The Department of the Air Force disciplined eight service members following the conclusion of two concurrent investigations into the Manda Bay attack in Kenya that left three Americans dead.
Investigators found that while there was no criminal behavior that created the conditions that allowed the attack to happen, there was a culture of complacency on the base. U.S. Army Spc. Henry Mayfield Jr. and two contractors, Bruce Triplett and Dustin Harrison, were killed. So were five terrorists, but not before they were able to destroy seven aircraft.
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“We were not as prepared at Manda Bay as we needed to be,” Gen. Stephen Townsend, the head of Africa Command, said in a video presentation of the findings at the Pentagon Thursday. “For a number of successive years, there was complacent leadership and command and control at the tactical level and poor oversight at the operational level.”
“Adverse actions have been taken against eight Airmen, and decisions regarding performance evaluations, decorations, unfavorable information files, and control rosters were made,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told the Washington Examiner. “These actions can affect the individual’s career in terms of promotion eligibility, reenlistment, and assignments. For the officers that were identified, regardless of the action taken, the findings of the investigation will be documented in their Officer Selection Record. The Officer Selection Record is the portion of the military personnel record that is considered when an officer is eligible for promotion.”
Stefanek cited “privacy concerns” as the reason she couldn’t provide more details, including the names of those airmen, while Defense officials declined to say whether any of the service members had been relieved of duty.
In the early morning hours of Jan. 5, 2020, al Shabaab fighters launched mortar fire on a Kenyan Defense Forces installation and Camp Simba while they simultaneously assaulted the airfield. There were 30 to 40 terrorists involved in the attack, Gen. Paul Funk, commander of Army Training Doctrine and Command, who led the independent review, told reporters on Thursday.
The al Shabaab fighters fired two rocket-propelled grenades at a truck with U.S. service members inside. The ensuing explosion killed Mayfield, 23, of the Army, while Harrison, 47, and Triplett, 64, were killed when the fighters fired rockets at the airplane they were in on the tarmac.
Following the attack, Africa Command conducted an investigation, but the results were kept out of the public’s eye, and as a result, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a separate review of the investigation.
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“In addition to determining that the al-Shabaab attack was the proximate cause of the deaths and injuries to U.S. personnel and the property loss, the USAFRICOM investigation found four causal factors that contributed to the outcome of the January 5, 2020, attack,” Air Force spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said in a statement on Thursday. “Those factors included an inadequate force protection focus; an inadequate understanding of the threat; inadequate security force preparation; and problems with mission command, including poor unity of command at the tactical level.”
Service members deploying to U.S. Africa Command now have to complete a 27-day security training, which is one of the recommendations from investigators.
The training “greatly exceeds the previous pre-deployment courses and focuses on providing the base-defense mindset and force-protection posture needed to operate in a hostile environment,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Roy Collins, the director of Air Force security forces, said Thursday.
