Strategery Archives

David Ignatius on Military Partnerships

By Townie 76

Good piece by David Ignatius in today's Washington Post on the importance of military partnerships and the use of all elements of national power. A particularly salient point was the military can not be the first answer to every problem with AQ or other terrorists organizations but takes times:

"Gen. Stanley McChrystal this week expressed a truth that military commanders know better than anyone: "A political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome," he told the Financial Times. The problem is getting to that political settlement in a way that the combatants find acceptable. This can take years, even decades."

Okay, Now Go Read Early Warning

By John

Now that all the huffing and puffing over the Lexington Institute's unusual entry into the blogging foray is finished, I'm wondering if anyone as taken the time to actually read Early Warning?

It's solid.

And it's going on the blogroll.

Two items of interest, courtesy their home page, that are worth putting your eyes on: Moving Forward on the Smart Grid and Stopping the C-17 Would Hobble Warfighters.

I do wish Loren Thompson had chosen a slightly less contentious path when announcing his blog, as this Early Warning business looks like an outstanding resource that the milbloggers could have helped push. We should pay attention.

North Korea Attention Whoring Ridiculous Even By North Korean Standards

By John

North Korea, which has managed to detonate two nuclear bombs with a combined (insignificant) yield of 3-4kt, is threatening to use their somewhat underwhelming stockpile. Yawn.

North Korea has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic weapons programme in defiance of new UN sanctions.

Today's Rodong Sinmun, a state-run North Korean newspaper, claimed the US has 1,000 nuclear weapons in South Korea. Another state-run publication claimed that America had been deploying nuclear weapons in Japan as well.

A few thoughts....

1) If your enemy had 1k nuclear weapons, why would you be threatening war when you only have 2?

2) 1,000 bombs are useless without a delivery system. We use bombers, subs, and ICBMs -- none of which are even remotely close to Korea (bombers are the closest, forward deployed to Guam). All the theater nuke shit we had, like the Pershing and GLCM, went bye-bye nearly two decades ago.

3) You'd need appx. 20-25 bombs (tops) to dismantle North Korea militarily -- and just one, detonated 100 feet or so above Pyongyang-- to kill them off politically. 1000 is, uh, slightly excessive.

4) Said bombs could be on target in less than 30 minutes from you reading this post, via our ICBM force. A bit longer via bomber (two B-2s is all you need).

5) The Norks are such tools....

A New Combatant Command?

By Townie 76

A story in the Washington Post today indicates that the Obama administration is considering forming a "Cyber Command."

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The Future of the United States Military

By Townie 76

From the Richmond Times Dispatch, A. Barton Hinkle writes, "Unmanned drones, lightly manned arsenal ships capable of operating in lit-toral waters, and special-ops forces would be better suited to fighting the asymmetrical conflicts against irregular forces that would be the hallmark of future warfare, went the thinking. Even before 9/11, Pentagon theorist Andrew Marshall -- the longtime head of the Office of Net Assessment, which is commonly described as the Pentagon's internal think tank -- was expressing skepticism about the F-22 fighter jet, whose production Gates recently recommended halting. Others argued against the usefulness of the M-1 Abrams tank, a 70-ton behemoth too large to be airlifted into close-quarter battlefields and too heavy to traverse many small bridges."

Michael Gerson Column in Today's Washington Post

By Townie 76

A interesting take on SECDEF's budget. "While the total defense budget should be larger in a time of war, it focuses resources and attention precisely where they are most needed: on our war fighters in Iraq, in Afghanistan -- and at places like Walter Reed."

Samuel P. Huntington; The Soldier and The State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations

By Townie 76

Samuel P. Huntington; The Soldier and The State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations; Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University; 1957

Several weeks ago, during my move to Northern Virginia, as I was separating my books into categories, I picked up the late Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State, I did so for two reasons, as he had just recently died I wanted to gander at his first work which had a decided impact on the United States Military and two because of some research I am doing, I thought he would be a good starting point. I first read this book while a Cadet at the Virginia Military Institute, and again while in graduate school, so my intent was only to scan particular chapters of the book. However, once I began reading, the genius of Huntington was once again evident to me, I have gone back and reread the entire book.

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George Will Is Right!

By Townie 76

I don’t often agree with George Will. . .he and I are at the opposite poles on most issues, however I never miss the opportunity to read his commentary in the Washington-Post. His commentary is well reasoned, well argued, and well written; in fact, one should study his writing style to learn how to properly write.

Today, Dr. Will (a Ph.D in Government from Princeton) wrote about Congress reasserting it powers relative to Foreign Affairs. (See Washington Post).

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Friday Free-Play

By Lt Col P

Got all sorts of stuff on my mind today.

If you ain't got yours, you ought to get it now. And a related note too.

What if the enemy decides to keep fighting after the deadline?

Isn't it perverse that defense-- a Constitutional obligation-- is now considered "discretionary," but Medicare-- no mention I can find in the Constitution-- is somehow "mandatory." Hello, Europe.

The big bad Bear gets slapped on the nose by a Maple Leaf! Nice.

Talk to you monday. I'm headed to the Star City of the South.

Update... Operation Gunnerside, 66 years ago today-- the op that saved the world. A fascinating story that only gets better the more you read about it. (I recommend this and this, and to a lesser extent this.)

Five More Senior DOD Posts Filled

By Lt Col P

From DefenseLink:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26, 2009 – President Barack Obama continued his efforts to fill key Defense Department posts, announcing plans today to nominate two more people and to have three others continue to serve in their current posts.

Obama announced his intent to name Jim Miller as principal deputy undersecretary for policy, and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Wallace “Chip” Gregson Jr. as assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs.

The White House also announced that Michael B. Donley will continue serving as Air Force secretary, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper will remain on board as undersecretary for intelligence, and Michael G. Vickers will remain as assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities.

Continuity is always good, especially in SOLIC, a domain which has big stakes in this war.

Congrats to LtGen Gregson as well. He was kind enough to give me about 20 minutes of his time back in '06 when I was working on my history of Det One, and he was retired and working for the Olympic Committee. I'm sure it was the thing he least wanted to do that day, especially after I politely harangued him about the lack of funding and attention for the U.S. Biathlon Team. A patient and forebearing man. I'm afraid he'll need both qualities in abundance.

Good luck to all these appointees-- there's still a war on.

To Kill or Not to Kill?

By John

Cross posted at Defense Tech (comments closed, weigh in over there)

Back in 2008, US Pacific Command scored big when they knocked down a decaying US satellite with a sea-launched interceptor. Now ABC reports that CINCPAC, Adm. Timothy Keating, is ready to break out the flyswatter again -- this time under operational conditions.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Adm. Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Commands, said that the military is prepared to shoot down any North Korean ballistic missile -- if President Obama should give the order.

If a missile leaves the launch pad we'll be prepared to respond upon direction of the president," Keating told ABC News. "I'm not a betting man but I'd go like 60/40, 70/30 that it will, they will attempt to launch a satellite. There's equipment moving up there that would indicate the preliminary stages of preparation for a launch. So I'd say it's more than less likely."

With plenty of Aegis assets floating around the ring of fire, ground-based interceptors at Vandenberg AFB, CA and Alaska, and a whole mess of radars that put Superman's x-ray vision to shame.... there's no doubt we could pull this off. But, like with all things defense, the question is whether or not we should.

Sure, the idea might appeal to those of us whose responsibility for national security and statecraft stop at the "publish" button on our blogs -- watching the Norks hopes for both a space program and a credible nuclear deterrent dissipate in a cloud of interceptor smoke sure to hell appeals to me-- but what about the State department wonks who are responsible for turning off the North Korean nuclear program? What happens if they North Koreans step up raids along their borders, seize an American ship, or send nuclear scientists and supplies to Iran -- or Syria?

The North Koreans are, by nature, aggressive creatures. But that doesn't mean they're stupid. In the fifty plus years since the ceasefire, they've frequently pushed us right up to our absolute, no shit limit, then quickly backed down. It's a strange amalgamation of diplomacy, politics, and warfare --a harsh calculus of slaps and handshakes- that the Norks have mastered in their half-century of dealing with the West.

In other words, Kim Jong Il is damned good at being a gigantic pain in the ass.

So do we provoke him? Is it necessary? Does the benefit outweigh potential cost? I venture a cautious yes (let our new CiC play a little hardball), but what say you?

So What's Going on Abroad Today?

By Charlie

Just a reminder, it remains a dangerous world out there:

Gaza: Rocket Fire and Israeli Strike Disrupt Cease-Fire

Hamas fired dozens of rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinian militants in an eruption of violence that disrupted a four-month-old truce

The Arab Israeli conflict seems as intractable as ever, which does not bode well for the region. If conflict erupts, it will likely pull the whole region into war.

Rwanda: Fighting Exposes Congolese Soldiers

Currently, the media is awash with stories of recent fighting in eastern Congo. Quite often, the turn of events can be ugly....Last week, Congolese soldiers were reported to have looted, raped and maimed civilians in DRC's town of Goma-sending many people fleeing to Rwanda.

Africa will continue to fall victim to poor governance, ethnic and tribal conflicts, terrorism, and corruption. This slide will not stop in the next 4 years. Quote me on that.

Russia to deploy missiles

MOSCOW - RUSSIA will deploy Iskander missiles in its western enclave of Kaliningrad in response to plans by the United States to build an anti-missile system in Europe, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday....Mr Medvedev said Russia would electronically jam elements of the proposed US system and that Russia had scrapped plans to stand down three missile regiments.

Sending bombers to Venezuela, now challenging missile defense. Russia seems bent on challenging the US at every opportunity. Again, unlikely to ebb anytime soon.

As much as we tend to look inwards in America, most of the world will continue to fixate on the myriad of problems that existed yesterday, and will likely last for quite a while longer... .

Or, We Could Kill All The Pirates

By Lt Col P

Against the dictates of all common sense, and fine historical examples, this shit is still going on.

On a Vital Route, a Boom in Piracy Somali Marauders Step Up Attacks in Gulf of Aden; Shipping Costs Soar

ABOARD A YEMENI COAST GUARD VESSEL -- Somali pirates plying the Gulf of Aden in speedboats equipped with grenade launchers and scaling ladders have launched what the maritime industry calls the biggest surge of piracy in modern times, sending shipping costs soaring and the world's navies scrambling to protect the main water route from Asia and the Middle East to Europe.

We have discussed this before, always with the same tone of disbelief. WTF, over? This is an ugly problem, but a simple one, and one that has a remarkably simple solution--

Kill all of the pirates.

Seriously. Why do we allow a handful of khat-addled assholes to dominate one of the world's most important sea lanes? We, the western powers, have sufficient naval units in the area to take care of the problem in very quick order. What we lack is the will. We apply an idiotically high standard of judicial due process to a situation that doesn't lend itself well to a judicial solution. Anyone who has dealt with Somalis can tell you that they laugh at western legalisms, and what they perceive as western weaknesses. And then they redouble their violent efforts to take what they want from you. They do react very well to a boot on their necks, and a gun to their heads. Then they tend to wise up quickly.

Here's how it needs to be done. Oil tanker sends distress call, takes evasive actions insofar as it is capable. (Or better yet, armed men aboard oil tanker defend by fire.) Coalition forces despatch vessels and boarding parties. Pirates who survive ensuing gun battle are lined up by the rail and shot in the head, then dumped overboard. Pirate boats are burned. If their bases or villages on the coast can be identified, said bases are raided and destroyed. No fuss no muss, no ransom, no hostages, no skyrocketing costs.

Damn, sometimes we are our own worst enemies. At the very moment we need to keep oil flowing freely at the lowest possible prices, our own flaccidness jacks up the price.

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The Arctic

By Lt Col P

Came upon this discussion yesterday, by accident almost. Although it unintentionally reveals much about the commenters and their odd notions-- I looked in vain for Skippy-san, perhaps he was using an alias-- it brings up a good point.

An interesting briefing by the Northcom Commander General Victor Renuart has flagged cyber and arctic threats as priorities for the next President. Reportedly, the National Security Council is debating drafting a new strategy document on the Arctic. We have already discussed cyber threats a couple of times, but not the Arctic. Ironically, Russia's behavior in Georgia may have ripple effects of national security thousands of miles away in the Arctic if we really are seeing the resurgence of an aggressive Russian bear. For that matter, one of the near-term security implications of global warming is to make the Arctic more in play for geopolitics. The Arctic mission is also one that would have interesting inter-service rivalry implications, since it would be primarily a Navy and Air Force mission. How important is the Arctic and should an increasing portion of defense resources be directed to it? My own sense is that the bipartisan push for energy security will make the Arctic a higher priority for future Administrations than it has been for decades, and its importance will grow in the decades to come. Given the long lead-times for some weapons purchases, it would be foolish not to make at least some investments in improving our capacity to project power in that region. The priority still should be on other near term concerns, winning the wars that we are in, as Gates puts it, and ensuring our capacity to respond to more urgent challenges, but it is smart strategy to be thinking anew about the Arctic. How big a factor should the Arctic be in US military planning?

At the top of the world we are cheek by jowl with Mother Russia. The end of the Cold War (supposedly) brought the end of the existential threats the old regime presented, the ICBMs, the bombers, the subs. Well, since the new boss in the Kremlin is the same as the old boss, welcome back to a new Cold War in the cold.

All of this has flown below our DEW Line, but it is a frequent topic over at The Torch...

Yes to Georgia, No to Russia

By Lt Col P

They're going at it hammer and tongs in an obscure corner of the Caucasus, but there is much more at stake than the finer points of sovereignty over a dusty patch of not-quite-Europe-not-quite-Asia.

Georgia has steadily advanced along the path to responsible government and stability, and has been a real ally in the war. For years now, US forces have been exercising and training with the Georgians, and have made considerable inroads in helping them emerge from the gross darkness of Soviet rule.

Russia has been steadily sliding back into its old ways, and making everyone nervous in so doing. They've been remarkably unhelpful with Iran.

Time to stand up for an ally, and stand up to the neighborhood bastard.

The Air Force and COIN

By Slab

Small Wars Journal posted an article by Air Force LtCol Buck Elton, "Shortchanging the Joint Doctrine Fight: One Airman's Assessment of the Airman's Assessment". LtCol Elton's excellent article is a counterpoint to an earlier monograph, published in December 2007 by Air University, and written by Air Force Deputy Judge Advocate MajGen Charles Dunlap, entitled Shortchanging the Joint Fight? An Airman's Assessment of FM 3-24 and the Case for Developing Truly Joint COIN Doctrine.

I have not read MajGen Dunlap's article, as I was deployed in Iraq at the time watching the lessons of FM 3-24 put into practice by an Army cavalry troop. I find it interesting that MajGen Dunlap believes the Army and Marine Corps are shortchanging airpower in the COIN fight, as I spent quite a bit of time using rotary and fixed wing aviation in support of Apache Troop's objectives. However, LtCol Elton does a far better job of refuting the General's criticisms than I ever could, so I'll let him do the talking:

Many COIN and Irregular Warfare experts argue population control, legitimacy of the government and isolation of insurgents are key elements of success. Contrary to what General Dunlap suggests, airpower is a critical enabler that is absolutely necessary, but it is by no mean sufficient to defeating insurgencies. While criticizing the commitment of massive numbers of American boots-on-the-ground, he fails to discuss any historical COIN case studies where airpower replaced land power as the dominant military effort. From Malaya, to El Salvador, to the Greek Civil War to Vietnam, to Algeria, insurgencies are rarely, if ever, successfully crushed by an overwhelming foreign military force alone and there has never been an insurgency crushed by the overwhelming application of airpower alone. Ground forces, whether they are host nation security forces or external combat forces assisting the security forces, are necessary but also not sufficient. Of all the discussions about the best way to counter insurgencies, only General Dunlap argues airpower is necessary and sufficient. The harsh reality is that our Joint Force will be called upon to conduct many difficult missions and we must prepare for them together with the resources we have available. Advocating the types of wars the Air Force should fight (no ground troops) by only preparing for the wars they want to fight (airpower centric conflicts with peer competitors), while ignoring the type of fight our enemy wants to fight (al-Qaeda’s global insurgency) and the wars our President orders us to fight (Afghanistan and Iraq), is a terrible mistake. Our nation must be prepared to succeed in conventional, irregular, and hybrid conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. If funding for new equipment and forces is constrained, the Air Force should be willing to consider some risk in capacity (not capability) for Major Combat Operations to increase the capability and capacity to conduct Irregular Warfare and COIN, while convincing our civilian leaders to supply adequate funding for all our threats and requirements. Our services shortchange the joint fight when they organize, train, and equip for only one type of conflict. General Dunlap shortchanges the doctrine development process by discrediting sister service doctrine and military operations to protect service’s budget equities.

H/T to SWJ

Update: Looks like several members of the Small Wars Council don't think quite as highly of LtCol Elton's article.

I am not convinced Buck like Dunlap ever read 3-24. He read passages and filled in with what he wanted it to say. More Hap Arnold airmindedness mess.

I saw LtCol Elton's article as being more in favor of joint mindedness, but perhaps I misread. I must admit that applauding a critique without having read the criticized work itself is less than exemplary scholarship on my part.

I have to say that when I read the line in his conclusion, "The United States Air Force is the most lethal, flexible, overwhelming and feared military force in the world," I snickered a bit.

Future War Question 1

By Charlie

Based on the previous post, We’ll take a look at (in general) the ways generic enemy conventional militaries might respond to an attack by the US. The purpose of this is to examine how enemy “conventional” militaries may adapt and respond based off of the contemporary operating environment. The reason I chose to post on this is the increased attention that COIN has received in Army training and doctrine. [full disclosure] I believe this new emphasis on COIN is well deserved, but many in the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines believe that we need to focus on preparations for more conventional future threats. A question to examine from the side of the anti-COIN-centric planners is: will conventional threats continue to organize and fight the way they always have, despite recent battlefield developments?

The first question that will be addressed will be: Will nation-state adversaries plan to fight the US based off of OIF I tactics?

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The Shape of Future War

By Charlie

It is taken as common wisdom that in the future, the US will face a large degree of irregular warfare when dealing with enemy actors, both state and non-state. Analysis of insurgencies, past, present, and potential, has been frequent and in depth –but what about all of those conventional armies that are still out there? While terrorist groups like Al Qaida lack infrastructure, funding, equipment, manpower, and all of the other benefits of an established military, state actors have all of these advantages from the beginning. Theorists often say that the military plans to fight and win the last war, so will nation-state adversaries do the same? Another way to frame this question is: will enemy conventional armies fight conventionally in the future? Will they (and are they able to) fight unconventionally? Is there some way for them to do both, and to maximize the advantages and minimize the disadvantages of each?

These questions are relevant to ask, especially now as the Army swings into full COIN mode. The emphasis on nation-state military threats has decreased, due in part to the fact that our forces have been very adept at striking and disabling conventional military forces, but that assumes that enemy conventional armies will not adapt their tactics or adjust their strategies in the future. How many future enemy armies will fight a war we want them to fight, the way we want them to fight it?

This is a broad topic, so let us attempt to address each of these questions:

Will nation-state adversaries plan to fight the US based off of OIF I tactics?

Will enemy conventional armies fight conventionally in the future?

Will enemy conventional armies (and are they able to) fight unconventionally?

Is there some way for enemy conventional armies to fight conventionally and unconventionally at the same time, and to maximize the advantages and minimize the disadvantages of each?

I will attempt to address each of these in a different post, but I would like to get some comments on the concept first. COIN training is prevalent, but should we be watching threat nation-states and evaluating what the next war may look like?

Pakistani Paramilitaries

By Slab

A recent firefight near Asadabad, Afghanistan was ended when US Air Force F-15Es and a B-1 dropped several 500-lb bombs into Pakistan. Only trouble is, the planes apparently targeted Pakistani paramilitaries, killing 11 of them. Pakistan is upset over the loss.

The incident highlights one of the perils of employing paramilitary forces - the difficulty of distinguishing them from the actual insurgents. My last tour in Iraq saw much of the same, although we were not being engaged by insurgents at the time, so there was little danger of mistakenly killing the Neighborhood Watch guys. However, on more than one occasion I had aircraft working for me report some sort of suspicious activity that looked an awful lot like, say, insurgents placing an IED on a dirt road that we used from time to time. After a watching for a bit, we realized we couldn't identify them as a threat with any reasonable certainty, and eased our proverbial fingers off the triggers. When we stopped out there on patrol the next day, turns out, it was just the local Neighborhood Watch filling sandbags to fortify one of their checkpoints. We left them with a polite suggestion that they might not want to fill sandbags in the middle of a road at night.

On the whole, paramilitary forces are one of the most effective tools in COIN. Although they don't have the training and equipment of regular military forces, their knowledge of the local area and population makes them far more adept at separating the insurgent "fish" from the "sea" of the local populace. Many have pointed to the Awakening Movement in Iraq as a key ingredient to the current success in Al Anbar province, and rightfully so. I have seen the difference between Anbar province of 2006, where the Iraqi Army battalion I supported struggled to maintain control of a 4-5 kilometer stretch of battlespace, and the same area in late 2007 and early 2008. The area was so peaceful that the Iraqi Army shifted the entire brigade to another province and gave responsibility for the area to a battalion. The difference was the rise of the Provincial Security Forces in the area.

The Afghan border presents a real predicament for Coalition forces. I spent some time in Asadabad in 2003, and the base out there is not all that far from the border. Add a Pakistani paramilitary force such as the Frontier Corps in close proximity to a Coalition outpost, and the potential for cross-border incidents such as this one is very high. I have no idea what level of coordination is being done with the Pakistanis, but it is apparent that it is not enough.

How to prevent the continuation of this sort of incident? Well, one way would be to restrict all Coalition fires across the border. But since the enemy regularly operates across the border, and places no such restriction on their fighters, it's pretty easy to see why this is a poor choice, militarily. Better communication with the Frontier Corps seems to be the answer. But how, in a situation like a firefight in the mountains of the Afghan/Pakistani border, do you communicate with the Pakistanis that you are targeting a group of personnel at location X? And how do the Pakistanis, in turn, verify the location of paramilitary forces in the area and communicate whether the targeted individuals are friendly? Or contact the Frontier Corps soldiers and tell them to mark their position in such a way that it is recognizable to Coalition aircraft? All of this in a timely fashion, because the guys in the Coalition combat operations center are very aware that their fellow Soldiers are taking fire on some mountainside and need help. I've been in a COC in that sort of situation in Iraq, and having the ability to rain down high explosive from the sky to help out your brothers is very satisfying, but it can also be incredibly difficult to wait for things like identifying a paramilitary force on patrol in the vicinity.

So, I'm going to come completely out of left field with an idea for solving this sort of problem. Rather than relying on communications with the Pakistani Frontier Corps, ask Pakistan to allow Coalition personnel to train and advise the Frontier Corps in the border regions. This puts Coalition personnel and communications equipment in position to track and communicate the location of Frontier Corps patrols. The benefits to the Pakistanis are better training and equipment for their paramilitary forces, and a reduced likelihood that they will be targeted by Coalition units when operating in the vicinity of Coalition forces. The benefit to the Coalition is a more capable force patrolling the Pakistani side of the border, interdicting the insurgents before they attack our forces on the Afghan side. It will also help to maintain good relations with Pakistan, as we are less likely to mistakenly kill their troops.

