US Navy deploys USS Freedom to Pacific

A fast, maneuverable surface warrior, the Navy's first littoral combat ship USS Freedom has joined the 7th Fleet in the Pacific.

Its arrival coincides with further heavy rhetoric from North Korea. News agency KCNA carried the government’s message Wednesday that it had ordered artillery and rocket units into "combat posture" to prepare to target U.S. bases in the United States mainland, Hawaii and Guam.

On its maiden deployment, USS Freedom arrived in the U.S. 7th Fleet Area of Responsibility (AOR) on March 20 -- a zone that covers more than 48 million square miles, stretching west from the International Date Line to the western coast of India. At any given moment, about 100 ships and submarines are deployed there and assigned to 7th Fleet.

On March 15, the fleet marked the 70th anniversary of its maintaining security and stability in the region.

While North Korea is not thought to have ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, it is capable of striking U.S. bases in the region, including Guam, where Freedom will be visiting.

The ship will participate in some large scale training exercises in Southeast Asia, involving maritime security operations with regional partners.

North Korea, meanwhile, has been carrying out its own large-scale military exercises.

Surface and anti-submarine warfare ready
Designed and developed by Lockheed Martin, the littoral combat ship (coastal and shallow water areas are called “littoral”) is quick and agile, and loaded with mission packages that can be configured for surface warfare, countering sea mines and anti-submarine warfare.

Led by Cmdr. Timothy Wilke, Freedom will initially be manned by her crew of 91 sailors, who include mission package personnel and an aviation detachment to operate its MH-60 helicopter.

Freedom can provide critical access and dominance in coastal water battlespaces.

As designed, Freedom can operate with substantially fewer crew, requiring only 40 core sailors plus support crew for the aviation and mission packages.

Should a battle erupt, Freedom can act as a hub to tie together sea, air and land assets.

COMBATTS-21 Combat Systems
The ship’s battle management system, also produced by Lockheed Martin, provides a flexible, next-generation defense system that can be reconfigured for a specific threat in days.

COMBATSS-21 is a self-defense suite and integrates the radar, electro-optical infrared cameras, gunfire control system, countermeasures and short-range anti-air missiles, as well as a variety of missile and torpedo systems, naval guns and more.

Let's say the mission required weapons systems to defeat enemy subs. An anti-submarine package would include an MH-60 Romeo carrying an active dipping sonar, sonobuoys and heavy-weight torpedoes.

What if the enemy had littered the coastal waters with mines? Freedom’s countermeasures package can search twice as quickly as earlier systems. It requires only two operators and would include tech like the Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle and Raytheon’s airborne SONAR mine countermeasure detection system, AQS-20A.

Remember the USS Cole incident where American lives were lost? Small boats continue to be an ongoing threat.

To protect the fleet from this sort of asymmetric warfare, Freedom’s tech could include the Gun Mission Module MK 50 MOD, a Non-Line of Sight Launch System Mission Module, a MH-60R helicopter and vertical takeoff drones.

Led by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, the team includes naval architect Gibbs & Cox and ship builder Marinette Marine Corporation

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/28/agile-combat-ship-uss-freedom-debuts-in-pacific-ocean/#ixzz2Or2fCL4D

USAF flies B-2s to Korean Peninsula in show of strength

The United States military made the rare announcement Thursday that it had flown two of its most advanced bombers in an "extended deterrence mission" all the way from Missouri to the Korean Peninsula, where they dropped inert dummy bombs, in a move clearly aimed at warning North Korea against further provocations.

A statement released by United States Forces Korea said the sortie by the two B-2 Spirit stealth bombers "demonstrates the United States' ability to conduct long range, precision strikes quickly and at will."

A senior defense official told CBS Radio News correspondent Cami McCormick the B-2 flights were, "intended to demonstrate very clearly the resolve of the United States to deter against aggression on the Korean Peninsula, and our strong commitment to the U.S. alliance with South Korea."

CBS News White House correspondent Major Garrett reports that the B-2 flights come amid rapidly increasing tension on the Korean Peninsula as new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ratcheted up the level of both his threatening rhetoric, and his hostile actions against South Korea, and the United States.

A Pentagon official told CBS News that, since March 8, the U.S. military has flown more traditional looking, non-stealth B-52 bombers over South Korea three times, but Thursday was the first run over the peninsula by B-2s.

Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel spoke Wednesday with the South Korean defense minister as part of an intensified effort by the Obama administration to coordinate reaction to the North's belligerence with South Korea and Japan.

"Hurry Imperious Leader - destroy US before we run out of quarters!"

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CIA director faces a quandary over clandestine service appointment

By Greg Miller and Julie Tate, Published: March 26

As John Brennan moved into the CIA director’s office this month, another high-level transition was taking place down the hall.

A week earlier, a woman had been placed in charge of the CIA’s clandestine service for the first time in the agency’s history. She is a veteran officer with broad support inside the agency. But she also helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture.

The woman, who remains undercover and cannot be named, was put in the top position on an acting basis when the previous chief retired last month. The question of whether to give her the job permanently poses an early quandary for Brennan, who is already struggling to distance the agency from the decade-old controversies.

