Wanda has emerged as the preeminent company building out a
chain of movie theaters in China and acquiring AMC that operates a chain of
movie theaters. They built their strategy on the old adage it is about butts in
seats. Their success in leveraging their Chinese strategy into a brisk American
strategy led them to acquire Legendary – a reliable producer of content. But
Legendary isn't capable of producing all of the content required by the
AMC/Wanda Pipeline. They still need outside relationships. But other Chinese
companies are also rising to fill the gaps.
Independent producers and major studios constantly attract
new investment into untested films to fuel the spirit of the entertainment
industry in China and America. Franchise films with track records rarely need
outside investment. There are lots of players in the world of film finance
including government incentives, presales, equity investors and others. Chinese
money has become one of the jewels in film finance. For every real investor
there are hundreds of pretenders.
I have been sitting on the fringe of a Chinese deal in Hollywood
for the past 2 ½ years. There have been contracts signed by multiple investors
but the money never seems to move. I also sat with a former CEO of a major
agency who arrogantly said to me that he had China wired. When it was time for
his announced deal to actually fund there was a blow-up, the funds evaporated,
and so did most of his agency. But Chinese deals are too lucrative to ignore so
they still get pursued at great cost. What if there was a way to take the
movement of funds as an issue off of the table?
Apple may be uniquely situated to facilitate investment
funds moving out of China. Apple’s iTunes figures to play a key role in the
future of digital platforms. Apple has a continued need for product to fuel
this digital platform and they could acquire this product by facilitating
investment funds flowing out of China. You see, Apple operates a brisk consumer
business in China and they are sitting on lots of RMB at any given moment. That
consumer business also is a customer base of screens that can view films - eyeballs on screens. Apple
also operates a manufacturing operation in China and they ship billions of
dollars every year to fund the production of their phones, tablets, computers,
and devices.
Apple and Hollywood already enjoy a close relationship.
There are many Apple ties into Pixar that was formerly an Apple affiliate.
Apple already gets content from many studios and independent producers for
their platform. Apple already has the relationship with the Chinese Government.
They sit in a unique position to help facilitate investments flowing into
Hollywood to develop and produce Hollywood content. But Apple also sits in a
unique position to help China build out their movie industry. They have the
strategic positioning and relationships to make this happen. The smart
production company negotiating with investors in China would begin reaching out
to Apple to forge an alliance. The right relationship with Apple takes the
movement of money off of the table on announced deals that face delays and
eventually fail to fund. As the business model shifts from butts in seats to
eyeballs on screens Apple figures to play a key role. The only question is:
Will Wanda get to Apple first?
UPDATE: A few days after this article appeared Apple was banned by the Chinese Government. Their movie and iBook apps have been removed from all of their devices in China. That means a tremendous opportunity for the company in China that gets Chinese Government approval to stream movies and partners with Apple. It will be interesting to watch the developing landscape of Chinese movies.
Suge Knight was targeted in 1996 at the shooting of Tupac
Shakur (Knight was also in the car) and he has been targeted ever since. 1Oak’s
video surveillance reveals that the shooters who shot Suge Knight on August 24th,
2014 specifically were looking to kill Suge Knight. According to Keith
Middlebrook, a witness of the shooting, the shooters yelled, “You killed Tupac,”
as they shot Suge Knight. Suge Knight had every reason to fear his life was in
jeopardy… but why?
Both the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls have been
blamed on Suge Knight. His reputation was based upon rumors that Suge allowed to grow over time that he was a thug that kills some people and
intimidates others. Suge obtained legendary status in the music industry – an industry
known for corruption.
Suge Knight accomplished something no one else ever could
building a record label from scratch with Bloods and Crips coexisting. How long
could he keep the peace? His overblown reputation was one of the keys to him being able
to keep the peace. The artists were all gangsters creating gangster rap and Suge
Knight kept them all working in spite of deep rooted differences. Suge Knight occasionally
pistol whipped someone that got out of line and he ruled with an iron fist. He
had no choice but the results speak for themselves.
