Feb 27, 2014 Meeting, 19:00 hours

Post date: Feb 26, 2014 7:57:9 PM

Explosive Ordinance Disposal Expert to Speak At The 2/27/14 Meeting

The speaker for the 27 February meeting will be U.S. Navy CWO2 (Ret) Zack Vaughn. Mr. Vaughn is an explosive ordinance disposal expert.

He will discuss, "How Afghan insurgent forces use asymmetric threats to wear down U.S. national political will" and "The transition from combat operations to Train/Advise/Assist of an autonomous Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan." Vaughn will also speak about experiences during his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He currently serves as the Chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Division for Characterization and Attribution within the Directorate for Science and Technology. He recently returned from duty in Afghanistan where he served as the Senior Defense Intelligence Officer in Regional Command Southwest, Helmand Province.

While on active duty he participated in Operation Desert Storm, where he served as a member of the wartime port recovery and mine-countermeasures teams that cleared unexploded ordnance from the recaptured Kuwaiti ports.

The night of the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he was assigned to Naval Special Clearance Team ONE, with the mission of swimming into the beach along the Western shore of the Al Fah Peninsula in Iraq to plant explosive charges and blow obstacles to clear the beach-head for Marine Expeditionary Units to be able to land and to set security for Naval vessels to transit the waterways that led up to Baghdad.

During his second tour in Iraq, Chief Petty Officer Vaughn served as a member of Special Operations Counter-terrorism Task Force Raptor. During this tour, he was involved in 54 combat engagements.

He concluded his Navy career as a CWO2, commanding the Combined Explosive-device Exploitation Cell – Afghanistan, where he led a Joint, Combined, and Multi-National unit with the mission of applying innovative techniques in the exploitation of captured enemy material in order to rapidly turn operational intelligence to enable combat mission planning.