Force Protection: From Beirut to Khobar Towers, What Have We Learned?

Abstract

There have been two incidents in particular over the past fifteen years that have greatly disturbed the American public and seriously called into question their government's ability to protect its military personnel. They are the October 23, 1983 bombing of the Marine Battalion Landing Team (BLT) Headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, and the June 25, 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers United States Air Force Housing Complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Together these tragedies accounted for the deaths of 260 service members and the wounding of many hundreds more. It is the intent of this paper to examine these two tragedies (with focus given to the discussion of intelligence support to these units prior to the tragedies), and highlight the major recommendations of the post-incident investigations. The status of Force Protection in the DoD today will also be discussed as well as changes that have come about as a result of these incidents in both the DoD and the intelligence community.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA529836

Entities

People

  • John C. O'brien

Organizations

  • Marine Corps University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Antiterrorism
  • Army Personnel
  • Force Protection
  • Governments
  • Military Operations
  • Military Personnel
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Security
  • Terrorism
  • United States
  • United States Central Command
  • United States European Command
  • Warfare
  • Warning Systems

Readers

  • Emergency Management and Homeland Security.
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation and International Security