WAR 03-04-2022-to-03-10-2022__THEWINDSofWAR

Housecarl · Mar 4, 2023

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Hummm........Once more no consideration of a strike upon Iran with ballistic weapons but focused upon aircraft.....

Posted for fair use.....

Su-35s Would 'Hunt Down' Returning Israeli Fighters: Iranian Expert Talks On Possible Strike On Nuclear Facility After S-400 Delivery

Amid growing military cooperation between Iran and Russia, Israeli officials fear Iran’s possible acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defense system would narrow the window for a strike on Tehran’s nuclear sites. Iran has allegedly asked Russia for a new S-400 air defense system, which could...

eurasiantimes.com

Su-35s Would ‘Hunt Down’ Returning Israeli Fighters: Iranian Expert Talks On Possible Strike On Nuclear Facility After S-400 Delivery

EXPERT REVIEWS
By Sakshi Tiwari

March 4, 2023

Amid growing military cooperation between Iran and Russia, Israeli officials fear Iran’s possible acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defense system would narrow the window for a strike on Tehran’s nuclear sites.

Iran has allegedly asked Russia for a new S-400 air defense system, which could prove to be a disaster for Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported on March 2. The report further noted that even though Russia had not officially confirmed the news, the system could become operational in Iran about two years after its delivery.

S-400 is a mobile, surface-to-air missile system (SAM) that can engage aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at their terminal stages. It is the fourth generation of long-range Russian SAMs, which China, India, and Turkey also operate.

The prospect of such an acquisition by Iran has reportedly rattled officials in the US and Israel. Bloomberg quoted some unnamed people in Israel and the US with knowledge of the discussions as saying that the prospect of Iran getting the S-400 would accelerate a decision on a possible Israeli attack on the country.

Further, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said of a strike on Iran at a security conference in Tel Aviv last week, “The longer you wait, the harder that becomes. We’ve waited very long. I can tell you that I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

It is pertinent to note that Iran already operates the Russian S-300 air defense systems, and the Russian ambassador to Iran hinted in 2020 that the S-400 ‘could be’ delivered to Iran.

Iran has already developed its Bavar-373 air defense, which is believed to be a domestic version of the S-400.

In November last year, an upgraded Bavar-373 version reported a detection range of 450 kilometers and a tracking range of 400 kilometers. Military experts believe the more air defense systems Iran deploys, the harder it will become for Israel to carry out strikes on its facilities. This is the reason why a prospective S-400 acquisition has triggered concerns.

However, experts expressed skepticism at the prospect of the deployment of S-400 by Iran. Middle East Analyst Seth Frantzman told EurAsian Times, “Any acquisition of the S-400 would take an immense amount of time because the Iranians would need to be trained on it, and it takes time to deliver.

“There is little chance that Russia will send the system anytime soon. Considering how Russia also claimed it would provide Syria with the S-300 and that system has proven ineffective in Syria to deter any Israeli actions, it seems improbable that the S-400 would be deployed to Iran.”

Frantzman added, “Russia-Iran cooperation has the potential to change calculations in the Middle East in the wake of Iran sending drones to Russia. Russia has backed Iran in the past, but any claims of Russia sending warplanes or other systems have not been realized. Russia is cautious and needs resources at home.”

In December 2022, media reports suggested that Moscow could negotiate to supply the S-400 air defense system to Tehran amid a burgeoning military relationship between the two partners. Iran has also reportedly announced that it would be receiving at least two dozen Su-35 combat jets from Russia.

The perception in Israel is that the window for carrying out a strike on Iran’s rapidly growing nuclear program would narrow with this acquisition. If the S-400 air defense is delivered to Tehran this year, it will become operational by 2025.

Israel Continues To Threaten Strikes On Iran

Israeli leaders and military experts consider Iran’s nuclear program and the potential development of nuclear weapons by Tehran as the biggest security threat facing their country. These concerns have risen significantly after foreign observers recently discovered uranium enriched to 84% purity, just below the 90% required for weapons.

According to a top Israeli official and a former senior American official, Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make ten bombs by the end of 2023, noted the Bloomberg report. Consequently, the calls for a strike are expected to grow louder in the foreseeable future.

In early February, at the time of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to France, a local French publication report stated that Israel had plans to form a military coalition with the Western powers to strike Iran. It said some 3,000 targets had been identified, and Israel wanted to take action quickly.

The report further stated that everything was ready on paper, and Israel had thoroughly studied its strategy to attack Iran. Even though these claims could not be independently corroborated, Tel Aviv has constantly signaled that it would strike Iran’s nuclear facilities using its F-35I Adir stealth aircraft.

Further, as Israel receives the KC-46A refueling aircraft from the United States by 2025, it will have an added long-range capability that would aid a strike on Iran’s military and nuclear facilities if the country goes ahead with the plan.

When asked whether the presence of S-400 air defenses in the country can complicate the situation for Israel, Iran military expert Patarames told EurAsian Times, “Iran is on the threshold of nuclear weapon capability. If Israel feels it’s worth a conflict to prevent that, they may do it. The end of such a conflict would be Iran attacking vital Israeli targets and Israel responding with about 3-4 nuclear strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. So, no. S-400 would not be the reason for them to attack Iran.

“The only caveat is that Su-35 would just make any attempt by the IDF/AF for a serious airpower campaign against Iran very costly for them. Su-35 would hunt down returning Israeli fighters or disrupt their refueling.”

