Army Times - June 2022

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Army Times (ISSN 0004-2595) | Vol. 83, Issue 06 | Army Times is published 12 times a year by Sightline Media Group, 901 N Glebe Rd. Sth Floor Arlington, VA 22203. Schedule is subject

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AIR CAV IS BACK
NEW UNITS, CLASS
WAITLISTS AND MORE

SERE WANTS
VOLUNTEERS
FUTURE WARS MAY
REQUIRE MORE TROOPS
WITH SERE TRAINING

Headquarters
XVIII Airborne Corps

and Fort Bragg ‘

NEW NAMES, BUT
SAME OLD POSTS
PANEL UNVEILS NINE
ARMY BASE NAME
RECOMMENDATIONS

‘ARCTIC ANGELS’
HOW — AND WHY — THE
11TH AIRBORNE IS BEING
RESURRECTED IN ALASKA

EXTRA CASH
NEW ALLOWANCE FOR
TROOPS ORDERED

TO MOVE OUT OF
BARRACKS

Top left:

Combat Readiness Center/Army
Cover photo:

Sgt. Shawn Keeton/Army

Cover design:

Jared Morgan/Staff
ARMY BEGINS TO BACKFILL
STINGERS SENT TO UKRAINE

The Army has awarded a $624.6
million contract to Raytheon to
build Stinger anti-aircraft missiles
to restock its own supply after
sending roughly 1,400 of the
weapon systems to Ukraine

to defend against the Russian
invasion.

“Work locations and funding will
be determined with each order,
with an estimated completion date
of June 30, 2026,” the Pentagon
announced May 27. Raytheon will
build 1,300 new Stinger missiles.

“The contract includes provisions
for engineering support, as well
as the test equipment and support
needed to address obsolescence,
modernize key components, and
accelerate production,” according
to the company statement.

Stinger and Javelin weapons
have been in high-demand. In

May, Congress passed a $40
billion spending package for
Ukraine that authorizes the Biden
administration to send another $11
billion in U.S. military equipment to
the country; the package includes
$8.7 billion to backfill stocks
already sent.

Of note, the Army hasn’t bought
any Stingers since 2005. The
service is also on the cusp of
a new effort to design the next
generation of man-portable anti-
aircraft missiles, while upgrading
its current inventory.

The Army said prior to the May
27 news that it would be awarding
a contract to Raytheon to address
the Stinger’s most critical obsolete
part, its dual-detector assembly.
The Stinger’s dual-detector seeker
uses infrared and ultraviolet
sensors to locate targets.

IPPS-A ROLLOUT
STILL ON TRACK

After an initial delay from its original
December 2021 release date, the

platform remains on track for full
implementation on Sept. 20.

The Integrated Personnel and Pay
System-Army had its launch for the
active duty force postponed due
to problems transferring data from
legacy systems.

An earlier version of IPPS-A is
currently in use across the National
Guard.

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4 ARMYTIMES.COM June 2022

GUILTY IN JAN. 6 RIOT

A former Army reservist described by prosecutors as a Nazi
sympathizer was convicted May 27 of storming the U.S. Capi-
tol to obstruct Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s
2020 electoral victory.

Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who worked at a Navy base when
he joined the pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, was also convicted of
disorderly conduct and other misdemeanors. Hale-Cussanelli
took the stand in his defense and claimed he didn’t know that
Congress met at the Capitol.

“| know this sounds idiotic, but I’m from New Jersey,”
Hale-Cusanelli said. “In all my studies, | didn’t know there was
an actual building that was called the ‘Capitol. It’s embarrass-
ing and idiotic.”

Hale-Cusanelli’s trial was the fifth before a jury and the sev-
enth overall for a Capitol riot case. The first four juries unani-
mously convicted the riot defendants of all charges. Roughly
300 others have pleaded guilty to crimes stemming from the
riot, including seditious conspiracy and assault.

Prosecutors said Hale-Cusanelli openly espoused white
supremacist and antisemitic ideology and wore an Adolf
Hitler-style mustache to work. On his cellphone, investiga-
tors found photos of him with the distinctive mustache and
combed-over hairstyle associated with the Nazi leader.

Hale-Cusanelli had a “secret” security clearance for his
job as a security contractor at Naval Weapons Station Earle
in Colts Neck, New Jersey. He also lived on the base with a
roommate who reported him to NCIS.

During the trial’s opening statements, a Justice Department
prosecutor said Hale-Cusanelli stormed the Capitol because
he wanted to kick off a civil war and create “a clean slate.”
Defense attorney Jonathan Crisp told jurors that “groupthink”
and a desperate desire “to be heard” drove Hale-Cusanelli to
follow a mob into the Capitol.