Suge drove sales into the hundreds of millions of dollars
and built a record label that was worth over $500,000,000. The Chronic,
Doggystyle, Dogg Food, All Eyez on Me, The Don Killuminati, Death Row Greatest
Hits, Above the Rim, Murder Was the Case, Gridlock’d, and Gang Related were all
albums released by Suge Knight’s Death Row Records. Those albums took lots of
studio time, engineering, marketing, and promotion. Everybody assumes
incorrectly that all of Death Row Records was partying and drama but there was
a tremendous amount of work that made Death Row such a valuable label. Suge
Knight knew the game and he drove Gangster Rap to a new level. But only his
reputation, much of which was overblown, painted him as a thug executive. To
get an idea how Suge Knight’s reputation grew with stories that are larger than
life we go back to the beginning.
Suge Knight represented rapper Chocolate that wrote songs
for Vanilla Ice. The story goes that Suge Knight dangled Vanilla Ice off a
hotel balcony to get him to pay up. The real story is that Suge may have
intimidated Vanilla Ice but that attorneys, contracts, and payments were made
to settle the dispute. Did Suge take Vanilla Ice out on to the balcony to
negotiate? Probably. He, no doubt, made reference to the height and Vanilla Ice
felt threatened. As the story began to grow, Suge Knight did little to quash it.
By the time the story was recorded in rap history it was that Suge dangled
Vanilla Ice over the balcony, 15 floors up, with change falling out of
Vanilla Ice's pockets at the Belage Hotel in West Hollywood.
The story of Suge intimidating Eazy-E into signing away
artists Michel’le, Dr. Dre, and The D.O.C. included Suge approaching Eazy with
thugs and baseball bats. One story was that Jerry Heller was held hostage. Here
again there were contracts and Ruthless Records actually took 15% off the top
of the revenue from Death Row Records and Suge Knight obtained rights to the
name NWA as part of that settlement.
The story of the exit of Dr. Dre included Dre being shot in
the leg and thugs stealing his masters. The hype was way overblown but the rumors
were galvanized into the minds of fans. The reality was that contracts were
drafted and a settlement was made. Jimmy Iovine had encouraged Dre to leave
Death Row Records and since he was the distributor for Death Row he had the
power to keep things relatively calm. In fact, as part of that settlement, Dre
was signed to a lifetime management contract with Suge Knight as his manager.
Russell Poole was among the first but certainly the loudest
to proclaim that Suge Knight was responsible for the murders of Tupac and
Biggie. His source for this information was a 1998 leaked Los Angeles Sheriff’s
report that Snoop had been rescued by Sheriff’s from an attack by Bloods and
that he said Suge Knight was behind Tupac Shakur’s death. The details of this
are available in Chaos
Merchants, the book Russell Poole and I were working on
at the time of Poole’s Death. Poole was adamant that every single fact be
footnoted for the investigators and Chaos Merchants has links to sources.
The picture that began to emerge for Poole, in writing Chaos
Merchants, was that Suge Knight had nothing to do with Tupac’s death. Poole had
assumed that since Suge Knight was the sole shareholder of Death Row Records
and the evidence led to Death Row Records as the responsible party for Tupac’s
murder Suge was somehow responsible; Poole failed to separate Death Row Records from Suge Knight. During the
Biggie Smalls investigation listening devices were placed in Suge’s cell and
his cell was tossed regularly but, according to Poole, nothing was ever found. Additionally, since Suge was in LA County Jail at the time of Biggie's death it would be very hard to prove that Suge had anything to do with it in spite of the implications that Death Row Records affiliates were involved. Remember that Suge no longer was running Death Row Records at the time. Once
Russell realized that Suge was a victim the night Tupac was shot, Poole felt
bad about his years of being vocal that Suge was behind the murders. Poole,
Carlin, and RJ Bond wrote Tupac:187
about the murders. Once that book was released additional clues poured in from
fans about the murders. Those clues along with salient details from
re-examining the case files Russell took with him from the LAPD led to the
condensed version of events that became Chaos Merchants.