Of course, there are many problems with this idea. Where do we get the manpower and equipment? Providing enough advisors for Afghan and Iraqi forces is difficult enough as it is. How to overcome Pakistani objections to foreign troops on their soil, even in an advisory and training capacity? They've 're obviously not interested in having our forces operating in their territory. Of course, I'm not talking actual Coalition combat formations, I'm talking small teams in advisory capacities similar to what we've done in Colombia and the Philippines. I would think that should be a bit easier for them to swallow. It's a pretty tough idea to implement, but one that can bear a lot of fruit in the struggle to secure the border regions and prevent cross-border operations by the insurgents. Not only will it aid in the discrimination of enemy insurgents from friendly paramilitaries, but it will make the Frontier Corps a stronger and more reliable counter-insurgent force. And ultimately, strong indigenous forces are required to win against this cross-border insurgency.

Edited to add: I'm leaving unsaid the possibility that the Air Force did, in fact, successfully target the individuals who attacked Coalition forces that day, and that those individuals might also have been members of the Frontier Corps. That is because I don't intend for this post to be about the reliability of paramilitary forces, which is another problematic issue. Coalition advisors could help to increase their reliability in terms of loyalty to the government of Pakistan, but ultimately it is up to the Pakistani military to take necessary steps to ensure the Frontier Corps in the Northwestern Frontier Province is not working against us.

Update: I was unable to find the complete footage of the strike earlier, but Defense Tech provided it. From the raw footage, it looks pretty clear that the guys who ate the high explosives were asking for it. Even UAS footage doesn't necessarily tell all, but I'm pretty confident at this point that if those guys were Frontier Corps, they were bad apples. Even if the UAS lost track of the original group of fighters and hit FC troops, the close proximity would indicate at least a degree of complicity on their part. So, tough luck boys, but when you mess with the bull you get the horns.

Obstacle Emplacement in the COIN Fight

By Charlie

North of the Green Zone, in Iraq, the Army’s new COIN doctrine is being put to the test as a wall is being erected in the southern third of Sadr City. The construction of this barrier is an odd mix of new and classical approaches to combat, engineering, and counterinsurgency. Here is a recent report from the New York Times on the progress:

This is the war over the wall. It is a daily battle of attrition waged over the large concrete barrier that the Americans have been building across Sadr City in the hope of establishing a safe zone in the southern tier of the Shiite enclave.

The Americans began building the wall a month ago, working east to west. The work started at night but soon extended into the day as American commanders sought to speed up the construction….Supporters of Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, denounced the wall as a nefarious effort to divide the city. Militia fighters with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and small arms have been trying to halt its construction. …Those efforts have failed, and the barrier is now 80 percent complete.

Interestingly, the idea of putting up barriers to restrict your enemy’s movement is a conventional one. The emplacement of obstacles has been contemplated by Army engineers since the Fulda gap planning (which may have recently stopped). The (old) Army FM 3-0 defines this as Countermobility, which:

.. denies mobility to enemy forces. It limits the maneuver of enemy forces and enhances the effectiveness of fires. Countermobility missions include obstacle building and smoke generation.

However, the placement, circumstances, and purpose of this wall in the southern third of Sadr city are directly inline with the new Army doctrine. Clever obstacle emplacement by maneuver commanders and combat engineers has been commonplace in Iraq for a while. Marines and soldiers quickly realized that Anti Coalition Forces were uncomfortable engaging them outside of certain distances, and employed obstacles such as barriers and wire to increase standoff distances. The relentless emplacement of this massive barrier is meant to do several things: increase standoff distance for Mahdi Army mortars targeting the Green Zone, disrupt movement of Special Group members and their supply lines, and increase the ability of Iraqi and Coalition forces to project power into the sprawling slum. This plan sounds good, because it is right out of the book:

FM 3-24: Military Aspects of Terrain for Counterinsurgency

B-4. At the tactical level, Soldiers and Marines consider different details of the military aspects of terrain
to describe the operational environment.

Obstacles. In addition to terrain obstacles, obstacles in a COIN environment include anything
that hinders insurgent freedom of operation or counterinsurgent operations. Traffic control
points, electronic security systems, and guard plans are examples of obstacles to insurgents.

By utilizing effective obstacle emplacement in a complex urban environment, Coalition and Iraqi forces are slowly and methodically demonstrating a fusion of countermobility and counterinsurgency.

Does Germany need a national security strategy?

By Charlie

Apparently this type of thing is hotly debated in Deutschland, and in Europe as a whole. It seems obvious to me that a nation state would want to set up some type of national command authority, as well as spell out the circumstances for deploying their military, in order to give themselves and their people a framework on how the country will respond to events as the occur in the real world.
Weekly Standard:

For far too long, in other words, German political leaders shied away from communicating a comprehensive strategic framework that defines the country’s national interests and addresses responses to the various threats. The conservative strategy paper defines Germany’s national interests in terms of five issue areas: (1) the fight against terrorism; (2) nuclear proliferation; (3) energy and pipeline security; (4) climate change; and (5) the prevention of conflicts.

My question: is this a blip on the radar, or are more countries going to start taking responsibility for themselves as they face real threats in the world? With declining military and defense spending throughout Europe, this type of move is a break from 50 years of relying on someone else to make defense decisions. We'll have to see how this plays out...

South Korea to become accompanied deployment

By Charlie

With the strains of the Iraq war, and repeated deployments, this seems like a good idea. Just keep the families out of artillery range:

The U.S. government is likely to accept a request by the top American commander in South Korea to extend the length of tours by U.S. troops here and have their families accompany them, a report said Thursday.

South Korea welcomes the extended tours by U.S. forces, while some critics are worried that the family-accompanied program, along with a plan to pause the reduction of U.S. troops, would burden South Korean taxpayers.

The report said U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will discuss the three-year, family-accompanied tour program for U.S. forces in Korea (USFK) when he visits Seoul in June.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is also in support of the plan, which has been pushed ahead by USFK Commander Gen. B. B. Bell, it said.

Currently, most U.S. troops here are required to serve one-year tours without their families. A USFK official said only 10 percent of the 27,000 USFK members are with their families now.

Stability Operations Now Part of Army’s Core Mission

By Charlie

While embracing reality, this move is likely to rankle some of the Army's "old corps." What I mean by that is that there is a sizeable chunk of the Army, especially in the combat arms branches, that think the mission of the infantry is only "to close with the enemy by means of fire and maneuver to defeat or capture him, or to repel his assault by fire, close combat, and counterattack." Not included in that is building schools, policing foreign cities, monitoring infrastructure, training local security forces,etc.

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Feb. 25, 2008) -- Soldiers have been in Iraq keeping the peace, battling insurgents, protecting civilians and helping to rebuild that country for nearly five years. The Army now recognizes that work, called “stability operations,” as part of a Soldier’s core mission and made it so in the new field manual for operations, FM 3-0, which will be released later this week.

The change comes because the U.S. government has identified that failed and failing states are breeding grounds for terrorists and insurgents, said Lt. Col. James H. Boozell, an Army G3 branch chief for the stability operations and irregular warfare division at the Pentagon.

“When local government can’t provide the civil security and civil control necessary for its people, terrorists are allowed to thrive,” he said. “If we stabilize governance, it will provide the level of civil security and control that disallows the growth of terrorism and insurgency.”

What we face is a near-term certainty of the continuation of "irregular warfare" wherever we fight, in the brushfire war after next. It is good that the Army recognizes this, but it will be a continuing challenge to split-train our 4GW forces on 3GW tactics. Face it, the 3GW mindset isn't going away any time soon.

Castro resigns: Fallout?

By Charlie

I figured Castro would govern 'till death, so this is certainly unexpected:

HAVANA - An ailing, 81-year-old Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when parliament meets Sunday. ADVERTISEMENT

The end of Castro's rule — the longest in the world for a head of government — frees his 76-year-old brother Raul to implement reforms he has hinted at since taking over as acting president when Fidel Castro fell ill in July 2006. President Bush said he hopes the resignation signals the beginning of a democratic transition.

I'm not the Latin America expert, but I think it is an ideal time to quote Thomas P.M. Barnett:

Don’t expect Cubans to take some passing of the torch to Raul without putting up something of a popular struggle. He won’t last long, and the committee that replaces him will naturally have, as its first order of business, meeting this popular expectation, a demand for political input that skews higher the younger you go.

According to the polls, 76% of Cubans think a more democratic political system would be good, improving their lives.

Also, 84% says a market-driven economy would improve their lives.

And some more:

Raul will rule with committees galore and new names will rise that we've never heard of before.

Then before he croaks (or when), we'll see serious reformers step up, "new era" and all that, and the popular push for direct elections will begin.

None of this happens overnight, but within five years Cuba is unrecognizable. The young will love it and dub it the "second revolution" and the old will be baffled and nostagically pine for the good old days. Old Miami Cubans will be shocked that the Cuba of their youth is not resurrectable, but they won't care given all the freedom to visit back and forth.

Sooner than any can imagine, life in Cuba will ramp up so close to that in Miami, the talk will begin of going all the way toward joining the U.S. Then, depending on the presidential election year, you'll start seeing Cuban statehood as a staple of Florida's electoral quid pro quo (just like sanctions support got you the Cuban vote in the past).

Comforting: Air Force's nuclear focus has dimmed

By Charlie

So says a report, reviewing the incident in August where a Minot AFB-based bomber was loaded up with nukes and flown to Louisiana.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military has lost focus on its nuclear-weapons mission and has suffered a sharp decline in nuclear expertise, factors that may have contributed to a mishap last year in which a B-52 bomber unknowingly carried six nuclear warheads across the country, according to two new independent reviews.

Both studies found that levels of nuclear training and alertness at the Air Force slipped after the end of the Cold War. But one of the reports was much more critical, saying accidents far worse than the errant B-52 flight could occur without immediate changes in nuclear procedures.

"The task force and several of the senior [Defense Department] people interviewed believe that the decline in focus has been more pronounced than realized and too extreme to be acceptable," said the report compiled by an outside panel chaired by retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch.

….
Dozens of officers have been either disciplined or relieved of command, but the Welch report's findings raise new questions about whether failures within the Air Force were more systemic than originally believed. The first Air Force investigation into the incident, completed in October, pinned much of the blame on individual officers at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

The war on terror (thankfully) hasn’t given our nuclear arsenal much to do, so this lack of focus is understandable, but not forgivable. It does bring up the question of “what is the mission of the Air Force?” A question that John and I have discussed at length. Here’s what he said on the Air Force’s mission drift:

I think what freaks Air Force types out about small wars talk (and equipping the force with short range slow-movers) is that they fear they'll go back to the days of subservience to the Army (shoot here, fly here). Zoomies are a proud bunch, and they take a certain satisfaction in the fact that they're our first line of defense against heavy hitters like Russia and China.

What the Air Force has here are two diametrically opposed missions: Space, missile, and strategic duties that require satellites, missile silos, and nuke-capable strategic bombers that will be the country’s strategic deterrence force and charged with dealing with the mythical “near peer” – and heavy lift, combat search and rescue, J-TAC, weather, CAS, and technical expertise for the irregular wars we are actually fighting.

Does it make sense then to cleave the organization in half, to allow for each mission to get 100% of the organization’s attention? I know many officers got fired for the Minot incident, but it seems to be a symptom of a larger problem of mission drift, but this is an outsider’s perspective.

Update (John): Interesting VMI fact, Lt.Gen. Daniel Darnell '75 spoke on this incident yesterday.... in front of a Congressional subcommittee.

Army to Shift (slowly) Out of Korea?

By Charlie

Well, troops are needed elsewhere, and it is looking less and less likely that war between the North and the South will breakout at a moment’s notice. Perhaps we really don’t need troops on the DMZ that are “ready to fight tonight:”

US officers said the headquarters of the Eighth Army, the overall US Army command unit in Seoul, would move to Hawaii by 2012. In addition, the headquarters of the Second Infantry Division, which has only one ground combat brigade instead of the usual three or four, will leave Korea even though its destination has not yet been decided.

About 27,000 US troops are currently posted in Korea. That number will soon decline to 25,000 and keep on dropping gradually, probably to fewer than 20,000. Those troops are needed elsewhere in an Army that is stretched thin by deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Moreover, US officers contend that South Korean forces should take charge of defending their own country from their potential enemy in North Korea. Some assert that the Koreans have long shirked that duty and thus have not prepared themselves to take over the communications, intelligence, and logistics essential to large-scale operations.

For that reason, US officers said, units like the 1st Signal Brigade, which provides strategic and tactical communications; the 501st Military Intelligence Brigade, which gets information for commanders; and the 19th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), which is the logistic arm of Eighth Army, will remain in Korea after 2012.

This plan isn’t new, it has been in the works since the last South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, sought to reach out to the North and take over more of the defense responsibility. The US, with other security matters at hand, apparently had no problem with this request. Now (according to the column) the South is seeking to reach out to us to slow our troop withdrawal plan, which is being rebuffed by a military that is stretched thin, and sees little need for another unaccompanied hardship tour.

This reminds me of the Germany situation, where we dramatically reduce our force projection due to changing policies of a host nation, only to turn around and see them seek to slow the withdrawal. Military bases are an economic stimulator –look at Fayetteville, NC or Sierra Vista, AZ –and the consequences of moving them must be carefully weighed. Critics of US basing overseas seem to be loudly wishing the military to leave, and then getting upset when they do.

Imperialist Westerners Threaten Helpless Backwater Former Colony

By Charlie

It’s OK though, because its France.

France today threatened to take military action against rebels in Chad after the UN security council called on all member-states to support the Chadian government.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was ready to launch a military operation in Chad against the rebels if necessary. "If France must do its duty, it will do so," Sarkozy said.

The rebels have accused the former colonial power in Chad of already intervening in the fighting, by using helicopters and tanks to back President Idriss Déby and of causing civilian casualties.

The rebels say French helicopters and tanks, which are part of a 1,400-strong military contingent in Chad, fired on rebels near the airport yesterday. French troops have helped evacuate foreigners from the capital, N'djamena.

Question: will France be roundly condemned for this? Or will other nations now have the political cover they need to step up to the plate and deal with the Crisis in Chad and Sudan? It seems that the “international community” has been just fine with letting the Darfur crisis continue unabated so far.

First Strike Simulation

By John

This creeped me out. It's a fictional depiction of a surprise Soviet first strike against US strategic assets, circa 1979. Looks like they used some of the footage in The Day After.

Apparently what had everyone freaking out back then was the Soviet's newly developed ICBM capabilities, which theoretically could destroy our ultra-hardened force of Minuteman III missiles. Enter the B-1 bomber, the Peacekeeper ICBM, the cruise missile, the Ohio-Class SSBN, and others during the 80s.

Thank you Reagan. While I admit the folks who made the video may have embellished a bit (we could have gotten more missiles and bombers off the ground, methinks), it's pretty obvious that Ronnie understood what it took to keep Ivan out of our collective faces.

US Military Unprepared for Attack on Country?

By Charlie

So sayeth a “report,” which I will discuss and dissect:

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military isn't ready for a catastrophic attack on the country, and National Guard forces don't have the equipment or training they need for the job, according to a report.
Even fewer Army National Guard units are combat-ready today than were nearly a year ago when the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves determined that 88 percent of the units were not prepared for the fight, the panel says in a new report released Thursday.

OK, let me give you some reality here: when a Guard unit becomes “combat ready” it gets sent to combat. Units are either preparing to leave, deployed, or resetting from deployment –that’s it. So unless a unit is preparing to leave, it isn’t going to be classified as combat ready. I get the “88%” that is quoted here, assuming 1/3 of the operational force is prepping to mob, 1/3 is overseas, and 1/3 is just returning and resetting –allowing for headquarters units and other rear-D elements, the 88% makes sense to me. Moving on:

Punaro, a retired Marine Corps major general, had sharp criticism for Northern Command, saying that commanders there have made little progress developing detailed response plans for attacks against the homeland.

"NorthCom has got to get religion in this area," said Punaro. He said the military needs to avoid "pickup game" type responses, such as the much-criticized federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina, and put in place the kind of detailed plans that exist for virtually any international crisis.

Whoa! Throw on the breaks. I was in the Katrina relief operation, and although the federal reaction to the disaster was “much-criticized”, the Guard’s response was nothing short of brilliant. At the end of the deployment, the TAG of Mississippi had to turn away the troops there to help. At the end of the mission, we had enough boots on the ground to successfully execute a follow-on mission to invade Mexico. “Pick-up” game responses are how situations are solved in the real world, because you can’t have a plan to react to every conceivable contingency, it just isn’t possible.

Do we actually want contingency plans for a F-5 Tornado strike on Kansas City followed by an outbreak of Swine Flu with a crowd and riot control element to be specifically codified? How would it even work? We’ve got an F-5 Tornado and a Swine Flu plus rioters in Kansas City –its OPPLAN 31 Bravo 5! Execute! Just like we planned!

No, in reality, the introduction of the Incident Command System is a much more realistic way to handle disasters – a simple, very flexible structure that is universal to civilian and military command structures, and one that can be used in a wide range of disasters or terrorist attacks. Let’s continue with this article:

He also underscored the commission's main finding: the Pentagon must move toward making the National Guard and Reserves an integral part of the U.S. military.

The panel, in its No. 1 recommendation, said the Defense Department must use the nation's citizen soldiers to create an operational force that would be fully trained, equipped and ready to defend the nation, respond to crises and supplement the active duty troops in combat.

Wow, that’s a leap. How is that in any way different to what the Guard is doing now? It has been my experience that the National Guard and Reserves ARE an integral part of the U.S. military. Studies like these continue to confuse me, because they tend to latch on to meta-narratives (Katrina was a disaster) and ignore the current problems that the Guard actually has (lower levels of training, high OPTEMPO, bad work/life balance for civilian careers).

Gaza Roundup

By Charlie

Terror! International Intrigue! War! Read my Gaza roundup below the fold!

Read More »

North Korea Calls for Formal End to Korean War

By Charlie

Give peace a chance? I don't buy it:

North Korea has called for a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War to be signed as soon as possible, to ease military tensions with the United States .

The call was made in a commentary published by the Rodong daily, the newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party. It said now is the right time for a peace treaty to replace the armistice that has been in place since 1953.

The Korean peninsula is technically still at war since the fighting ended.

North and South Korean leaders held a summit in October that resulted in a call for a meeting of three or four parties to lay groundwork for a formal peace treaty and normalized U.S.-North Korean relations.

But South Korean opponents to the idea argue that any treaty should wait until North Korea completes the full abandonment of its nuclear programs.

Guess which one's communist...

Recall, if you will, that the Korean war was waged by the newly-minted United Nations, not imperialistic unilateral war-mongering America . It is interesting that South Korea is balking on this, given their repeated attempts at “sunshine” policies. The South is probably nervous about the spectacle of having its economy wrecked by absorbing the North’s shattered infrastructure in the event of re-unification (ala West Germany after the Berlin Wall fell). So will the UN be the place where this war ends? I doubt it. Kim Jong Il may be crazy, but a formal end to the Korean war would be followed by a gradual opening of the North Korean economy, which may cause his “hermit kingdom” to realize that their neighbors to the south have it a lot better than they do. Liberalization leads to dictators losing power, and a permanent war footing is a great excuse for an autocrat to hang around for 20+ years of solitary rule –look at Cuba , Syria , Libya , Egypt , etc. So it seems that war is good for Kim Jong Il, and it is unlikely that he will be open to the idea of peace in our time.

But we WANTED to Fight in the Fulda Gap...

By Charlie

This Canadian colonel comments on the SECDEF's remarks on NATO last week, but struck a chord with me in this graf:
Collateral Damage
By George Petrolekas

Many American officers who passed their military adolescence in training to fight in the Fulda Gap - the strategic area in the Cold War era where the Soviets would theoretically invade West Germany - still believe that the U.S. Army is not meant for protracted low-level conflict or nation-building. The Powell doctrine, so favored by many U.S. officers, of applying overwhelmingly superior force followed by rapid withdrawal from the field, was highly successful in America 's first Gulf war but does not apply to the current situations in Afghanistan and Iraq .

The war in Iraq has awakened military soldier-scholars to the fact that America must wage a completely different type of war, fought among the people, generational in scope, where firepower and maneuver must be coupled with the development of civil society and security through close contact with the population.

Petrolekas goes on to chide the SECDEF for his comments about NATO’s reliance on Cold War doctrine and the inability to conduct COIN ops and talk about how great NATO is. What struck me was how true that 1st paragraph rang. Many officers that I have served with, especially the combat arms types, are all about the Powell doctrine and are frustrated with the restricting way the US military chooses to fight its wars. Some majors I have worked with seethe about fighting a “faceless enemy” that does not wear a uniform, others complain about having to waste time on the “other stuff” like IO, PSYOP, Civil Affairs, and coordinating with Host Nation forces, instead of writing a really good “tasks to maneuver units” paragraph in the OPORD. I know that the plural of “anecdote” is not “fact,” but it has been my experience that many leaders in the Army really want to fight another army, not an insurgency. That could be a result –as the colonel above says- of officers who “passed their military adolescence” training to fight the commies in the “big one,” and is leading defense planner to focus on the next “big one,” (China) rather than dealing with what is in front of us now. I always hear from my artillery brethren “you’ll all be sorry you cut the artillery branch when we fight the Chinese/Russians/whoever.”

My take is that the Powell Doctrine is great, when we can use it. The problem is that America rarely gets to choose the conflicts that we engage in. I know Iraq can be debated here as a “war of choice,” but let’s focus on Afghanistan . In 2001, was the Big Army prepared to fight a well-armed terror network and their state-supporters in the middle of Afghanistan in the middle of the winter? Adequately, I suppose, but the Powell doctrine really did not fit into the dynamic of OEF1. So to paraphrase Rumsfeld, you go to war with the doctrine you have. Leaders on the ground made decisions, which became unit SOPs, which were handed off to replacements, which became the "way things were done." FMs have to be re-written occasionally, and organizational knowledge is always better than schoolhouse instruction. We’ll see how the Petraeus doctrine of FM 3-24 (4GW) works out in Iraq, and for all of the Cold Warriors still out there, we’ll keep our older (3GW) regs on the shelf just in case.

Resurgent Russia Running Rampant?

By Charlie

Yes, my skills at alliteration are breathtaking. Moving on, is Russia destined for a comeback?

Putin's provocative actions have become so frequent that they barely generate much attention or protest. Yet these recent news items underscore the challenge a resurgent Russia poses for Bush and his successor:

* Russia 's Navy has test-fired tactical missiles off the coasts of France and Spain , the kind of action not seen since the Cold War. The clear intent was to show Russia is again a military power.

