Shabab fighters then fired rockets at a plane on the tarmac. It caught fire, killing the pilots, who were both American contractors, Gen...
Shabab fighters then fired rockets at a plane on the tarmac. It caught fire, killing the pilots, who were both American contractors, General Basham said. Dustin Harrison, 47, and Bruce Triplett, 64, were two experienced pilots with L3 Technologies, a Pentagon contractor who flew surveillance and reconnaissance missions around the world.
At the press conference on the report, the Pentagon declined to go into specifics about whether any of the senior officers involved had been fired.
Africa Command conducted an initial investigation shortly after the attack, but the results were bottled up at the Pentagon in the final months of the Trump administration and were never approved or made public.
When the Biden administration took office last January, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III ordered a review of the Africa Command investigation, in part to avoid a repeat of the controversial investigation by the Ministry of Defense on the 2017 attack in Niger. This report revealed widespread problems at all levels of the military counterterrorism operation, but focused in particular on the actions of junior officers leading up to the ambush – unfairly, many believe. family members, lawmakers and James N. Mattis, the Secretary of Defense. at the time.
The review Mr. Austin requested, led by Gen. Paul E. Funk II, chief of Army Training and Doctrine Command, validated Africa Command’s findings, officials said Thursday. .
The Manda Bay deaths signaled a grim expansion of the Shabab campaign against the US, which was often confined to Somalia but in this case spilled over into Kenya despite an escalation of the US air campaign in the region at the time. ‘era.
During his final weeks in office, President Donald J. Trump ordered most of the 700 US troops in Somalia to leave the country but not the region. Most forces have been transferred to Djibouti or Kenya, including Manda Bay, where security has been improved, officials said. The Biden administration is conducting a review to determine whether to send any of these troops back to Somalia.
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