Further, it has been noted that Israel has been looking for support for a strike on Iran in the US. However, already preoccupied with a war in Europe, Washington has reportedly chosen not to give the green light to this adventure. Military experts have also warned that any such strike on Iran could snowball into a massive regional conflict.

Nonetheless, the US and Israel have been strengthening military cooperation. In late January, US Air Force F-35s launched from the USS George HW Bush flew hundreds of miles over the Mediterranean Sea and teamed up with Israeli F-35s to mimic a joint assault on surface-to-air missile batteries in the Negev desert.

In the aftermath of these drills, analysts and former US officials highlighted how many of the capabilities were startlingly similar to those needed by Israel to carry out long-range strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites, which displayed extraordinarily complicated abilities.

The calls for a strike in Israel are only expected to grow louder, especially in the wake of increasing Russia-Iran cooperation which has sent alarm bells ringing in the West.

Contact the author at sakshi.tiwari9555 (at) gmail.com

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Housecarl · Mar 4, 2023

CRISIS - More Than 75% Of Americans Aged 17-24 Aren't Fit For Military Service

As the US military struggles to fill the ranks with new recruits, a new report from the Department of Defense reveals that the vast majority of Americans aged 17-24 are unfit for military service. Citing a Feb. 16 congressional hearing, a DoD report reveals that 77% of Americans in the above...

www.timebomb2000.com

TERRORISM - Two [RUSSIAN] New York men charged with flying drone over three Louisiana [chemical] plants

https://unfilteredwithkiran.com/new-york-men-arrested-flying-drone-over-chemical-plant-st-charles-parish/ (fair use applies) Two New York men charged with flying drone over three Louisiana plants Investigators say they observed the drone from the St. Charles Parish Emergency Operation Center...

www.timebomb2000.com

WAR - Where Are The Carriers?

So, I was nosy this morning and I googled the current location of US Aircraft carriers. I understand the need for certain secrecy (why should the USN tell Google where their ships are if those ships are in the backyard of a potential enemy that cooks Chinese food?). It looks like there are...

www.timebomb2000.com

ALERT - RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE - Consolidated Thread

Vindman committed Treason when he released the transcript of the perfect call between Trump and Zelenskyy. He wasn't a Whistle-blower, he was a partisan hack working to protect Trader Joe Biden Now Vindman wants to personally grift ($12M) to transport our weapons to Ukrainian troops on the...

www.timebomb2000.com

ALERT - The Winds of War Blow in Korea and The Far East

Donald Trump defends North Korea’s ‘not happy’ Kim Jong-un after missile launches: ‘he feels threatened’ Trump said Kim was ‘not happy’ with ‘extremely expensive and provocative’ US-South Korea military drills that Seoul ‘pays us very little to do’ The former US president has claimed...

www.timebomb2000.com

And more to link......

Housecarl · Mar 4, 2023

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Africa Focus Group of Global Coalition against ISIS warns against threats of separatist groups – The North Africa Post

northafricapost.com

Africa Focus Group of Global Coalition against ISIS warns against threats of separatist groups

North Africa Post
March 3, 2023 5:23 pm

The Global Coalition against Daesh Africa Focus Group, co-chaired by Morocco, the United States, Italy and Niger, has voiced deep concern over the impact of the proliferation of non-State actors on efforts to counter ISIS in Africa.

In a joint statement released following its meeting held March 1-2 in Niamey (Niger), participants said the proliferation of separatist movements in Africa destabilizes certain African states and creates conditions on the ground that ultimately favor Daesh and other terrorist and violent extremist organizations.

The Africa Focus Group is African member-led and represents a collaborative, civilian-focused counterterrorism effort intended to enhance the counterterrorism capabilities of African members of the global coalition against Daesh.

In Niamey, 38 Coalition members and observers participated in a two-day Africa Focus Group meeting that highlighted various counter-Daesh initiatives on the continent, facilitated regional-based discussion on addressing the ISIS threat and identifying gaps in counterterrorism capabilities in the Coastal West African states, the Sahel region, East Africa, and Central and Southern Africa.

The Group endorsed the Africa Focus Group Action Plan that committed the Global Coalition to strengthen border security, collect biometrics of known and suspected terrorists, protect and utilize battlefield evidence, counter ISIS propaganda & recruitment and counter terrorist financing.

The Africa Focus Group meeting and the Co-Chairs affirmed that the Global Coalition against Daesh remains committed to confronting and defeating ISIS in Africa and elsewhere in the world, wherever it operates.

US Deputy Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Ian J. McCary, who took part in the meeting, praised, Morocco’s efforts in the global coalition against Daech, and stressed that Morocco is a model in the fight against terrorism and extremist ideologies and a pioneering partner of the United States.

Morocco made a lot of success in the fight against terrorism. It is a model to be followed, said McCary.

The Africa Focus Group aims to enhance the fight against ISIS by engaging with interested global Coalition members, coordinating with other regional and multilateral entities on existing initiatives on countering ISIS terrorism financing, supporting stabilization efforts in liberated areas, deterring foreign terrorist fighter flows and countering ISIS violent extremist messaging to vulnerable populations.

Housecarl · Mar 4, 2023

Hummmm.........

Posted for fair use....