* Putin is offering a bear hug of nationalist solidarity and economic incentives to Serbia . He champions Serbia 's claim to Kosovo, countering the U.S. view that the Serb province deserves independence. Russia has also just bought Serbia 's national oil monopoly and is extending a gas pipeline there.

Putin's aims are no mystery. He wants to revive as much of the old Soviet influence as possible. He's in a much stronger position than in 2001. Unlike then, Russia is flush with oil and gas money, and it has paid off debts to international banks and organizations.

They’ve also been going a little heavy on the crazy by blaming NATO for copyright infringement for making illegal AK47’s:

MOSCOW, January 24 (RIA Novosti) - The new Russian ambassador to NATO has raised the issue of military patent infringement and promised to look into the production of the famous 'Kalashnikov' brand of automatic weapons by NATO countries.

Plus, they’ve given Poland flak over the upcoming missile defense deal with the US , and have released Cold-War-esque statements about “fears” and “wariness” over NATO troop build-ups in Europe . (Huh? Build-up? NATO couldn't get troops to Afghanistan, so they're building up in Europe?? Right...)

One might ask, what the hell is going on in Moscow ? Is Russia struggling to regain its superpower status and return to a bi-polar world? Do they see a militarily weakening and economically shrinking EU, and see a golden opportunity to impose influence over it? Do they fear a hyper-powered US, with technology leaps and bonds above Cold-War era tech, hopping around the world killing terrorists and fear that display of power. Or, do they see a bogged-down America over-committed militarily across the globe and seek to selectively project their power to areas that we have ignored –Africa, Eastern-bloc European countries, and South America ?

Whatever is going on, Russian “help” to petty dictatorships is working out about as well now as it did during the Cold war. Just ask Syria how that new air defense system they bought from Moscow worked out for them. When/if Russia becomes a problem in the future, it will likely be along political, not military lines. That doesn’t mean that the US Army will stop planning to go to war against the Krasnovian motorized rifle regiments any time soon… that would be too much to hope for…

The Doctrine Gap

By Charlie

Over at Abu Muqawama, a comment on the current doctrine that is being taught at CGSC:

I'm a European exchange student in the US Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth and it strikes me that the focus of this academic year is still very much, if not entirely, on force-on-force conventional warfare (Fulda gap style). I had expected an immersion in COIN and 4GW related doctrine but I still need to see the first course or excercice [sic] where we have a look in the recent COIN FM. I'm more than a little disappointed with regard to this. Especially since most of my fellow American students have such extensive experience in the COIN/4GWF area. This experience is simply not beeing [sic] used by the school. I would suggest Def Sec Gates to have a hard look at his own institutions before critisizing [sic] others.

In 2005, Army intel officers in the basic course still had to memorize the task/org of Warsaw Pact tank divisions. It took 2 weeks. Think about that.

I Comment on John’s Commenters

By Charlie

That’s right. Do something about it, Weekly Standard! That’s what I thought…

Hi John-
I'm one of those a$$hole battalion commanders mentioned in "The Army's Other Crisis."
Speaking only for myself, from talking to my guys - National Guard cav troopers - it's pretty clear that the main retention issues are that people either are tired of being away from their families and civilian lives or simply want to move on to something else. Being in the Army is, well, hard - it was hard when I was active and it's hard now (Remember the "one weekend a month, two weeks a year" National Guard? None of my guys with under six years does!).
…I'm less convinced that this is a case of a generation of agile, thinkers being repressed by a generation of mindless, nitpicking fossils. As a 20-year LTC, I guess I'm right between those two alleged factions. I don't see it - at least anymore. I mean, when I was a lieutenant, I was certain that only I had the vision, that only I really cared about Soldiers, that my superiors were stodgy, hidebound desk jockies who didn't know anything about the real world. The same was true when I was a captain. About the time I made major, I started to see that perhaps my bosses had concerns that extended a bit farther than the little platoons I led or the companies I commanded.

Sir, I’m with you. Having been through a deployment abroad, I think that officers at the battalion level and below “get it.” Obviously, as officers grow and mature from platoon leaders to company commanders to battalion operations officers to XOs to commanders, they grow and become concerned with things that extend a little farther than the “little platoons and companies.” However, it is also pertinent to note that most O5s and above have not seen counterinsurgency warfare as a company grade officer, and this is especially true in the Reserve Component. This isn’t a knock on colonels, I know a lot of them, but it is a perception among younger officers that must be dealt with –accurate or not. The bottom line for us reservists is that we have to make the best of the situation that we’ve been dealt –imperfect troops, leaders, training –and pair it with our inherent Reserve Component strengths- occupational diversity, civilian skills, creativity, and flexibility. The result of this strange brew has been uniform success in every mission that has been assigned to the Reserve Component, from missions in combat zones to peacekeeping, to support to Noble Eagle and Homeland Security.

The good LTC continues:

That isn't to say there aren't careerist jerks who would shaft their subordinates to get ahead. There are, and they make good people go just like inspirational leaders make people stay. It's just I don't think that's the rule rather than the exception.

Oh, and as for the young officer who was complaining about being chewed out after a patrol for not having his men in their safety glasses - maybe if he did his job and had his guys in their protective gear his battalion commander wouldn't have to. Part of this job is sometimes being a jerk - if you measure success by your popularity, maybe being an Army officer isn't for you. For my part, I'll be the a$$hole squadron commander whose guys can all still see.

Swift and deadly!

Man, I would serve under this officer in a heartbeat. Except that I’m not a huge fan of California’s climate/economic situation. I am sick of hearing about LTs complaining about obvious NCO-Level TTPs being enforced in line units (such as safety glasses and roll-over drills). Those things save lives. The things that can be debated as descent into administrative CYA TTPs, such as reflective safety belts on FOBs, still remain on my lists of reasons to leave the Army ASAP. The bottom line here is that many complaints from junior officers are lingering, and are contributing to the yet-unnoticed mass exodus of mid-level officers and NCOs from the force. These issues are not getting a proper hearing among Army brass, and while the immediate impact cannot be seen, it will soon appear when the Army suddenly finds itself without quality mid-level leadership.

So to conclude, I am with this squadron commander that wrote in to the Weekly Standard, there are no more “weekend warriors,” there are real warriors now. Because of the new threat environment we find ourselves in, there are numerous threats and adversaries that do not easily fit into the current doctrine and training we have received. Change is a part of every organization, but the way that organization manages the change speaks volumes about how the organization will perform in the future.

The Army has a Plan

By Charlie

I’ve knocked the Army in the past for not flagging new units, but it looks like they have a plan in the works to do just that…they just never tell me these things…

Behold! Grow the Army:

In January 2007, the President requested, from Congress, a 74,200 Soldier increase in Army end strength across the Active, Guard and Reserve components. The initiative to “Grow the Army” (GTA) provides additional ground forces to meet strategic demands and mitigate persistent capability shortfalls, and reduce stress on our Soldiers and Families. The types of organizations the Army will grow are Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs), Support Brigades, Combat Support (CS) and Combat Service Support (CSS) units. To support these IBCTs and Support Brigades the Army is simultaneously announcing the stationing of approximately 30,000 Soldiers in Combat Support and Combat Service Support units throughout the United States as well as various overseas locations.

In addition to the Grow the Army units, one Maneuver Enhancement Brigade (MEB) will be restationed to Ft Drum, NY and one MEB is planned to be restationed to FT Richardson, AK pending completion of an environmental analysis in accordance the National Environmental Policy Act.

Read More »

Help with Gulf Security or Return of Colonialism?

By Charlie

Now this is interesting:

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - France will set up a permanent military base of up to 500 troops in the United Arab Emirates, the French government announced Tuesday during a visit by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The military base deal will make France one of the first Western countries other than the United States to have a base in the Persian Gulf region. The presence would give Paris the ability to project its forces into a crucial oil-producing region where many countries are wary of Iran 's rising influence.

The prevailing theory is that as the world’s lone superpower, maintaining world oil supply at market prices is a top national priority for economic, cultural, and political reasons. We have fought multiple wars and smaller conflicts in this region to maintain a reasonable level of stability, and have endured partnerships with shady individuals and countries to keep the oil flowing. There are economic upsides, and lots of other downsides to this. A downside is that precipitous withdrawal from the Persian Gulf would present a security vacuum, which could cause other powers (such as Iran ) to step in and act, gaining a piece of the local security and a cut of the profits. This would be against America ’s best economic and political interests, so we stay. Another downside is that many countries benefit from our security spending in the region, basically getting a free lunch. Take China , which gets a large percentage of its oil from Saudi Arabia , and is having its trade routes protected by the DOD, not the PLA, at American taxpayer expense. China has contributed scant resources to overall security efforts in the Middle East , yet reaps the benefit of stability in its trade.

Now comes France , with plans for a more substantive partnership with the UAE, to include a military base. This allows France to project power into the Middle East , but it could signal some troubling future issues. What if this is just the beginning, and soon China , Germany , India , and other of today’s “great powers” begin to scale up their presence in the Middle East , replete with military force? Could this become a situation akin to the European colonial powers dividing up Africa in the 1700- 1800’s? The image of US and Chinese warships uneasily passing each other in the Straits of Hormuz is difficult to conjure up, but it can’t be a positive future.

On the other hand, perhaps France ’s foray into the UAE is a sign of a positive international development, where Western Nations begin to partner in ensuring regional stability in areas of common interest. After all, Sarkozy did say the deal is "a sign to all that France is participating in the stability of this region of the world,"

The US and the Brits are already heavily deployed in the Persian Gulf :

Outside of Iraq , the United States has about 40,000 U.S. troops on bases across the Gulf — including the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain . The British military also has a small presence in the Gulf. The Royal Air Force operates out of Al Udeid, a U.S. air force base in Qatar , and the military is part of the coalition naval task force based in Bahrain .

As we move toward a future that is depending on resources becoming more scarce, and a third world that is becoming more violent and unstable, great power struggle –or cooperation- over the dark areas of the map may be making a comeback, for better or for worse…

Russia to Upgrade AD

By Charlie

After the Israelis blew through the Syrian-deployed, Russian made Air D that ringed the alleged nuke plant a few months back, Russian tech seems to have had some egg on its face. In a frantic attempt to recover their rep, they are rolling out a brand new system that they swear will work:

14/01/2008 10:53 MOSCOW, January 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's advanced S-400 air defense missile systems will be initially deployed in central regions of the country, the Air Force commander said on Monday.

The S-400 Triumf (SA-21 Growler) air defense system is expected to form the new cornerstone of Russia's theater air and missile defenses up to 2020 or even 2025.

A regular S-400 battalion comprises at least eight launchers with 32 missiles and a mobile command post, according to various sources.

Related?
Russian Air Force to receive five Su-34 warplanes in 2008

Good Article on Bhutto

By Charlie

I don't usually read the NYT, but they had a pretty good take on Pakistan this week:

It was under Ms. Bhutto’s watch that the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, first installed the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was also at that time that hundreds of young Islamic militants were recruited from the madrassas to do the agency’s dirty work in Indian Kashmir. It seems that, like some terrorist equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, the extremists turned on both the person and the state that had helped bring them into being

When I was at VMI, I remember going to see a speech by Bhutto at a nearby Virginia university. I don't quite remember the reason why I went, but I remember the speech centered around the unfairness of Musharaf's takeover, and a commitment to restoring civil liberties in Pakistan. I met her, briefly, after the speech, and she seemed like a politician, not a crusader for human rights.

After spending some time in the third world dealing with corrupt figures, I realize that there is more "gray" in international relations than we like to admit. Sometimes, a figure like Bhutto can be mis-cast as a relentless crusader for freedom, just as Musharaf can be cast as an incompetent militaristic despot. Both figures have good and bad qualities, and their actions need to be viewed in the proper context.

A Peace Accord in our Time?

By Charlie

Somehow, I doubt this:

RAMALLAH, West Bank - President Bush, summing up meetings with both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, said Thursday that a peace accord will require "painful political concessions" by each. Resolving the status of Jerusalem will be hard, he said, and he called for the end of the "occupation" of Arab land by the Israeli military.

Even if a peace of paper is signed here, I feel fairly confident that this conflict will not be solved in my lifetime. Also, I'm unclear as to how Abbas can be seen as a Palestinian power broker when he only controls the West bank. With Gaza now degenerating into a Mogadishu on the Mediteranian, the concept of a Palestinian state under "moderate" leadership seems overcome by events. When Hamas took control of Gaza, they ran out all Fatah members, and even threw some off of buildings. How do you share power after such violence and no reconciliation?

With Gaza pushing at Israel from the South with rocket attacks, Hezbollah-occupied southern Lebanon pushing from the North, and the Iranians hovering in the background, the window for any type of agreement may already be closed.

Ruskies: We'll Target Poland Missile Defense Site

By Charlie

This is so 1982:

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Polish and Russian officials met Thursday for Senior Polish, Russian officials discuss US missile defense planshigh-level talks on a US plan to build a missile defense base in Poland, which Moscow says would pose a threat to its security.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak and Poland's chief missile defense negotiator, Witold Waszczykowski, were discussing a US proposal to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland as part of a global missile defense shield - a plan Russia has opposed fiercely.

Kislyak was also slated to meet with Poland's top diplomat, Radek Sikorski, during a one-day visit to Warsaw.

Washington says the system, which would also include a radar base in the Czech Republic, is needed to protect the US and Europe from so-called rogue states like Iran.

Russia, however, has argued that an installation so close to its territory would threaten its security, and has warned it could target the base with its own missiles.

When viewed in the Cold War framework, this makes perfect sense. When viewed in the Islamist jihad to establish a new Caliphate framework, this makes no sense. When Iran gets nuclear weapons, Chechnya -a major security concern of Russia- could renew its jihad movement, this time under the Aegis of Iran's Shahab missiles. Russia obviously does not think that this is a big deal, probably because it seems out of the realm of possibility. While I like the idea of a global missile defense system, I am drawn to the argument that if European nations don't want protection for ballistic missiles, and aren't going to pay for it, why should they get it?

Far be it for us to impose protection on countries that do not want it, or spurn us for it. South Korea's past spasms against US force deployments comes to mind, as does Germany's post-2001 anti-Americanism. The Defense Department spends millions to establish forward bases abroad, and there are many nations that would love to have a huge US military presence (Romania, as an example) because of the obvious economic boost it provides.

It seems that Russia is reflexively opposing most moves by America now, and that is detrimental to both sides because of the common threat of Islamist extremism Russia and America now face.

Network-Centric warfare vs 4GW... here we go again.

By Charlie

General Charles Dunlap in the NYT:

... fans of the counterinsurgency manual are using it as a bludgeon against anyone who wants to plan to fight the next war rather than the last one. Their line of thinking holds that our next war will be a replay of Iraq, and thus most of our armed forces should be structured for counterinsurgency.

But this ignores other potential threats. Should we simply wish away China’s increasing muscle, or a resurgent Russia’s plans for a fifth-generation fighter that would surpass our top of the line jet, the F-22 stealth fighter? Moreover, does anyone really believe that creating corps of civil affairs officers will deter North Korea or Iran?

Yes, there is always the possibility that we may again find ourselves battling an insurgency, and the manual has many great ideas. Furthermore, the proposal for a 20,000-strong adviser corps to help Iraqi local forces fight insurgents ought to be green-lighted.

The enormous cost of the Iraq war, not to mention the loss of life on both sides, would seem to counsel against the idea of a similar operation elsewhere. Looking ahead, America needs a military centered not on occupying another country but on denying potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests. This is not a task for counterinsurgents, but rather for an unapologetically high-tech military that substitutes machines for the bodies of young Americans.

OK, I've got some thoughts on this analysis, so here we go. The world is becoming more urbanized, and governments in the third world are becoming less stable. Wars now are increasingly fought inside states rather than between states, but I understand that the legacy of the Red Menace still bothers Cold Warriors, so let's look at China and Russia.

China's challenge is certainly conventional, but it is also challenging us in unconventional and unrestricted ways such as cyber-warfare. Russia just fielded new ballistic missiles, but their country remains challenged by Islamist radicals in the south, restive former satellite countries in the southwest, and has massive internal problems like underpopulation, organized crime, and unemployment. So China and Russia should remain on our radar screen, but they just aren't our "near-peer" competitors yet. Give China 15 years, and give Russia a civil war, and we'll talk.

Moving on to Dunlap's next point, Iran and North Korea are much more dangerous and current threats than China and Russia. Iran is the chief state sponsor of terrorism in the world, is on its way to developing nuclear weapons, has fielded what amounts to a mediocre attempt at a conventional military force, and has a ballistic missile force capable of putting distant capitals in its cross hairs. North Korea is led by a maniac, and while it may be playing ball now on its nuclear program, that hasn't been the case in the past and they could walk away from the table at any moment. North Korea threatens ally Japan with ballistic missiles, and threatens us by exporting their technology to anyone that will buy it. So for these two cases, yes, I am in favor of a high-tech, high-end force full of warrior trigger-pullers, and not a "corps of civil affairs officers."

Not so with the rest of the world. Here's where we part ways on how the military should "deny potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests." The top threat, now in 2008, is terrorism. The US homeland isn't going to be directly attacked by Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. If it is directly attacked, it will be by a terrorist group (that may of had some level of state support) based in a lawless area, with support networks throughout the world.

Technology alone is not the answer to our future conflicts, people are the answer. Now, you can use technology to empower those people, much as rifle company commanders in Iraq are empowered by the ability to call in precision air strikes. The issue is that the focus should not be on the aircraft, the munitions, or the technology, it should be on the commander and the soldiers/Marines/airmen/sailors that wield them in the greater scheme of things.

We (in the service) don't get to pick the wars we have to go fight. If so, most would choose a "straight up fight" instead of a "bug hunt." Looking at the world today, and at the threats we face, we have to recognize that missions like foreign internal defense, counterinsurgency, military cooperation agreements, training missions, and counter terrorism are the best ways to deter attacks against our homeland for the near term. The next attack on America won't be planned in some war room by generals of an enemy nation, it will be plotted like the last attack -on the slopes of a mountain in Pakistan, relying on human networks to leverage the most casualty-causing weapon on the weakest point in our target profile.

We live in the greatest country in the world, and I believe that we have the capability to maintain a high-tech, high-end conventional force to deter the Chinas and Russias of the future, while confronting the Irans and North Koreas of the present -while at the same time using our troops to build up parter nations in the third world and make them more resilient in the face of terror groups. That's my high-tech solution to the problem: empower struggling nations to deal with their own problems, because a US-trained Pakistani soldier conducting counter terrorism in the tribal areas is probably going to be more effective in securing his homeland than a US soldier there would be, that takes people, not machines, to accomplish.

We live in a dangerous world, and today it is filled not only with dangerous armies, but with dangerous networks of people that can do just as much damage. The idea that we can just send in the robots to deal with all of our future problems does not match up with how the world looks today.

More on the Captain Gap

By Charlie

Abu Muqawama laments the Army’s impending captain exodus, which I have extensively spoke of here.

Kapinos was accumulating lessons afforded few West Point graduates of recent generations—the chance to experience real war as a young lieutenant. Still, he was feeling frustrated. He worried that his superiors were slow to grasp the complex nature of counterinsurgency. In Afghanistan, he had suggested that instead of merely conducting nighttime raids, his men should camp in small villages to help local leaders root out insurgents and their sympathizers. His commanders repeatedly rejected the idea. In Iraq, he was full of similarly innovative proposals, but felt his commanders disregarded his input. "After a while, you just stop asking," he said.

Yeah, buddy. I’ve seen this problem across the spectrum of the Reserve component as well, where young officers feel that they have no say in the way the force is trained, deployed, and maintained. The article that Abu Muqawama sites continues:

These problems are of vital concern, and are reasonably well understood in newsrooms and on Capitol Hill. But the top uniformed and civilian leaders at the Pentagon who think hardest about the future of the military have a more fundamental fear: young officers—people like Matt Kapinos—are leaving the Army at nearly their highest rates in decades. This is not a short-term problem, nor is it one that can simply be fixed with money. A private-sector company or another government agency can address a shortage of middle managers by hiring more middle managers. In the Army's rigid hierarchy, all officers start out at the bottom, as second lieutenants. A decline in officer retention, in other words, threatens both the Army's current missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its long-term institutional future. And though many senior Pentagon leaders are quite aware of the problem, there's only so much they can do to reverse the decline while the United States maintains large numbers of troops in Iraq.

OK, if these problems are “well understood,” then why have I not seen any remedies being offered to fix them? Next, Abu Muqawama points out that many officers are being demoralized by the fact that pro-COIN commander like McMaster aren’t getting one-star, I haven’t seen that as a specific problem in the Reserve component or the Guard. The main problem that I have seen is that many officers are frustrated with the current career progression scheme, and that many officers are not given sufficient career counseling, and have little direction as to where their military careers are going.

The article continues:

Over the next five to ten years, experts foresee a high likelihood that the military will be drawn into humanitarian and counterinsurgency-style operations that require officers with foreign-language aptitude, cultural awareness, negotiating skills, and other talents. Many of these skills are rarely, if ever, taught in formal Army training programs.

Again, damn straight. There currently is no training that gives reserve component forces a good understanding of Arabic, much less Pushtun or any other language in a combat environment. Coupled to that, there is not a robust training program to familiarize troops with the cultures or AOs that they will be functioning in. The TSIRT (Theatre specific training) that is provided t deploying units meets the “standards,” but is not provided to the troops in drilling status. Also, Reserve component troops seem out of the loop on both network-centric warfare theory and 4GW, which does not bode well for future deployments.

The article concludes:

When the government struggles with its most elemental challenges—identifying geostrategic goals and designing the tactical missions to achieve them—it turns in part to its four-star generals. The generals who will appear before Congress in twenty-five years are in the Army right now. They're junior officers, probably captains. And keeping them in uniform might be the Army's most important mission.

A friend of mine was the regimental commander (the top cadet) at VMI, and he commissioned in the Army, and has served a remarkable 5-year term. He is getting out of the Army, just as a generation of Army officers seem posed to do. It seems like a crisis to me, but I have yet to make up my mind.

OP-FOR readers will keep tabs here, but my choice will soon be upon me: as the Clash said, “should I stay or should I go?” The choice will be upon me soon, and I’ll have to make it. Stay and mentor young officers, or go into the private sector. Either way, I feel I will have done my part, finished the race and kept the faith. The main choice that I will face will be my own future, and how I choose to shape it.

Where for Art Thou, NATO?

By Charlie

Afghanistan was made a NATO mission ala Kosovo, in the hopes that the countries of the world would pitch in and send troops, easing the burden on the US, increasing cooperation between militaries, and joining in protecting against a security threat to the world.

First, we got caveats: “The restrictions, also called caveats, vary and are imposed by governments who fear casualties or don't agree with all parts of the mission. Other caveats are due to a lack of training or equipment.” Most specific countries’ caveats are classified, but they generally include issues such as not fighting at night, not using crowd control weapons, not responding to local security incidents, and not participating in extended patrols.