The DEA, FBI, and LAPD, spent millions of dollars and tens
of thousands of man hours investigating Death Row Records with no indictments
or convictions. The truth was that insiders at Death Row Records were behind
the murder of Tupac Shakur and attempted murder of Suge Knight. Those
insiders were responsible for derailing investigations into crimes associated with Death Row Records. The planning was done by David
Kenner, a criminal defense attorney and Reggie Wright Jr., a Justice
Administration graduate and former Compton Police Officer. They hired off-duty
police to be present when crimes were committed and those investigations were
derailed because solving the crimes would lead to damaging the careers of
officers. Those implicated in the Rampart Scandal were involved in Death Row
Records particularly Rafael Perez, David Mack, and Kevin Gaines. But Kevin Gaines and Suge Knight were not friends. Gaines was dating Sharitha, Suge Knight's estranged wife. That tends to indicate that Suge was not in the loop on the extracurricular activities of the Rampart cops. In spite of that, the crimes of
Rampart all trace back through the halls of Death Row Records including the
Tupac and Biggie murders. The beating at the El Rey Theater was cleared when
Compton Police called over to the investigator and said this was nothing more
than a gang thing and weighing the careers of police officers that would suffer
from their conflicts of being present when a murder was committed caused the
investigator to clear the case without any convictions or even charging anyone
with the crime.
Suge liked having the off-duty cops around but he was also
wary of them… for good reason. The Rampart corrupt cops along with the corrupt
Compton Police were all working for Death Row Records. They along with Reggie
Wright Jr., David Kenner, and Crips were involved in toppling Suge Knight. When
they failed to kill him in Las Vegas they worked hard to get his probation
violated.
Right after the Tupac murder, Suge Knight was discovered
living in the Malibu home of the Longo family that exposed a conflict of interest with,
Deputy District Attorney, Larry Longo. It was also learned that David Kenner, a
friend of Larry Longo had orchestrated the signing of a contract with Gina Longo
to elevate the conflict of interest. When this was exposed, Larry Longo lost
his job and Suge Knight’s probation was violated but his reputation surged as a person that could bribe a D.A.. That was not a reputation that would serve Suge well in any of his criminal or civil trials... something Kenner would know. On October 22, 1996 Suge was arrested. Longo
would be cleared of any wrongdoing because Kenner had rented the home from
Longo’s son Frank. Kenner also negotiated Gina’s contract with Frank and Gina, a trained singer, laid down six tracks at CanAm Studios.
With David Kenner in charge of Suge’s probation case and
Compton Police complicit in entering evidence against Suge into the court, and in light of his reputation of compromising an Assistant District Attorney, Suge
Knight never had a chance at a fair trial. David Kenner entered into evidence
the tape of the Orlando Anderson scuffle to put Suge behind bars. By California law Suge Knight could
not operate a business so he needed to turn over the operations to others. For the probation violation hearing, Frank Alexander’s statement to Brent Becker was altered and entered into evidence by the Compton Police. Their motive to
put Suge Knight behind bars was the theft of millions of dollars from Suge
Knight’s Death Row Records. Suge put Reggie Wright Jr. in charge and Reggie and
David Kenner looted the record label while Suge was in prison. Is it any
surprise that the protective order limiting contact with Suge Knight to only
his attorney, David Kenner, was entered in his current murder case by David Kenner
after Kenner was fired by Suge Knight? Why do they fear what Suge will say?
They know what Suge Knight knows.
The murders in the immediate aftermath of the Tupac murder
were to take out witnesses. The murders at the time Suge Knight was going to be
released from prison included Suge Knight’s inner circle. They wanted to make sure Suge
would not have protection once he was released. Suge was one of the only people
that knew the truth about what had happened at Death Row Records. He was a
liability and loose end. His life is still constantly in danger especially in control of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs with their many existing ties to the former Compton Police Department that were instrumental in sending Suge Knight to prison.