UN report: Modern weapons being smuggled to Haiti from US

Increasingly sophisticated weapons are being trafficked into Haiti mainly from the United States and especially from Florida amid worsening lawlessness in the impoverished Caribbean nation, according to a U.N. report released Friday. The report by the Vienna-based Office on Drugs and Crime said...

news.yahoo.com

UN report: Modern weapons being smuggled to Haiti from US

EDITH M. LEDERER
Fri, March 3, 2023 at 10:35 PM PST

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Increasingly sophisticated weapons are being trafficked into Haiti mainly from the United States and especially from Florida amid worsening lawlessness in the impoverished Caribbean nation, according to a U.N. report released Friday.

The report by the Vienna-based Office on Drugs and Crime said a network of criminal actors including members of the Haitian diaspora “often source firearms from across the U.S.” and smuggle them into Haiti illegally by land from the neighboring Dominican Republic, by air including to clandestine airstrips, but most frequently by sea.

“Popular handguns selling for $400-$500 at federally licensed firearms outlets or private gun shows in the U.S. can be resold for as much as $10,000 in Haiti,” the report said. “Higher-powered rifles such as AK47s, AR15s and Galils are typically in higher demand from gangs, commanding correspondingly higher prices.”

The U.S Department of Homeland Security’s investigations unit reported “a surge in firearms trafficking from Florida to Haiti between 2021 and 2022” and a spokesman described the recovery of increasingly sophisticated weapons destined for Haitian ports “including .50 caliber sniper rifles, .308 rifles, and even belt-fed machine guns,” according to the report.

“Weapons are frequently procured through straw man purchases in U.S. states with looser gun laws and fewer purchasing restrictions” and then transported to Florida where they are concealed inside consumer products, electronic equipment, garment linings, frozen food items and even the hull of freighters, it said. “On arrival in Haiti, including major hubs such as Port-de-Paix and Port-au-Prince, cargo is offloaded and passed on to end-users via a host of intermediaries.”

The 47-page report, entitled “Haiti’s Criminal Markets: Mapping Trends in Firearms and Drug Trafficking,” cites the challenges of patrolling 1,771 kilometers (1,100 miles) of Haiti's coastline and a 392-kilometer (243-mile) border with the Dominican Republic with national police, border and coast guard operations that are severely under-staffed, under-resourced and “increasingly targeted by gangs.”

The heavily-armed gangs are also targeting ports, highways, critical infrastructure, customs offices, police stations, court houses, prisons, businesses and neighborhoods, the report said. And throughout 2022 and early 2023 they have expanded their control over key access points to cities including the capital Port-au-Prince.

“Many are also engaged in predatory behavior in communities under their control contributing to rising levels of extortion, sexual violence, kidnapping and fatal violence,” it said, citing an increase in homicides from 1,615 in 2021 to 2,183 in 2022, and a doubling of kidnappings from 664 to 1,359 during the same period.

The U.N. report said private security companies in Haiti are permitted to buy and keep arms, and while independent verification isn’t possible “specialists speculate that there could be 75,000 to 90,000 individuals working with roughly 100 private security companies across the country, at least five times the number of registered police officers.”

According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Haiti has long been a trans-shipment hub to move cocaine, cannabis and to a lesser extent heroin and amphetamines to the United States and the Dominican Republic. The drugs mostly enter the country via boat or plane, arriving through public, private and informal ports as well as clandestine runways.

During the 2000s, the report said, drug traffickers moved illegal airstrips from the outskirts of Port-au-Prince northward to more isolated areas including Savane Diane, roughly 50 miles north of the capital.

When then-President Jovenal Moïse ordered the destruction of suspected clandestine airstrips in June 2021, UNODC said “local authorities refused.” A week later, he was assassinated.

Since the assassination, U.N. officials said gangs have grown more powerful, and gang violence has reached a level not seen in decades. In December, the U.N. estimated that gangs controlled 60% of Haiti’s capital, but most people on the streets in Port-au-Prince say that number is closer to 100%.

In late February, the U.N. condemned a new surge of gang violence in central Haiti.

Haiti was stripped of all democratically elected institutions when the terms of the remaining 10 senators expired in early January. No elections are on the horizon and Prime Minister Ariel Henry continues to plead for the deployment of foreign troops, a request first made in October. The international community has instead opted to impose sanctions and send military equipment and other resources.

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On the Web: https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/toc/Haiti_assessment_UNODC.pdf

Housecarl · Mar 4, 2023

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US adds $5 million bounty to the Islamic State’s leader in the DRC | FDD's Long War Journal

Musa Baluku, the leader of the Islamic State's Central Africa Province (known locally as the Allied Democratic Forces), has joins other infamous Sunni jihadists actively sought after by the United States government.

www.longwarjournal.org

US adds $5 million bounty to the Islamic State’s leader in the DRC

BY CALEB WEISS | March 3, 2023 | caleb.weiss07@gmail.com | @Caleb_Weiss7

Yesterday, the United States’ State Department’s Rewards for Justice program placed a $5 million bounty on Musa Baluku, the emir of the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The group is known locally as the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF.

Using the U.S. government’s preferred nomenclature for the group, the Rewards for Justice poster notes that “under [Seka] Musa Baluku’s leadership, ISIS-DRC targets, kills, maims, rapes, and commits other sexual violence and engages in abduction of civilians, including children. The group also recruits and uses children during attacks and for forced labor in the DRC’s Beni territory.”