Now, caveats seem to have been dispensed with in favor of just not any sending troops:

December 19, 2007: The U.S. is upset that NATO countries have failed to deliver three infantry battalions, 3,000 trainers and 20 transport and attack helicopters they promised to send. The reasons are part political (the Afghan operations are unpopular in Europe) and partly practical (the Cold War era forces most NATO nations have are not organized or equipped situations like Afghanistan. …

Malarkey! I don’t buy the second reason. An infantry battalion is three infantry companies and a HQ element, just like it has always been. If NATO forces are not “organized or equipped situations like Afghanistan,” an expeditionary fight, after the Cold War force model has been gone for over 15 years, we’ve got problems.

… To further complicate matters, Holland announced that they were withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan in 2010, no matter what. Many Europeans believe that if they just ignore Afghanistan, there will be no problem. Americans are more inclined to see the country becoming another base for international terrorism if the Islamic radicals are not neutralized (one way or another.)

The issue here is that many European countries spend next to nothing on defense, and are not even willing to do heavy lifting on their own country, such as the meltdown of Yugoslavia. So a logical continuation of that lack of interest is that the countries that make up NATO are unwilling to contribute to expeditionary fights, like Afghanistan, or the mission in Darfur if it ever gets off the ground. The answer here is to realize the global role of the US military and MAKE IT BIGGER, give it one more percentage point of GDP and let it figure out how to use it. Flag new divisions, and initiate a national recruiting campaign.

Israel wants the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

By Charlie

John, over at the Weekly Standard, writes on Israel's attempted acquisition of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter:

Another "unique requirement" is that Israel has to penetrate integrated air defenses without the advantage of stealth technology. Stealth is the primary reason that the USAF has made Russian-built IADs their bit&* these past two decades. The air defenses that the United States overcame in Serbia and Iraq are similar to the ones fielded by Israel's enemies. While the IAF is skilled enough to pull off gee-whiz raids like Operation Orchard with bulky Strike Eagles, they have to beat radar coverage with sophisticated hacks or Wild Weasel missions. The JSF, with its shortcomings noted, fits the IAF's profile perfectly: slip in, break stuff, slip out.

Anyway, with Israel now facing Iran with a growing ballistic missile delivery capability, it is no surprise to me that they are seeking to update as much of their tech as possible.

Read More »

UN Says Saudis Should Lead in Stabilization of Somalia

By Charlie

This sounds like a great idea:

The United Nations special envoy for Somalia, Ahmed Ould Abdallah, says Saudi Arabia should take the lead in efforts to stabilize Somalia. From VOA's New York Bureau, correspondent Barbara Schoetzau has the story.

After 17 years and no success, Ould-Abdallah says it is time for the international community and the United Nations to either take a new approach or, essentially, admit defeat and withdraw from Somalia.

"As time is pressing, this new peace presence has become a must. For this, Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the two Moslem holiest sites and a close neighbor with many Somali refugees, more than 350,000, should be invited to play a leading role. Due to its successful contribution to peace in previous conflicts, Saudi Arabia can help."

I don't even know where to start on this one... the UN's utter incompetence or Saudi Arabia's inability to positively affect any country in the region...

Commie Dictator: I’ll give up power…real soon…

By Charlie

Castro, who has been in power since 1959, and has run his island as a communist dictatorship, now claims that he will cede power at some indefinite time in the future. Right… Cuba is in for some big changes when Fidel croaks, so he may be attempting to manage expectations in advance of the crumbling of his administration when he dies. The same thing happened to Stalin. Perhaps he realizes that his brother may not be able to hold onto power, and that the onset of a “younger generation” is inevitable, so he may as well make it look like it was his idea. Also, that comment is farcical on its face –at what point of his 50+ years of rule did he worry about standing in the way of “younger” leaders? When he was jailing them en mass?

Here's the text:

HAVANA - Ailing leader Fidel Castro says he doesn't intend to cling to power forever, saying in a letter read on state television that he does not want to stand in the way of a younger generation.

The 81-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since he temporarily ceded his powers to his younger brother Raul 16 months ago after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery. He has not said when — or even if — he will permanently step aside.

"My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, or even less to obstruct the path of younger people, but to share experiences and ideas whose modest worth comes from the exceptional era in which I lived," Castro wrote in the final paragraph of a lengthy letter Monday discussing the Bali summit on global warming.

"not to cling to positions" HA!

How do you Plan for a Hostile Media?

By Charlie

6 Bogus Stories in 6 Weeks!

Read the whole thing, but here are the headlines:

20 headless bodies

… nope

11 close family members of Jordanian-based Baathist reporter Dia al-Kawwaz, who runs the online anti-Iraq newspaper Shabeqat Akhbar al-Iraq, were slaughtered in Baghdad.

…err, not so much…

12-25 "construction workers" were killed in a Bombing by NATO forces in Afghanistan

…yeah… the “construction workers” were actually “Taliban”…

13 people were slaughtered by Al-Qaeda in their sleep

…except they weren’t….

There was an explosion at a refinery in Baghdad. The media immediately reported it as a rocket attack

…nope!

Iraqi soldiers have found a mass grave of mutilated bodies in a restive region north of Baghdad, a local security official told CNN Thursday.

…Nope!

With all of this false reporting, I’ve got a hunch that this may be an Al Qaeda death rattle playing out over the airwaves –basically, keeping their info ops campaign that worked in 2006 running into 2008. The only problem is that there are no bodies or explosions to back up their press releases.

I also can’t believe how gullible reporters are when they actually report on these matters. I don’t want to get on a rant about media types, because I’m sure some of them are nice guys who do hard work, but this type of reporting reflects badly on the reporters, the news company, and the media overall. I’m astonished that these folks have any credibility left.

What this does is decrease everyone’s trust in the media as a credible source of information –BUT- we live in an information age, where trustworthy or not, that same media reporting saturates us.
In our next war, wherever that is, handling the press may be the number one objective of our combat commander. It’s almost a cliché at this point to say “the US sucks at waging an information battle,” so I will focus on why: Training.

Currently, most PAOs are not trained to do their jobs, they are staff officers who get tagged with an additional duty. Next, the IO/G7/PSYOP/PAO guys are almost never synched up, and when they do it is rare when their plan fits in with what is actually happening on the ground. What we need, almost, is a type of “PR manager” like most corporations have to manage the totality of the information fight. Just like Civil Affairs, most of the IO types are not trained in their jobs. Because of that, and due to the fact that maneuver battalions can rarely issue press releases, the US is lagging in the infowar.

CAVEAT: In the above article, TF IRON’s PAO was on the ball with each false story, and they got the information out –although the big media didn’t put as much amperage into the correction as they did the initial screaming headline. So we’re getting there…

Soft Power

By Charlie

WASHINGTON (AFP) - After six hard years of war, the United States is awakening to the idea that "soft power" is a better way to regain influence and clout in a world bubbling with instability.

And nowhere is the change in thinking more advanced than in the US military, which is pushing for greater diplomacy, economic aid, civic action and civilian capabilities to prevent new wars and win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I think having stubbed our toe badly on Iraq, people are realizing that we weren't doing that well, and it's time for a change," said Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor and former senior Pentagon official.

Nye popularized the term "soft power" in books and essays which argue that a key source of US clout is its ability to attract friends and allies by investing in the international good.

I've read Nye's books, and can comment on this:

Read More »

US/Russia Missile Defense Talks Continue

By Charlie

MOSCOW, December 12 (RIA Novosti) - High-ranking diplomats from Russia and the United States will meet in Budapest on Thursday to discuss an ongoing missile defense dispute, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

U.S. plans to deploy a radar and a missile base in Central Europe purportedly to counter possible strikes from "rogue" states have angered Russia, which considers the plans a threat to its security. The sides have held a series of failed talks on the issue.

The unstated question here is how Iran changes the equation. We always hear about Iran's quest for regional hegemony, and nothing backs that up like a Shahab 3 missile.

With all of Russia's nationalist separatist issues, especially those with an Islamic component, one would think that they would see the above graphic as a threat. However, Russia has sold Iran ADA assets, it appears that they are putting profits ahead of any threat they view from Iran. Russia seems set on opposing US attempts at a missile shield, perhaps because Iran is a bigger threat to us than it is to them.

Israeli forces move into Gaza

By Charlie

Another War Begins?

JERUSALEM: Israeli troops accompanied by about a dozen tanks moved into southern Gaza on Tuesday, a day before Israelis and Palestinians were due to hold their first talks on a comprehensive peace following the American-led conference in Annapolis, Maryland. The Israelis went as far as two miles into Hamas-run Gaza, near the towns of Khan Yunis and Rafah, and engaged Palestinian gunmen along the border, according to Palestinian residents and spokesmen for the Israeli Army.

At least six Palestinians were killed. Three of them, from Islamic Jihad, died when a tank shell struck the house they were using for cover; three more, from the Popular Resistance Committees, died from missiles fired by Israeli planes and helicopters.

This hasn’t gotten too much play from the news cycle, and I’m not sure why. An incursion against Hamas is every bit as relevant as the incursion against Hezbollah, although no airports are being bombed this time around…so far.

The objectives of the Israelis is either creating a buffer zone between the Gaza strip and Israel to decrease indirect fire attacks into Israel, or to seek out and dismantle Hamas infrastructure. Or both. More on tactics:

Twelve Palestinians were wounded, local medics said, three of them critically and five seriously. Four Israeli soldiers were "very lightly injured," an Israeli Army spokesman said, when their Merkava tank was hit by an antitank missile. The soldiers were evacuated and the tank was set on fire, but the Israeli Army said it would continue to operate.

Other antitank missiles were fired but they missed, the army said. A squad of gunmen approaching the Israelis was hit from the air, the spokesman said.

Interesting. It seems that Hamas has not quite mastered the anti-armor ambush, or their anti-armor systems are not quite up to Hezbollah standards.

COIN: the Great Debate

By Charlie

My buddy John, who used to blog here before he became cooler than all of us, writes over at the Weekly Standard blog:

Bottom line, the Air Force still can't be bothered with counter-insurgency ops. If they do stand up a wing of COIN birds, it will be to create a logistics infrastructure around the new airframe so that other nations will buy it, employ it, and do the icky ground attack mission so that the Air Force doesn't have to. I'm starting think that only way to get Blue-suiters serious about the ground attack role is to offer fixed-wing combat aircraft to the Army.

First off, there are people in the Army who still aren’t onboard with COIN, and its implications for the troops and the future structure of the Army. I can’t tell you how many infantry officers I’ve served with that complain about not being able to synchronize combat power on a linear battlefield against a uniformed enemy, and how anything else is not true “war.”

I’m not, nor do I claim to be, an Air Force guy (thank the Lord). However I can speak to my experience with the Air Force personnel I have served near, and some of the problems that I, an outside observer, see:

1. SWO’s and TACCPS are a great example of AF integration into ground units. Yeah, they don’t fly, but they are subject matter experts in functional areas that serve the ground forces very well.

2. The AF has cut its troops in Europe by “25,500 personnel over the last two years. It will cut another 17,000 personnel over the next two years to reach a self-imposed strength target of 316,500 by October 2009.”

Holy Crap, why not just re-structure a couple of smaller, modular, expeditionary Air Force wings to support missions across the globe, missions in the Horn of Africa, Philippines, Southern Command, EUCOM, and the new AFRICOM? I think the AF is definitely relevant to the war on terror, which is global in scale last time I checked. Why haven’t they considered a scaled-back support mission instead of simply firing people?

3. They keep trying to take our stuff: keep UAVs at the lowest level possible, and have them organic to the unit using them!

Air Force officials have been pressuring Congress for the past year to give them control over unmanned aerial systems that operate above 5,000 feet. That would include the bulk of the five major unmanned aerial systems managed at Redstone Arsenal for the Army.

U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, said moving control of the majority of the military's unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, would be disruptive and possibly dangerous to soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Every few years the Air Force makes a grab for Army aircraft, and I don't really know that it helps anything in the long run," Cramer said last week. "The Army already uses these vehicles, is adept at using them and managing them, and I see no reason to change that. Any decision would have to be carefully reviewed."

John concludes:

Today's Air Force is overtasked and underfunded. Budget cuts have forced them to close base after base, and trim manpower by a whopping 40,000 Airmen. They have to remain strong against a resurgent Russia and occasionally hostile China, while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, maintaining dominance in space, proficiency in global mobility, combat search and rescue, close air support, and dozens of other secondary missions….as long as the Air Force is forced to choose between fighting a hypothetical war against the Chinese or Russians and the actual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, COIN ops should be their number one priority.

Sure, but the Army also has similar missions. Last time I checked, we were still in Germany and South Korea, and have developing missions in Africa and Romania, and the US Army is still on-call for a variety of security emergencies across the globe. The point is that the entire military is being presented with mission requirements and budget constraints that are mutually exclusive. Eventually, the military will have to either expand its size and percentage of the GDP, or contract globally and take on less. That’s the bottom line, policy-makers, good luck with the decision!

Israel to Invade Gaza?

By Charlie

The IDF has been conducting small scale actions around Gaza since it withdrew in 2005, and following the kidnapping incidents that led to the 2006 war. Here’s the latest:

JERUSALEM - Israel's army has completed plans for a large offensive in the Gaza Strip and is only waiting for government approval, the military chief said Wednesday, shortly after two Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli tank fire in the coastal area.

Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said that until he receives the go-ahead for a broad operation, Israel would continue with its policy of airstrikes and brief ground incursions to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.

The Gaza incursions have been militarily frustrating for Israel. Hamas fighters are imbedded in the civilian populace in Gaza, and use the civilian infrastructure to facilitate their indirect fire attacks into Israel. Recall that in 2006, the purpose of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon was to halt the firing of rockets by Hezbollah into northern Israel. Even after the armored strike into Hezbollah-run southern Lebanon, the IDF withdrew following disastrous info-war counterpunches by Hezbollah. After the 2006 fighting ended, Hezbollah remained in southern Lebanon, still retaining the ability to fire rockets. This was all despite UNSCR 1701 which called for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Why does Hezbollah matter this time? Because the same tactics used by Hezbollah will likely be used by Hamas if the IDF invades Gaza. Indirect fire against Israeli civilian and soft targets, and then Hamas fighters withdraw into their civilian areas. Any attacks by Israel on Gaza will be construed as warcrimes by the Arab media, and any civilian casualties will be broadcast and trumpeted as evidence of Israel’s brutality. Gaza’s Hamas militants will ignore all of the laws of armed conflict, and Israel will be held to he highest possible standard. In 2006, the IDF culminated without achieving many of its strategic objectives, and since Hezbollah was still on the battlefield after the dust settled, it was portrayed as a victor by the Arab media.

This type of warfare seems to be on the rise, and in the information age we live in, the infowar side of warfare, cannot be ignored. Also different this time is the possibility of intervention by Syria or Iran in the conflict. If Israel suffers another stalemate or defeat like it did in 2006- it may be viewed as weak enough to strike at by Iran or its other enemies.

Communism Fails in Venezuela

By Charlie

This is a huge victory for democracy in Latin America. By denying Chavez his “president for life” plan at the polls, the march towards Castro-like communism is set back in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.

There isn’t much on Latin America in the US National Security Strategy, and there has been a policy drift for Central and South America –America’s been focused elsewhere. However, it is good to see that people are rejecting this type of governance when given a choice.

The only bad side to this is the next time a plan like this is developed, they just won’t let the public vote it in.

Money Quote:

Chavez told reporters at the presidential palace that the outcome of Sunday's balloting had taught him that "Venezuelan democracy is maturing." His respect for the verdict, he asserted, proves he is a true democratic leader.

HAH!

Great Article on WWIII

By Charlie

Is the world more prone to global war now than it was during the height of the Cold War? Ron Rosenbaum thinks so in this piece from Slate:

He brings up the following points:

1. George Bush's Oct. 17 warning that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III," you ought to worry about the prospect of Iranian nukes.

2….originally published two weeks earlier in London's usually reliable Spectator, in a story about the Sept. 6 Israeli raid on that alleged Syrian nuclear facility. A quote from a "very senior British ministerial source" contending, "[I]f people had known how close we came to world war three that day there'd have been mass panic."

3….. “a mistake" that came to light about the same time as the Israeli raid, the mistake in nuclear weapons handling, which allowed—for the first time in 40 years—six nuclear warheads to be flown over U.S. airspace, suspended from the wing of a long-range B-52 bomber en route from Minot, N.D., to Barksdale, La., a staging point for Mideast missions.

4…..And now we have the crisis in Pakistan, one that portends a nightmare scenario in which Pakistan's so-called "Islamic bomb" falls into the hands of al-Qaida sympathizers.

Well, keeping up with the existential nuclear nightmare-talk on the blog, I’ll throw in my two cents here and try to make it sound a little more reasoned than the exposition to Red Dawn.

My worry about Pakistan is that if Musharraf falls, AQ won’t just rush in and take over –they’ll take their time and take over. Bhutto (or some interim politician) will get into to office and praise the “success” of democracy. Meanwhile, AQ elements continue to gain power in the north, infiltrate the government, and basically hollow out the state and grow their base of support –all while Bhutto is in charge, not doing anything about it, and –most importantly- not letting anyone else do anything about it. Then, when the day comes for Pakistan to become the next seat of the Caliphate, it will take about 5 minutes for AQ to knock off whoever’ in charge and get the nukes.

The Israeli raid in Syria? Perhaps it was to take out a Syrian nuclear weapon mid-assembly, perhaps it was a dry run rehearsal of a larger operation to come.

The Air Force flying the nukes across the country? I’m pretty sure that was just a bad day for the Air Force, not a conspiracy. Why else would they sack the base commander?

Rosenbaum concludes:

I think this is the urgent debate question that should be posed to both parties' candidates. What happens if Pakistan falls into the hands of al-Qaida-inclined elements? What happens if Musharraf hands over the launch authorization codes before he's beheaded?

I don't want to spoil your day, but all of this has spoiled mine, so I want to share, if you know what I mean. Since the "holiday from history," we have never been in greater danger of a nuclear breakout.

Sunday Afternoon Nuke Discussion

By Charlie

I just finished Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox 360 (I’m a bit behind the times, I’ve been deployed, give me a break…). Anyway, the game was great, the graphics were amazing, but one part of the storyline stuck out to me, and I figured it was at least worth a blog post.

Basically, the game opens with a huge US invasion of an unnamed capital city somewhere in the Middle East (sound familiar?) however, once the US forces get into the city, the opposing forces pop off a nuke, wiping out everyone.

That got me thinking –is that a realistic scenario for the future of conventional warfare? If Saddam Hussein had a nuke, and knew he was facing annihilation, would he be willing to nuke Baghdad and kill a large portion of his own people, and his own military, to halt an invading force?

Is this a plausible scenario? Looking at it from a second-strike perspective, if, in 2003 Baghdad had been suicide nuked by Saddam (at a safe distance) there would be no feasible targets to retaliate against in Iraq using nuclear weapons. It would basically be a nuclear fait accompli.

I’d be interested to see the comments on this, as a jumping off point for a future post. Is this a viable strategy for a despot seeing an army rush toward his capital? Is it a viable strategy for Iran?

ASMEA Launches

By John

This project was overdue:

Princeton, N.J.- Professor Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Princeton University, considered one of the world's leading authorities on the Middle East, will chair a newly formed professional academic association, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). Prof. Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University will serve as the Vice-Chairman of the association's Academic Council. Other charter members include Dr. Les Gelb, Prof. Victor Davis Hanson, Prof. David Landes, Gen. Cevik Bir, Prof. Robert Lieber, Prof. Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Sec. George Shultz, and Prof. Kenneth Stein. ASMEA’s website can be found at: www.asmeascholars.org.

ASMEA's goal is to encourage and promote the scholarly and dispassionate study, through multiple disciplines, of these important and so often misrepresented regions. It will advance both research and discourse in these fields by offering its members new opportunities to publish and present ideas to the academic community and beyond. ASMEA will offer its assistance to established as well as new scholars in the field, including un-tenured faculty and senior graduate students.

At the announcement, Lewis stated: "Because of various political and financial pressures and inducements, the study of the Middle East and of Africa has been politicized to a degree without precedent. This has affected not only the basic studies of language, literature and history, but also has affected other disciplines, notably economics, politics and social science. Given the importance of these regions, there is an acute need for objective and accurate scholarship and debate, unhampered by entrenched interests and allegiances. Through its annual conference, journal, newsletter, and website, ASMEA will provide this. It will seek to improve the education of the next generation of scholars and leaders upon which our future depends."

Lewis summarized: "It will respond to the burgeoning interest in these and related fields by helping to address problems individually and in a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary fashion.”

So, when a new nonpartisan organization is announced, one that prides itself on removing ideology from scholarship, how is it covered? Why, with a slant, of course.

Seeking to change the direction of Middle Eastern and African studies, a new scholarly organization was announced Thursday — with some big name scholars on board and some tough criticism for the discipline. The biggest scholarly names in the new group, Bernard Lewis of Princeton University and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University, are associated with support for the Bush administration’s view of the Middle East, a decidedly minority opinion within Middle Eastern studies.

The use of "Bush administration" irked me. It was deliberate, those folks know anything with "Bush" in it will provoke an emotional (and often irrational) response. If it had a place in the story, then fine... I'm not arguing for sanitized news here. But this was about a bunch of professors trying to expunge politics from scholarship, not forming policy.

Read the comments, too. It would have been nice if folks waited a few months before passing judgment.

IAEA Chief: Next Time, Ask Our Permission

By John

UN: Leave Syrian Nukes Alone!

Israel has said it bombed a military target inside Syria September 6, but has provided no additional details, amid speculation that the target may have been a site storing nuclear materials from North Korea.

Mohamed ElBaradei said he had been told by Syria that the site was a military facility and "has nothing to do with nuclear."

"I would hope if anybody has information, before they take the law into their own hands, to come and pass the information on," he said.

Uh, what law? Anyone?

Look, Syria promised that the site wasn't nuclear. ElBaradei and Bashar Al-Asad pinky swore on it, okay? We're talking real cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die shit here. So next time, Israel better check with irrelevant UN bureaucrats before violating the tenets of an imaginary legal system.

Because Hell hath no fury like a sternly-worded UN memo.

Marines to take Afghanistan?

By John

Update: So LtCol P beat me to this story by appx. 10 minutes, with almost an identical title. Great minds, suckas.

LtCol P says... How will they get there with no beaches? John, my friend, our reach extends way beyond the beach. :-)

Anyway I'll leave this post up, so everyone noes that I <3 the KISS method.

______________________________________________

But how will they get there with no beaches to storm?

The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.

The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.

As described by officials who had been briefed on the closed-door discussion, the idea represents the first tangible new thinking to emerge since the White House last month endorsed a plan to begin gradual troop withdrawals from Iraq, but also signals that American forces likely will be in Iraq for years to come.

Simplification. I like it. I understand the whole concept behind the "purple force," but to be honest... most of the (few) experiences I've had with joint commands is that they were poorly organized goat screws.

