Can’t lie, that scene in Kelly’s Heroes where Oddball talks about firing red paint (foreshadowing a battle later) had me laughing for days.
As we shift into militarized AR, I was reminded of Oddball’s red paint shells and altering enemy mindsets.
Once outfitted with the technology, service leaders headed through the woods and into a building on a mission to test out the IVAS HUD’s ability to recognise and register faces, pull up maps, and translate foreign characters. Leaders also demoed the integration of the Family of Weapon Sights – Individual (FWS-I) – a thermal sensor mounted on M4 Carbine and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon that provides users with infrared imagery in all weather and lightning conditions – into the IVAS HUD when they faced ‘enemy combatants’.
Imagine Kelly’s Heroes talking today about a AR hack that made hostile forces see teddy bears coming at them…it must be way past time for a remake of that classic movie.
In 2012 I wrote about an “uncomfortable truth” that Poles who either murdered Jews during WWII or allowed it to happen continue to believe the Germans are the only ones to blame.
It makes sense why someone in Poland would object to Nazi death camps being labeled as Polish death camps. People unfortunately blur geographic location with who came up with an idea. Language should be precise where needed to avoid false attributions.
However, trying to draw clear lines in a very blurry situation also can go too far. Poles should not use a campaign for Nazi attributions to become a blanket excuse to deny any crimes committed by Poles, or to silence discussion of Polish logistics for death camps located in Poland.
As German authorities implemented killing on an industrial scale, they drew upon Polish police forces and railroad personnel for logistical support, notably to guard ghettos where hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children were held before deportation to killing centers. The so-called Blue Police was a force some 20,000 strong. These collaborators enforced German anti-Jewish policies such as restrictions on the use of public transportation and curfews, as well as the devastating and bloody liquidation of ghettos in occupied Poland from 1942-1943. Paradoxically, many Polish policemen who actively assisted the Germans in hunting Jews were also part of the underground resistance against the occupation in other arenas. Individual Poles also often helped in the identification, denunciation, and exposure of Jews in hiding, sometimes motivated by greed and the opportunities presented by blackmail and the plunder of Jewish-owned property.
Bruno Dey, 93, has claimed he had no idea Jews were being murdered in the Stutthof camp near what’s now Gdansk, where he began working in 1944. But he admitted at trial that he saw Jews taken into gas chambers at the camp, heard their screams and watched the frantic rattling of locked steel doors, The Guardian reported. On at least one occasion, “I didn’t see anyone come out,” he testified.
The USHMM historian estimates 20,000 Poles served in the “Blue Police” (Granatowa policja). They easily could have been in a similar situation as described in a USHMM paper on the subject (PDF).
And, as I’ve also written before, forced deportations since at least 1942 were known (even by the Allied forces) to mean people being sent to Nazi death camps in Poland. Those observing knew that by 1943 only 50,000 Jews out of 350,000 were in Warsaw, and it was this knowledge of certain death that led to the famous uprising.
I’ve written here before about French use of encryption in the 16th Century, and prior art. A new history article makes brief mention of ancient secrecy methods found in England.
The spies had a few special tricks up their sleeves. “They practiced secret inks,” explains Alford. “Quite a lot of use of code and cypher, which to our eyes looks relatively unsophisticated, although it develops an increasing sophistication.” Cyphers became particularly important during the infamous Babington Plot, when Walsingham’s agents decrypted letters to and from Mary Queen of Scots. This provided evidence that Mary was conspiring against Elizabeth, leading to Mary’s trial and execution.
Source: UK National Archives. The Babington postscript and cipher, 1586. (Catalogue reference: SP 12/193/54 and SP 53/18/55)
Provided evidence? Very important to understanding the fallout from the Babington Plot is that integrity was the bigger failure, on top of confidentiality being breached.
While in his possession, Walsingham had the letters deciphered and copied. In 1586, Babington wrote a letter outlining the details of the plot to rescue Mary. In the letter, Babington asked for Mary’s permission to assassinate Elizabeth. Mary responded and agreed with the plans, but did not authorized the assassination. That did not matter however, because Walsingham’s spies intercepted the letter. The letter was deciphered and copied but this time a postscript was added. According to the new letter, Mary authorized the assassination. Walsingham had his proof.
By the 1580s, ciphers were extremely complex – they could incorporate substitute letters, Arabic numerals, nulls, letters with a dot before or after, substitute names for locations, and numbers, signs of the zodiac or days of the week for individuals.
If you think that sounds innovative, consider how French and English secrecy methods seem to have roots elsewhere:
Muhammad ibn Abbad al-Mu’tamid (المعتمد بن عباد), King of Seville from 1069-1092, used birds in poetry for secret correspondence.
