The Vinnell Corporation is an international private military company based in Herndon, Virginia,[1]United States, specializing in military training, logistics, and support in the form of weapon systems maintenance and management consultancy. Vinnell Corporation is a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corporation. They are also party to other joint-venture companies, e.g. Vinnell-Brown & Root (VBR). The Vinnell Corporation was mentioned in Fahrenheit 9/11 for its connections to the Carlyle Group, George W. Bush, and the Saudi Royal family.
They conducted training of portions of the Saudi Arabian National Guard as a joint Saudi/American owned company called Vinnell Arabia since the 1970s.[2] Vinnell Arabia was bombed on May 12, 2003 by Saudi terrorists. Eight Americans and two Filipinos were killed. Another employee was stalked from the military hospital to his home in Riyadh and assassinated on the street.
Vinnell Corporation was given the initial contract to recreate the New Iraqi Army in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Defense.[3] The contract was for nine battalions, with an option to extend the training to 27 battalions. In the event, the second phase was taken over by regular U.S. military forces.
History
Vinnell Corporation was founded in 1931 in Alhambra, California, by Allan S. Vinnell, as a hauling and excavating contractor.[4] The company grew into construction of roads and buildings and constructed portions of the Pan-American Highway, as well as Dodger Stadium[5] and portions of the Grand Coulee Dam. It had also diversified into production of steel and into mining operations. Vinnell also performed construction for the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam and/or similar Federal Government organizations such as the Navy's Officer in Charge of Construction RVN in Vietnam in the 1960s.
The company moved into operations, maintenance, and training largely in the 1970s. In 1975, the company undertook the Saudi Arabian National Guard Modernization Program. In 1979, it moved into the Job Corps arena with the operation of the Shreveport (LA) center and later operated the Hubert H. Humphrey center in St. Paul, MN; the Roswell (NM) center; the Laredo (TX) center; the Joliet (IL) center; the Gainesville (FL) center; the North Texas (formerly McKinney) center; and the Whitney Young center in Shelbyville, KY.
↑ Spearin, Christopher. "A Justified Heaping of the Blame? An Assessment of Privately Supplied Security Sector Training and Reform in Iraq - 2003-2005 and Beyond." In Military Advising and Assistance: From Mercenaries to Privatisation, 1815 - 2007, edited by Donald Stoker: Routledge, 2008.
The Saudi Arabian Armed Forces (SAAF), also known as the Royal Saudi Armed Forces, are the military forces of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It consists of the Saudi Arabian Land Forces, the Royal Saudi Navy, the Royal Saudi Air Force, the Royal Saudi Air Defense, and the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force. The King of Saudi Arabia is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and forms military policy with the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior. The five Armed Forces are among eight military forces of Saudi Arabia, with the others including the Saudi Arabian National Guard, the Saudi Royal Guard Regiment and Saudi Arabian Border Guards.
The IAI RQ-5 Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was originally intended to serve as the United States Army's Short Range UAV system for division and corps commanders. It took off and landed on runways. It used a gimbaled EO/IR sensor to relay its video in real time via a second airborne Hunter over a C-band line-of-sight data link. The RQ-5 is based on the Hunter UAV that was developed by Israel Aerospace Industries.
Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military technology providers. The firm ranks No. 101 on the 2022 Fortune 500 list of America's largest corporations.
TRW Inc., was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, electronics, automotive, and credit reporting. It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering. TRW built many spacecraft, including Pioneer 1, Pioneer 10, and several space-based observatories. It was #57 on the 1986 Fortune 500 list, and had 122,258 employees. The company was called Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc., after the 1958 merger of the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation and Thompson Products. This was later shortened to TRW.
LucasVarity plc was a UK automotive parts manufacturer, created by a merger of the British Lucas Industries plc, and the North American Varity Corporation in August 1996.
Litton Industries was a large defense contractor in the United States named after inventor Charles Litton Sr.
Avondale Shipyard was an independent shipbuilding company, acquired by Litton Industries, in turn acquired by Northrop Grumman Corporation. In 2011, along with the former Ingalls Shipbuilding, the yard was part of Huntington Ingalls Industries. It closed in October 2014. The yard was located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in an area called Bridge City, about 20 miles (32 km) upriver from New Orleans near Westwego, Louisiana. It was the site of the modernization of the battleship USS Iowa in the early 1980s and also constructed some of the lighter aboard ships (LASH). At one time, it was the largest employer in Louisiana, with about 26,000 employees.