I don't know any of the details of this Marine proposal, but it makes sense from an air war perspective. The Marines have self-contained air wings, Harriers, Cobras, Hornets, etc that should fill the Afghan mission nicely. That leaves the Air Force to support the Army in Iraq.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of the KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!) methodology.... so at first glance I'm liking this plan. Marines in Afghanistan, Army in Iraq, and the Air Force out somewhere in middle America reminding everyone of how important they are.

Fool's Errand

By John

Iran draws up plans to bomb Israel:

TEHRAN, Iran - The deputy commander of Iran's air force said Wednesday that plans have been drawn up to bomb Israel if the Jewish state attacks Iran, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

The announcement came amid rising tensions in the region, with the United States calling for a new round of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear program and Israeli planes having recently overflown, and perhaps even attacked, Iranian ally Syria.

On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the international community should prepare for the possibility of war in the event that Iran obtains atomic weapons, although he later appeared to soften that statement.

"We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime (Israel) makes a silly mistake," Gen. Mohammad Alavi was quoted as telling Fars in an interview.

They may as well draw up plans to turn camel dung into solid gold, as long as they're daydreaming. Oh I'd kill to see that raid. A bunch of archaic, poorly maintained fighter jets with no mid-air refueling capability have to transverse thousands of miles of airspace controlled by the United States or her allies, only to meet one of the world's most modern and accomplished Air Forces on its home turf and backed by a state-of-the-art radar and air defense artillery infrastructure.

Don't tease me Iran, just the thought of it has gotten me all hot and bothered.

Oh, and PS, because I know this will come up. Yah, I know Syrian airspace is "friendly." But, if Iran intends to exploit it, they can either travel through Turkey or northern Iraq (nawtgunnahappen), or plan on shipping their jets by boat (alsonawtgonnahappen).

Hotel Tango: The Tank

Update: Readers have pointed out that Iran does have air-to-air refuelers. Right-o, converted 707s, although I think what I meant to say is that they're no stinkin' good at it. And if you really want to nit-pick, the F-14 isn't really an archaic airframe either. But, whether it be refuelers or fighters or anything that involves the slightest degree of military discipline and technical proficiency... just because the Iranians have it doesn't mean they know what to do with it.

Update 2: Fun fact! If you break down our hits by country, the bulk comes from the United States, but at a surprising number two is Iran. Mostly they come to yell at me for calling their new fighter jet a piece of crap (which it is), so no doubt they'll have a cow over this post. Cool.

On the nightstand

By John

So far, I'm giving it my highest review of "pretty awesome," but I admit I'm only 175 pages in. This guy Smith, former British general, seems to be a walking encyclopedia of warfare. Check out this passage on revolutionary war, the type of conflict that radical Islam believes itself to be fighting, and tell me if you think Al Qa'ida gets it:

In this formulation of the antithesis, revolutionary war, force is being used to form the people's intentions as to their governance: throughout all lines of operations the revolutionary is working to increase the acceptance of the people to be governed by the revolution. The strategic and theater-level objectives are all to do with forming or changing the will of the people, not that of the opponent, and it is only at the tactical level, and at a time of the revolutionary's choosing that force is applied directly to acheive its destructive potential. These ideas gathered weight and were put into effect in both Russia and China. It was Lenin who drew on Clausewitz's thinking on weak against strong opponents, with his discussion of a "people's war," which should rely on popular support, and his argument that no single event could decide the outcome of such a war. In engineering the Russian Revolution there is no doubt Lenin applied this thinking a very successful way. Indeed, the ideas Lenin derived from his own experience have had a major impact on modern guerilla strategies.

In Iraq, Al-Qa'ida has sought to change the will of the enemy, not the people, a failure which is most evident in Anbar. They choose spectacular and violent attacks on Iraqis, aimed at affecting the will of the American people, instead harnessing the power of Islam to revolutionize the Iraqi countryside. And it is a failure that is working in our favor.

If Bin Laden had appointed Fidel Castro to run his Mesopotamian operations, we would have been screwed.

Anyway, if you're into military theory, buy this book. I'm totally digging it.

Iranian PSYOP??

By John

By PSYOP COP

I’ve been keeping an eye on the news concerning Iran and the Kurdish region in northern Iraq. It seems that the Iranians are trying to take care of some business on their side of the border reference the Kurds. It only reinforces my opinion that we should give the Kurds their nation and help them foment trouble in northern Iran and Syria, while leveraging them hard to lay off of claims in Turkey. I believe it can be done.

As Crapgame said in “Kelly’s Heroes,”: “Make him a deal… a DEAL deal. Who knows… maybe the guy’s a Republican.”.

This little tid-bit from Reuters…

...makes it appear that the Iranians have been engaging in a little PSYOP of their own. Now, hold your horses. The Iranians are probably not readying for an attack (just yet). This is probably designed to instill fear in the Kurdish population and give them a moment of pause. There’s apparently no evidence on the leaflet as to who the source is, so this would be classified as grey PSYOP.

“Grey PSYOP?” you ask.

There are three types: white, grey, and black. The types mainly deal with their source. White PSYOP can be directly traced back to its legitimate source. For example, I hand an Iraqi kid a leaflet reading, “don’t throw rocks at American troops.” This product would have a product number on it (a bunch of letters and numbers that mean something to PSYOP’ers but are gibberish to everyone else). You know who made it by looking at it.

Grey PSYOP is product whose source is unknown. Usually, this is not nefarious in nature and we (the Americans) engage in grey PSYOP all the time. For example, if I disseminated a product that had a message that read, “support the Iraqi government” but had no product number on it, that could be considered grey PSYOP. Basically, the target audience doesn’t know who made it.

Black PSYOP is fun, but also illegal (well, for us anyway… you know how it is… the bad guys get to have ALL the fun). Black PSYOP is produced so that the target audience believes the source is someone who it is not. For example, say I go into a Sunni area one night or early one morning and I spray-paint, “Sunnis suck” on the homes and walls in the area. Sunnis wake up, see the graffiti, and think, “damn Shi’ites… let’s go kill them.” That’s black PSYOP. Now, this is a simple example… you can actually get far more creative than this, but ummm…. yeah, it’s illegal and the official line of the United States government is that it or its representative do not engage in the dissemination of product whose origin is implied (or stated) other than what it really is.

Don’t ask me why it’s illegal. I’m not a lawyer. I’m just PSYOP Cop.

Here endeth the lesson.

PSYOP COP is a VMI alumnus with experience in the Army's psychological operations field.

Ivan the Terrible

By John

Russian Long Haul Bomber Flights Return!

CHEBARKUL, Russia (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Friday security threats had forced Russia to revive the Soviet-era practice of sending bomber aircraft on regular patrols beyond its borders.

Putin said 14 strategic bombers had taken off simultaneously from airfields across Russia in the early hours of Friday on long-range missions.

Looks like it's up to the Canadians and their F-18s to fight them off, we've BRAC'd most of our northern fighter bases. Trying to think of what's left. Alaska has F-15s and F-22s, Oregon National Guard has F-15s, South Dakota National Guard has F-16s, Montana National Guard has F-16s, Michigan National Guard has 16s, Vermont has 16s, and Massachusetts has 15s.

Okay, so maybe we're not doing too bad.

Still, I'm not too terribly worried here. With Russia's early warning systems in such disrepair, and our cruise missile/stealth bomber technology, we could completely decapitate their NC2 infastructure right quick.

So catch up, Ivan! I miss the bipolar world.

Culture Battle

By John

"The selective use of history should not be used to justify the status quo."

So says Colonel Hank Foresman, who is assigned to the Third Army. More importantly, he's VMI class of 1976.

Colonel Foresman:

If we truly want to succeed in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we must embrace a future that is a radical break with our past. Merely changing our organizational structure is not sufficient. We must be willing to break with our past as we execute in the present and prepare for the future.

Video teleconferences, meetings and PowerPoint presentations are how decisions are made in the Pentagon. No decision is made without countless hours spent making slides by "action officers" and countless revisions by those above them. No decision is made until all the general officers are on board. No decision is made without total agreement. Staffing actions are routinely sent back to the drawing board because some general has a better idea, further slowing a process that already moves at a snail's pace. The system is not designed for quick decisions, as all decisions must work their way through a vast bureaucracy before the ultimate decision can be made. Decisions are made in a system designed for an Army at peace, not an Army at war.

As I have mentioned, transformation is more than organizational change — it is a change to how we think of war. The greatest threats to transformation are those who would turn back the hands of time to an earlier day when the Army would concentrate on fighting major combat operations or grand wars and ignore the rest.

Wars of the 21st century will not be state-on-state but rather will involve states taking on organizations and groups that share a common ideology, culture and outlook and to whom the state, and state boundaries, mean nothing. They will wage their wars, holy or otherwise, wherever they must so that they can achieve their goal, whether it be greater Islam or otherwise. They do not wear the uniforms of a state, nor do they fight in the same manner as conventional armies. The wars of the 21st century will not be fought on the open plains of Europe or in vast sands of Middle East. They will be fought in the urban sprawl of our increasingly urban planet. They will be battles for the hearts and minds of a local populace where the U.S. and the Army will be seen as the invader and occupier and not as the liberator.

I could not agree more, this whole piece is outstanding. I was particularly taken with his comments on the bureaucratic leadership style that evolved from technological advances. Sometimes I wonder if the military is even a face-to-face business anymore.

One thing I would add is the frustrating new trend of "leadership by committee." I can't speak for the other services, but the Air Force (my command in particular) is in love with "Tiger Teams," committees formed to accomplish a specified task. Tiger Teams are slow, cumbersome, and rarely achieve the desired results. Bold and innovative new ideas can be shot down by a show of hands, and as a result, they help foster in a new class of warrior who is terrified of making a decision without first consulting a committee.

What's worse is that Tiger Teams ensure that no one can be held responsible for success or failure. It's a way of weaseling away from the normally high standards of accountability that the military places on its leadership.

Anyway, end rant. Great piece by Colonel Foresman, ya'll should really read the whole thing.

Short Term Strategy

By John

With the Senate showdown on Iraq in the pipes, there's been a substantial increase in the pundit-driven noise level over the debate. The best I've read so far comes from Michael Tanji at Threats Watch:

A firm date for withdrawal of US forces is just another way of establishing a terrorist-liberation-day in Iraq. US military might is the only thing that is keeping a relative lid on violence in Iraq. A date-certain for withdrawal would bring about a temporary drop in violence, but only because terrorists would be taking advantage of the down-time to prepare for the slaughter that was to come.

We successfully defeated the old Iraq. What the surge is doing is trying to set the conditions for the rise of a new Iraq. Benchmarks are essential for that rise. But what consequences do we impose absent progress? For some the answer seems to be “progress or die,” because that is what will happen if we leave prematurely. The results-now-or-else caucus want Iraq to be post-war Germany or Japan: at best an apples to oranges comparison given the size of the forces involved and the differences in the nature of the two wars.

More troops would allow the US to exert more control over the security situation in Iraq, but caps on troop levels are a key factor in the strategies of most defeatists. The leaving behind of a token force of trainers is a viable option, but only if the security situation affords them a level of protection that does not result in a repeat of Little Big Horn. Having the Secretary of Defense “certify” that every troop sent forward is perfectly trained and outfitted is the Sarbanes-Oxley-fication of war. Ask any business executive what a pleasure work has been since that legislation passed and you will have some idea of what it will take for the US to defend its interests and principles.

Tanji, a career spook, also runs an excellent blog called Haft of the Spear in addition to his Threats Watch postings. Read it daily.

President Bush to Act on Iran?

By John

Not the double secret sanctions definition of "act," either.

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.

The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."

The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

I'm calling shenanigans here. This Guardian guy crafted a whole story from some insider's gut feeling.

Bush doesn't trust a Dem to launch an air campaign in response to some rogue dictator snubbing UN sanctions? Are you serious?

Desert Fox, Deliberate Force anyone? That's what Democrats do.

I'm not making a statement in favor of military action against the Iranians or against it. Just pointing out that this story is sensationalist, and should be treated with the same regard as you treat National Enquirer headlines in the supermarket checkout.

Kilcullen in the Danger Room

By John

Our buddy Noah Shachtman scored a money interview with Colonel Kilcullen, who seems to be a man who understands the importance of blogging. Noah focused the chat on Baghdad's new network of security barriers:

Retired Colonel (and present-day blogger) David Kilcullen says that the walls were necessary to turn the security of Baghdad into a more manageable problem -- one that could handled with somewhat fewer American troops.

"The point of the walls was to structure the environment, to hold the city and keep it safe," he tells DANGER ROOM. "It's like [keeping] guard inside a concrete building, instead of in the middle of a field... You don't need vast maneuver forces to do it... It's the principle of economy of force."

Now that the eleven sets of walls across Baghdad have been built -- "controlling access, preventing attacks on the community, and preventing attacks from being launched on someone else," Kilcullen says -- "we're now in a position to move against the [insurgent] havens."

"Murders and sectarian killings have dropped 63%" in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighborhood, since the wall has been put in place, he claims. Residents are "thrilled."

That last line is important. A few months back, you couldn't open a newspaper without reading a story detailing just how pissed off Baghdad residents were about these walls, which invoked fresh memories of the more famous (and incredibly unpopular) West Bank security barrier in Israel. I should caveat here though, the wall is unpopular in the Arab world. The Israelis love the thing, as that beautifully simple solution effectively killed off Arafat's second intafada.

And now it's helping kill Sunni and Al Qaeda terrorism in Baghdad.

Walls work, folks.

Syria Prepping for Assault?

By John

Yeesh, I thought these Mid-east state v. state fights went out with the October War and disco:

Israeli intelligence officials have been warning for weeks that Syria is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in anti-tank weapons, antiaircraft rockets, and other missiles, and bolstering its presence along the Israeli border.

Mohammad al Habash, a Syrian parliament member, meanwhile, told the Al Jazeera satellite channel this week that his country was actively preparing for war with Israel, which he said he expected to break out this summer.

Israel's performance during last summer's Lebanon War was unimpressive, to say the least. Maybe it was a poor enough showing that the Syrians and Iranians decided to give this whole "wiping off the map" thing another go. The Arabs do always seem to be on the lookout for new opportunities to lose a ground war against the IDF.

Snarkiness aside, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Syria border units consist of aging Soviet tanks spread out in a lame static array. That's a defensive configuration that well-disciplined armor units can easily demolish with an iron-fist of awesomeness....awesomeness like this:

Helicopters and tanks are mobilized as the Israeli army takes part in a military manoeuvre to conquer a Syrian outpost

Not mention the fact that the IAF is so in control of Syrian airspace that they could do touch-and-gos at the Damascus airport, just for kicks.

Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee suspects that this might be some sort of massive military subterfuge aimed at buying more time for the Iranian nuclear program. I disagree on this point, Syria fully understands the IDF's sting, so I highly doubt that they're going to take one of the team. Not on that level at least, not just so that the Iranians can have their bombs. And Iran already tried that game last summer, an attempt that was awfully transparent.

Plus, that sort of Syria-Iran double team pretty much gives the Israelis one good "bomb Iran for free" card, a justifiable casus belli that even those wastes of space in the UN couldn't touch.

I'm tempted to call shenanigans on this whole thing and chalk it up to more Arab blustering. They always talk a great game, but historically have never been able to physically deliver on their rhetoric.

Another Hezbollah offensive though? That I could definitely see.

New AOC Opens

By John

At Tyndall AFB. The new AOC (pronounced "a-ock") apparently fits in to some sort of post 9/11 NORAD/Hurricane Katrina function:

First Air Force celebrated the opening of the 601st Air and Space Operations Center here June 1 with a ceremony and tour of the 37,000-square-foot, $30 million combat center.

First Air Force, which also serves under the North American Aerospace Defense Command as the continental U.S. NORAD Region, provides air security and air sovereignty defense for the continental United States. Airmen at the new AOC plan, direct and assess air and space operations for NORAD and the United States Northern Command.

Conceived in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the state-of-the-art AOC further enables 1st Air Force Airmen to protect America's airspace from attack as well as coordinate life-saving relief during natural and man-made disasters.

As you can see, they stuck with the Cheyenne mountain war-room design:

Okay, I understand shifting the NORAD mission from the traditional ballistic missile warning to a more air defense centered role, but.... if we were told that Cheyenne Mountain is closing as a cost-saving measure, why are we building multiple new AOCs to fill Cheyenne Mountain's shoes?

CMD Command Center, Cheyenne Mountain

Redundancy? We already had that, between CM, the NMCC, and our National Airborne Command Post. Just seems like we're fixing something that wasn't necessarily broken here.....Cheyenne Mountain was all but invincible....surely we still have use for such a facility in the post-Cold War world?

Plus, with Cheyenne Mountain gone, how are we going to trick the Broncos' Cheerleaders into visiting us?

Seriously.

Brits Lament Sub Cuts

By John

I've long argued that in this new war, the line between the military and the media must be blurred by soldiers who are more accustomed to the strong, silent, stoic traditions of the Armed Forces. Here's an exception (ugh, sorry for all the excessive alliteration this 'morn):

Sub Crews' Cost Cutting Criticism:

BBC Radio 4's File On 4 has heard sailors' complaints that the condition of these and the rest of the navy's submarines are being affected by government cost-cutting.

Indeed one sailor serving on a Trident submarine claims they are "just about" seaworthy, with crews scouring other subs for spare parts in a massive "make do and mend" operation.

The senior rating said crews frequently experienced problems with oxygen production equipment on board as well as with the batteries on the craft.

"Our subs are nuclear powered but if for any reason we can't use the nuclear power we would use the battery," he said.

"If it was in an escape situation, the reactor would be shut down and you would need the battery.

"There's so many things that seem to go wrong that the guys do an unbelievable job fixing it, and how they keep going is beyond me."

This type of dissent is best kept within the confines of proper military channels. Britain doesn't have a triad like we do, those subs are their first and only line of nuclear defense. Or offense, I suppose...depending on how you look at it.

Still, a key tenet of a sound nuclear strategy is proving to your enemies that you have the ability to employ atomic weapons anywhere, anytime. When that capability is lost, like say....your subs are all broken, deterrence fails and your strategy fails.

So, if there's a weakness in a nation's nuclear weapon platforms, that weakness is best kept classified and quietly fixed. I can guarentee that this story was read with great interest in the halls of multiple foreign intelligence services, if they didn't know already.

And a final thought. Yes, Great Britain could easily survive under America's protective nuclear umbrella. But if they do choose to maintain nuclear independence, this does not seem to be the most effective way to do it.

Another Hotel Tango to The Tank.

Brits Lament Sub Cuts

By John

I've long argued that in this new war, the line between the military and the media must be blurred by soldiers who are more accustomed to the strong, silent, stoic traditions of the Armed Forces. Here's an exception (ugh, sorry for all the excessive alliteration this 'morn):

Sub Crews' Cost Cutting Criticism:

BBC Radio 4's File On 4 has heard sailors' complaints that the condition of these and the rest of the navy's submarines are being affected by government cost-cutting.

Indeed one sailor serving on a Trident submarine claims they are "just about" seaworthy, with crews scouring other subs for spare parts in a massive "make do and mend" operation.

The senior rating said crews frequently experienced problems with oxygen production equipment on board as well as with the batteries on the craft.

"Our subs are nuclear powered but if for any reason we can't use the nuclear power we would use the battery," he said.

"If it was in an escape situation, the reactor would be shut down and you would need the battery.

"There's so many things that seem to go wrong that the guys do an unbelievable job fixing it, and how they keep going is beyond me."

This type of dissent is best kept within the confines of proper military channels. Britain doesn't have a triad like we do, those subs are their first and only line of nuclear defense. Or offense, I suppose...depending on how you look at it.

Still, a key tenet of a sound nuclear strategy is proving to your enemies that you have the ability to employ atomic weapons anywhere, anytime. When that capability is lost, like say....your subs are all broken, deterrence fails and your strategy fails.

So, if there's a weakness in a nation's nuclear weapon platforms, that weakness is best kept classified and quietly fixed. I can guarentee that this story was read with great interest in the halls of multiple foreign intelligence services, if they didn't know already.

And a final thought. Yes, Great Britain could easily survive under America's protective nuclear umbrella. But if they do choose to maintain nuclear independence, this does not seem to be the most effective way to do it.

Another Hotel Tango to The Tank.

Russia's Fancy New ICBM

By John

Ruskies claim ICBM can beat any system:

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia tested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple independent warheads, and it also successfully conducted a "preliminary" test of a tactical cruise missile that he said could fly farther than existing, similar weapons.

"As of today, Russia has new tactical and strategic complexes that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defense systems," Ivanov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. "So in terms of defense and security, Russians can look calmly to the country's future."

Oh. Well in that case, they have no reason to fear a missile defense base in Eastern Europe.

Aside: there's no such thing as a "tactical cruise missile." Not when the payload is nuclear. Now I'm no fancy big city repoter, but I'm pretty sure that bumps you up into some sort of "strategic" category.

Hotel Tango: The Tank

Port Security and Priorities

By John

Eagle1 has an interesting post up on how we've got it wrong on Port Security:

A "Coast Guard expert" tells Congress it has its priorities for maritime security mixed up here:
Members of Congress should be more concerned about the threat of terrorists using mines and small boats to attack multiple U.S. ports and disrupt the economy, according to a U.S. Coast Guard expert.

Lawmakers should grant more funding to port surveillance to counter the threat, Guy Thomas, science and technology adviser for maritime domain awareness at the Coast Guard, said in an interview.

Instead, lawmakers are focusing port security spending on scanning shipping containers for a nuclear bomb, which most experts in the Coast Guard and intelligence community agree should be less of a priority than maritime domain awareness, he said.
***
Lawmakers have preferred to fund container scanning technology because “it’s visible and your congressman gets points for doing something” that is more dramatic and TV-friendly than installing cameras, radars and sensors, according to Thomas.

A scenario that greatly troubles him is that terrorists might use multiple small boats — carrying chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and coordinated via inexpensive satellite radio — to attack several U.S. ports at one time. Or the terrorists might use the boats to disperse anthrax all over a city, he said.

Terrorists “could also drop mines in the harbor as they entered to really slow seaborne relief operations to the port,” Thomas said.

He was reluctant to talk about a multiple port attack scenario until recently, when he found others openly discussing it.

Nuclear security for ports is the same as nuclear security for....well pretty much everywhere else. It starts and ends overseas, by ensuring nations like Iran don't develop a bomb, maintaining proper accountability of the Cold War arsenal, and enforcing rigorous restrictions on the trade and trafficing of technology that makes uranium enrichment possible. The best defense is a good offense and all that....

But nuclear security in our ports? It's just a phrase to keep you warm at night. By the time all those sophisticated sensors and the detection equipment with the seven figure price tag pick up a possible signature, the bomb is already in knifing range of the port in question.

