The final preparations are underway for the U.S. Marines to leave Fallujah.

As part of the reduction of United States troops from Iraq, by Thursday there will be few marines left in or around this mostly Sunni city of about 300,000 people. The closing of Camp Falluja is one of the most prominent symbols yet that America’s presence in the country, which at times had seemed all encompassing, is diminishing.

As recently as a year ago, the base closing was cause for alarm. The calm that seemed to have taken hold here was fragile enough that both Iraqi and American officials feared the potential consequences of the marines’ departure.

Today they look forward to it.

“That will make our job easier,” said Colonel Dowad Muhammad Suliyman, commander of the Falluja Police Department. “The existence of the American forces is an excuse for the insurgents to attack. They consider us spies for the Americans.”

To be sure, the threat of violence has not vanished. But the police said they were proud that a place that suffered a major attack a week just a few years ago has had only two in the last six months.

The view that the town is better off taking care of itself was echoed by residents, even in the neighborhood hit by the most recent big attack, in early December, when suicide truck bombers linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed 19 people, wounded dozens of others, and leveled nine houses and two police stations.

“Our sons will take care of the security issue,” said Khalil Abrahim, 50, a resident of the neighborhood, as he walked over the rubble of his house, wondering aloud how he could afford to rebuild. “They can do a better job.”

Camp Falluja will be handed over to the Iraqi Army, with most of its marines relocated to Al Asad Air Base, about 90 miles to the west. A smaller contingent will remain at nearby Camp Baharia.

The move reflects the confidence of the American command that major violence will not return here.

“It won’t happen again because the Iraqis don’t want it to happen again,” said Colonel George Bristol, the bald, heavily muscled commanding officer of the First Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group at Camp Falluja.

“We’ve certainly turned a page,” he said. “The conditions are now there where we can close it and turn it over to the people who fought beside us. It’s a great thing. If you look at the city, it has really come to life” …

At Camp Falluja, Major James Gladden and Master Gunnery Sergeant Ray SiFuentes are overseeing the dismantling of a base that had once been home to 14,000 marines and contractors.

The 2,000-acre post had its own fire department, water treatment plant, scrap yard, voter registration booth, ice-making factory, weather station, prison (for insurgents), beauty shop, power plant, Internet café, Turkish bazaar and dog catcher.

Its chapel could fit 800 marines for religious services, a Toby Keith concert or a performance by the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders, all of which were held there.

“We had basically everything a small town had,” said Gladden, 34, who is known by other marines as the mayor of Camp Falluja. “Everything except fast-food outlets,” he said, which were deemed too unhealthy.

There are only 200 marines left now, and about 170 truckloads a day leave the base, most headed for other United States military installations.

Even the gaggle of geese from the camp’s artificial pond, which some marines had adopted as pets, has been taken away. One by one, they were trapped and set loose at a larger pond at Camp Baharia.

A good deal of packing up involves making sure nothing is left behind that later could be used against American forces. Obsolete armor for trucks, ballistic glass plates for Humvees and concertina wire are cut to pieces. Thousands of mammoth concrete barriers are being trucked to other military bases.

First of all, this is a testimony to the difficulty of movement of military materiel and relocation of forces.  Logistics rules, and we have long said that the logistics officers will determine when the U.S. withdraws from Iraq rather than the politicians.

Second, it is even more a testimony to the bravery of the Marines in Operation Al Fajr, the follow-on operations, and then finally the Marines of 2/6 who conducted Operation Alljah.  Three years of blood, sweat and tears have brought Fallujah to this point.  The bravery of the Marines has enabled the process to move forward.  It’s now time to turn over, and continued presence by the Marines in Anbar would be an improper extension of the the final phase of counterinsurgency.  It is finished in Anbar.

Separately from another Marine stationed elsewhere in Iraq (perhaps to the North), The Captain’s Journal has received word that they are engaged only in force protection.  There is no combat.  It’s time to move on, since the victory has been won.

In January of 2008 The Captain’s Journal predicted that the so-called spring offensive by the Taliban would be more asymmetric than conventional and kinetic.  True, there have been stark reminders that the Taliban, in this case the Tehrik-i-Taliban, were capable of highly conventional and kinetic engagements, such as with the battle of Wanat.  But there have also been reminders of just how badly the Taliban lose when they choose to go head-to-head in kinetic engagements with U.S. forces, such as with recent Marine Corps operations with a kill ratio of 50:0.  True to our prediction, the Taliban has gone asymmetric.

Taliban fighters increasingly are deploying precision marksmen to fire on U.S. troops at greater distances throughout southern Afghanistan, military officials say.

It marks the latest Taliban shift to asymmetrical warfare and away from confronting U.S. troops in conventional fights, according to the top two commanders for the southern region.

Instead of gathering in company-sized units to take on foreign troops, Taliban forces also are resorting increasingly to explosives attacks and bombings, which require fewer people and pose less risk to themselves, the commanders said.