While Suge Knight was in prison for the probation violation
the Compton Police had been found to be corrupt. A gun, booked into
evidence by the Compton Police, found its way into Death Row Records being run
by the son of Compton Gang Lead, Reggie Wright. That gun was used to shoot Long
Beach Police Officer, Brian Watt. In the civil suit both Reggie Wright Sr. and
Jr. were deposed. The City of Compton reached an out of court settlement but
the damage was done. There was an internal investigation into the Compton
Police Department and it uncovered lots of missing cocaine and weapons. The
result was that the Compton Police, who should have been disbanded, were
absorbed into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department. The corrupt officers
were sworn in as Sheriff’s.
When Suge got out of prison he was handed back a mere shell
of a company. There were lots of lawsuits and complications that led him into
bankruptcy. Mired in the legal system Suge Knight failed to regain the stature
he once held. But the threats to Suge Knight continued.
What has never been disclosed before is that when I
interviewed Long Beach Police Chief, Jim McDonnell for the article, “Taking
the Blinders Off of Justice” I disclosed to him the existence of the
confession letter and told him what I was working on. He campaigned and became
the Sheriff after that meeting. I set up the meeting for Russell Poole with the Sheriff's through Sheriff Jim McDonnell. He was the first law enforcement representative to
learn of the confession letter in March of 2014. In June of 2014, RJ Bond and
Russell Poole visited with four members of the Los Angeles Police Department and
provided them with the clue to the murder of Tupac Shakur and attempted murder of
Suge Knight in 1996. In 1998, a confession letter had been given to respected journalist
Chris Blatchford and that detailed the plot against Suge Knight. Russell hoped
that, with the element of surprise on the side of LAPD, the shooters could be
brought in for questioning. He mapped out for LAPD how he thought they should
proceed. A copy of the letter was given to them but RJ was smart and he put a
special border on the letter. On August 18th the letter was leaked
on the Internet and the leaked letter contained the special border. LAPD was
caught cold leaking the letter. LAPD had chosen to leak the letter instead of
investigating it. Suge Knight may have a cause of action against LAPD for failing to
investigate a crime perpetrated against him.
Six days after the leak of the confession letter, Suge Knight
was lured down to the 1Oak Nightclub in West Hollywood. Russell would later
learn that an off-duty Sheriff let the shooters in the club and drove them to
the airport the next day. Why West Hollywood? Because the Sheriff’s would
respond there and the response could be managed by remnants of the former
Compton Police Department that still had deep ties into the Sheriff’s. On
August 24th, Suge Knight was shot six times but survived the attack.
Remember, this shooting occurred just six days after the Tupac confession
letter was leaked by LAPD and the shooters yelled at Knight as they shot, “You
killed Tupac!” The off-duty Sheriff has ties to the music industry. To this
day, in spite of 37 cameras in the club, nobody has been charged with the
crime. Most of the eyewitnesses were turned out of the club that night instead of getting their contact information for later follow-up - which is a deviation of standard procedure in any investigation.
Why was Suge going to Tam’s? Apparently Suge Knight was owed
money from the Apple Beats Deal. Suge Knight signed a lifetime deal to manage
Dr. Dre. He may have had a legitimate claim to some of the Beats money. Court
never seemed to work out for Suge Knight. Perhaps he was sending word to Dre to
work things out with him.
To further complicate things, Suge Knight also had a
legitimate claim to monies from the budget of Straight Outta Compton. He was owed
money for use of his likeness and he also had acquired the rights to the name “NWA”
that was used in the movie. He had three solid claims of money he was owed. Having just been shot six times at 1Oak he was on edge coming to
Compton that was known for danger and violence. Terry Carter, a well respected
member of the community and brother of one of the original 16 founders of the
Piru’s had invited Suge Knight down to Compton to work out a deal with Dr. Dre.