Look I know that everyone hearts the container ship theory because Tom Clancy floated it (har) in The Sum of All Fears. And that it kinda makes sense. But at some point, you've got to start looking realistically at the threat. And at resources. Nuclear weapons may as well be found at the end of the rainbow, as far as mainstream terror organizations are concerned. But they do have an over-abundance of suicidal young men who have the technical knowledge and ideological will to hit us in ways that are equally, if not more, creative than the 9/11 attacks.

Is a multi-layered defense against asymmetrical nuclear warfare important? You betcha. But when the discussion centers around a purely defensive strategy, particularly with our ports, you have to evaluate which threat is more likely. And recognize that there's more than one way to skin a cat knock out a port.

On OPSEC

By John

...come two must-reads. The first from Phil Carter at Slate:

Soldiers' voices may also help our military machine function better, as well. To be sure, militaries require discipline, and they work most efficiently as ordered societies in which individuals work together as a team to accomplish a mission with minimal griping. But the squashing of dissent can go too far. In Iraq, where I served last year in the volatile Diyala province, I saw military hierarchy and culture conspire to spin or block negative or pessimistic reports from traveling up the chain of command, or to silence dissenting views before they could reach the generals in Baghdad. Headquarters did this because it saw its job as distilling and filtering information from the battlefield so senior officers could see "the big picture." Yet Iraq is a land that confounds national strategies and generalization; the devil is truly in the details. When organizational filters insulate top military leaders from these facts, their decisions suffer, as does the mission.

It's by circumventing organizational filters that blogs and soldiers' writings allow unconventional and controversial views to percolate up to senior leaders and the public. An important article in the Armed Forces Journal by Army Lt. Col. Paul Yingling illustrates the point. For years, the Army's general officer corps congratulated itself for its stewardship of the Army during America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yingling, who is one of the Army's "jedi knights" trained at its elite School of Advanced Military Studies, wrote that today's generals in Iraq failed to commit sufficient resources, failed to understand the dynamic situation on the ground after April 2003, failed to adapt to these changed circumstances, and then failed to tell their civilian political leaders about the risks of these choices. The article should have provoked self-examination among the Army's generals. (Though friends in the Pentagon tell me it has been met by deafening silence.)

On the last line, I'm sure that -instead of provoking the said self examination- the puzzle palace held an intense "how to deal" discussion regarding LTC Yingling.

Second piece comes from DJ Elliot at Roggio's place, who opines that the if the Pentagon is worried about OPSEC violations, they need to look inward:

Most people do not realize that Chris and I were bouncing Order of Battle [OOB] data between each other for a year before the OOBs were finally published. I started my collection of data as a hobby to see just what the real status of the Iraqi Security Forces was since the published press reports were far off base and contradictory in their own stories. My principle motivations for my involvement in publishing these OOBs are somewhat contradictory. First, I wanted to get the principle operational security [OPSEC] violators to tighten their OPSEC. Second, I want to further an understanding of the development of the Iraqi Security Forces and the Baghdad Security Plan. As a retired intelligence analyst, I could not believe that the Public Affairs Officers [PAOs] and Commanders were releasing this much operational data in a time of war.

Since we started to publish the Iraqi Security Forces OOB and the Baghdad OOB, Bill has received the occasional complaint about the reports being a violation of OPSEC. The complainers continually miss the point.

The Order of Battles we have published are not OPSEC violations, they are reports of OPSEC violations. All of the data contained within the OOBs is available with a simple word search on the Internet and any intelligence operation worthy of its name already has the data in far greater detail than what we publish in these OOBs. Most of the information used to compile the OOB comes from the PAOs and senior officer briefs. By far, these are the source of the greatest OPSEC violations in this war.

Also since we started publishing these OOBs, the reported unit IDs have dropped by more than half. Some of the previous OPSEC violators have either rethought what they were doing or been "counseled". Good. The harder it is for the OOB to be updated the better I feel.

The worst OPSEC violator in the senior staffs is the Pentagon. I get more advance notice from a Pentagon Press Brief of US movements from Kuwait into Iraq than I get from all other sources combined. The Pentagon acts as if it is not at war, and the leaks emanating from Arlington are enormous.

Hey so maybe the new regulation is working, in that it's revealing some systemic OPSEC risks that need to be terminated. Though I wouldn't hold your breath if you're waiting for an updated AR-530-1A specifying that the problem isn't the milbloggers.

Column does bring up an interesting point though, a conflict really, between the Public Affairs infastructure's obtuse bureaucratic culture and the new, decentralized, soldier-driven outreach via milblogging. Can't help but to wonder which is more effective.

Hotel Tango: Shachtman

Iran Blusters

By John

Iran: Britain Must Admit Navy Trespassed:

IYADH, Saudi Arabia -Iran's foreign minister said Wednesday that Britain must admit that its 15 sailors and marines entered Iranian waters in order to resolve a standoff over their capture by the Mideast nation.

Manouchehr Mottaki's statement in an interview with The Associated Press came on a day of escalating tensions, highlighted by an Iranian video of the detained Britons that showed the only woman captive saying her group had "trespassed" in Iranian waters. Britain angrily denounced the video as unacceptable and froze most dealings with the Mideast nation.

Right. And for some things that make you go "hmmmmm," here's a couple of visual aids released by the MoD earlier today.

Accuracy <9 feet.

First map detailing initial location of boat crews, borders, and HMS Cornwall.

Second map, post Iranian snatch n'grab.

The Brits are calling shenanigans, but I think that's pretty much all they're going to do.

Hotel Tango: Lowry.

Chicom Flatop?

By John

Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard reports:

I'd still contend that, as Brookes put it, Chinese carriers would be "nuthin’ but big, fat gray targets," but that doesn't change the fact that an aircraft carrier would boost Beijing's ability to project "soft power." And deploying a Nimitz-sized nuclear carrier would, like the ASAT test, show that China is to be considered a military superpower.

Agreed on all points. There seems to be some dispute over whether or not the report is credible. Peter Brooks at Heritage thinks it is:

Recent military news out of China includes double trouble. First, Beijing announced a jaw-dropping 18 percent jump in its defense budget - 5 percentage points more than last year's alarming rise -at the yearly meeting of the National People's Congress.

On top of that came news from an unidentified Chinese admiral via a Hong Kong newspaper that China is pretty far along in aircraft-carrier R&D - and could have one in the water by 2010.

This isn't good news.

The existence of a Chinese "flattop" program has long been rumored. Sure, some military experts scoff at the idea - often pointing out that carriers don't fit with China's military doctrine of "asymmetry."

That is, China's military buildup has focused on developing capabilities that are best suited to take advantage of an opponent's weaknesses - rather than one of trying to counter its obvious strengths.

I've always chuckled at references to China's "asymmetrical" military doctrine. We're the boys with the force-multiplying toys, and China's the one with the big honking Army. Aren't we the asymmetrical ones?

But that's aside the point. This new nuke carrier sounds like a paper tiger to me. It looks good, it sounds good, but until the Chicoms actually put the thing to sea and master the craft of carrier flight ops (you know, the one we've been working on for 60+ years?) this sucker is just going to be a "big fat grey target."

Three Dimensional Warfare

By John

UH-60 BLACK HAWK helicopters land in Samarra, Iraq, to pick up Soldiers from Company D, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, following an operation March 3. Photo Courtesy of the US Air Force

Richard S. Lowry sends:

[Petreaus] has moved Stryker units into Diyala Province for mobility on the ground, and is also reaching out with small helicopter borne raids. He is using ground assault and air assault in conjunction, thus a three dimentional fight.

For another example of winning the war with smartness, check out how we duped a bad guy AA emplacement with a UAV.

Two Hotel Tangos to Richard S. Lowry

Two Carriers Now in the Gulf

By John

First time since 2003:

USS JOHN C. STENNIS, At Sea (NNS) -- The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) entered the Persian Gulf on March 27, escorted by the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG 54).

While in the Gulf, the flagship of the USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group (JCSSG) and its air wing, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 9, will conduct a dual-carrier exercise with the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (IKE CSG). This marks the first time the Stennis and Eisenhower strike groups have operated together in a joint exercise while deployed to the U.S. Fifth Fleet area of responsibility.

U.S.S. John C. Stennis

Bubbleheads explains why no one should freak out:

It interests me that we're going for a "show of force" option that tends to minimize our ability to actually conduct any attacks on Iran; this is good news for those of us who don't think war with Iran is the right option at this time. While the Kos Kids might think that this is a precursor to an attack on Iran, in actuality the absolute worst initial conditions for a U.S. attack on Iran would be to have both (or any) carriers inside the Persian Gulf - that's the only place where the Iranian forces could conceivably hurt our capital ships......Putting the carriers in a better position to defend themselves (i.e. pulling the Eisenhower out of the Gulf) would have sent a stronger message to the Iranian military -- at the cost of appearing "weak" to those who don't understand the military at a tactical level.

Yup. And flying sorties from the Indian Ocean instead of the Gulf affords our flyboys a little more flexibility. Key in war, y'know.

Re: Reserves

By Charlie

I’m a National Guardsman. I’m a citizen soldier, part of an organization that traces its lineage to the Minutemen. Those Revolutionaries had civilian careers, just like we do today –and just like today those careers were abandoned when the country called them to arms.

Nowadays, the term “Minutemen” needs to be re-evaluated. I’ve been “mobilized” [a term that invokes a sense of “mobility” or movement.] for nine months now,, and I was stuck at a mob-station (MOBSTAT in Army lingo) for 3+ months starting July, 06. We trainied for months for a deployment, working on individual, small collective, and large collective tasks. The conventional wisdom goes: the Guard isn’t composed of “full-time” soldiers, so they need an extensive mob process to bring them “up to speed” for a deployment. With this extensive process, the Guard units obviously require intense oversight to ensure they are up to Army standards, so a Training Support Brigade/Battalion (TSB) should be put in charge of them, and Observer/Controller/Trainers (OC/Ts) should be pervasive, giving out valuable expertise to neophyte Guardsmen deploying. There’s the current party line.

Now here’s why the entire process of calling up and readying a unit for deployment is counter-productive and is probably leading to a decrease in retention of valuable combat-trained Guard soldiers, NCOs, and officers:

Read More »

Russia Redux

By John

Poland and the Czech Republic piss off Moscow--

The conversation turned Cold War today when Poland and the Czech Republic said they would gladly host two installations -- the first foreign bases -- for America's spectacular, and long-time-coming, missile shield. Within hours of the two centre-right governments announcing their intention to help the US ward off the threat of Iran and other rogue nations in the Middle East -- "It is in the interests of our countries to host the anti-missile shield,” said Mirek Topolanek, the new Czech Prime Minister -- the Kremlin said it would have to start dusting off some of its old hardware.

“If the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic take such a step... the Strategic Missile Forces will be capable of targeting these facilities if a relevant decision is made,” said General Nikolai Solovtsov, a senior officer in Russia's missile agency.

Whoa. So will the Russians telling the Poles and Czechs that they are liable to be nuked be MORE of an incentive to base interceptors on their home soil, or less?

So lemme see if this makes sense. General Solovtsov says that Russia ditched all their medium-range and short-range ballistic missiles, which -back in the day- were used to hold Western Europe at risk. Now he's saying that they are going to bring them back simply to knock out defense shield bases that pose zero threat to Russian long-range sorties in the first place? Yeah, it confused me too.

Ruskies always take news of the shield being deployed/upgraded personally, even though there isn't a snowball's chance in hell it could deter against a massive ICBM attack from over the pole. And the thing isn't even postured against a pole attack, right now it's exclusive to the west coast and Alaska, to defend against North Korea...and soon enough, Iran from these new Eastern European bases.

Doesn't really give you that warm, fuzzy "Russia is still our ally" Hallmark-vibe does it? Quoting our shiny new blogger Bull Nav: "Cold War? As a submariner, I would say 'when did it end'?"

Heh, yup.

With Friends Like These....

By John

Nasty Business:

February 14, 2007: European opposition to American efforts in Iraq is expressed in many little ways. For example, American transports flying badly wounded U.S. troops back to the United States, often ask European air controllers for a more direct flight path through European air space. This is in order to get the wounded soldier or marine to the American hospital more quickly. This is particularly useful when the aircraft have been turned into a flying ECU (Emergency Care Unit), and doctors are actually treating the seriously wounded in flight. The European air controllers rarely allow the direct flight. It would mean some more work for them, but saying "no" is another way to stick it to those bastards who removed Saddam Hussein from power, and continue to fight Iraqis who want to destroy democracy in Iraq. When the American medical flight reaches American air space, air controllers are quick to give the transports the shortest possible route to its destination. Some of these medical flights are non-stop from Iraq to Texas, where there are several major military hospitals.

Hotel Tango to Robert Averch, who quipped:

This should come as no great surprise. When French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin was asked at a press conference in London whether he wished for the United States to win in Iraq, the dapper Frenchman refused to answer.

Yup. We've got em here, too.

The Strategist and the Protestor

By John

Via the First Lady:

I told this man that although security has been tightened, I was surprised there hasn't been a major attack in the United States since September 11.

Why?

Because it seems that it would be easy to pull off.

How so?

How hard would it be to plan a coordinated attack on a subway system in New York or Washington?

Why would they want to do that?

Because they can.

How would they benefit from pissing off the American people right now?

They live to piss off the American people. Their mission is to kill us.

Terrorists don't have the support of the American people in the sense that we generally define support, but the American people are giving them what they want by clamoring for retreat. It's not in the terrorists interest to hit the United States right now.

Game, set, match. Of course that by that logic, staying on the offense in Iraq (and Afghanistan) would be the best defense for the homeland. Not exactly a bolt-from-the-blue revelation for us military types, but it might be tough medicine to swallow for some.

Reminds me of a recent conversation with an anti-victory friend:

So you support withdrawal?

Of course, I was against this little adventure from the git-go.

That's 2003's debate buddy, we're in 07 now. What happens if we leave?

Well.....we let the Iraqis work it out.

Do you even understand what you're proposing? Iraq will tear itself apart, turn into a terror-friendly vacuum, or..worse..a satellite of Iran, and Al-Qaeda will turn their eyeballs west towards America again. And that's to say nothing of the thousands of Iraqis that we can except to die in the turmoil. Do you accept responsibility for what happens when we leave?

No of course not. This was Bush's war, not mine.

President Bush is not advocating for premature retreat, you are.

......Yeah, but it's Bush's --

Right. Oil, Halliburton, profit...fill in your theory. Let's go get some beers, and let's try not to mix them with politics alright?

k.

And such was the conversation. We've got a dangerous crossing of brain patterns in the craniums of our domestic anti-warriors. No concept of strategic consquences coupled with a complete unwillingness to accept responsibility for their political positions. Not the type of pundits that we should be listening to, particularly when we're talking about something as important as our defense.

The Claws Come Out

By John

Aussie PM Blasts Obama on Withdrawal:

Mr. Howard, a conservative leader who is a close ally of the White House, denounced Mr. Obama’s proposal to withdraw American combat troops from Iraq by March 31, 2008. In a television interview in Australia, Mr. Howard said the senator’s redeployment plan would simply inspire insurgent violence in Iraq.

“If I were running Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Mr. Howard said, “I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.”

Hey, it's a tough pill to swallow for many-a-Dem, but it's the truth. I've said it many, many times here on OPFOR. The Soviet pullout of Afghanistan taught guys like Bin Laden that low-level warfare can topple superpowers. That withdrawal got us a decade plus of escalating terrorism, culminating in 9/11. Now some American lawmakers want to repeat that mistake, seemingly without any thought of the consequences. That frustrates guys like John Howard, and it frustrates guys like me.

Obama, by the way, really showed his true colors in his response to PM Howard.

In a news conference here, Mr. Obama dismissed the remarks, saying it was “flattering that one of George Bush’s allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced.” Mr. Obama said Australia had sent 1,400 troops to Iraq, a fraction of the American force. “If he’s ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and send them to Iraq,” Mr. Obama said. “Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric.”

Yikes, is that a modified "chickenhawk" line? Thrown at one of our most stalwart allies' chief-of-state? So he supports an Australian "surge" but not an American one?

Another concern. Obama's lack of military know-how. Australia is fighting alongside Americans in many other places besides Iraq (like Afghanistan, for one). They have a fraction of our military resources, yet dedicate them selflessly to the war on terror. Obama saying that they should just snap their fingers and call up 20,000 troops is completely unrealistic, and it means that the Senator either 1) didn't know any better or 2) knew better, but wanted a snappy sound bite. Both bad.

God bless the Aussies. That's a friendship, an alliance, that we need to fight like hell to protect. And any candidate, on either side of the aisle, who opts to play political games with something so precious to our strategic interests needs to seriously reevaluate his capacity to be an effective commander-in-chief.

Resurgent Russia

By John

It's happening:

MOSCOW -- Russia's defense minister yesterday laid out an ambitious plan for building new intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines and possibly aircraft carriers, and set the goal of exceeding the Soviet army in combat readiness.

..........

Russia's defense budget, which stood at $8.1 billion in 2001, nearly quadrupled to $31 billion this year, Mr. Ivanov said. While this year's military spending is Russia's largest since the Soviet collapse, it is still about 20 times less than the U.S. defense budget. Mr. Ivanov said the military now has enough money to intensify combat training. "Combat readiness of the army and the navy is currently the highest in the post-Soviet history," he said, adding the task now is to "exceed Soviet-era levels." Mr. Ivanov said the military now has about 1.13 million servicemen, compared with 1.34 million in 2001.

As always, it's all about oil. Russia's got it, and that means they've got the money to start buying the toys they want. And their defense tech sector still remains strong, particularly in the field of surface-to-air missiles and combat aircraft.

The lines on the ICBM force is pure politics. While Russia's post-Soviet strategic capabilities have been questionable, it is still widely believed that they are capable enough to launch a devastating nuclear strike on the US mainland. Upgrading their ballistic missile force is more of a political message to the world, and Russian citizens, that our missile defense shield doesn't have much of a chance of knocking down their birds. Which is fine, since that was never the missile defense shield's purpose anyway.....

On another note, I had a thought as I was reading through the Times column. Would the reemergence of a bipolar world be such a bad thing? It's nice to be on top and all, but sheesh....all this sole superpower with a myriad of smaller actors squabbling at us and each other crap is getting old. Bring back mutually assured destruction and proxy wars!

Read More »

When You Set Out to Take Vienna...

By Lt Col P

BY GOD, SIR, TAKE VIENNA!

Napoleon's famous advice is as worthy today as it was 200 years ago.

Not to make light of the poor intended victim (and a bit of free advice to you, my dear Captain Shipman-- don't get a restraining order, get a gun) or the moon-loon's unfortunate blameless family, but what military lessons can we learn from CAPT Nowak's incontinental transcontinental movement to contact?

Why, as Napoleon would have pointed out, it's ruthless single-minded concentration on the objective, once you've set your sights on it. Or her, as the case may be. OBJECTIVE is, has been and always will be the most important of the nine principles of war, commonly abbreviated as M-O-O-S-E-M-U-S-S.

If only our body politic and our some of our elected officials were as ruthlessly single-minded. We'd have a lot fewer problems. They would do well to remember that when you set out to take Vienna, don't settle for Salzburg. Take the damn place and be done with it.

Napoleon and Nowak; they'd have made quite a pair.

Does Terrorism Work?

By Charlie

Terrorism is often used to accomplish political objectives (politics by other means…) –but does it work? Is terrorism effective enough of a tactic to endure beyond our generation? Let’s take a case study and see where it goes:

Read More »

The Next Terror Attack: Big or Small?

By Charlie

I believe that the largest (and softest) target available to terrorists is the US economy. The economy was the target of influence for the WTC attacks in 1993 and 2001, and the stretch and influence of the US economy in the middle east, related to the export of petroleum, was a likely target of influence for the US Embassy bombings in Africa and the Khobar Towers attacks in the 1990s.

Read More »

Petraeus' Soldier Scholars

By John

Phenomenal article from The Washington Post's Thomas Ricks on Petraeus Guys:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals -- including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders -- in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.

Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys." They are smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: military officers with doctorates from top-flight universities and combat experience in Iraq.

General Petraeus' main brain is, surprisingly enough, an Aussie:

Petraeus, who along with the group's members declined to be interviewed for this article, has chosen as his chief adviser on counterinsurgency operations an outspoken officer in the Australian Army. Lt. Col. David Kilcullen holds a PhD in anthropology, for which he studied Islamic extremism in Indonesia. Kilcullen has served in Cyprus, Papua New Guinea and East Timor and most recently was chief strategist for the State Department's counterterrorism office, lent by the Australian government. His 2006 essay "Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency" was read by Petraeus, who sent it rocketing around the Army via e-mail. Among Kilcullen's dictums: "Rank is nothing: talent is everything" -- a subversive thought in an organization as hierarchical as the U.S. military.

Not a subversive thought in the Special Forces, however, where the round-table concept is more doctrine than tradition.

I like Ricks. Making the Corps was outstanding. And while he was terribly harsh on Rumsfeld in Fiasco, seemed to have a high opinion of General Petraeus. You can catch that vibe in the article, he referred to Petraeus' leadership in Mosul as "one of the few notable success stories of the war."

Straight shooter who isn't afraid to embed. I wish Ricks would take over as the Washington Post's National Security Columnist....

MOGADISHU Re-Re-Re-Conquered

By Charlie

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Jubilant Somalis cheered as troops of the U.N.-backed interim government rolled into Mogadishu unopposed Thursday, putting an end to six months of domination of the capital by a radical Islamic movement.

Ethiopian soldiers stopped on the outskirts of town, after providing much of the military might in the offensive that shattered what had seemed an unbeatable Islamic militia. [when has an Islamic militia been “unbeatable?” –ed] Islamic fighters fled south vowing to continue the battle.

When Somalia fell to the Islamists, I was worried that another Taliban Afghanistan would emerge in the Horn of Africa. I think the Islamists failed to take into account how many different (diverse, even) groups of people they have provoked blood-feuds with. I’m sure there are plenty of groups across the world itching to get back at the repressive 8th century death-cult “revolution” that has been spreading like a cancer from the Middle East.

I’m sure the Christians in Chad and Sudan would appreciate some payback against the Janjaweed militias that have been slaughtering them for the past few years. The pro-government forces in the Philippines and Malaysia would love to roll back the jihad in the South Pacific, and Chechnya still pokes at the Russians. What happened in MOG could happen anywhere else there is encroachment of Islamic law: people picking up weapons and fighting back.

WWII was a global conventional war. What is developing here is a global counter-insurgency. The only question remaining revolves around the nuts and bolts of “what next?” We took Baghdad, and we’re still there. Ethiopia now has to deal with a similar situation. We’ll see how they compare to the world’s only remaining superpower.

Prompt Global Strike

By John

Ramjets, non-nuke ICBMS, and conventionally tipped Tridents....oh my.

It's all part of USSTRATCOM's bold new vision for "bolt-from-the-blue" weapon systems, called Prompt Global Strike. The goal: hit anywhere on earth in less than an hour.