One Navy seaman said Hale-Cusanelli told him “he would kill
all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and
he wouldn’t need to season them because the salt from their
tears would make it flavorful enough,” according to prosecu-
tors. Other coworkers recalled Hale-Cusanelli making deroga-
tory remarks about women, Black people and other minorities,
prosecutors said.

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MAN INDICTED IN FENTANYL
OVERDOSES OF WEST POINT CADETS

ON SPRING BREAK

A Florida man from Lauderhill was
indicted this week on federal drug
charges after dealing to a group of
West Point cadets fentanyl-laced
cocaine in March, causing at least
four to overdose.

Axel Giovany “Gee” Casseus, 21,
was indicted May 5 on two counts
of distribution of a controlled
substance after allegedly selling
fentanyl-laced cocaine to six
spring breakers March 10 and to
an undercover cop March 11, court
documents show.

If convicted, Casseus
faces a minimum of 20 years
imprisonment for the first drug
charge that resulted in the
overdoses and a maximum of life
in prison.

West Point spokeswoman
Cheryl Boujnida declined to
answer questions regarding what
disciplinary actions the cadets are
facing when reached for comment.

“Currently, we do not have any
additional information to provide
as the incident is still under
investigation,” Boujnida told Army
Times.

Following a 2021 cheating
scandal that rocked West Point
and the Army at large, the U.S.
Military Academy got rid of a
program that gave cadets who
violated the school’s honor code a
second chance.

At this point, the academy is not
expected to respond kindly to the

6 ARMYTIMES.COM June 2022

cadets involved.

It’s unclear from court
documents whether the cadets
or the other spring breakers
involved bought the drugs from
Casseus. But on March 9, two of
the cadets — who would later be
put on ventilators following their
overdoses — met with Casseus at
Fort Lauderdale beach.

Casseus allegedly gave them his
number, which was subsequently
saved as “Gee fort Lauderdale
plug.”

The college student spoke with
Casseus until the next afternoon
around 4:30 p.m., court documents
show.

The deal was allegedly
completed sometime around then
outside the Wilton Manors home
the group had rented.

According to court documents,
the spring breakers then laid
out seven lines of cocaine and
ingested them, with at least two
of the partiers immediately going
into cardiac arrest. All six had to be
hospitalized.

Casseus was arrested March 11
after selling almost 44 grams of
cocaine to an undercover officer.
He was denied pre-trial release
May 6 because of his previous
record with drugs and the “near-
death overdose of two victims,”
court records stated.

Casseus’ trial is scheduled for
June 6.

NEW COURT RECORDS

Court documents filed on May 19 by Texas officials revealed
a potential motive in the 2020 murder of Army Spc. Vanessa
Guillen.

Cecily Aguilar, the only defendant charged in the murder,
told investigators that Spc. Aaron Robinson hit Guillen in the
head with a hammer after Guillen saw a picture of Aguilar on
Robinson’s phone, according to a 61-page Texas Department
of Public Safety investigation

“Aguilar later explained why Robinson killed Guillen, saying
Guillen saw Robinson’s cellphone lock screen, which con-
tained a picture of Aguilar,” the Texas DPS document reads.
“fRobinson] told her he was worried about getting in trouble
for violating the Army’s fraternization rules since Aguilar was
still married to another soldier and he hit Guillen in the head
with a hammer.”

Robinson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound when
approached by law enforcement on July 1, 2020, according to
police in Killeen, Texas. Investigators tried to apprehend him
after finding Guillen’s remains, which were buried along the
Leon River, about 30 miles from Fort Hood.

Robinson killed Guillen with a hammer in an armory on post
in April 2020. He then enlisted the help of Aguilar to dispose
of the remains. The interview in which Aguilar describes
Robinson’s motive for the murder took place after Guillen’s
remains were found on June 30, 2020.

The release of the Texas DPS document comes as Aguilar is
attempting to have her confession thrown out as inadmissible,
citing the court’s infringement of her constitutional right to fair
and speedy trial. The Guillen family’s lawyer, Natalie Kha-
wam, told Army Times that she was “sickened” with Aguilar’s
“frivolous filings,” but that she didn’t believe Aguilar would
be successful in her attempts to get the evidence against her
thrown out.

“We just have to continue to focus on getting this trial to
move forward,” Khawam said.

