In SECRETS OF SEAL TEAM SIX, viewers are invited behind closed doors to learn the story of this top-secret Special Operations unit that officially doesn’t even exist. For three decades, SEAL Team Six has been considered one of the most – if not the most – elite group in the U.S. military. These are the men who took down Osama Bin Laden. Now that this undisclosed group has made headlines, will they still be as effective as they’ve proven to be in the past?
In addition to the group’s background and history, viewers will get a look at the recruiting, weapons and technology necessary in carrying out the year’s top news story. Team members are put through some of the most rigorous training and examinations to prove that they have what it takes to complete missions intelligently, discreetly and seamlessly.
Through graphics, interviews and dramatic military b-roll, the stories of those who put it all on the line will be told candidly and informatively. The special introduces viewers to the team’s founder, Dick Marcinko, and former members to give the first tell-all account of their experience in this underground organization.
“There’s a group that will kick ass and save you,” says Marcinko.
Viewers will also meet former SEALS, military analysts, journalists and Seal Team Six wives for an outsider’s knowledge and expertise on the group’s ability to remain under the radar while carrying out tasks successfully.
“We’re rough boys. We want to fight. That’s why we joined,” says former Seal Don Shipley.
Delve into this mysterious world and learn the SECRETS OF SEAL TEAM SIX.
SECRETS OF SEAL TEAM SIX is produced for Discovery Channel by NBC Peacock Productions. Gretchen Eisele is executive producer for NBC Peacock Productions, and Brooke Runnette is executive producer for Discovery Channel.
About Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is dedicated to creating the highest quality non-fiction content that informs and entertains its consumers about the world in all its wonder, diversity and amazement. The network, which is distributed to 100.8 million U.S. homes, can be seen in over 180 countries, offering a signature mix of compelling, high-end production values and vivid cinematography across genres including, science and technology, exploration, adventure, history and in-depth, behind-the-scenes glimpses at the people, places and organizations that shape and share our world. For more information, please visit www.discovery.com.
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New Pentagon plan would cut ground forces by 100,000
Published January 26, 2012 | FoxNews.com
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta unveiled a plan Thursday that would cut nearly a half-trillion dollars from the defense budget over the next decade by retiring older planes and ships, delaying some projects and shrinking U.S. ground forces by about 100,000.
The plan would reduce the size of the Army by 80,000 soldiers by 2017, bringing the force size to a level slightly larger than it was on 9/11. Amid concerns from some lawmakers that the cuts would endanger security, Panetta cast the proposal as a response to changing times.
“We are at a strategic turning point after a decade of war and after a very substantial growth in the defense budget,” Panetta said Thursday.
Panetta said the plan shifts the Pentagon’s focus from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to future challenges in Asia, the Mideast and in cyberspace. More special operations forces like the Navy SEALs who killed Usama bin Laden will be available around the world, he said.
At the same time, the Pentagon would shrink the size of the overall military while pushing off certain projects.
Some lawmakers immediately aired concerns with the plan.
“Taking us back to a pre-9/11 military force structure places our country in grave danger,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee that will hold hearings on the Pentagon budget plan.
Panetta announced that the administration will request a 2013 budget of $525 billion, plus another $88 billion for operations in Afghanistan. Combined, those totals are about $33 billion less than the Pentagon is spending this year. Panetta said, however, that the Pentagon’s base budget will grow to $567 billion in 2017. At that point, the cumulative budgets over five years would be $259 billion less than had been planned before the administration struck a deficit-cutting deal with Congress last summer that requires projected defense spending to be reduced by $487 billion by 2022.
Among the details Panetta disclosed:
The Army would shrink by 80,000 soldiers, from 570,000 today to 490,000 by 2017. That is slightly larger than the Army on 9/11.
The Marine Corps would drop from today’s 202,000 to 182,000 — also above the level on 9/11.
The Air Force would retire some older planes including about two dozen C-5A cargo aircraft and 65 of its oldest C-130 cargo planes.
The Navy would keep a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers but retire seven cruisers earlier than planned. Panetta described those cruisers as “lower priority,” and said they either have not been upgraded with “ballistic missile defense capability” or require significant maintenance. The plan would delay purchase of some other ships, including a new Virginia-class submarine.
Purchase of F-35 stealth fighter jets, to be fielded by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, would be slowed.
Current plans for building a new generation of submarines that carry long-range nuclear missiles would be delayed by two years. The current fleet of nuclear-capable bombers and land-based nuclear missiles would be left unchanged. Panetta said the move would not harm the country’s nuclear deterrence.
Military pay raises will remain on track until 2015, when the pace of increase will be slowed by an undetermined amount. However, the Pentagon recommended an increase in health care fees, co-pays and deductibles for retired military members.
President Obama will ask Congress to approve a new round of domestic base closures, although the timing of this was left vague and there is little chance that lawmakers would agree to this in a presidential election year.
The defense spending plan is scheduled to be submitted to Congress as part of the administration’s full 2013 budget on Feb. 13.