Brennan endured a bruising confirmation battle in part over his own role as a senior CIA official when the agency began using water-boarding and other harsh interrogation methods. As director, he is faced with assembling the CIA’s response to a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee that documents ­abuses in the interrogation program and ­accuses the agency of misleading the White House and Congress over its effectiveness.

To help navigate the sensitive decision on the clandestine service chief, Brennan has taken the unusual step of assembling a group of three former CIA officials to evaluate the candidates. Brennan announced the move in a previously undisclosed notice sent to CIA employees last week, officials said.

“The director of the clandestine service has never been picked that way,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official.

The move has led to speculation that Brennan is seeking political cover for a decision made more difficult by the re-emergence of the interrogation controversy and the acting chief’s ties to that program.

She “is highly experienced, smart and capable,” and giving her the job permanently “would be a home run from a diversity standpoint,” the former senior U.S. intelligence official said. “But she was also heavily involved in the interrogation program at the beginning and for the first couple of years.”

The former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing internal agency matters, said that Brennan “is obviously hesitating” at making the chief permanent.

CIA officials disputed that characterization. “Given the importance of the position of the director of the National Clandestine Service, Director Brennan has asked a few highly respected former senior agency officers to review the candidates he’s considering for the job,” said Preston Golson, a CIA spokesman.

The group’s members were identified as former senior officials John McLaughlin, Stephen Kappes and Mary Margaret Graham.

Golson said Brennan will make the decision but added that “asking former senior agency officers to review the candidates will undoubtedly aid the selection process by making sure the director has the benefit of the additional perspectives from these highly experienced and respected intelligence officers.”

READ MORE AT THE WASHINGTON POST 

North Korea - cut-off ready for war.

NYTIMES: SEOUL, South Korea —

North Korea cut off the last remaining military hotlines with South Korea on Wednesday, accusing President Park Geun-hye of South Korea of pursuing the same hard-line policy of her predecessor that the North blamed for a prolonged chill in inter-Korean relations.

Amid tensions over the North’s third nuclear test last month and ensuing United Nations sanctions, North Korea had already shut down Red Cross hotlines with South Korea and a communication line with the American military command in South Korea. But its decision to cut off military hotlines with South Korea on Wednesday was taken more seriously in Seoul because the two Koreas have used those four telephone lines to control daily cross-border traffic of workers and cargo travelling to the North Korean border town of Kaesong.

The two countries run a joint industrial park at Kaesong, the last standing symbol of inter-Korean cooperation that has survived the political tensions of recent years. Seoul officials said 887 South Korean workers were in Kaesong on Wednesday. The traffic was running normal on Wednesday, South Korean officials said, indicating that the North Korean military did not go so far as to stop cross-border economic exchanges.

“There do not exist any dialogue channel and communications means between the DPRK and the U.S. and between the North and the South,” said a North Korean statement sent to the South Korean military by telephone and later carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. “Not words but only arms will work on the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces.”

DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.

The North’s action came a day after its top military command ordered all its missile and artillery units to be on “the highest alert” and ready to strike the United States and South Korea. It also vowed to take “substantial military actions” to retaliate against joint U.S.-South Korean military drills, which involved American B-52 bomber sorties over South Korea.

North Korea had previously cut off communications lines with South Korea that are intended to prevent military clashes.

“Under the situation where a war may break out any moment, there is no need to keep North-South military communications,” Pyongyang said on Wednesday.

The North Korean action came shortly after President Park Geun-hye of South Korea stressed both firmness and reciprocity in North Korea policy.

“If North Korea provokes or does things that harm peace, we must make sure that it gets nothing but will pay the price, while if it keeps its promises, the South should do the same,” she said during a briefing from her government’s top diplomats and North Korea policy-makers. “Without rushing and in the same way we would lay one brick after another, we must develop South-North relations step by step, based on trust, and create sustainable peace.”

Her new unification minister Ryoo Kihl-jae, South Korea’s point person on North Korea, later told reporters that his government was willing to consider lifting trade embargoes imposed on the North following the deadly sinking of a South Korean navy ship in 2010 - but not before North Korea takes responsibility for the incident that killed 46 South Korean sailors.

Seoul blamed the incident on a North Korean torpedo attack, but Pyongyang insists that it had nothing to do with it.

“We keep our door open for dialogue,” Mr. Ryoo said.

But on Wednesday, the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the North Korean counterpart of Mr. Ryoo’s ministry, berated President Park for warning a day earlier that the Pyongyang regime can ensure its survival only when it stops building nuclear weapons while its people go hungry. “This time her remarks have gone beyond the line,” it said.

It said that Ms. Park’s recent comments were “utterly shocking” compared with her earlier indications that she would not maintain the hard-line policy of her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, whom she replaced on Feb. 25. “If she keeps to the road of confrontation like traitor Lee, defying the warnings of the DPRK, she will meet a miserable ruin,” it said.

Also Wednesday, the North's main ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said that its planned "substantial military actions" will include "pre-emtpive nuclear strikes" against the United States and South Korea.