Just one day before his abrupt firing as commander of detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Rear Adm. John Ring said publicly that detainees there may not be receiving adequate medical treatment.
Adm. Craig Faller, commander of U.S. Southern Command, relieved Ring as the head of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo on Saturday due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command.
On Friday, Ring was quoted in a Defense One article as questioning the U.S. policy that prevents the transfer of detainees to the United States, even in the case of a medical emergency.
"I'm sort of caught between a rock and a hard place," Ring said in Defense One. "The Geneva Conventions' Article III, that says that I have to give the detainees equivalent medical care that I would give to a trooper. But if a trooper got sick, I'd send him home to the United States. And so I'm stuck. Whatever I'm going to do, I have to do here."
Ring was scheduled to move onto another assignment after a change of command in June, but his abrupt firing "had nothing to do" with his comments in the Defense One story, Army Col. Amanda Azubuike, spokeswoman for SOUTHCOM, told Military.com on Monday.
Guantanamo Bay currently houses 40 detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who allegedly planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Ring was also quoted as saying that some of the detainees are "prediabetic" and could develop serious health conditions as they get older.
"Am I going to do dialysis down here? I don't know. Somebody has got to tell me that," he told Defense One. "Are we going to do complex cancer care down here? I don't know; somebody has got to tell me that."
Ring was relieved as a result of an investigation that began in March and ended in mid-April, before the Defense One story was published, Azubuike said.
A Marine colonel who was fired from his job as commanding officer of a Virginia-based unit was arrested earlier this month for allegedly driving while intoxicated.
Col. John Atkinson was arrested April 12 in Prince William County, Virginia, according to police records. Atkinson, 49, was released after agreeing to appear in court May 24.
It's Atkinson's first alleged offense. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
Maj. Gen. Vincent Coglianese, head of Marine Corps Installations Command, fired Atkinson from his job as commanding officer of Headquarters and Service Battalion in Quantico, Virginia, last week.
Marine officials declined to say whether he's facing additional punishment.
"It would be inappropriate to comment on the circumstances that led to the decision to relieve Col. Atkinson due to the ongoing investigation," Maj. Simba Chigwida, a Marine Corps Installations Command spokesman, told Military.com.
Atkinson, who lives just outside Prince William County, allegedly refused a blood or breathalyzer test at the time of his arrest, according to court records. Doing so can result in the court suspending a driver's license for a year, Virginia law states.
In January, he was also fined for driving without a license, according to court records.
If found guilty, Atkinson faces a minimum $250 fine and could have his license revoked for a year.
A private company in Texas has acquired scores of old French fighter jets — and with its 63 former French air force Dassault Mirage F1s, Fort Worth-based Airborne Tactical Advantage Company possesses an air force that, in size, rivals that of many countries.
ATAC in 2017 announced it would buy the single-engine Mirages in order to expand its adversary operation, which simulates the "red air" enemy force in U.S. and allied war games.
Two years later ATAC announced that, with the help of parent company Textron, it has finished refurbishing and upgrading the supersonic Mirages.
"Textron retrofitted around 45 of the F1s with modern avionics systems such as digital radio-frequency memory-jamming capabilities and upgraded radars," according to Jane's. "ATAC plans to use the Mirages for the U.S. Air Force adversary-air requirement, which requires almost 150 aircraft to fulfill the service's red-air training needs."
ATAC also operates former military Hawker Hunter, IAI F-21 Kfir and Aero Vodochody L-39ZA. Other red-air companies include Draken International, Tactical Air Support, Top Aces and Air USA.
Tactical Air Support recently procured 21 former-Jordanian F-5s, bringing its total fleet of F-5s to 26. Draken bought 12 ex-South African Cheetah fighters, boosting its own total fleet to 109 jets.
Until recently, the U.S. military mostly provided its own red air. The Air Force operated three "aggressor" squadrons flying F-15s and F-16s. But the flying branch in 2014 shuttered the F-15 unit as a cost-saving measure. Two squadrons -- one each in Nevada and Alaska -- continue to fly a few dozen F-16s in the adversary role.
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps together operate several adversary squadrons flying early-model F-16s and F/A-18s plus 36 refurbished, former-Swiss F-5s. The Navy's 2020 budget request includes $40 million to acquire 22 ex-Swiss F-5s in order to maintain, over the long term, a 44-plane F-5 fleet.
While the sea services have not cut back on their organic red-air capability in the same way the Air Force has done, Navy and Marine squadrons still need more adversaries than the services' own squadrons can provide.
"Adversary capacity is the greatest issue in Marine Corps airâ€toâ€air training," the Corps stated in its 2018 aviation plan.
BREAKING: Rep. Schiff just said at this event that House Intelligence Committee will make a criminal referral to the Justice Dept later today on Trump booster Erik Prince for possibly lying to Congress https://t.co/zRi72FsKWA
— Devlin Barrett (@DevlinBarrett) April 30, 2019
The BERN app was so poorly designed that for a couple hours today the personal voter IDs of 150m+ Americans was available freely and easily, in violation of laws in all 50 states and fed privacy statutes, and it was entirely the doing of the Sanders campaign. Think about that. https://t.co/MjOA77T8Kz
— Madison V. King (@madisonvking) April 29, 2019
Quote by Scoopster:
Oh good f'in lord..The BERN app was so poorly designed that for a couple hours today the personal voter IDs of 150m+ Americans was available freely and easily, in violation of laws in all 50 states and fed privacy statutes, and it was entirely the doing of the Sanders campaign. Think about that. https://t.co/MjOA77T8Kz
— Madison V. King (@madisonvking) April 29, 2019
Quote by Scoopster:
Oh good f'in lord..The BERN app was so poorly designed that for a couple hours today the personal voter IDs of 150m+ Americans was available freely and easily, in violation of laws in all 50 states and fed privacy statutes, and it was entirely the doing of the Sanders campaign. Think about that. https://t.co/MjOA77T8Kz
— Madison V. King (@madisonvking) April 29, 2019
It isn’t the first time that Trump has called for this. Charging asylum application fees puts a dollar amount on helping migrants escape persecution. It is pure villainy, but it is also a sign of how few ideas for limiting immigration that they have left. https://t.co/7BkupaxkZr
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) April 30, 2019