Our friend Noah Shachtman has the story over at Defense Tech. And it's the cover story in this month's Popular Mechanics, which Noah also scribed. Read em both.

Russia Resurgent?

By Lt Col P

First of all, apologies for my absence, I've been getting thrashed at work, in my office in the uhhh, Department of Agriculture... All I can say is that it's in a good cause.

With a Hotel Tango to Michelle Malkin—to whom I am always predisposed to tip my hat—I’d like to mention that some recent events mean nothing good for the U.S. Those events collectively signal a resurgent Russia.

In the summer of 1987 I took a course on Russian history at Roanoke College. One of the points the professor hammered home was an old saying that went like this—“Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tatar.” By extension of course, he also meant that if you scratched a Soviet you’d find a Russian. Names change, natures endure.

The recentralization of economic and political power in the Kremlin at the expense of liberty and free enterprise doesn’t signal so much a return to the good old days of parades in Red Square and forced labor in Siberian coal mines as it confirms the essential nature of Russia: authoritarian, expansive, distrustful of the outside world, and absolutely on its own program.

Russian moves in the Iranian nuclear power debate remind me very much of the Great Game, in which Persia was courted (and betrayed) more than once by both Russia and Britain. What is the Kremlin’s gain in a nuclear Iran? That, comrade, is for Russia to know and for us to find out. But I’ll bet that it won’t be good for the U.S. We’d best be paying attention, lest we find ourselves check-mated in this round of the Great Game. It ought not be viewed as separate from the Long War.

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Draft Resolution

By Charlie

So the draft talk is back. Yawn.

WASHINGTON --Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 under a bill the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says he will introduce next year.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars.

Our military’s strength is volunteerism, but manpower continues to be a serious issue –not just for the new recruits (who end up as the PFCs manning humvee turret guns, or the guys pulling maintenance on blackhawks at 0300), but also for salted soldiers who must be retained with ever-increasing reenlistment bonuses each year. The fact that there are still vast reserves of young women and men that are willing to do these dangerous and difficult jobs far from home and loved ones speaks volumes to the character of our country. By no means am I saying that everything is coming up roses, but neither are we dire straits.

If the Army (or the military as a whole) wants to fix its manpower issues, they should loosen the rules tying Guard soldiers to their states. At this moment, we have the most combat-experienced National Guard in our nation’s history. Most states have regulations, however, that delay and disrupt soldiers from voluntarily deploying abroad to OIF/OEF.

If you want to go to Iraq, you have to (1) get a conditional release from your commander, who then takes a hit on his bottom line (manpower is such an issue that commanders are now graded on their ability to keep their units filled.) Overcoming that hurdle is difficult, because once your unit commander gives you the go-ahead, (2) the request is then kicked up to the state’s Joint Force Headquarters (where, if your commander somehow approved it, it will get disapproved, because the states also get graded on their ability to keep the ranks filled.) Next, you have to have an assigned slot to be transferred into in Iraq, which must marry up with your rank and MOS. (never mind operational needs on the ground –they always can use more guys helping out. Even in Iraq, soldiers get sick, get hurt, or go on leave.)

I’ve had several of my buddies get denied OIF/OEF deployments after volunteering to go because there were “no spots.” That gave me a hearty chuckle.

I tried to volunteer to go to Iraq 2 years ago, and my request was denied.

Bottom Line: there are many, many ways the military can work to fix its manpower problems, but a draft shouldn’t be part of the conversation. My infantry unit is filled with warriors who are motivated to successfully accomplish any mission given to them. Woe be to the company commander who must take command of a rebellious, ill-disciplined company of draftees and leads them in combat.

The question is: is this draft proposal supposed to help the military achieve victory? Or is another attempt at social “justice” that has absolutely no place on the modern battlefield?

If At First You Don't Succeed....

By John

Here we go again...

US Detects Activity at North Korea Test Site -

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. spy satellites have detected suspicious vehicle and people activity near the site of North Korea's nuclear test that may signal preparations for another test, U.S. television networks reported on Monday.

U.S. officials said they could not be certain of what the North Koreans were doing in the area, but the activity there could be preparations for a second nuclear blast, NBC and ABC said.

In Seoul, a South Korean government official told Reuters on Tuesday: "The government is aware of signs related to North Korea's possible second nuclear test. We cannot exclude the possibility of a second test."

What'd I tell you cowboys and cowgirls?

Kim Jong Il is going to keep at this until he gets it right.

Kim Jong Il Threatens New York and Tokyo

By John

And plans to test an H-Bomb, apparently.

Kim Myong-chol, director of the Center for Korean-American Peace, who is regarded as an unoffical spokesperson for Kim Jong-il has claimed in a radio interview that North Korea has an H-bomb and is ready to test it.

When asked for evidence the director replied, "that’s why we are going to test the bomb." He went on to say "If the Bush administration makes more provocations, both New York City and Tokyo will be blazed."

The South Korean Ministry of Unification minimised the importance of the remarks, saying they should be ignored. Kim however claims to be in contact with high ranking North Korean officials and that his comments are representitive of Pyongyang.

Interesting words from the Director of the Center for American-Korea Peace.

Considering Kim Jong Il has spent the last few months proving that he is the Dictator of Duds.....

Yeah. Have some salt with your story.

Two Must Reads

By John

Or "Rapid Fires" as Col P calls em. It's interesting the way the blogosphere works, in that I found articles by two of my favorite writers -Robert Kaplan and Joe Galloway- by way of two of my favorite bloggers -Robert Averch and Michael Yon.

Mike has a fascinating, must-read up from the king of embedded reporters, Mr. Joe Galloway.....

...and Robert has a somewhat lengthy, but fascinating article from Robert Kaplan on North Korea.

Both Galloway and Kaplan are "solution guys," and I think you'll find their solutions on Iraq and North Korea stimulating. Read em both.

PS- Just for kicks, read a 10 year old Robert's letter to the Commandant of West Point.

Not a Nuke

By John

Just got an email from Mike Yon, who pointed me towards this post:

A very well-placed government source told me Tuesday afternoon that the North Korean explosion was non-nuclear. The explosion may have been an actual nuclear test — this is unknown — but the source reports the outcome was non-nuclear. The source stressed the importance of bearing in mind that though the explosion occured in North Korea — if it was actually a test and not merely a dictator clamoring for attention and influence — the test may have been by or for the Iranians. The source reported that American physicists with access to the information see no sign of nuclear activity, however. My source also mentioned that Japanese sensors picked up no radiation signatures.

This further confirms some of what Bill Gertz reported in the Washington Times this morning.

Double good news. Another fizzle from the dictator of duds, and Mike Yon appears to be posting at The Corner now.

How on earth did the Norks get that much TNT into a mine shaft without us detecting it though? Was the explosion deliberately faked? Or did something go wrong? One thing is for certain, this line:

"The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent,"

...seems pretty appropriate.

Was it a Suitcase Nuke? Was it TNT?

By John

Anyone who reads OPFOR knows that we're big fans of Wretchard's Belmont Club. Today he's asking the right questions, and coming up with the right answers.

The small size of the detonations has led to speculation that the North Korean tests are really "faked" nukes using large quantities of convention munitions. Chester explores the logic and arguments behind this theory without necessarily subscribing to it. However, there is another possibility. Kim Jong Il is testing suitcase nukes.

Wretchard updated with clarification:

I think its important in this discussion, not to confuse the a 'low yield' from a small amount of fissile material with the miniaturization of components required to create a suitcase weapon. I know that RAND has just published a study describing the delivery of a terrorist bomb by ship to a US port -- a kind of shipcase weapon. So I think that the issue requires quite a bit of attention which I hope will be forthcoming in the next few days.

Bingo. The idea of the Norks creating some sort of suitcase bomb is absurd. They don't have the technology and it's not what they want. In fact, they can't even miniaturize to achieve a somewhat easier goal, mating a bomb to a working missile. And they want that bomb to yield large, not small, results.

North Korea wants a weapon that can knock out Hawaii, or Anchorage, or LA, so that they can have a free hand in attacking the South. It's an offshoot of the old chicom doctrine, "defending Taiwan isn't worth Los Angeles." People are confusing the Nork ideology with that of jihadists. Islamists want a bomb to generate damage, destruction, and casaulties. Their goal is chaos. The North's goal is Seoul.

As for the TNT hypothesis, let's put that one to bed right now. It is science fiction to think that the Norks can slip hundreds, if not thousands, of tons of TNT into a single entry mine shaft withour our spy sats detecting the activity. Remember it was those space assets that blew the whistle on the North's nuke operation in the first place.

Kim Jong Il is going to keep at this until he gets it right. Once he can credibly threaten the US with the proper bomb + delivery system, he'll adapt a far more aggressive posturing. And that's when things will get interesting.

Destablization v2.0

By John

Another nation joined the nuclear club today. A particularly nasty one.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test and the blast had been successfully set off underground with no radioactive leakage from the site.An official at South Korea's seismic monitoring center confirmed a magnitude-3.6 tremor felt at the time North Korea said it conducted the test was not a natural occurrence.

My source on the peninsula says that South Korea is -understandably- having a cow, same with Japan. And think of all the nations that are within the fallout range of a green-glowing, radioactive Korea. Russia, China, Vietnam, Japan, Cambodia, Taiwan, the list goes on.

And North Korean sugar-daddy China has even more reason to be seeing red (no pun). The last time the North pulled a stunt like this (launching an IRBM over the Japanese mainland) it sparked a massive Japanese defense buildup and lit a fire under America's tail to get a missile shield operational, complicating Chinese plans for Taiwan.

Back then it was just one errant missile. Today we're talking about a nuclear weapon. A nation killer. A world killer. And it's in the hands of a man whose sanity is suspect and is worshipped as a god by an army of over one million.

Korea is simply too small of a theater to be playing with nuclear toys. You can bet your britches that the far east paradigm just shifted, big time. Let the arms race begin...

**Update** Post I wrote a few says ago. Still applicable:

We've figured that North Korea has had these things for a few years now, largely in part thanks to -trying my best to be apolitical here- the Clinton Administration's pseudo Sunshine Policy during the 90s....

Hopefully the test goes as well as North Korea's 7 dud barrage that was launched on the 4th of July this year. But if their nuke test is successful, try to remember that building a nuke is one thing, building one small enough to be mated to a delivery system that ACTUALLY WORKS is another matter altogether.

Here's my question. Does a successful test scare Japan into building an arsenal of their own?

SMASH answers that last question with this link.

**Update 2** I'm talking with a friend who is somewhat concerned by my "lack of emotion." He wanted to know, "doesn't this freak you out?'

Not really. Our missiles work. Theirs don't.

**Update 3** Unbelievable. AMERICAblog has found a way to blame Bush.

**Update 4** Stop the ALCU is rounding up the blogosphere reax.

New Nork Nuke?

By John

North Korea says it will stage nuke test (AP) --

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Tuesday it will conduct a nuclear test in the face of what it claimed was "the U.S. extreme threat of a nuclear war," ratcheting up tensions amid international pressure to return to negotiations on its atomic program.

The United States warned a North Korean nuclear test "would pose an unacceptable threat to peace and stability." South Korea raised its security level, and Japan promised a severe response if the threat was carried out.

The statement from Pyongyang gave no precise date for a test, but the prospect that North Korea could soon take a major step forward in its nuclear weapons development triggered alarm and condemnation in foreign capitals, including Russia and the European Union.

We've figured that North Korea has had these things for a few years now, largely in part thanks to -trying my best to be apolitical here- the Clinton Administration's pseudo Sunshine Policy during the 90s. You can insert a "don't feed the crocodile" cliche if you want, since I can't think of a better way to describe giving a hostile, dictatorial regime that wants to join "the club" two nuclear reactors.

Hopefully the test goes as well as North Korea's 7 dud barrage that was launched on the 4th of July this year. But if their nuke test is successful, try to remember that building a nuke is one thing, building one small enough to be mated to a derivery delivery system that ACTUALLY WORKS is another matter altogether.

Here's my question. Does a successful test scare Japan into building an arsenal of their own?

Linked Already?

By Charlie

What a coincidence! My first post since my long break and I get linked by Thomas P.M. Barnett –whose books I just read. The first was Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating, As well as the Pentagon’s New Map.

For anyone who has been on an extensive military deployment, you are no doubt familiar with the fact that free time always seems to be either completely absent or horribly abundant. That being said, a good book is always something to keep in your assault pack for those longs lines at CIF, waiting for your firing order at the range, or just general barracks boredom. I’ve been reading quite a bit since I’ve been mob’d, and since I was linked, I think I’ll speak to some of the things Barnett mentions in his books. I thought they were good, pertinent, and thoughtful looks at today’s military, foreign policy, and place in the world today.

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Bigger and Badder or Leaner and Meaner?

By Charlie

The whole argument over the Army’s “transformation” can be encapsulated like this: During the Cold War we needed big, heavy, divisions with lots of men, tanks, self-propelled artillery, and armored personnel carriers. We needed this because we faced a similarly equipped enemy. After the Cold War, the unchallengeable American military had nothing to template itself against. For the decade of the 1990’s, the Army downsized, still trying to figure out how to effectively organize itself. Post 9/11, the military has two recent, and different, examples of how to organize itself for war against a medium-sized third world country.

The first is the “lean and mean” force the overthrew the Taliban. This force package revolves around a small, light, maneuverable, dispersed force that is backed up by a lethal reserve force of US airpower and shock troops. The “big and bad” strategy was used in Iraq, and consisted of dual heavy-armored convoys plowing through Iraqi defenses into Baghdad. Both of these strategies worked in the past, and both are used exclusively for “initial entry” into a hostile country and neither addresses the post-conflict stabilization period

A strategy for war brings with it new requirements for manning, equipment, and training –so which one worked out better in the past? Which one will be more prevalent in the future?

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The Jet Nuke Threat

By John

Received a fair share of emails on my dismissal of the suitcase nuke threat as a non-sequiter. The general consensus seems to be that I'm not taking the threat seriously enough, and am indiscriminately lulling others into a false sense of security.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Nuclear terrorism is very real, and it's something that we should take very seriously. In fact, I would go so far as to say that nuclear-capable terrorists are the single greatest threat the United States has ever faced. It's also the primary reason that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a bomb.

There are two logical places that Islamists could shop for a nuclear weapon. The first is the former Soviet Union, as there are weapons missing from their stockpiles. The second is a sympathetic nation state like Iran or Syria. In both cases, the probability of a terrorist group -irrespective of how well funded they may be- securing a small, man portable warhead is low, leaving the traditional cone-shaped ICBM/SLBM reentry warhead as the weapon most likely to fall into the hands of extremists.

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The Social Scientist's War

By John

Major General Robert H. Scales:

World War IV will cause a shift in classical centers of gravity from the will of governments and armies to the perceptions of populations. Victory will be defined more in terms of capturing the psycho-cultural rather than the geographical high ground. Understanding and empathy will be important weapons of war. Soldier conduct will be as important as skill at arms. Culture awareness and the ability to build ties of trust will offer protection to our troops more effectively than body armor. Leaders will seek wisdom and quick but reflective thought rather than operational and planning skills as essential intellectual tools for guaranteeing future victories.

If the poet-soldier has fallen, is the diplomat-soldier rising? Scales calls this new conflict the "Social Scientist's War," a strategic paradigmn that hyperempowers leadership at the platoon and company level, and shifts the primary battlesplace away from nodes and directly into the hearts and minds of the enemy populace.

Technology is no longer the end all, be all in warfare. Psychology is just as important, if not more important, if winning enemy populations is the path to winning wars. And the technology that we do develop should center on amplifying tactical power, not strategic power.

Scales' piece is indispensable, highly recommend you read the whole thing.

Hotel Tango to Eddie @ Milblogs.

Syria Blusters

By John

Syria Ready for Regional War:

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem crossed into Lebanon Sunday for the first visit by a top Syrian official in more than a year, Lebanon's state news agency said. Speaking to reporters after the meeting with his Lebanese counterpart, Fawzi Salloukh, Moallem said "Syria is ready for the possibility of a regional war if the Israeli aggression continues."

Because Syria has been so successful in other regional wars.

BTW, the Syria order of battle doesn't exactly make me nervous. A couple of aging Soviet fighters for an air force, plus poorly maintained tanks arranged in a static border defense. Somewhere out there in the great unknown, Moshe Dayan is drumming his fingers together, whispering "excellent."

Israel and Effects Based Warfare

By John

As the United States established its post Cold War supremacy in the skies, a new type of war order was established, that of "effects based warfare." EBO is the simultaneous application and projection of power, flexibly executed at all levels of command, designed to force the enemy to comply with our will.

Airpower --from stealth technology, to UAVs, to precision guides munitions-- has allowed us to redefine the war principle of mass, striking more targets with more effeciency and fewer forces. That pinpoint application of airpower also makes Parallel Warfare possible.

And Parallel Warfare is precisely what Israel is employing today. Examine their initial, pre-ground assault actions. Israeli air units swept out and targeted enemy systems and centers of gravity rather than troops. The IAF hit nodes of communication, transportation, leadership, and industries, executing a parallel attack against each enemy target system, climbing down the ladder from strategic targets, to operational targets, and finally to tactical targets.

Israel is now largely in the tactical targeting phase of their effects based operation, although strategic and operational missions still continue. We witnessed the strategic ops phase as Israel blockaded the Lebanon coast, bombed the airport and roads, and struck at Hezbollah leadership. We witnessed the operational phase as Israel shifted focus towards Hezbollah gun and rocket emplacements (enemy units in enemyheld territory). And now we are seeing Israel's use of ground forces in the tactical -- the "bug hunt"-- phase of their plan, as the IDF roots out enemy fighters from the battlespace.

As stated earlier, objectives still exists at the tactical, strategic, and operational levels of warfare, and thus fighting will continue for at least another 10-14 days.

48 Hours of Midnight

By John

Why did Israel agree to strip themselves of their most decisive strategic advantage --their control of the Lebanese airspace-- for 2 days?

1) Bone toss to Secretary Rice: It was important that Secretary Rice's trip produce tangible results. This is the tightrope that the US has to walk. On one hand, we want Hezbollah destroyed just as badly as Israel does, on the other we have spent the last few years weaving a complex tapestry of relationships and alliances in the Middle East in support of our own war on terror. Coming out too strongly in support of Israel jeopardizes our ability to fight wars elsewhere. It's unfortunate, but the nature of this beast we call the war on terror.

2) Qana: Critical that the incident in Qana appear isolated and accidental, despite the fact that the Law of Armed Conflict and Geneva Convention place blame for the incident squarely on Hezbollah's shoulders. This move on Israel's part is as much of a language as it is a strategy, and the message to the Lebanese people is: "if you see Hezbollah fighters in your backyard, get out of Dodge. You've got two days."

3) The Israeli Democracy: Israel the Democracy faces the same warfighting challenges as America the Democracy. Politicians think about winning the public, Generals think about winning the battle. Both want to win the war. The airstrike pause was a political decision, whether or not it had the support of the Israel high command is subject to speculation.

Final thought: It's unlikely that Israel denies their ground troops the air support that they need. It's likely that Israel will refrain from hitting the dense civilian areas where Hezbollah cowers for the next day and a half or so, but that doesn't mean that they will deny their ground pounders close air support. Expect thunder and lightning when the IAF gets their greenlight to resume combat operations.

Targeting and "Fence Checks"

By Pinch

Found this interesting bit in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today:

Military analysts question Israeli bombing

From reading various and sundry articles over the past few years from the Seattle P-I, I am well aware of its reputation, notwithstanding the fact that it comes from the state that has given us Patty “Osama builds day care centers!” Murray (for a surprisingly good smackdown of Senator Murray for this comment from, again surprisingly, the same newspaper, go here) and Jim “Saddam Capture Was Staged” McDermott.

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The Genesis of a Deep Penetration Raid

By John

**Two Notes** This map is best viewed using Firefox. Second, I know that the first line of attack arrow is a little off, stemming from the Sinai instead of the Negev... I think when movable type resized the picture, the arrows shifted a bit to the right.

I put together this battle map as a means to convey how difficult it would be for Israel to succesfully execute an airstrike against Iranian nuclear facilities. This is a scenario that I wargamed myself, based on the geo-political situation in the middle east, the location of air defense facilities, logical refueling points, and distance to targets. Note that I said this type of operation would be difficult, not impossible.

I narrowed down the aim points to 4 must-hit targets. The experimental reactor at Bushehr, the uranium processing and enrichment facilities at Isfahan and Nataz, and the Arak heavy water facility. All of these facilities would have to be destroyed for Israel to call this a successful mission. The remainder of even one of these facilities would limit the "set-back" effect that the strikes would have on the Iranians nuclear development program.

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Prepping the Battlespace

By John

One of the lessons America, and the world, drew from the lightning campaigns of Gulf Wars I & II was the importance of battlesplace preparation. That is, the conditioning of the battlefield's environment prior to initiating full scale military operations.

What we are witnessing in southern Lebanon is concurrent with actions designed to prep a battlefield for the insertion of ground forces. So far, Israel has relied on its dominance in sea and air forces to isolate Hezbollah, rather than focusing their brunt of their superior forces on actual enemy positions. By blockading the coast, neutralizing Beruit's airport, and damaging roads and bridges into and out of Lebanon, the IDF has cut off Hezbollah's supply routes by land, sea, and air, and blocked all lines of escape.

These isolation actions are eerily similiar to Coalition movements prior to Operation Hail Mary during the first Gulf War, where allied aircraft severed supply lines to foward deployed Iraqi Army units.

The end result is a battlespace that traps the now ill-equipped enemy force, the ideal environment for Israel to crush Hezbollah forces.

I think that in the coming days, we will see a sizable Israeli ground incursion into southern Lebanon, a campaign designed to exploit the favorable conditions that Israel has created for itself. I have the feeling that once that invasion comes, Hezbollah's ability to launch rocket attacks into Israel proper will be severly reduced, if not eliminated.

Endstate: IDF holds the territory until it is satisfied that the Lebanese Army is A) free from Syrian control and B) capable of holding the southern border on their own.

**Update** Defense Tech and Stratfor concur....

**Update #2** A reader writes:

I just read your blogposting "Prepping the Battlespace."

I am a faculty member with the US Army Command & General Staff College and your comments are the same ones we have been having with students.

Another Front Opens on Israel

By Charlie

Israel launches raids on Lebanon

Israel has launched an assault in southern Lebanon using planes, tanks and gunboats, after the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah militants.

Three Israeli soldiers were also killed in Hezbollah's cross-border raid on Wednesday morning.

Roads and Hezbollah outposts were hit and two civilians killed as Israel responded, with its first incursion in Lebanon since 2000.

Israel's PM Ehud Olmert described Lebanon's actions as an "act of war".

So Israel's fighting on two fronts, Lebanon and Gaza. Meanwhile, in a virtual "bomb us" request, Syria says the following:

DAMASCUS - Syria said on Wednesday Israel was responsible for an operation by its ally Hizbollah in which two Israeli soldiers were captured.