Prominent in the Obama plan is a renewed focus on Asia, where China’s rapid military modernization has raised worry in Washington and rattled U.S. allies.
The Pentagon has embraced a proposal by special operations chief Adm. Bill McRaven to send more manpower and equipment to worldwide “Theater Special Operations Commands” to strike back wherever threats arise, according to a senior defense official who spoke to The Associated Press, and other current and former U.S. officials briefed on the program. The stepped-up network would put top special operations personnel closer to the problems they face, better able to launch unilateral raids like this week’s Somalia mission.
Panetta also has made clear the administration will resist any effort to shrink the Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers. He said last weekend while on board the fleet’s oldest carrier, the USS Enterprise, that keeping 11 of the warships is a “long-term commitment” that Obama believes is important to keeping the peace.
Obama has said he hopes to further reduce the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, but Panetta said the basic structure — a “triad” of land, sea and air nuclear forces — will be maintained. The Pentagon said it will study the potential to shrink that force later.
The defense budget is being reshaped in the midst of a presidential contest in which Obama seeks to portray himself as a forward-looking commander in chief focusing on new security threats. Republicans want to cast him as weak on defense.
Obama has highlighted his national security successes — the killing of Usama bin Laden, the death of senior Al Qaeda leaders and the demise of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi — to counter Republican criticism. He also has emphasized the completion of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and the start of a drawdown in Afghanistan as turning points that offer new opportunities to scale back defense spending.
But several congressional Republicans see a political opening in challenging the reductions in projected military spending that the GOP and Obama agreed to last summer as part of a deal to raise the nation’s borrowing authority. They’ve echoed Obama’s potential presidential rivals Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who plead for fiscal austerity but contend that sizable cuts would gut the military.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/26/panetta-to-outline-new-defense-spending-cuts-at-pentagon/print#ixzz1kdFRzyxn
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Revisiting the bin Laden Raid: Was Capture Ever an Option?
By MICHAEL CROWLEY | @CrowleyTIME | April 27, 2012
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/04/27/revisiting-the-bin-laden-raid-was-capture-ever-an-option/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fswampland+%28TIME%3A+Swampland%29#ixzz1taf275JU
After last year’s bin Laden raid I wrote a few of posts about the operation’s original intent–namely, whether the objective had always been to kill the al-Qaeda leader, or whether capture had ever been a viable option. The White House gave unclear and shifting answers on this point, but nothing I’ve seen since last May suggests that anyone spent much time talking about a capture scenario. (Who cares, you might ask? Well, for one thing, interrogating bin Laden might have been hugely valuable. Trying him would have made a powerful statement about the rule of law. And the legalities of the killing have always been murky.) Graham’s Allison’s excellent new TIME cover story adding detail to the operation’s planning doesn’t address this point specifically, but one passage affirms my sense that it was always meant to be a hit:
In a series of 40 intelligence reviews from August 2010 to April 2011, further questions were explored and competing hypotheses examined — in particular, the possibility that the suspect in Abbottabad was not bin Laden. This led to the creation of what some called the Bible: a three-inch binder listing every question about the operation, from assessing the risks of a leak at various stages to what to do with bin Laden’s body.
Another, more ambiguous data point, is the memo about Obama’s order to commence the operation written by then-CIA director Leon Panetta and obtained by TIME, which includes this line:
The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out.
As Breitbart.com’s Ben Shapiro notes, it’s not clear–perhaps intentionally so–whether “get” was supposed to mean “capture” or “kill”. Shapiro also argues, not unfairly, that the memo has the whiff of a CYA document to protect the White House–and/or Panetta I would add–in case the operation went awry.
All that said, Obama made the call, the operation was a huge operational, strategic and political success, and the White House probably doesn’t mind a little second-guessing on the margins, so long as people keep mentioning the fact that the 9/11 mastermind is dead. Which is why the Obama campaign has a new web video out taking more credit for the mission, and implying that Mitt Romney would have wimped out. Whatever nits people might pick, the bin Laden mission may be the highest card in the Obama campaign’s poker hand.
Update: BuzzFeed tracks down some 2008 remarks in which Obama himself made the case for taking bin Laden alive:
“What would be important would be for us to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr, and to assure that the United States government is abiding by basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism,” Obama said as he unveiled his new national security team in June 2008.
As Jon Chait notes, Obama didn’t rule out killing bin Laden that day. He went on to say that, “If I’m president, and we have the opportunity to capture him, we may not be able to capture him alive.” From what we know about the Abbotabad raid, however, it sounds like it may indeed have been possible to capture bin Laden. Certainly, trying to capture him in a darkened and unfamiliar house in a semi-hostile country could have increased the risk to the SEAL team and even given bin Laden a chance to escape. But it’s far from clear that we were “not able to capture him alive.”
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/04/27/revisiting-the-bin-laden-raid-was-capture-ever-an-option/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fswampland+%28TIME%3A+Swampland%29#ixzz1taepqedn
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