Baluku, a Ugandan national who first joined the ADF in the mid-1990s, has been twice sanctioned by the United States. In 2019, Baluku, alongside five other prominent commanders of the group, were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department under the Global Magnitsky Act for human rights abuses.

And in 2021, Baluku was sanctioned by the U.S. State Department as a global terrorist alongside the ADF for its relationship as an affiliate of the Islamic State.

Prior to becoming the overall leader of the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province (ISCAP), Baluku was the chief qadi, or Islamic judge, of the group where he first earned a reputation for violence and extremism.

After rising to become the group’s emir in 2015, Baluku oversaw the ADF’s transition to become an Islamic State affiliate and has since presided over an unprecedented level of violence and expansion: ISCAP has killed over 4,000 civilians in the last four years and has grown its area of operations inside the DRC by over 400%.

Baluku’s threat is not just limited to the DRC. The terrorist leader has become an integral part of the Islamic State’s networks in East, Central, and Southern Africa. Baluku’s group is also responsible for attacks inside Uganda, including the November 2021 triple suicide bombing in Kampala, as well as thwarted bomb threats in Rwanda.

With financial and logistical networks that reach into Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, and down to southern Africa, as well as fighters from across the region who have flocked to ISCAP, the group poses a significant regional terrorist threat.

Multiple informed sources have also reported to the author that Baluku previously held a leadership role over the Islamic State’s affiliate in Mozambique. Baluku purportedly helped resolve internal disputes and provided guidance that helped the Mozambique branch become its own province for the Islamic State in May 2022 (the Mozambique faction was previously one half of a combined ISCAP with the ADF).

The jihadist leader has also coordinated his activities with the Islamic State’s leadership in Somalia, particularly Abdul Qadir Mu’min and recently killed Bilal al-Sudani. Islamic State Somalia hosts the Al-Karrar regional office, which helps oversee and coordinate the Islamic State’s activities across Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa.

Baluku’s relationship with the Islamic State Somalia leadership has made him instrumental in plotting the Islamic State’s expansion across much of the continent.

With the new bounty placed on his head, Musa Baluku now joins other infamous Sunni jihadists belonging to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State who are actively sought after by the United States government.

Caleb Weiss is an editor of FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.

Housecarl · Mar 4, 2023

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A Lack of Machine Tools Is Holding Back Ammo Production, Army Says

The U.S. has enough raw materials, but the heavy equipment used to make artillery shells aren’t easy to buy.

www.defenseone.com

A Lack of Machine Tools Is Holding Back Ammo Production, Army Says

The U.S. has enough raw materials, but the heavy equipment used to make artillery shells aren’t easy to buy.

SAM SKOVE | MARCH 3, 2023

A lack of machine tools is constraining the United State's ability to ramp up ammunition transfers to Ukraine, the Army's top weapons buyer said March 3.

The timeline for acquiring new machine tools “are often the long poles in the tent on getting capacity increased,” said Douglas Bush, assistant Army secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. “These machines are the size of buildings. You don’t just go buy it from a parking lot somewhere.”

U.S. and allied production of artillery ammunition has emerged as a key problem in supplying Ukraine, which burns through thousands of shells a day fighting Russia’s invasion. Ukraine may lose the war if it doesn’t receive enough supplies, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrel said Feb. 20.

Obtaining the raw materials might be a problem eventually, but not yet, Bush said at an event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The U.S. already maintains large stockpiles of some key raw materials, such as the precursor chemicals for explosives, Bush said. But how much of other raw materials the U.S. should keep in reserve is an open question. “The issue is really stockpiling, Bush said, “It’s really a question of how much you can afford to do.”

The U.S. has no shortage of raw materials used for artillery shell manufacture, Bush added, citing more than adequate supplies of steel.

Bush also pointed to allied production capabilities as potentially taking the stress off of U.S. manufacturing, noting Polish interest in manufacturing the Javelin—an anti-tank guided missile—and Australian interest in manufacturing precision-guided munitions.

The U.S. has already supplied large amounts of artillery ammunition to Ukraine, sending more than a million 155mm rounds, according to research by Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The ammunition feeds artillery pieces donated to Ukraine by the U.S. and NATO allies. On Friday, the Department of Defense announced another tranche of military aid to Ukraine that includes 155mm artillery rounds.

U.S. officials said in April 2022 that they were ramping up production of 155mm shells, the most common caliber of the U.S. and NATO-ally artillery guns sent to Ukraine. Production is set to rise to 20,000 shells per month by spring 2023, and 40,000 per month by 2025, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said.

Even that rate, though, may not be enough to support Ukraine and keep U.S. inventories prepped for other wars across the globe. “This could become a crisis,” Cancian wrote.

TammyinWI · Mar 4, 2023

2,700 Tractors Bring Brussels to a Standstill Amid ‘Climate Change’ Alarmism Push

By American Faith 16 hours ago

Angry farmers in Belgium have blocked traffic in Brussels with hundreds of tractors, protesting against a plan to cut nitrate levels which “climate change” proponents have called for.

The move comes as the debate over alleged agricultural pollution is becoming a political issue in many European Union (EU) farming nations.

According to the Brussels police, the BB farmers union and several others brought more than 2,700 farm vehicles from Belgium’s northern region of Flanders to the capital city, leading to the closure of several major roads, Fox News reports.