“Occupation is what provokes the Palestinian and Lebanese people,” Vice President Farouq al-Shara told reporters.

“The resistance in south Lebanon and among the Palestinian people decides solely what to do and why.”

Syria supports demands by Hizbollah, a Shia group also backed by Iran, for Israel to pull out of Shebaa Farms, an area near the Golan Heights which the United Nations says is Syrian land, but which Syria describes as Lebanese.

Killing terrorists seems to be treating the syptoms and not the disease. Syria, and to a greater extent, Iran are behind this.

Mr. Jong-IL, Tear down this demilitarized zone!

By Charlie

North Korea has been a source of unceasing problems to the United States and the world at large for the greater part of 50 years. Isolated, and disconnected from the rest of enlightened societies (even China), NK has threatened, blustered, and extorted assistance from the rest of the world. While this assistance (be it food, fuel, or aid) has continued to flow, it has gone to either the corrupt regime led my Kim Jong Il, or his military, which has been pointing its acres of artillery toward Seoul since the conclusion of the Korean War –not the people of NK, who starve. This isolated country has exploited past energy deals made in good faith by America in order to create its own nuclear weaponry, and now they seek to test delivery devices, which will cement their extortion racket in place with the ability to rope in countries like India and Russia with the extended range of their rockets.

Because of all of this, Korean reunification should become a policy priority. But this is a touchy subject with one of the key players in the now-defunct six-party talks: China. Our future (peaceful) relations with the Middle Kingdom hinge on Korean reunification, so with all of these delicate factors in the balance –how might it play out?

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Marines Want Space Plane

By John

Is a Space Ship One type space craft destined for military purposes? According to the Marines, aye-sir! Military.com's David Axe writes:

Unlike the Air Force, Navy and Army, all three of which sponsor expensive satellite programs, the cash-strapped Marines are pushing just one space concept. It's called Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion, or SUSTAIN, and it's a reusable spaceplane meant to get a squad of Marines to any hotspot on Earth in two hours -- then get them out. The idea is to reinforce embattled embassies, take out terrorist leaders or defuse hostage situations before it's too late. "The Marine Corps needs [this] capability," Brig. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer told Congress in 2004.

Artist's sketch of SUSTAIN insertion vehicle

The space insertion project, dubbed Hot Eagle, seems a bit far-fetched. Despite the obvious technological obstacles, military and defense contracting officials say that developing a craft that would accomplish the SUSTAIN mission is feasible. According to The Space Review, planners are following:

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(The League of) United Nations

By Charlie

Well, with a dictator furiously building the means to deliver WMD (while at the same time building up weapons-grade plutonium from its "civilian" reactors), the United Nations, true arbiter of peace and justice in the universe is, is on the cusp of what promises to be MAJOR ACTION:

UN weighs action against N. Korea

Missile tests called threat to peace

WASHINGTON -- The UN Security Council held an emergency session yesterday to consider action against North Korea after the Stalinist state test-fired at least seven missiles, including one long-range rocket that US officials feared was capable of reaching US territory.

Japan circulated a draft of a Security Council resolution that calls the tests a ``threat to international peace" and urges nations around the world to ``prevent the transfer of financial resources, items, materials, goods, and technology" that might benefit North Korea's weapons programs, according to a copy of the proposal.

The United States and Britain backed the resolution, but Russia and China appeared reluctant to endorse it.

So the UN cannot even agree that cutting off NK's acquisition of technology relating directly to its missile program might be a good idea... What is the point of this organization again?

Why walls won’t work: thoughts on Gaza, North Korea, and terrorism

By Charlie

Walls have a very important place in our world today. They delineate boundaries, establish physical barriers, and protect people and their property. But, strategically speaking, relying solely on a wall as a policy seems to have inherent problems that have recently brought to light by world events.

In Israel, a policy of disengagement was enacted with one major defense initiative: a wall. Israel’s security barrier was to be set in place, withdrawn behind, and the nation of Israel would live happily ever after, forever separated from the chaos on the other side of the fence.

America, via its forward deployed assets around Japan and South Korea, started down a path of a “virtual wall” of missile defense technology in 1998. This wall America was building would protect the continental United States from a ballistic missile launched from Asia eastward, hopefully negating the threat of North Korea acquiring WMD and the means to deliver it.

In America, domestically, there have been roiling debates over the nature of how to fight terrorism: as a criminal/law enforcement issue, or a war. Some of the arguments (from both sides) have advocated the establishment of our own walls at home –be they persistent surveillance of our ports, actual walls on our borders, or a wall of disengagement and isolation from the world.

Two of these three issues are relying on walls as the centerpiece of a policy. The emerging problem with that is that a wall cannot stop a determined enemy. Walls have their purposes in the world, but a wall alone is not a solution to a foreign policy quandary.

The problem with walls is that there is usually a way around them –therefore relying on a wall to solve all of your problems is inherently an incomplete way of addressing an issue. In order to actually solve a problem (not manage one) a wall must be incorporated into a holistic strategy for accomplishing a foreign policy goal. What do I mean? -I’ll explain:

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The Corporal Conflict Update & Future implications

By Charlie

Israel Widens Operations as Gaza Incursion Enters Second Day

June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Israel expanded operations in the northern Gaza Strip, staging air raids in open areas and telling residents it may move into populated areas, as its incursion aimed at freeing a kidnapped soldier entered a second day.

Residents in Khan Yunis, Beit Hanun and other towns were told in leaflets distributed by the army to stay clear of ``combat zones,'' an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified, said by telephone. Soldiers are now stationed outside northern Gaza's borders, she said.

Israeli Air Force jets flew over Syrian President Bashar al- Assad's palace in Damascus early yesterday, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Syrian state television. The army spokeswoman confirmed the report, calling it a ``message'' to Syria about its possible role in the kidnapping.

The Gaza incursion is Israel's biggest in the area since it evacuated settlers last August and September after a 38-year occupation. Hopes that the pullout would reduce Palestinian attacks and help revive peace talks collapsed after Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian parliament in January and militants stepped up rocket launches from Gaza into Israel.

The operation was prompted by the kidnapping of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shilat on June 25 in a raid by Palestinians, including members of Hamas. Israel has accused Khaled Mashaal, a Hamas leader based in Damascus, of involvement in the kidnapping.

The question is: will this trigger a broader conflict? What should we be watching? Here are my suggestions.

-Iran/Lebanese Hezbollah: These guys could open up a new front with Israel, and are well supplied and well armed.

-Egypt: Their forces are staged near the border, ostensibly for “border enforcement,” which translates into keeping the Palestinians in Gaza. During conflicts, large force concentrations of opposing powers parked near each other tend to make situations less stable.

-Syria: Assad is giving material support to Hamas, and got his house buzzed this morning by Israeli fighters. Syria’s army is very degraded, with its Republican Guard probably being the only effective combat unit in the country. However their artillery assets, all aimed at Israel, are armed with the Arab world’s largest chemical weapons stock.

-Gaza itself: We’ll soon see how much of a fight Hamas can muster. Unfortunately for them, Israel is probably the only other army in the world next to us that can pull off a “Fallujah”- type operation and make it successful. BUT if Al-Aqsa makes good on its dubious WMD threat, or something goes wrong with the op, an “Intifada 3” could be launched, triggering a regional crisis.

Two powers have the ability to stop this: America and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis hold the real purse-strings to the Palestinians, and they could stop the conflict in a matter of hours. The suffering of the Palestinians plays well for them, and I doubt they’ll throw in the towel just yet. America can also put pressure on Israel –but I doubt we will.

In the end, this is what the Palestinian people voted for when they elected Hamas, a government that declared a war they cannot win.

Spetsnatz to deploy to iraq?

By Charlie

...Probably not, but this story raises my eyebrows:

MOSCOW, June 28 — President Vladimir V. Putin ordered Russia's secret services today to find and kill those who kidnapped four Russian embassy employees in Iraq and then executed them, the Kremlin announced in a statement.

"The president gave instructions to the Russian special services to take all measures for finding and destroying the criminals who committed this atrocity," the Kremlin said, according to the official Russian Information Agency.

The Russian president has made similarly pointed threats before — against Chechnya's separatist fighters and those who have carried out terrorist attacks in Russia. Early in the second war in Chechnya Mr. Putin vowed to destroy the separatists in their outhouses. And four Chechen separatist leaders have been killed in strikes or raids since the second war began in 1999, most recently on June 17 when Russian forces killed the latest leader, Abdul Khalim Saidullayev.

I don't know what "special services" consist of in Russia nowadays, but with remnants of the KGB, SPF, and intelligence services still intact, its probably nothing to laugh at.

Driving on, this story is relevant to the topic.

Chechnya: Basayev Appointment Sends Signal To Russia And Beyond

PRAGUE, June 28, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The man who claimed responsibility for the 2004 Beslan school siege, rebel field commander Shamil Basayev, has been appointed vice president of the breakaway republic's separatist government, putting Russia's most-wanted man next in line to become separatist president.

So... the Chechnyan VP is a terrorist. Damn America's imperialism in provoking the worldwide Islamic resistance! I've got a radical solution to this problem. US/Russian relations are pretty cool, but they might be warmed with a renewed security bargain. This bargain could include some of the arms control negotiations that Putin wants, but it should also include a forces swap. We would give Russia's armed forces some US advisors, giving them some of our COIN experience from the last 5 years of battling terrorists. Russia's performance in Chechnya during the first go-round showed that their operations could use some help.

In exchange for this, we would facilitate Russia's bloody vengance against the Iraq Islamists. Russia could deploy a few elite units, SPETSNATZ or otherwise, to help our SF forces doing COIN and our transistion command in training Iraqi forces. Most of the weapons and equipment the Iraqis use is Russian/Soviet anyway.

Just a thought...

Has the 2006 War (or the corporal war) already started?

By Charlie

Israel is on the knife's edge of open war with the Palestinian people, governed by Hamas.

Fire support assets have begun to prep the battlefield already:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli planes attacked three bridges in central Gaza, the military said Wednesday, and Israeli tanks were on the move after the government approved a limited operation — a response to a weekend Palestinian attack in which two soldiers were killed and a third captured.

The Israeli military said in a statement that the object of the attacks on the bridges late Tuesday and early Wednesday was "to impair the ability of the terrorists to transfer the kidnapped soldier." Knocking down the bridges would cut Gaza in two, Palestinian security officials said.

Israeli military officials said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert approved a "limited operation" for southern Gaza, aimed at "terrorist infrastructure." The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Palestinian security forces said Israeli tanks were on the move near the Israeli village of Nahal Oz, a main Israeli staging area just outside Gaza, but that they had not yet entered the territory. An Associated Press reporter saw tanks moving on the Israeli side of the border fence.

Meanwhile, Israeli gunships are targetting power plants in Gaza:

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli helicopter gunships fired at least two missile into a Palestinian power plant in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday, cutting electrical supplies to large areas of the coastal territory, witnesses said.

Egypt's forces are apparently deployed to their border, obstensibly for the purposes of blocking Palestinians from fleeing into their country (so much for Arab unity). Additionally, the Hamas hardliners in hiding in Damascus who are directing most of the violence must be sleeping a little less soundly tonight, fearing the creeping Israeli agents.

More to come on this...

Air Defense Artillery isn't dead yet

By Charlie

Way to go, North Korea. China must be seething that US/Japanese relations have warmed to the point of allowing the missile defense shield to forward deploy.

Japan and the United States, facing North Korea's apparent plans to test-launch a long-range missile, have agreed to deploy advanced Patriot interceptor missiles on American bases in Japan for the first time, officials said Monday.

The U.S. plans to deploy the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles -- designed to intercept ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or aircraft -- as soon as possible, a Japanese Defense Agency spokeswoman.

The spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with agency policy, said the sites and exact timing for the deployment have not yet been decided.

The plan was first reported Monday in Japan's largest newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. It said the U.S. military would deploy three or four batteries of the surface-to-air missiles on the southern island of Okinawa by the end of the year and send 500-600 additional U.S. troops there.

I thought they going to start drafting people after the 04 election...

By Charlie

Joan Vennochi, a columnist at the Boston Globe, wants to draft you.

REINSTATE THE military draft and see how quickly the United States ends its war in Iraq.

If we feared our children were next up to be gutted like fish, we might be less likely to shake our heads at crazy antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. If turning 18 meant your kid's boots on the ground, a resolution to pull troops out of Iraq by a certain date might grab more than six votes in the US Senate.
…
Last February, US Representative Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, did so, introducing the Universal National Service Act of 2006. It requires all people in the United States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42, to perform a period of military service or period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security. The proposal was referred to the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel.

At the time, Rangel said he did not expect the bill to pass; he intended it as a reminder of those who have died and suffered injuries and will continue to do so in Iraq. A news release posted on Rangel's website noted, ``Right now, the only people being asked to sacrifice in any way are those men and women who, with limited options, chose military service and now find themselves in harm's way in Iraq. A draft would ensure that every economic group would have to do their share and not allow some to stay behind while other people's children do the fighting."
…
Either this war is worth every citizen's effort, or it's not worth any soldier's life.

Well, someone woke up on the radical egalitarian side of the bed this morning. It’s not enough that our military consumes 4% of the national GDP, and has about 1.3 million members, who in six years have conquered two formerly hostile governments and established free societies in their place –what our military really needs to be successful is proportionalism!

Aside from the absurd application of social justice here- what would “ensur[ing] that every economic group would have to do their share and not allow some to stay behind while other people's children do the fighting” really accomplish? Does a military’s strength reside in the fact that every soldier in the field is proportionally represented by the populace of its home country? -I must have missed that in Von Krieg. Our volunteer army is why we are winning!

Do we really want to model our army on, say, the USSR? When they invaded Afghanistan with an Army of conscripts (using the “big footprint” strategy vice our SECDEF’s “small footprint strategy in Iraq) they had entire divisions securing LOCs, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, and many soldiers dies due to bad training, bad leadership, ill discipline, and other age-old problems of filling the ranks with men against their will. In today’s Army, everyone wants to be there and believes in the mission.

Driving on –there are about 54 million women and 54 million men in the US who are within the range of drafting. How many people should we draft? How should our new conscript army look? The problem with the draft advocates (Rangel voted against his own bill, btw) is that they are more focused on things like social justice than fielding an operational, deployable, and lethal fighting force.

The Case for Invading Somalia

By Charlie

If we could have identified the terror camps in Afghanistan and destroyed them from, say 1996-2000, would it have been worth the sacrifice of national resources, troops, and equipment? If the targeting prevented 9/11, then the answer would be yes.

Therefore, we should bomb Somalia.

Mogadishu has just been conquered by a loose union of “moderate” Islamic courts that press Sharia law, shelter terrorists, and seek to spread their degenerate ideology to neighboring countries. This is pretty much what the Taliban did in Afghanistan after the communist puppet government was driven out after the Soviets left*. So, if we identify centers of gravity in Somalia where terrorists are congregating –let’s hit them hard. I’ve even got a suggestion for the troops to task on this one –what’s the one Army unit that may just want to get a little revenge for something that may have happened in 1994 in Somalia? Let’s re-deploy the 75th Ranger Regiment to Somaila, backed up by a multi-national task force headed by the 10th Mountain Division. Let’s raid this failed state, destroy any terror camps that are established, and make no apologies for it.

If we can prevent another Taliban from rising, the costs of preventing another 9/11 far outweigh the deployment of combat troops to the region.

In conclusion, Let’s Roll.

**John Says** I strongly disagree with Charlie on this point. A heavy, brigade level presence in the abyss that is east Africa would satisfy no real strategic end, while enabling the loose confederation of Islamists to hit us the only way they know how: low-level, asymmetric warfare.

Furthermore, there are no real "centers of gravity" to hit in Somalia. The enemy is spread out amongst clans and tribes, blurring the lines between military units and civilian populations. The army is a sword, not a scalpel, better to keep the heavy lifters near the heavy loads: Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm not saying we should ignore the Horn. CIA paramilitary teams (like the Jawbreaker team in Afghanistan '01) have proven effective in accomplishing US objectives in failed states in the past, and they can do so in the future.

We've learned this lesson already, revenge is not a strategy.

Read More »

North Korea: A Threat, or Just Ronery and Looking for Attention?

By Charlie

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Japan warned North Korea on Monday against a missile launch as some officials said Pyongyang appeared to have finished fueling for a test flight that could reach as far as Alaska.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said a missile launch by North Korea would be viewed as a very serious matter and "provocative act" that would further isolate Pyongyang.

"We will obviously consult on next steps but I can assure everyone that it would be taken with utmost seriousness," said Rice at a news conference in Washington.

There are three main things you need to have a credible nuclear threat: a nuclear device, a means of delivering it to a target, and the means of producing more in order to maintain your posture as a nuclear power. Once you have such power, the will to use it (rationally versus irrationally) is a main factor in the realm of international relations. For instance, France has a nuclear weapon, the means to deliver it, and a viable reactor program from which to produce more weapons –however, they would be unlikely to use those weapons to exert their will on other nations. North Korea, however, lives in a different world than the US and France. I caught a bit of the Rush Limbaugh show on the way back from work today on this topic:

A tyrant, a thug, a dictator will never, ever sit down at the diplomacy table and sign away his power. It won't happen. This little pot-bellied tinhorn dictator in North Korea is not going to do it. This wacko lunatic in Iran is not going to do it. They don't do it anywhere. And the idea that diplomacy is going to get insane lunatics to drop their weapons, which is the only thing they've got to make them feel like something, otherwise they are nothing but Third World countries, is absurd.

Nuclear technology in the hands of a Kim Jong Il, or the Iranians, is inherently more dangerous than when possessed by a responsible state like France, Israel, or Brazil. North Korea knows that it can exploit, threaten, and cajole the international community into funding its regime for the foreseeable future, and nukes allow them to do the exploitation much more louder and more effectively.

Combine that with the fact that we live in a world governed by the aggressive use of force –the threat of which makes us take states like North Korea very seriously. We know that communist North Korea thinks nothing of killing thousands of their own people, and would delight in slaughtering thousands more to further their insular and dictatorial regime.

If North Korea test-fires its missile in our direction, we should “test-fire” some of our own toward them. The time is far-gone to play around with these dictators.

The Need for Ballistic Missile Defense

By John

North Korea's impending Taepodong test launch has reaffirmed America's need for a functional ballistic missile shield. Here is another simple reminder of why the shield has become so important to the national defense.

Nations equipped with ballistic missiles in 1972.

And, below the fold, nations equipped with ballistic missiles as of 2004.

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All Eyes on North Korea

By John

Troublesome developments in the Far East...

North Korea Readies Missile Launch Platform

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has moved key components of a long-range missile to a launch pad as well as 10 large liquid-gas tanks to fuel it, a South Korean newspaper reported on Saturday, citing government officials.

In a separate report, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted diplomatic sources in Seoul as saying a missile test could come as early as on Sunday or Monday.

The United States on Friday warned North Korea against conducting a "provocative" intercontinental missile test after U.S. officials said there were signs a launch could take place as early as this weekend.

And in related news, North Koreans Asked to Raise Flags on Sunday

TOKYO, June 18 (Reuters) - The North Korean leadership has told its people to raise the national flag at 2:00 pm (0500 GMT) on Sunday, in what may be a sign that Pyongyang will go ahead with a missile launch test, a Japanese government official was quoted as saying.

Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun on Sunday also quoted the Japanese official as saying that the North Koreans had been instructed to monitor television and other broadcasts for a "message to the people".

North Korea's test launch of one of their Taepodong missiles over northern Japan in 1998 shook both the Japanese and US defense communities to the core. It was enough to place ballistic missile defense on the the front burner in Congress, and the subject was a point of intense debate during the 2000 presidential election. And perhaps most importantly, the '98 launch is the primary reason why we have a Missile Defense Agency today.

The United States now has 10 operational ballistic missile interceptors in Alaska and California, as well as shipborne ABM assets in the Pacific fleet.

Imagine the message that it would send to kill a North Korean sortie while it was still in its boost stage.

Conversely, imagine the message it would send if we missed.

Hot Dog! State on State Conflict is Back!

By John

Peter Brooks on the Shangai Cooperation Organization (SCO):

Some see it as a NATO counterweight. Others call it a Club for Dictators -- or at least near-dictators. Some consider it an anti-American stalking horse for Chinese and or Russian hegemony, with the potential to become "OPEC with nukes."

Whatever: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) -- a so-called "anti-terrorism, anti-separatism, anti-extremism" grouping, including China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which holds its fifth annual meeting this week -- definitely reeks of trouble for Uncle Sam.

Well, I guess calling them calling it "anti-American" would be lacking in the subtly department. Of course by "anti-American" I don't mean some long haired unhappy Seattle teenager who gets his political info from Green Day songs, but rather anti-American interests, specifically in southeast Asia. According to Brooks, it's all about the hegemony (well, regional hegemony):

...consider the wider strategic implications. Beijing and Moscow are using the SCO as a tool to eliminate U.S. influence in the Eurasian heartland -- the home to half the world's population, a key front in the War on Terror and the location of key world energy supplies. The SCO formally agreed at last year's summit to reverse America's post-9/11 military presence in Central Asia. Soon after, Uzbekistan closed Karshi Khanabad airbase to U.S. forces. Now the rulers of Extortistan -- er, Kyrgyzstan -- are trying to raise the price of the U.S. lease on Manas airbase rent from $2 million to $200 million a year.

And it could affect our efforts to de-nuke Iran:

The SCO has offered observer status to India and Pakistan as well as Iran, and discussed full-membership for all. Iran and Pakistan are keen to join -- and may be offered the chance later this year. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may push for membership at this week's session -- it would help scuttle U.S. and European Union pressure over Tehran's nuclear program.

With NATO pushing closer and closer to Russia's borders, and America and her allies circling China, the alliance makes sense. The question is, how large will the SCO grow, and will the new alliance translate into some sort of pseudo east-Asia version of the Warsaw Pact?

Taliban II: Rise of the Africans

By John

This has the potential to be pretty bad news, folks.

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 5 — Islamic militias declared victory today over Somalia's traditional warlords in the battle for control of Mogadishu, quelling months of fierce fighting in the lawless capital but raising new questions about whether this regime, which American officials have accused of sheltering terrorists, will steer the country down an extremist path.

Another collapsed state that has the potential to turn into a big-time breeding ground. Somalia is starting to look alot like pre-Enduring Freedom Afghanistan. A few posts down, Charlie mentioned that:

this expands the Sharia sphere of influence, from Sudan to Somalia. The Palestinian Authority is up in the air on Sharia, and it is being fought full bore in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a "rollback" strategy for this Dark-Age style of governance.

So what's the better Somalia scenario for the war on terrorism? A standing, functional, yet hostile government that *might* be pressured into playing ball with the West, or a collapsed state at controlled by factions of constantly-feuding warlords? Both settings are environments in which terrorists flourish.

Sudan, then Somalia. I sincerely hope Nigeria isn't next. I concur with Charlie, we need a rollback strategy for the dark continent's rising Islamist tide.