War News Updates ran a story concerning the crash of the CH-53 in Romania. You can read it here. But a little light digging led me to "Juniper Stallion 2010".
I can find nothing on it.
A Google News Search gave me seven...that's right 7 hits. No photos. No Navy press releases. Nothing.
If you can provide a heads up on the units/ships involved and the type of training that took place, I'd certainly appreciate it. And since this is a named exercise and is the public arena, I assume that its not classified.
Just for background - Juniper Stallion is part of various US-Israeli contingency war planning exercises, including live firings, so there's not much available publicly. They were ran out of USEUCOM (with all services participating), don't know if that's still the case.
ReplyDeleteThe ex include Juniper Cobra, Juniper Falcon, Juniper Hawk, Juniper Stallion, as well as Noble Dina; Noble Rose, Noble Shirley, Noble Stallion, and Noble Suzanne, and other Juniper and Noble variations. They usually run from March/April and sometimes May.
There are usually some (tame) pics available after the exercises, ss per Israeli request.
JS'2010 participants identified are the Harry Truman CSG, an unidentified "Israeli missile ship", and the German frigate F-221 Hessen (which might just have been a PASSEX instead of a full participant).
ReplyDeleteIt included five days of live and simulated attacks at the Israeli Nevatim Base-28 in the Negev desert SE of Be'er Sheva. The exercise was prompted by rising tensions from Syria's (Hizbollah?) deployment of advanced SCUD SSMs near the Lebanese border.
Around 60 USAF F-16 participated, operating out of Germany and Romania, refueling and training with Israelis and practicing long range bombing over the Red Sea and Easter mediterranean.
It was decided by the White House to stage the Juniper Stallion exercise only eight months after Juniper Cobra 10, after receiving new intelligence that Iran, Syria and Hizballah had almost doubled their operational armory of medium-range missiles.
In short: don't expect any public announcements or pictures anytime soon.
Cheers.
i take it my google search was a bit too specific.
ReplyDeletei guess i should have left on 2010...
The only story out there is coming from DEBKA and with all due respect, I'd think twice about using DEBKA as a source of information. They never, and I mean never, quote their sources and have been shown, on several occasions, to be flat out wrong about what they are writing about. Certainly nobody in Israel takes them seriously as an intelligence source.
ReplyDeletejust the man i wanted to hear from.
ReplyDeleteany idea (i'll take speculation) on what the exercise was all about?
i agree about Debka but they're the only ones that have anything on it (except for some Arab sites that start with all the "we hate the US"---"we hate Israel" stuff)...
to say that a major exercise took place its mighty hush hush.
For what it's worth, so far there has been no word about this exercise in the Israeli press.
ReplyDeleteThat's extremely valuable intel.
ReplyDeleteThat's just another indication that there was a bit more to this than some might think.
No wonder Iran is again making noise about wanting to discuss peace.
The only public picture re Juniper Stallion I found on New Wars; FGS Hessen (F221) cruises past USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) -
ReplyDeletehttp://newwars.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/100619-n-6003p-686.jpg
It wasn't the only trouble the CH-53 saw in Romania during the common exercise with US and Israeli forces. On the 3rd of August, other 2 such birds had some technical problems that made them land for a quick check-up.
ReplyDelete