Police have warned that disruptions could last until the end of the day and have recommended that people use public transportation instead of personal cars.

“We are all convinced that something has to change nitrogen-wise, but the agricultural sector should not be treated differently to the industrial sector”, protester Leen Engelen said, referring to one of the disputed points in the draft bill, Reuters reports.

“Our sector is already making a lot of effort and is willing to do so as well, but (the government) expects more and more from us while the industry sector is also expanding”, said farm owner Liesje Van Loon.

The debate over agricultural pollution has become a political issue in many of the EU’s farming nations, with environmentalists increasingly pitted against the agricultural lobby.

The issue is set to be a focal point of Dutch elections in two weeks’ time and is also affecting Belgium, another EU nation where intensive farming has put environmentalists against farmers.

Climate activists have yet to address the apparent bias that goes into which dates they select for global temperature comparisons, periods of global “cooling,” how much warming is acceptable before disaster strikes, and what percent decrease in CO2 emissions will achieve their desired decrease in temperature, as outlined by Eugene Slaven.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1631649700121305090

View: https://twitter.com/joophazenberg/status/1631649700121305090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1631649700121305090%7Ctwgr%5E3a6b6ea6395b18cbdf133e04bd653dcb92a2f61e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Famericanfaith.com%2F2700-tractors-bring-brussels-to-a-standstill-amid-climate-change-alarmism-push%2F

2,700 Tractors Bring Brussels to a Standstill Amid 'Climate Change' Alarmism Push - American Faith

Climate activists have yet to address the apparent bias that goes into which dates they select for global temperature comparisons, periods of global "cooling," how much warming is acceptable before disaster strikes, nor what percent decrease in CO2 emissions will achieve their desired decrease...

americanfaith.com

Housecarl · Mar 5, 2023

Hummmm........

Posted for fair use.....

Netanyahu rebuffs nuclear watchdog chief's remarks against possible attack on Iran

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www.haaretz.com

Haaretz | Middle East News

Netanyahu Rebuffs UN Nuclear Watchdog Chief's Remarks Against Possible Attack on Iran

The Israeli prime minister rejected the United Nations nuclear watchdog chief's comment that any Israeli or US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be illegal, stating Israel has the right to defend itself

Israel rebuffed as "unworthy" on Sunday comments by the UN nuclear watchdog chief that any Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be illegal.

Having visited Tehran in a bid to loosen deadlocked talks on renewing its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, International Atomic Energy Agency chairman Raphael Grossi on Saturday said "any military attack on nuclear facilities is outlawed."

He was responding to a reporter's question about threats by Israel and the United States to attack Iran's nuclear facilities if they deem diplomacy meant to deny it the bomb to be at a dead end.

"Raphael Grossi is a worthy person who made an unworthy remark," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in televised remarks on Sunday.

"Outside what law? Is it permissible for Iran, which openly calls for our destruction, to organize the tools of slaughter for our destruction? Are we forbidden from defending ourselves? We are obviously permitted to do this."

The IAEA said on Saturday that Grossi had received sweeping assurances from Iran that it will assist a long-stalled investigation into uranium particles found at undeclared sites and reinstall removed monitoring equipment.

Rafael Grossi began meetings in Tehran on Friday that diplomats said were meant to push Iran to cooperate with an IAEA investigation into uranium traces found at undeclared sites that had been enriched close to nuclear-weapons grade.

His visit comes amid contacts with Tehran on the origin of the uranium particles enriched to up to 83.7% purity, very close to the 90% threshold for weaponization, at its underground Fordow enrichment plant, according to a report by the UN nuclear watchdog seen by Reuters.

jward · Mar 6, 2023

China hints at carrier-borne airpower breakthrough

Gabriel Honrada

China’s Fujian air wing is slowly taking shape, possibly making it the first carrier worldwide capable of launching 5th-generation stealth fighters from its decks.
This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China might be preparing to deploy a new stealth fighter or perhaps a stealth drone from its Fujian aircraft carrier, incrementally building the combat capabilities of its third carrier and flagship naval vessel.

SCMP mentions a recruitment video for People’s Liberation Army–Navy (PLA-N) showing a pilot walking towards the figure of an unidentified stealth aircraft or drone, which could be the J-31/FC-31 stealth fighter or an FH-97A Loyal Wingman drone.
The report notes that the J-31/ FC-31 will complement the J-15, China’s only carrier-based fighter. It also mentions that the J-31 will be used for air supremacy missions due to its stealth characteristics, while the J-15 will be limited to ground and sea attacks.

However, the report notes that both the J-31/FC-31 and the Fujian are still not combat-ready, with the J-31/FC-31 still undergoing ground tests and the Fujian expected to perform sea trials later this year.
Given the J-31/FC-31’s design history, Aviacionline notes in a January 2023 article that the aircraft was the product of China’s espionage campaign 12 years ago, which managed to steal several terabytes of confidential information about US systems including blueprints and other relevant data about the F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters.
The report says that the J-31 builds on this captured information and takes clear design cues from the F-35, with a one-piece cockpit, infrared search and track (IRST), electro-optical targeting system (EOTS) and crew boarding ladder.
Aviacionline notes that China’s J-31/FC-31 has a 2,000-kilometer estimated range, maximum takeoff weight of 28 tons, an operational ceiling of 15 kilometers and a top speed of Mach 1.8 or 2,205 kilometers per hour.