POSSIBLE MOTIVE IN VANESSA |
GUILLEN MURDER REVEALED IN

LEFT TO RIGHT: AP PHOTO/FREIDA FRISARO; GODOFREDO A. VASQUEZ/HOUSTON CHRONICLE VIA AP
* fasd [RONG

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AIR CAV IS BACK IN VOGUE—NEW=—

UNITS, CLAS

By Davis Winkie
[email protected]

FORT RUCKER, Ala. — Air Cav is
back. Aviation leaders were quick to
remind Army Times that it technically
never left, but throughout the Glob-
al War on Terror, the massed deep
reconnaissance missions and raids that
featured in air cavalry’s early years were
largely relegated to Vietnam movies, set
to Wagner.

But as the Army continues rework-
ing its force structure and doctrine in
preparation for a potential large-scale
conflict with an adversary like Russia,
China or Iran, air cavalry doctrine and
units are coming back into vogue.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also
demonstrated the potential utility of
deep penetration by helicopter-borne
forces. Russian airborne forces suc-
cessfully took the strategic Antonov
Airport, located near Kyiv and about
50 miles south of the Ukraine-Belarus
border, in a daylight heliborne assault
on Feb. 24. However, Russia ultimately
failed to take Ukraine’s capital.

Then on April 1, a pair of Ukrainian
attack helicopters made a daring raid
into Russia, destroying an oil depot
in the southern city of Belgorod. U.S.
officials told CBS News that Ukraine
carried out the attack, despite Kyiv’s
reluctance to confirm it.

While the Army’s doctrine updates
and changes to force structure have

8 ARMYTIMES.COM June 2022

S WAITLISTS AND MORE

been years in the making, there’s been

a sudden jump in interest, said Maj.
Matt Clawson, who directs the Air
Cavalry Leaders Course at Fort Rucker.
The senior major, who has completed
three company-level commands and
received the Distinguished Flying Cross
for a 2009 engagement in Afghanistan,
spoke with Army Times in May.

Across the hallway, ACLC class 22-
501 was underway — with an un-
precedented wrinkle. The 1st Combat
Aviation Brigade had booked all twenty
seats in the class and picked up the
training bill, because the command-
er believed in ACLC’s training and
wanted his troops to jump the course’s
lengthy waitlist.

ACLC was started in 2015 with the
Army’s next war in mind, explained
Clawson. In recent years, the Army
used its Apaches as mobile fire support
platforms rather than maneuver recon-
naissance assets, and. many senior avia-
tors have never known any different.

Clawson wants to change that mind-
set and get back to the fundamentals
of planning for reconnaissance and
security missions supporting brigade-
or division-level ground forces.

“In the past, in [counterinsurgency],
you...show up to receive your oper-
ations intelligence brief that lasts for
30-45 minutes, do a pre-flight [inspec-
tion], check-in and go take off,” said
Clawson. “Here, [the students] are
doing 15 to 20 hours of planning in

order to execute that one-hour mission.
The [approach] has kind of gone back
to the future, where it was during the
invasion [of Iraq] in ‘03, or even Desert
Storm.”

Students at the two-week course are
tested on doctrine before they plan a
series of air cavalry missions that they
see from “cradle to grave,” as Clawson
put it. They produce squadron-level
plans and orders, wargame them all
the way down to the platoon level, and
then climb into aircraft simulators next
door to execute their plans.

The course is intended for mid-career
officers, senior warrant officers, and ex-
perienced unmanned aerial surveillance
operators, said Clawson.

He said that one of the biggest shifts
he’s seen since the outbreak of full-scale
war in Ukraine is an increased “level of
respect” for the course material from
students for whom the course was
previously just an exercise in doctrinal
techniques that the Army hasn’t execut-
ed in decades.

“[Now] it’s not just us saying, ‘In the-
ory these things would happen, as per
these doctrinal references.’ Now they
can watch live on TV,” Clawson added.

And as more officers trained at ACLC
continue to advance in their careers,
the Army itself is restructuring how
and where it will employ air cavalry.

‘The service is still in the process of
adding more air cavalry assets and de-
termining where and how to use them.

Apaches arrive
Helicopters), with the 1st
Air Cavalry Brigade, arrive
in Poland, Feb. 25, 2022.

The 2nd Infantry Division gained a
permanent South Korea-based squad-
ron in May when the 5th Squadron,
17th Cavalry Regiment, reactivated at
Camp Humphreys. The unit eliminates
the need for other air cavalry squadrons
to rotate through the peninsula to serve
as the 2nd ID’s air reconnaissance asset.

The new squadron will have around
500 troops and 24 AH-64E Apache
helicopters, as well as unmanned aerial
surveillance systems.

Senior leaders are also considering
new ways to build air cavalry assets
into division-level cavalry squadrons
alongside ground cavalry assets pulled
up from the brigade level, where they
currently reside.

