Tag: army
Senate Passes Aid For Veterans Injured By Exposure To Toxic Burn Pits

Senate Passes Aid For Veterans Injured By Exposure To Toxic Burn Pits

Washington (AFP) - US senators on Tuesday approved benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, which President Joe Biden, who believes his son Beau died of such exposure, has called a "decisive and bipartisan win."

Open trash fires have been commonly used by the US military in conflicts after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and are lit to get rid of everything from plastic bottles to human waste and old tires -- all incinerated with jet fuel.

But the fumes from these holes in the ground are suspected of causing a range of illnesses among soldiers, from chronic respiratory ailments to a variety of cancers.

Biden believes the pits are at the root of the brain cancer that claimed the life of his son Beau, who served in Iraq in 2008.

By 86 votes to 11, the Senate passed the PACT Act, which expands the window of eligibility for free medical care and ensures that, for certain respiratory illnesses and cancers, veterans will get disability benefits without having to prove they were made sick by exposure to the pits.

The passage came just days after Republican senators had rejected the bill, triggering withering condemnation from veterans groups and activists, including the outspoken comedian Jon Stewart, who had championed the cause.

Biden welcomed the approval of the act, saying, "While we can never fully repay the enormous debt we owe to those who have worn the uniform, today, the United States Congress took important action to meet this sacred obligation."

He said the new law would be "the biggest expansion of benefits for service-connected health issues in 30 years and the largest single bill ever to comprehensively address exposure to burn pits."

'Proper Care' For Exposure

Vice President Kamala Harris said that "too many of our veterans and their families have long waited for this day. With today's passage of the PACT Act, our veterans will finally see an expansion of their health benefits and proper care for burn pit exposure. They deserve it."

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that some 3.5 million US service members were exposed to toxic smoke in Afghanistan, Iraq or other conflict zones, and more than 200,000 veterans have registered on lists of people who came into contact with burn pits.

The Pentagon funded a $10 million study in 2018 that concluded there was "a potential cause and effect relationship between exposure to emissions from simulated burn pits and subsequent health outcomes."

Until now, nearly 80 percent of veterans' requests to have suspected burn pit ailments acknowledged by the government were rejected, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).

A poll by the organization found that 82 percent of those questioned said they were exposed to burn pits or other airborne toxic chemicals.

Of these people, 90 percent said they are or may be suffering from symptoms linked to that exposure.

U.S. Army Eases Rules On Beards, Turbans For Muslim, Sikh Troops

U.S. Army Eases Rules On Beards, Turbans For Muslim, Sikh Troops

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Army has taken new steps to make it easier for Sikhs, Muslims and other religious minorities to obtain approval to dress and groom themselves according to their religious customs while serving in the military, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning, in a memorandum signed this week, revised the uniform policy to set appearance standards for people seeking religious accommodations to wear beards, turbans and head scarfs.

The new rules also enable brigade-level commanders to approve the religious accommodations, an authority that previously rested with the Army secretary. Denial of a religious accommodation may be appealed as high as the Army secretary.

An approved religious accommodation will continue throughout the soldier’s career and may not be revoked or modified without approval of the Army secretary, the memo says. The accommodation will not affect job specialties or duty locations, except in a few limited cases, the memo says.

“Our goal is to balance soldier readiness and safety with the accommodation of our soldiers’ faith practices, and this latest directive allows us to do that,” Lieutenant Colonel Randy Taylor said in a statement.

The new rules were welcomed by the Sikh Coalition.

“We are pleased with the progress that this new policy represents for religious tolerance and diversity,” said coalition Legal Director Harsimran Kaur.

Sikhs have a long tradition of military service in India and elsewhere and have served in the United States as far back as World War One. But uniform reforms after the Vietnam War made it difficult for them to serve without violating the tenets of their faith.

The new rules permit religious accommodations for beards, but they may not be longer than 2 inches unless rolled or tied up. Soldiers with a religious accommodation may wear a turban or under-turban known as a patka.

Soldiers with religious accommodations still must be able to wear combat helmets and other protective headgear and must modify their hairstyles to achieve a proper fit.

The new rules allow head scarfs, or hijabs, for Muslim women. They must be of a similar color to the uniform and be free of designs or markings, unless they are camouflage and worn with a camouflage uniform.

Hair grooming rules have been amended to allow for braids, cornrows, twists or locks, the memo said.

(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

IMAGE: U.S. troops participate in Latvia’s Independence Day military parade in Riga, Latvia, November 18, 2015. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

Army Begins Training For The Next War

Army Begins Training For The Next War

By Rick Montgomery, The Kansas City Star (TNS)

FORT RILEY, Kan. — For more than a decade, troops here have been schooled in counterinsurgency.

“Mission-specific” training, they call it: going house to house, busting down doors, rooting out terror cells, recognizing crude explosives.

Now, after a pair of mission-specific wars, an Army in transition aims to get back to the future.

The training needed to fight full-scale, more conventional battles has suffered, Army leaders contend. So Fort Riley is putting soldiers such as Staff Sgt. Gilbert Monroe back into big tanks and simulating wars on a scale grander than Iraq or Afghanistan.

“This is what I signed up for,” Monroe said.