The J-31 in a promotional display at a Chinese air show in a file photo. Image: Twitter
The J-31/ FC-31 has an internal weapons bay with a 2,268-kilogram capacity for six air-to-air missiles or air-to-ground armaments, with the option to carry additional weapons on six external hardpoints.
Moreover, Aviacionline reports that a naval version of the J-31/FC-31 is under development and has been designated the J-35. According to the report, the J-35 appears to be a larger J-31/FC-31, with greater fuel capacity, refined stealth shaping and the necessary equipment for carrier operations such as a tail arresting hook, folding wings and reinforced landing gear.

In a November 2022 article, Aviacionline notes that the FH-97A Loyal Wingman drone is an AI-powered unmanned stealth aircraft designed to complement the J-20 stealth fighter. Unlike other loyal wingman drones, the stealthy FH-97A has a 1,000-kilometer range with a six-hour maximum flight time, the article says.
Aviacionline says that the FH-97A is designed for air-to-air operations, noting that it has a front-mounted EOTS and internal weapons bay for six infrared air-to-air missiles. Apart from air-to-air roles, the report mentions that it can perform secondary missions such as surveillance, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) and electronic warfare.
The source also says that considerations are being made to develop a carrier-based FH-97A variant featuring in-flight refueling capability.

These developments underscore the increasing importance of aircraft carriers in China’s overall naval strategy, addressing the capability gap between “near seas defense” and “far seas protection.”
Jennifer Rice and Erik Robb note in a February 2021 article for the US Naval War College that China’s near seas defense strategy, which was first advocated in the 1980s by then-PLA-N Commander in Chief Liu Huaqing, is concerned with defending territorial sovereignty, maritime rights and interests and aims to win “informationized” local wars in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea and within the First Island Chain.
However, Rice and Robb note the limitations of China’s near seas defense strategy, stating that it keeps China hemmed inside the First Island Chain, needs to be revised to address US rebalancing to Asia and is not in line with China’s expanding global economic interests.

The writers say that in 2019 China expanded its naval strategy to include far seas protection, noting that China’s growing global interests such as its Maritime Silk Road (MSR) require a navy with global force projection capabilities.
In addition, they note China’s current far seas operations are in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific, and that it is developing new operational concepts to operate in those areas. They also suggest that deploying the PLA-N on far seas deployments is essential to maintaining China’s image as a great power.
China’s Fujian aircraft carrier. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

China understands the strategic value of aircraft carriers and their firepower in implementing its naval strategies. However, China’s aircraft carrier ambitions face significant challenges ahead.
As Edward Sing Yue Chan noted in a July 2022 article for The China Story, the PLA-N lacks relevant modern combat experience, with its last engagement being the 1988 Johnston Reef skirmish against Vietnam. Chan also notes that while the PLA-N has exceeded the US Navy in ship numbers, it still lags and needs to compete in terms of operational experience, technology and capability.

Chan highlights China’s geopolitical challenges, noting that it is blocked by Japan, Taiwan the Philippines, India, and the US from power projection beyond the near seas and that its territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas make regional states view its naval modernization program as a threat.

China hints at carrier-borne airpower breakthrough

jward · Mar 7, 2023

Japan's H3 rocket ordered to self-destruct after liftoff: JAXA

March 7, 2023 (Mainichi Japan)

MINAMITANE, Japan (Kyodo) -- Japan's new flagship H3 rocket lifted off Tuesday for the first time but was ordered to self-destruct minutes later, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

The launch failure came after a string of delays including one last month in which a launch attempt was aborted moments before blastoff.

The successor to the country's reliable H2A rocket was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island in the southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima on Tuesday morning as scheduled.

However, it was not possible to confirm from JAXA footage whether the H3's second-stage engine ignited.

Japan's new flagship H3 rocket launch fails, ordered to self-destruct - The Mainichi

MINAMITANE, Kagoshima (Kyodo) -- Japan's new flagship H3 rocket lifted off Tuesday for the first time but was ordered to self-destruct minutes later a

mainichi.jp

jward · Mar 7, 2023

Strengthening Sahelian Counterinsurgency Strategy

By Michael Shurkin

Adapting Sahelian force structures to lighter, more mobile, and integrated units will better support the population-centric COIN practices needed to reverse the escalating trajectory of violent extremist attacks.

Highlights

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have experienced a near uninterrupted expansion in militant Islamist violence over the past decade, underscoring the need for an alternative security strategy. Central to this is the recognition that these violent extremist groups employ irregular tactics and operate as local insurgencies, requiring a sustained counterinsurgency campaign.
Elevating the effectiveness of Sahelian forces will require a more integrated, mobile, and population-centric force structure bolstered by enhanced logistical and air support capabilities.
Building positive relations with local populations is not just a question of morality or legitimacy but also an essential means of weakening support to insurgents.

Militant Islamist violence in the Sahel is accelerating faster than in any other region in Africa. After nearly a decade of conflict, violent events in the Sahel (specifically Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger) are surging—with a 140-percent increase since 2020 and no signs of abatement. Militant Islamist group violence against civilians in the Sahel represents 60 percent of all such violence in Africa and is projected to increase by more than 40 percent in 2022.1 This uninterrupted escalation of violence has displaced more than 2.5 million people and is on pace to kill more than 8,000 individuals in 2022 (see Figure 1).