Explosives attacks rose by 33 percent last year, as did deaths of coalition troops, according to the International Security Assistance Force, which leads the coalition forces stationed here.

“They are reverting to tactics that tell us they are suffering heavy losses,” said U.S. Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander for the southern regional command.

The expanded use of precision marksmen comes as the fighting shifts from eastern Afghanistan to the south, where the Taliban are trying to protect opium production, which is reputed to be their economic base. The number of coalition troops killed in southern Afghanistan has increased sharply in the past two months.

So far, shooters have made use of long-barrel rifles, not specialized sniper weapons, and Nicholson said there was no indication that Taliban forces had trained snipers. Instead, they take advantage of the rough terrain to shoot at troops safely from afar, he said.

If the Taliban develop a corps of snipers, it would mark a major shift for U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan. When snipers began appearing in Iraq’s once-restive Anbar province in 2005, U.S. troops had a difficult time protecting themselves from attacks and began wearing more armor.

At one point, Iraqi insurgent groups began filming their sniper attacks, and the images of Marines falling to them became a rallying point for the insurgency.

Thus has the highly touted focus on high value targets and small footprint in Afghanistan come to ruin.  Satellite patrols don’t help in open terrain like they would in urban environs.  Body armor relies mainly on the SAPI plates for high power rounds, and the coverage area of the plates is fixed.

Combating snipers requires counterinsurgency practices, a larger footprint, and a true commitment to winning both the human and physical terrain.  The Taliban has learned from their conventional experiences, and while it is a sign of U.S. superiority that the Taliban has turned to sniping, it’s also a sign of Operation Enduring Freedom passing from one phase to another.  Counterinsurgency is necessary, and troops are required.

Dianne Feinstein waxes mythical in the Wall Street Journal over unilateral nuclear disarmament.

When Barack Obama becomes America’s 44th president on Jan. 20, he should embrace the vision of a predecessor who declared: “We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.”

That president was Ronald Reagan, and he expressed this ambitious vision in his second inaugural address on Jan. 21, 1985. It was a remarkable statement from a president who had deployed tactical nuclear missiles in Europe to counter the Soviet Union’s fearsome SS-20 missile fleet.

President Reagan knew the grave threat nuclear weapons pose to humanity. He never achieved his goal, but President Obama should pick up where he left off.

The Cold War is over, but there remain thousands of nuclear missiles in the world’s arsenals — most maintained by the U.S. and Russia. Most are targeted at cities and are far more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today, the threat is ever more complex. As more nations pursue nuclear ambitions, the world becomes less secure, with growing odds of terrorists obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The nuclear aspirations of North Korea and Iran threaten a “cascade” of nuclear proliferation, according to a bipartisan panel led by former U.S. Defense Secretaries William J. Perry and James R. Schlesinger.

Another bipartisan panel has warned that the world can expect a nuclear or biological terror attack by 2013 — unless urgent action is taken.

Nuclear weapons pose grave dangers to all nations. Seeking new weapons and maintaining massive arsenals makes no sense. It is vital that we seek a world free of nuclear weapons. The United States should lead the way, and a President Obama should challenge Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to join us.

Regardless of what Ronald Reagan did or didn’t say about this subject, reference to him by Feinstein is a Red herring, and she doesn’t really believe in the doctrine of peace through strength that marked his presidency.  Rather, Feinstein believes in myths.

It is analogous to the myth that disarmament of the population through gun control will make it safer.  Her worldview has no category for unrepentant, intentional evil, and thus it cannot exist.  Further, because evil cannot exist, it necessarily follows that behavior we might define as not conducive to the advancement of mankind (from a utilitarian or instrumentalist view) is able to be rectified by education.

Hence, Feinstein proposes the only remedy available in her world view for this behavior – example by unilateral disarmament.  But evil exists, and the bad actors in the world require deterrence, just like criminals need to know that the population is armed.  Peace through strength isn’t merely a byline; it’s the irreplaceable doctrine upon which safety and security are built.

The Obama administration has an opportunity to continue to ignore the nuclear weapons stockpile and refuse to engage in further research.  This would bring joy in the land of fairy tales, but the real world requires leadership by example, and not the kind of example that Feinstein is proposing.

Prior:

Sounding the Nuclear Alarm

An Aging Nuclear Weapons Stockpile

In New Body Armor for the Marines we detailed the interim, ad hoc changes to the Modular Tactical Vest resulting from complaints about various issues associated with performance of the vest in combat.  Below is the MTV:

And below is the modified MTV:

The modified vest kept the same SAPI plats, front, back and side, reduced the coverage of the soft panels on the sides and around the shoulders, and removed the soft panel neck and groin protection.  The changes were made to save weight and provide for maneuverability.  Unfortunately, only modest weight reductions are seen from the modifications, and yet the Corps has given up shrapnel and small arms (e.g., 9 mm) protection in the neck, shoulder and groin area.