A pilot program underway with the
Ist Cavalry Division at Fort Hood,
Texas, is exploring the concept of a
947-soldier division cavalry consisting
of two air cavalry troops, an armored
cavalry troop and support companies.
It’s not clear whether air cavalry assets
would be moved from the division’s
aviation brigade to support the con-
cept.

Clawson, the ACLC director, also
sees significant potential for mixed
ground and air cavalry for reconnais-
sance, though he acknowledged “a bit
of a divide.”

“We're working to nest [cavalry pro-
fessional military education] together
because it’s really one mission,” he
explained.

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Returning with honor

Soldiers attending the Survival, Evasion,
Resistance and Escape School stand in
formation during a practical exercise at Fort
Rucker, Alabama, May 12, 2022.

ML,

By Davis Winkie
[email protected]

It’s the Army’s most notorious training school availa-
ble to conventional troops.

Survival, evasion, resistance and escape. Level-C
SERE training, which is mandatory for pilots and
Army special operations personnel, is intended to
help prepare troops to “return with honor” if they are
isolated or captured by the enemy.

Much of the training at the service’s two Level-C
schools at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, and Fort
Rucker, Alabama, is classified, which has led to myths
filling the vacuum.

Tall tales describe SERE as a “torture school” where
instructors have license to intentionally break stu-
dents’ bones during the interrogation resistance phase
of the course.

Not too long ago, Maj. Nicholas Barwikowski
was one of the uninitiated. Now the infantry officer
commands the SERE school at Fort Rucker, which
he said trains around 1,400 service members per year.
Army Times interviewed Barwikowski while observ-
ing students in the evasion portion of the course meet
with a friendly role-player who was recovering them.

Their salvation was short-lived, Barwikowski said.

“An incident’s going to happen where things are
not going to be as pleasant as they thought they were
going to be,” he added. “They’re going to the final
portion of training,” which is the resistance practical
exercise.

The myths, which primarily center around the
resistance phase, “exist because there's a lot of secrecy
around the school,” acknowledged Barwikowski.
‘When he accepted command of the school, he had to

10 ARMYTIMES.COM June 2022

attend Level-C SERE training at Camp Mackall —
and he didn’t know what to expect.

“After learning and demystifying the methods, and
seeing how [valuable] the school is, it’s kind of lit a

fire under me to reach out to my peers in the infantry
[branch],” explained Barwikowski.

All of the physical contact between instructors and
students, “even handshakes,” is “highly restricted, reg-
ulated, rehearsed [and] practiced.” There is no quota
of bones that the interrogators may break.

Some of the myths are true, though. The survival
and evasion training helps students learn how to live
off the land and avoid capture by enemy patrols.
Students only eat what they can forage or catch.

He thinks the survival training alone could be a
boon for more troops across the Army in light of the
service’s renewed focus on preparing for large-scale
combat against a foe like Russia or China.

Barwikowski said Army officials are reviewing the
possibility of requiring more troops from conven-
tional units to go. Currently, the only conventional
troops required to attend are aviation officers and
warrant officers, though flight crew members, defense
attaches, SFAB teams, scouts and others are “highly
encouraged” to attend.

He pointed out that Army regulations allow other
troops to attend SERE with their battalion com-
mander’s approval, and around 600 training slots go
unfilled each year at the Fort Rucker school.

The commander believes that’s a wasted oppor-
tunity, and he hopes the service follows through on
mandating attendance for more soldiers due to the

increased potential for capture in a large-scale war.

Significant numbers of U.S. soldiers were captured
during the 20th century’s wars, including thousands
during World War I] and the Korean War, after
which the American public’s obsession with prisoner
of war “brainwashing” was a hot topic. The current
conflict between Russia and Ukraine has also seen
hundreds of troops captured.

“One thing that they’re looking at is if any [career
fields] need to be added to the list” of those required
or “highly encouraged” to attend Level-C SERE, said
Barwikowski.

He emphasized that “in the last 60 years, we've
really focused on isolated individuals,” but during
large-scale maneuver warfare, units can become iso-
lated even “by battlefield geometry...[without] rounds
being fired.”

The service may not require 100% SERE training
for conventional units, though.

“As we continue to write [large scale combat oper-
ations] doctrine, it is gonna be more important that
there’s SERE knowledge at units that don’t tradition-
ally have SERE knowledge,” the commander said.
Units can benefit from having even just one or two
SERE-trained personnel who can direct other troops
in a evasion or capture setting.

Asked what he'd say to a soldier coming to SERE,
Barwikowski encouraged them to simply “show up in
the right place, at the right time, in the right uniform
with an open mind.”

“SERE school is not escape the room. You can’t win
SERE school,” he added. “It’s meant to train you.”

SPC. JORDAN ARNOLD/ARMY