ASB41 Figure 1: Violence Linked to Militant Islamist Groups in the Sahel

Government control over the vast rugged territory has diminished over the years, revealing an inability to sustain pressure on militant Islamist groups and to provide security for communities. Sahelian security forces have suffered heavy losses in the conflict. Militants have successfully targeted security and defense forces in their attacks throughout Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Superior mobility and intelligence capabilities have allowed the militant groups to overrun static military bases, resulting in hundreds of casualties among armed forces. Military coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, moreover, have diverted precious attention and resources from the fight, allowing militants to gain momentum and expand. In 2021, a record 73 administrative districts witnessed violent events associated with militant Islamist groups, up from 35 districts in 2017 (see Figure 2).

The conflicts in the Sahel are complex and cannot be reduced to any single factor. The deteriorating security environment, nevertheless, highlights the need to reexamine and recalibrate the strategy Sahelian countries employ for their security forces to confront this growing threat. At its core, this requires recognizing that Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger face local insurgencies (rather than isolated terrorist threats). Consequently, reshaping security forces specifically for counterinsurgency is paramount to stabilizing the Sahel. This implies several important changes with respect to military capabilities, doctrine, and force structure as well as the place of armies in the larger context of justice and law enforcement.

ASB41 Figure 2: Spreading and Intensifying Militant Islamist Violence in the Sahel

Please see source for the rest of the analysis and a d/l PDF
Click here for a printable PDF.

Strengthening Sahelian Counterinsurgency Strategy – Africa Center for Strategic Studies

Lighter, more mobile, and integrated units will better support counterinsurgency practices needed to reverse extremist attacks in the Sahel.

africacenter.org

jward · Mar 7, 2023

james crabtree
@jamescrabtree
Mar 6
Excellent new @IISS_org report on pretty much the most important issue in global security at the moment: deterrence and possible Taiwan contingency scenarios by @HoansSolo, @MeiaNouwens and Henry Boyd.
Report here:

https://iiss.org/blogs/research

Franz-Stefan Gady
@HoansSolo
Mar 3
Three scenarios, respectively set in 2027, 2032 and 2037, all posit a decision by Beijing to undertake large-scale military action against Taiwan, but against a backdrop of differing domestic and international political situations.

Deterrence Failure in a Cross-Strait Conflict: The Role of Alliances, Military Balance and Emerging Technology

Both regionally and globally, governments and researchers consider Taiwan to be a growing source of contention between China and the United States, with the possibility of armed confrontation or conflict in the near future mounting. Understanding the factors that might contribute to, or deter, any decision by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to employ military force on a large scale and how they interact with each other remains challenging due to the largely opaque nature of high-level decision-making within the CCP.

This report reflects on discussions by regional and extra-regional experts at a contingency scenario workshop convened by the IISS in late 2022. Three scenarios, respectively set in 2027, 2032 and 2037, all posit a decision by Beijing to undertake large-scale military action against Taiwan, but against a backdrop of differing domestic and international political situations, focussing on the role of three key variables in possible cross-Strait deterrence failure: the role of alliances, conventional military balance, and integration of emerging technologies. While the workshop and report do not aim to be predictive, cross-comparisons of responses to all three scenarios for each variable offer overarching thoughts for government, industry and academia.

The status of Taiwan as a major potential flashpoint between China and the United States and the possibility of a large-scale military confrontation over the island in the near future are now widely acknowledged by Indo-Pacific and extra-regional governments and researchers. Following the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has devoted significant time and resources into modernising and increasing the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army for high-intensity war fighting. In October 2022, at the 20th National Congress of the CCP, President Xi Jinping emphasised that, although ‘Peaceful Reunification’ remained the CCP’s preferred approach, China ‘will never promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary’.

High-level decision-making within the CCP remains largely opaque. Understanding the factors that might contribute to, or deter, any decision by the CCP to employ military force on a large scale and how they interact with each other, therefore, remains quite challenging. Three hypothetical scenarios of deterrence failure were presented at an IISS workshop of subject matter experts held in late 2022. These scenarios, respectively set in 2027, 2032 and 2037, all posit a decision by Beijing to undertake large-scale military action against Taiwan, but against the backdrop of differing domestic and international political situations. For all three scenarios, participants presented feedback on how plausible and logical they found the behaviour of key actors, with a particular focus on how these were shaped by three key variables.

This report presents overviews of each scenario discussed at the workshop, and reflections by participants in each discussion round on the relative importance of each variable considered for Beijing’s perceptions. While the workshop and report do not aim to be predictive, cross-comparisons of responses to all three scenarios for each variable offer some overarching thoughts.

Alliances:

• US and allied access to basing should not be taken for granted and further diplomatic efforts to guarantee this prior to the outbreak of hostilities should be a priority.

• It is unclear how Beijing might react to US aircraft or vessels delivering military supplies to facilities in otherwise neutral third states for onward distribution to stand-in forces operating around Taiwan.

• Widespread support from allies and partners would be crucial to any attempt by Washington to organise a policy of denial by economic punishment, but is not guaranteed.

• The direct military contributions of allies and partners will probably be less significant in their deterrent effect.

• Greater discussion between the US and allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and Europe is, therefore, necessary in order to align political, economic or military responses to a Taiwan contingency.

