GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Game-Changing Environment Vexes Planners, Warfighters

 

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: AFCEA/Signal Online

02April2011 1:06pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: One challenge the United States faces is the potential for a high-end conflict from a peer competitor. Technology advances are leveling the battlefield, and the United States must address that fact technologically and strategically. This and other challenges are compounded by global shifts such as climate change—which may increase the amount of navigable seas as the North polar icecap melts—the global economic crisis, resource competition from emerging giants such as China and India, and globalization in general.

Maj. Gen. Melvin G. Spiese, USMC, deputy commanding general, 1 Marine Expeditionary Force, describes some of the challenges facing the U.S. Marine Corps.

Some of those concerns were echoed by Maj. Gen. Melvin G. Spiese, USMC, deputy commanding general, 1 Marine Expeditionary Force. Gen. Spiese also warned that nations, including friends, will act in their own interests, so the United States could have difficulty assembling an alliance or even getting support from some allies. Because nations change their policies over time as their national interests shift, the United States should not place itself in a position where addressing U.S. concerns depends on the policies of another nation. (read full report)

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's partners or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Financial terrorism suspected in ‘08 economic crash

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: The Washington Times

01March2011 6:30amEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.

The unclassified 2009 report “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” by financial analyst Kevin D. Freeman, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, states that “a three-phased attack was planned and is in the process against the United States economy.”

While economic analysts and a final report from the federal government's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission blame the crash on such economic factors as high-risk mortgage lending practices and poor federal regulation and supervision, the Pentagon contractor adds a new element: “outside forces,” a factor the commission did not examine.

“There is sufficient justification to question whether outside forces triggered, capitalized upon or magnified the economic difficulties of 2008,” the report says, explaining that those domestic economic factors would have caused a “normal downturn” but not the “near collapse” of the global economic system that took place. (read full report)

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's partners or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: The future of seabasing

Moving beyond the post-Cold War unilateral approach by CMDR. GREGORY J. PARKER

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Armed Forces Journal

11February2011 7:39pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Like a ship’s hull with too many barnacles, seabasing is laden with unnecessary conceptual debris that has obscured its central tenets and confused its core strengths. As the Navy ponders its roles and corresponding force structure for the coming decades, it is worth putting seabasing in dry dock and stripping it clean. Only then will a vision appropriate to the 21st century emerge.

2010 was an important milestone for the concept of seabasing. Eclipsed in recent years by large-scale ground campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, seabasing once again occupied the limelight in January when a powerful earthquake struck Haiti, closing the main seaport and limiting air traffic to an antiquated and quickly overwhelmed airfield. The Navy and Marine Corps responded quickly by dispatching considerable assets to the scene, including an aircraft carrier, an amphibious assault ship and a hospital ship. By hosting extensive relief efforts offshore, the Haiti naval operation seemed to validate the seabasing concept in its entirety. Yet less than a month later, the Navy effectively canceled the Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future), the most significant seabasing acquisition program to date and a pillar of the Marine Corps’ 21st-century vision. What was once billed as revolutionary and transformational met an anticlimactic end, described as a concept that is “valid but not currently within the Navy’s fiscal reach.”

This contradictory turn of events suggests it is time to take a fresh look at a pivotal post-Cold War concept. (read full report)

 

 

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's advertisers or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.