He began his military career 14 years ago in an M1 Abrams tank. But he spent tours in Iraq commanding more nimble armored vehicles, rolling on eight tires and lacking the heft to blast a target from 2 miles out.

With Americans still assessing what was gained from fighting two drawn-out conflicts at the same time, are they ready to start thinking about the next war — maybe even The Big One?

“You hope it wouldn’t be World War III, but you have to prepare for the worst,” said Lt. Gen. Robert B. Brown, commanding general of the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. “We need to be ready to play against the pro teams, not just the amateurs.”

By that he means a nation such as North Korea, even Russia. A “pro team” could even be a band of radicals with the means to acquire nationlike resources in a hurry — such as those fighters who call themselves the Islamic State, recruiting through the global reach of the Web.

In Army-speak, the training needed to fight that brand of enemy is shifting away from “mission-specific” toward “decisive action.”

And that requires the reacquainting of soldiers with epic battle plans featuring tanks, surface-to-air missiles, Apache choppers and military precision exercised over a broad and rugged terrain.

“That skill set has perished,” said Timothy D. Livsey, Fort Riley’s deputy garrison commander.

“It’s a paradigm shift for the Army,” Livsey said. “With Iraq and Afghanistan, it was all about COIN — counterinsurgency. We still need to train for that. But we also have to get back to bread-and-butter skills such as precise artillery, precise gunnery.”

Fort Riley officials say decisive-action training blends yesterday’s emphasis on battlefield prowess with the people skills required of troops more recently focused on counterinsurgency.

At a time when U.S. military action has become defined by targeted airstrikes, ships jockeying in the South China Sea and a reluctance to place boots on the ground, the Army is seeking to reassert itself on the strategic stage, experts say.

Now facing steep troop reductions planned by the Pentagon, “the Army really is looking for a strategic framework in which to remain relevant,” said Kelley Sayler of the Center for a New American Security, an independent research organization.

“And you do need to train for the prospect of an epic war, even if there’s a low likelihood of it happening,” Sayler said. “You don’t want battlefield skills to atrophy.”

Nora Bensahel, a defense policy expert at American University, agreed.

“You have to prepare for the full spectrum,” she said.

Generations of U.S. military planners have gravely miscalculated that the next war would be like the last, Bensahel said.

“You just don’t know what the next conflict will entail.”

Don’t think of the activities at Fort Riley as training for a “conventional” war, said Brown of the Combined Arms Center.

“A nation-state fighting against another nation-state would be so complex these days, so unlike World War II, you could hardly make a comparison,” he said.

Future wars wouldn’t compare even with Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 land assault in which a multinational force drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Brown said technological leaps since then, plus threats posed by cyberattackers, have transformed conventional battle plans.

“No enemy today would be stupid enough to allow us months and months to build up forces,” as was the case in Desert Storm, he said.

Livsey said Fort Riley provides the perfect stage to replicate a complex battle across a vast landscape.

Home to the nation’s 1st Infantry Division, known as “the Big Red One,” the fort boasts more than 75,000 acres of deep-rooted grasslands that quickly rebound from the tank tracks, fires and other scars of mock battlefield maneuvers.

In combined-arms exercises slated for next month, “we’ll have a synchronization of artillery, aviation, howitzers, tanks … everything we’ve got,” said Maj. Steve Veves. His tank group fired at long-distance targets last week.

The Army’s National Training Center in the Mojave Desert has long been a site of intensive battlefield maneuvers for deploying troops. The military is shifting more of that training to home stations such as Fort Riley, and some of them have already been working on the new training.

Relying also on simulated training, Fort Riley this year became the first in the Army to use gaming software developed at Fort Leavenworth’s simulation laboratory. The software allows moving soldiers to become their own fighting avatars, surrounded by a virtual battleground they view through helmets.

“You become immersed,” said Bill Raymann, chief of training at the fort’s Close Combat and Tactical Training campus.

“If a simulation is done correctly, it’ll take the brain about 15 seconds to adjust back. You walk out the door surprised: ‘Oh, I’m really in Kansas.'”

Indoor simulators helped Pfc. Christian McClure get down the mechanics of loading an Abrams tank.

“They help, but nothing can simulate like this does,” McClure said just before wedging into a real tank and practicing live action on the firing range.

Although many experts, including some top Pentagon brass, question the Army’s need for heavy tanks and howitzers for future conflicts, McClure and tank commander Monroe would rather be nowhere else in battle.

“You can always use a tank,” Monroe said. “And, unfortunately, there will always be wars to fight.”

Miles away from the erupting battleground, Fort Riley commanders can monitor live maneuvers and coordinate them with drills around the globe.

A beach landing in California, infantry moving through a crowded Asian city and sea support from somewhere else, all linked together, make for what Army officials call “the ultimate scrimmage” for the ultimate war.

Military analyst John Pike said troops trained in counterinsurgency ought to prepare for that war, too.

“The Army has kicked down a lot of doors in the last dozen years,” said Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “And North Korea could break out any minute.

“It’s a big world out there. … Best as I can tell, peace isn’t breaking out all over.”

Photo: Capt. Brian Kossler talks about the features of a M1A2 Abrams tank simulator on Thursday, May 21, 2015, at Fort Riley in Kansas. (Keith Myers/Kansas City Star/TNS)