Leaflets have been so basic, so very black beret and prone to failures, that something higher up on the hat color chart seems to be in store for the military:
How better to attract talent into a modernizing Psychological Operations (PSYOP) group than a grey hat? Or imagine the “grey berets” calling in “knowledge bombs”…
Nothing is decided yet, I mean there’s still a chance someone could influence the decisions, but rumors have it that the next generation of psychological warfare troops could expect to be represented in a beret the color of white noise:
The idea is essentially still being floated at this point, but it could be a recruiting boon for the PSYOP career field, which is tasked with influencing the emotions and behaviors of people through products like leaflets, loudspeakers and, increasingly, social media.
“In a move to more closely link Army Special Operations Forces, the PSYOP Proponent at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School is exploring the idea of a distinctive uniform item, like a grey beret, to those Soldiers who graduate the Psychological Operations Qualification Course,” Lt. Col. Loren Bymer, a USASOC spokesman, said in an emailed statement to Army Times.
While still being a little fuzzy on the details, reporters also dropped some useful suggestions in their story:
1) The new Army Special Operations Command strategy released just a month ago states everyone always will be trained in cyber warfare and weaponizing information
LOE 2 Readiness, OBJ 2.2 Preparation: Reality in readiness will be achieved using cyber and information warfare in all aspects of training.
2) Weaponizing information means returning to principles of influence operations in World War II (e.g. Mission 101, and Operation Torch), let alone World War I (e.g. Battle of Beersheba)… I mean adapting to the modern cloud platform (Cambridge Analytica) war.
“We need to move beyond our 20th century approach to messaging and start looking at influence as an integral aspect of modern irregular warfare,” Andrew Knaggs, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism, said at a defense industry symposium in February. Army Special Operations Command appears to take seriously the role that influencing plays in great power competition.
As some of the most highly trained military personnel, the “grey beret” are a force to be reckoned with. Until SOWT gives the “all-clear” the mission doesn’t move forward.
Kessler AFB: “Team members collect atmospheric data, assist mission planning, generate accurate and mission-tailored target and route forecasts in support of global special operations, conduct special weather reconnaissance and train foreign national forces.” Click for original.
Meanwhile over at the Navy and Marines there’s much discussion about vulnerability to broad-based information attacks across their entire supply chain.
…a massive cyber campaign is being waged against the Navy, and every organization associated with it is mounting. The defense industrial base and associated supply chains are under constant assault. The hackers have two objectives: steal U.S. defense secrets and undermine confidence…
While Brigadier General (BG) William P. Yarborough, commander of the U.S. Army Special Warfare Center, waited at the pond, the presidential caravan drove down roads flanked on both sides by saluting SF soldiers, standing proudly in fatigues and wearing green berets.
“Late Thursday morning, 12 October 1961, BG Yarborough welcomed the 35th President, Secretary McNamara, GEN Decker, and the distinguished guests at the reviewing stand.”
General Yarborough very strategically wore the green beret as he greeted JFK and they spoke of Special Forces wanting them a long time (arguably since 1953 when ex-OSS Major Brucker started the idea).
The challenge of this old but new form of operations is a real one…I am sure the Green Beret will be a mark of distinction in the trying times ahead.
Just one month later, 58 years ago (November 1961) the green beret became official headgear of the Special Forces, which earlier that year started being deployed into Vietnam. Finally on April 11, 1962 JFK issued a White House Memorandum to the US Army:
The Green Beret is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.
What will the grey hat symbolize and what will become its history?
Update May 2020: Perspective from USSOCOM on SOF and US Strategy.
“During his most recent trip to Afghanistan, Clarke said, he found that commanders now spend 60 percent of their time working in the information space. Commanders think about how to use the information space to influence the Taliban’s thought processes and how to influence the Afghan.”
Founded in 1952 as part of the U.S. Army Psychological Warfare Division, the 10th Special Forces Group was the first of its kind, according to Army archives. It was named the tenth group to make the Soviets think there were at least nine others just like it, Anne Jacobsen wrote in her book “Surprise, Kill, Vanish.” […] Wanting to distinguish themselves from conventional Army forces, Special Forces soldiers selected the wear of the beret because of OSS influence, since a number of its teams adopted headgear worn by soldiers in France. And the color green came from the influence of British Commandos during World War II.
U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has created a new joint task force to fight against Chinese information operations in the Pacific.
[RAT LEAFLET] Translation: “The Invisible Sheikh with the expansion of his false caliphate… will soon have none to help him achieve his illusions.” Target Audience: ISIS members. Objective: Encourage desertion to weaken ISIS. This is a reference to the leader of ISIS and self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He is called ‘invisible’ because his exact location remains uncertain and he hides among civilian populations in ISIS-controlled areas rather than anywhere in the open or near immediate danger. An example of a PSYOP leaflet used against the Islamic State (ISIS) that was dropped before the Delta Force raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. (USASOC).
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