According to former Mayor of Compton, Omar Bradley, Suge Knight was guaranteed
safety for his meeting. Terry Carter’s word was a pass that should have
been honored by everybody in Compton. Suge Knight was brought down to Compton by Terry Carter to broker peace. The video only shows us four men approaching Knight. We can’t
see what is behind him but a witness placed Jimmy Chrys with a gun and other
men with automatic weapons behind Suge Knight's truck. After Suge Knight runs over Terry Carter and Cle “Bone”
Sloan there is a gun picked up off of Bone’s body before he is moved and the gun is put
into the waistband of one of the men. Only a gun gets put into a waistband. Cle
Bone says he was punching Suge Knight so Knight was admittedly attacked. If the
gun was in one of Cle Bone’s hands Suge could have been facing potential
bullets inside his truck. Suge backs up. With armed men behind him it gives Suge
Knight every reason to pull forward to escape certain death. This incident
happened only five months after Suge Knight was shot six times. He may have
been understandably jumpy.
Can Suge get a fair trial? He hasn't been treated fairly so far. He has been prosecuted, not on the merits of this case, but on the larger than life rumors of what he is alleged to have done... None of which has ever been proven in a court of law.
Suge Knight’s current legal case was one of the reasons
Russell Poole was coming down to the Sheriff’s station. Russell believed it was
a conflict of interest having Richard Biddle handling both crime scenes because
in one case you have Suge Knight as a victim and nobody is brought to justice
and the other case Knight is initially a victim and becomes the suspect of
Terry Carter’s murder. There is a clear pattern here. In June of 2014, the LAPD
failed to prosecute or investigate the attempted murder of Suge Knight that
according to the confession letter began as a conspiracy in Balboa Park in
September of 1996. Sheriff’s fail to prosecute the shooters that attempted to
kill Suge Knight at 1Oak on August 24th 2014. Could it also be that
Suge Knight was lured to Tam’s in Compton because the perpetrators knew that
Sheriff’s would respond to that location too? Why is Suge only ambushed in
place where Sheriff’s respond? Remember also that the rumor that Suge Knight
was behind the murder of Tupac was leaked by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s.
Compton Police that worked hard to get Suge’s probation violated still maintain
very strong ties into the Sheriff’s.
Could it be that the bail is originally set at 25 million
dollars and the protective order put in place to stop Suge Knight from talking
about the police corruption that led to Compton Police, the LAPD, and the Los
Angeles County Sheriff’s? Somebody doesn’t want Suge Knight talking and they
hope to banish him the nethermost parts of the prison system for the rest of his life.
Russell Poole was meeting with the Sheriff’s hoping to get
them to drop the case against Suge Knight that was going to embarrass the
department so that they could reopen the murders of Tupac and Biggie and solve
cases that could make the department shine. The murders of Tupac and Biggie
always haunted Russell and he was there talking about reopening the cases. The
day before the meeting on a telephone call he confirmed with a Sheriff that the shooter’s were
let into the 1Oak by an off-duty Sheriff and that the shooters were dropped off
at LAX by the same Sheriff the next day. The Sheriff’s were anxious to discover
the source of Russell’s information. He arrived at the meeting and instead of
just the promised homicide investigator, he was confronted with four Sheriff’s
on the Suge Knight case. Russell Poole had a massive heart attack and died in
that meeting. He had given his last breath to clear Suge Knight and to solve
the Tupac and Biggie murders.
The recent highly publicized theory that Orlando Anderson
and Keefy-D are the shooters of Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight on September 7, 1996 has many fatal flaws. Let's
examine some of them.
The theory goes that Orlando Anderson was mad because he got
beat down by Tupac and the crew so he contacted his uncle and they rolled in a
white Cadillac and shot Tupac and Suge a couple of hours later while the
entourage is making their way to Club 662. (Never mind that the fight was staged - see video below.)