The AP reports that there are permanent changes coming for the MTV.

Acting on widespread complaints from its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps has ordered major modifications to its body armor to improve comfort, mobility and safety, The Associated Press has learned.

The decision results from a survey of more than 1,000 Marines, many of whom reported that their flak jackets, which cost the Marine Corps more than $100 million, were too heavy and restrictive.

“The Marine Corps is developing an Improved Modular Tactical Vest to address the problem areas uncovered by the survey results,” Capt. Geraldine Carey, a Marine spokeswoman, told the AP by e-mail last week.

Earlier in 2008, the Marine Commandant, Gen. James Conway, temporarily suspended an order for more than 20,000 of the so-called Modular Tactical Vests.

“I’ve worn the vest on my travels into Iraq and Afghanistan, and I can tell you those Marines have raised some valid points,” Conway told the AP by e-mail.

Body armor has been an issue since the Iraq war began in 2003. The Army reportedly had a shortage of the ceramic protective plates needed to make vests effective, and lawmakers demanded answers from the Department of Defense after reports surfaced of soldiers’ families buying the plates themselves and sending them to Iraq.

The Marine Corps has been ahead in distributing adequate body armor and replacement parts to its troops, though it too has struggled to adapt and fine-tune the technology in an ever-changing urban warfare environment. The vest now used by the Marines in Iraq is the Corps’ third since 2001.

There are other lighter types of body armor that are widely used by police but they are not approved for combat. The Modular Tactical Vest, designed by the Marine Corps to improve on an older jacket, has a track record of stopping bullets and shrapnel.

It was designed to better protect the kidneys, lower back and torso in urban combat, and make it easier to carry ammunition, water and grenades.

The vest was the top choice of troops who tested it before a manufacturer was awarded the contract, according to Lt. Col. T.V. Johnson, Conway’s spokesman. Marine and Pentagon officials said it has a proven record of protecting troops, and Carey said there are no reports of failings that resulted in injury or death during combat.

But troops in the field started complaining almost as soon as the vests were issued in 2007.

At 30 pounds it is bulky and between one to three pounds heavier than its predecessor depending on its size, adding to the burden on Marines who carry more than 90 pounds of gear. Army officials testifying before Congress in 2007 said they turned down the vest because it was heavier and no more effective than what the Army was using.

Because the vest rides higher on the chest for added protection, and features shoulder straps and buckles for adjustment and quick removal, several Marines blamed it for causing facial bruises when rifle butts slipped during recoil.

To better shoulder their weapon, some Marines loosened straps to lower the vest, exposing their upper torsos, according to a Marine field commander in Iraq who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is against policy for troops to alter the vest.

Told of the practice by the AP, Conway said: “Any decision to scale down levels of protection for the sake of comfort is wholly unacceptable.”

The vest has a tab for quickly removing the vest to prevent a tragedy, such as when a Marine in an older jacket couldn’t remove it and drowned. But Marines complained that the tab snagged equipment, and are now told to tuck away the tab.

Unlike previous jackets, which Marines could just throw on and go, this one requires training or online video courses on how to wear it.

An initial 84,000 vests at a cost of more than $84 million were ordered in September 2006, nine months after an urgent request came in from the field for better protection. Conway, who became commandant after the contract was issued, put a hold on the last batch of 20,000 vests, questioning their design and testing.

He later lifted the suspension and the Marine Corps ordered more than $17 million worth of vests and replacement parts over the summer.

The current vest costs about $1,050, according to Lt. Col. A.J. Pasagian, who oversaw the survey at Quantico, Va.. The price of the improved vest wasn’t immediately known.

As we have explained before, the MTV is a carrier, not the armor itself.  The shell is a carrier for the SAPI plates and soft panel armor.  The MTV is also designed to hug the body tighter than the older Interceptor Body Armor (IBA) used by the Army, and thus acts more like an internal frame backpack by placing the weight on the hips.  It raises the front SAPI plate, lowers the rear SAPI plate, fully integrates the side SAPI plates into the carrier (rather than having to hang them on the carrier with Molle straps), and more efficiently deploys the soft ballistic panels compared to the IBA.

The MTV was a major improvement in carrier design, and complaints about weight should be aimed primarily at the SAPI plates, not the carrier or even the soft panel armor.  Additionally, the soft panel coverage should be maximized in any future design for shrapnel protection.

There is much reiterated in the report that readers of The Captain’s Journal already know, but what we learn from the AP report is that the Corps has conducted a poll, the results of which are driving permanent changes to the MTV.  Unfortunately, without major investment in SAPI plate design, any permanent changes aren’t likely to reduce weight without compromising protection.  As we have pointed out in our body armor coverage, the low hanging fruit has already been picked.  It’s time for major investment in the ballistics and fracture mechanics of the SAPI plates if we wish to reduce weight and maintain protection.  Otherwise the Corps will be disappointed in the outcome of this redesign.