The Saudi Arabian National Guard or SANG, also known as the "White Army", is one of the three major branches of the military forces of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The 3rd Marine Division is a division of the United States Marine Corps based at Camp Courtney, Marine Corps Base Camp Smedley D. Butler in Okinawa, Japan. It is one of three active duty infantry divisions in the Marine Corps and together with the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing (1stMAW) and the 3rd Marine Logistics Group forms the III Marine Expeditionary Force. The division was first formed during World War II and saw four years of continuous combat in the Vietnam War. Today, elements of the 3rd Marine Division are continuously forward deployed and forward postured to carry out the US Government's mission of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific in conjunction with its sister services.
The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) was to be the United States' next-generation satellite system that would monitor the Earth's weather, atmosphere, oceans, land, and near-space environment. NPOESS satellites were to host proven technologies and operational versions of sensors that were under operational-prototyping by NASA, at that time. The estimated launch date for the first NPOESS satellite, "C1" or "Charlie 1" was around 2013. Issues with sensor developments were the primary cited reason for delays and cost-overruns.
ESL Incorporated, or Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory, was a subsidiary of TRW, a high technology firm in the United States that was engaged in software design, systems analysis and hardware development for the strategic reconnaissance marketplace. Founded in January 1964 in Palo Alto, California, the company was initially entirely privately capitalized by its employees. One of the company founders and original chief executive was William J. Perry, who eventually became United States Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton. Another company founder was Joe Edwin Armstrong. ESL was a leader in developing strategic signal processing systems and a prominent supplier of tactical reconnaissance and direction-finding systems to the U. S. military. These systems provided integrated real-time intelligence.
Lieutenant General Kevin T. Campbell was the commander of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command from December 2006 to December 2010, replacing Lieutenant General Larry J. Dodgen. In October 2011 Campbell began working for Northrop Grumman Corporation as vice president and corporate lead executive (CLE) for company business after retiring from the Army.
The 37th Training Wing is a unit of the United States Air Force assigned to the 2nd Air Force and the Air Education and Training Command. As the host unit to Lackland Air Force Base, Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, the 37th TRW is the predominant unit on the installation and is the largest training wing in the USAF. Known as the "Gateway to the Air Force", the 37th Training Wing's replaced the Lackland Training Center as the single basic military training for the USAF.
The Office of the Program Manager, Saudi Arabian National Guard Modernization Program is a Security Assistance Organization of the United States Army with the primary mission of managing the modernization effort of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG).
Braddock, Dunn & McDonald, later known as BDM, then BDM International, was a technical services firm founded in 1959 in New York City. Its founders were Dr. Joseph V. Braddock, Dr. Bernard J. Dunn, and Dr. Daniel F. McDonald, who each received a PhD from Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. In 1997, TRW purchased BDM, and in 2002 Northrop Grumman bought TRW.
The 864th Engineer Battalion is a combat engineer battalion of the United States Army based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. The battalion is a subordinate unit of 555th Engineer Brigade.
James Bennett Kelly III serves as Executive in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business. For three years he was president and CEO of Flight Explorer, a software and IT solutions provider to the global aviation community. A former pilot, Kelly took the company from a significant loss to profitability while doubling revenue and implementing an exit strategy resulting in the company's acquisition by Sabre Holdings. As the founder of SynXis, a hotel reservation management software provider to over 50,000 hotels, Mr. Kelly served for eight years as president and CEO. Sabre acquired SynXis in 2005. Kelly is a former Vice President, International, of BDM, an 8,000-person Carlyle technical services firm now part of Northrop Grumman. He previously served as International Programs Vice President at SAIC and before that was Deputy Assistant Secretary, Economic Policy, Africa the Near East and South Asia under Secretary Malcolm Baldrige in the second Reagan Administration. Prior to joining the Administration, he held various international engineering marketing positions, worked for several years on Capitol Hill and served six years in the Pennsylvania Legislature. Mr. Kelly is a graduate of Virginia Tech, where he served for ten years on the Pamplin Business School Advisory Board, and ASU's well-known Thunderbird School of Global Management.
The Beechcraft RC-12 Guardrail is an airborne signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection platform based on the Beechcraft King Air and Super King Air. While the US military and specifically the United States Army have numerous personnel transport variants of the King Air platforms referred to with the general C-12 designation, the RC-12 specification refers to a heavily modified platform that collects SIGINT through various sensors and onboard processors.
Walid Abdulmajid Abukhaled is the CEO of Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI) and the former Chief Executive of global defense and aerospace corporation Northrop Grumman in the Middle East. He is a board member of Dussur.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