Orlando Anderson is escorted away by Reggie Wright Jr. at
8:55 P.M. Tupac was shot at 11:15 P.M. That means that Orlando Anderson must
depart from his meeting with Reggie Wright Jr., meet up with his uncle -
Keefy-D, find the entourage, and figure out which car Tupac is traveling in,
and shoot Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight. Is that even possible on a fight night in Las Vegas?
Two hours and twenty minutes isn't much time to carry all of this out. Just finding his uncle could have taken an hour, and finding Tupac
and figuring out which car he was in would be impossible without radios and
spotters that require a tremendous amount of planning. According to the theory
that has Orlando Anderson pulling the trigger, there was no planning.
Have you ever been on the Vegas Strip in traffic during
fight night? The cars are bumper to bumper. The intersection where the hit was
carried out was right on the edge of the traffic where the shooters could get
away and that implies a high degree of planning. Orlando Anderson being
detained by security makes it highly unlikely that he could hook back up with
his uncle and the entourage... unless Reggie Wright Jr. helped him hook back up
with them. But there are other problems with this even if Orlando had help.
Cathy Scott talks about Orlando Anderson being badly beaten
in the scuffle and in no condition to retaliate. Watch the MGM surveillance
tape again. How many blows does Anderson sustain? Tupac talked about Tyson
landing 50 punches. In about the same amount of time, Orlando Anderson is
punched and kicked by multiple people. Was he in any condition to plan a hit
with his uncle? Corey Edwards says Orlando seemed OK after the scuffle.
Corey Edwards runs into Orlando Anderson at
the bar before news of Tupac being shot had reached them. There were many
others there that could verify this including a professional basketball player.
That news travelled fast in these circles as everybody in the cars following
Tupac had cell phones and they burned up the telephone lines with news of the
shooting. So in between the scuffle and the shooting, Orlando Anderson was seen
in the bar. Corey Edwards hears later about Tupac being shot.
Orlando Anderson makes the statement that he adjourned to
his room. Both of these statements are easily verifiable. Las Vegas has an eye
in the sky everywhere... Las Vegas Police verify this easily and have no
interest in Orlando Anderson as Tupac's shooter when offered up by the Corrupt
Compton Police.
As for the Keefy-D confession obtained in exchange for
a proffer deal that was illegally recorded, Keefy-D would have said anything to
get out of a potential prison sentence. The confession is coerced as Keefy-D
has stated. According to a recently interviewed former Assistant United States
Attorney, "FBI Profer deals are never recorded." This would violate
the interviewee’s Fifth Amendment Rights. So if the taped recorded interview
was indeed recorded it was done so without permission of the Federal Government
and in violation of the rights of Keefy-D. Just the type of behavior you would expect from a corrupt cop that was caught altering witness testimony.
Keffy-D has a reputation for making up stories. Darnell Brim
was recorded by J. Gollaz and T. Bracia of LAPD as saying about Keefy-D, "He
likes to talk a lot. He keeps stuff going; like hearsay stuff. Like when my
homeboy Lee got killed he was saying that he saw what happened including that
he seen my car driving away from the shooting. He was saying that I was the guy
who shot Lee. When he found out that. I was locked down. He changed his story
and said that it was someone who looked like me. He keeps a lot of stuff going like
girls do. I asked him about it when I got out of jail. He said something like, 'you know what's going on, you don't like us and we don't like you, just
keep it like that.'"
Now think of one of the most fatal flaws in this theory: the
fact that Michael Moore heard, "got-em" come over Former Compton Cop and head of Death Row Security, Reggie Wright Jr.'s
radio that night at the time of the shooting. That means someone was watching
and reporting on a radio and that indicates a high degree of planning. That
fully refutes the theory that Orlando Anderson pulled the trigger that night.
Compton Police arrested Anderson with the full expectation
that he would be charged with the murder of Tupac Shakur. He was offered up to
Las Vegas Police but because they knew he wasn't the shooter as his alibi
checked out, he was never charged, tried, or convicted of the murder of Tupac
Shakur.
