding Initiative (RFI).  All the coolest and latest stuff from body armor to backpacks.  Four duffel bags full to be exact.  I spent two days in the barracks piecing everything together and I am still not finished.  Some stuff I like such as the ACH helmet and the assault pack.  Other stuff I'm not a huge fan such as the MOLLE rifleman kit.

Still, it represents the massive investment they've made in equipping Soldiers with better equipment.  There is better out there, but it is not like the gear I deployed with back in 2003.  When compared to other combat arms units, we deployed with poorly designed gear.  Of course, we accepted the fact that the 82nd's and 101st's would always get the latest and greatest.  Back then there were haves and have-nots and we accepted that we would be poorly equipped when compared to our divisional counterparts

All Soldiers now deploy with the same RFI.  All Soldiers wear the best the Army has to offer.  It's nice to see that changed for the better.   Of course, the wearing and carrying of all this heavy ass crap will be a different matter.

 

A New Job and a New Patch

New assignment, new mission, new patch. Finally after years of bouncing around since my time at Fort Sill, I'm back wearing a bona fide patch. Hello Big Red One. Why isn't the One Red? Don't ask me, I am just a bit stoked that the Leavenworth Lamp is off my shoulder replaced by an insignia with history and tradition.

I am now the Effects and Operations Advisor of a Military Transition Team which will be assigned to an Iraqi Infantry Brigade sometime in January. I anticipate the assignment will be the most challenging in my career, but it also has the potential to be the most rewarding as the Iraqis continue to step up to the table and take charge.

This marks a transition in my blog as I will now focus on detailing the experience of myself and my team.

Hacking Georgia: On Further Review

I am still in the process of taking some lessons learned from the past week's Russian incursion into Georgia. As with any operation, there was a lot of questionable information floating around the internet. One of the interesting pieces coming from the region was the reports of Denial of Service attacks against websites belonging to government agencies. On the surface, it looked like Russia had deftly managed to combine offensive maneuver operation with the burgeoning concept of Network Attack.

As they say in the NFL, "On further review." First, it appears that the attacks did not appear to originate from government operators, but a group of civilian hackers. According to Shadowserver, a volunteer group that monitors internet hacking activity, the attack linked to a group of servers previously corresponding with hackers known for hacking pornography and gambling websites.

It is important to note that, as with any attack, the ability to pin the rose on any particular group, government or individual is extremely difficult. The attack may originate in Russia, but that does not mean it came from their government. On the other hand, you cannot remove government-sponsored operators from consideration regardless of their own spokespeople.

Do not think that the Georgian hackers are sitting idle while their country takes a pounding. Apparently, they responded, by taking down sites that provided news about the Russian-backed Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia and in one case replacing the Web site´s content with a news feed from a pro-Georgian service.

Now that the cyber dust is settling, what did we learn? Here is a great PCWorld article by Andreas Antonopoulos. His point: "There were no reports of attacks against critical infrastructure, electronic jamming of stock exchanges, SCADA-hack explosions in substations or anything like that. This was not a battalion of elite army-trained hackers from the Russian Southern Command of Cyber Warfare. In all likelihood it was groups of run-of-the-mill script kiddies with control of a botnet, stroking their egos with the higher cause of injured nationalism."

Personally, I believe the lessons learned lies somewhere in the middle. While the cyber attacks in Georgia proved anything buy decisive, they received considerable attention from an international press fascinated by cyber-warfare. Hackers were able to draw the attention of Georgian officials already decisively engaged by attacking Russian forces. Like it or not, they were a factor albeit not a decisive one.