You can read more about this in Chaos Merchants and Tupac:187 - Russell Poole's final words on the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls before his tragic death meeting with Sheriff's about the cases.
From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release
SOUTHWEST ASIA, Feb. 26, 2016 — U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Strikes in Syria
Attack, fighter, ground attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 14 strikes in Syria:
-- Near Abu Kamal, two strikes struck an ISIL petroleum, oil, and lubricant separation vessel and an ISIL gas and oil separation plant and crude oil collection point.
-- Near Hawl, eight strikes struck five separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed six ISIL vehicles, an ISIL strikes staging area, an ISIL tactical vehicle and an ISIL mortar position.
-- Near Raqqah, two strikes struck an ISIL staging area and an ISIL weapons storage area.
-- Near Hasakah, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL building.
Strikes in Iraq
Fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 16 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:
-- Near Haditha, a strike destroyed an ISIL tactical vehicle.
-- Near Hit, a strike destroyed an ISIL oil tanker.
-- Near Kirkuk, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Kisik, four strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL light machine gun and suppressed an ISIL mortar position.
-- Near Mosul, a strike destroyed five ISIL fighting positions.
-- Near Ramadi, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL artillery system, an ISIL staging area, and two ISIL supply cache and damaged an ISIL staging area.
-- Near Sinjar, two strikes suppressed an ISIL mortar position and an ISIL rocket position.
-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike suppressed an ISIL mortar position.
-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Fallujah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three ISIL bunkers.
Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.
Part of Operation Inherent Resolve
The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.
Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2016 — Investments in science and technology are critical in maintaining the nation's military edge in an increasingly competitive global arena, Defense Department officials told Congress today.
The United States is at a "pivotal moment in history" where investments in military technology are being made by "increasingly capable and assertive foreign powers," Stephen Welby, the assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, told the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities.
Welby appeared at the hearing to discuss defense innovation to create the future military force. Other witnesses included Arati Prabhakar, the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
The United States is still the largest investor in research and development around the world, Prabhakar said in her written statement. "But unlike past decades, we are not alone in our excellent scientific and technical capabilities," she added.
Keeping the Edge, Meeting Future Challenges
The challenge at DARPA and DoD is to create a "significant advantage for military and national security purposes against this competitive, shifting backdrop," Prabhakar told the panel.
"Our senior military and civilian leaders face a world of kaleidoscopic uncertainty today and into any foreseeable future," she said. "The daily fare is a noxious stew of violent extremism, terrorism and cross-border criminal activity."
Welby said the goal of sustaining and advancing the nation’s technological superiority in the current national security environment requires investments in sound research and development.
DoD laboratories have produced significant innovations in vital defense areas, he said, listing areas such as electronic warfare, propulsion and weapons design.
"Maintaining this unique technical expertise within the department is critical for ensuring the department's ability to prepare for future threats," he said.
Investments in Personnel
Welby said when he visits laboratories and organizations, he meets young scientists and engineers who are pursuing technological innovations to meet the challenges that are emerging globally. The Defense Department employs more than 39,000 scientists and engineers in 63 defense laboratories, warfare centers, and engineering centers across 22 states, he noted.
"Our strength is in our people," Welby said. "We must recruit and retain the best and brightest military and civilian scientists and engineers and harness their innovative spirits to give our military forces the warfighting edge."
The scientists and engineers are sustaining the department's ability to support and field militarily critical technology that often has no commercial equivalent, he said.
Prabhakar described DARPA personnel as a "team of about 200 extraordinary individuals" that propels the agency and revels in the opportunity to attack "pressing, nearly intractable problems -- all in the context of public service."
DoD cannot innovate and bolster its future technological superiority from within the department alone, Welby told the subcommittee. He said that is why DoD’s science and technology enterprise touches the broadest range of emerging concepts through engagement with academia, industry and international partners, he noted. That keeps keep DoD "smart, knowledgeable, agile, and responsive in the face of new and emerging threats," he said.