Conventional Military Balance:

• The military balance is likely to play a necessary but not sufficient role in deterring large-scale military action by China across the period covered.

• Beijing’s perceptions of Taiwan’s will to fight a sustained campaign and its capability to do so would almost certainly be a significant factor in its calculus of potential military options.

• Increased investments in the US military’s own short when it comes to the prototyping, testing, survivable/attritable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and stocks of standoff munitions would also serve to increase the credibility of a US intervention.

• An escalatory cycle resulting from miscalculation on one or both sides will remain a plausible risk factor throughout the period covered.

• More detailed comparative study is needed of systems-destruction warfare and joint all-domain operations in Chinese and US military thinking about the future of warfare, including an attempt at sketching possible technological milestones that need to be achieved to operationalise both concepts. Emerging Technologies: The timeframe of 15 years for the three scenarios, each separated by a span of five years, is extremely evaluating and eventual introduction of new weapons systems and platforms into the respective armed forces of China, Taiwan and the US.

• Technological change will likely be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, be primarily driven by the private sector and need to be accompanied by the associated novel-operational concepts and force-structure changes.

• Perceptions of future advantage or disadvantage resulting from the development of emerging military technological capabilities may have a significant impact on Beijing’s risk calculus.

• There is also a possibility that autonomous platforms with humans out-of-the-loop cause inadvertent escalation and contribute to the breakdown of deterrence, particularly in domains with low transparency.

Deterrence Failure in a Cross-Strait Conflict: The Role of Alliances, Military Balance and Emerging Technology

www.iiss.org

jward · Mar 7, 2023

"US Is Not Yet Ready For Great Power Conflict", Yet Still Plots Against China; WSJ

by Tyler Durden

Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,
A vivid scene came in my first year Harvard MBA course, Business, Government and the International Economy, taught in my section by George C. Lodge, son of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. George Lodge said he still remembered the day in 1968 when he realized there were limits to US power, that we could not fight a war on poverty, send a man to the moon, and fight a ground war in Asia at the same time.

The lack of that insight still seems widespread inside the Beltway, with belief in American omnipotence renewed by the fall of the USSR and then the further decline of Russia in the 1990s.
Under a story initially published with a page-wide banner headline, The US is Not Yet Ready for the Era of “Great Power’ Conflict. The article curiously omits that it is the US that has been fomenting these clashes. And even though the URL banner on the article proper reads, The US is Not Yet Ready for the Era of “Great Power’ Conflict with China and Russia, the piece treats Russia dismissively, in passing, and treats escalating with China as a perfectly reasonable thing to do, not just now. We’ll turn to Russia in due course, particularly in light of Ukraine deciding Monday to try to break into the Bakhmut cauldron.

If you read the article carefully, you’ll see the reverse, that any meaningful improvement in US preparedness against China is based on hopium, like the US developing, manufacturing, and deploying new weapons that are on the drawing board or in early stages. Similarly, it fails to admit a huge weakness in the US dealing with China: that our Navy is badly overinvested in the floating pork known as aircraft carriers. Informed observers like Scott Ritter has said China has the capability to take them out without too much difficulty if they get within menacing range. Sinking only one aircraft carrier would result in roughly 6000 deaths, a humiliation the US would not tolerate. Ritter has long worried that our response would be to fire a tactical nuke at the Chinese hinterlands. Ritter is certain that China would immediately light up the entire US West Coast.
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The point of this article may be to provide cover for a minor US de-escalatory move with China: that rather than having new House Speaker stir the Taiwan independence pot as Nancy Pelosi did with a visit to the island, the Taiwanese leader will instead come to the US to meet McCarthy.

Note the article repeats the CIA claim that China intends to invade Taiwan by 2027. Ex CIA analyst Larry Johnson has warned that the agency has outsourced a tremendous amount of its purported intelligence-gathering, which in Ukraine has resulted in the government retailing Ukraine propaganda. There’s no reason to think China will invade even it decides it has had enough. A blockade would do. That would also put the US, in the eyes of the international community, as being the aggressor were it to try to do anything about it, since just about no one recognizes Taiwan.

The belief among cynics was the CIA (or its pro-Taiwan sources) focused on 2027 as close to the end of the window when the US could challenge China over Taiwan, in light of the growth of the Chinese economy and among other things, its ship-building capability. But this piece implicitly throws cold water on this timeline and keeps hammering at the idea that the US can surpass China, when there’s no reason to think we can create and deploy a whole bunch of new-gen systems and upgrade our forces too.

The article is also heavily anecdotal, generally not a good sign in a story on a “hard” topic like geopolitics. It start with an Air Force lieutenant general realizing as a result of 2018 wargames that China had enough missiles to do serious damage to US bases in the region. It ominously continues:

Five years ago…the U.S. started tackling a new era of great-power competition with China and Russia. It isn’t yet ready, and there are major obstacles in the way….
Corporate consolidation across the American defense industry has left the Pentagon with fewer arms manufacturers. Shipyards are struggling to produce the submarines the Navy says it needs to counter China’s larger naval fleet, and weapon designers are rushing to catch up with China and Russia in developing superfast hypersonic missiles.
When the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies ran a wargame last year that simulated a Chinese amphibious attack on Taiwan, the U.S. side ran out of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles within a week.
The military is struggling to meet recruitment goals, with Americans turned off by the long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially leaving the all-volunteer force short of manpower. Plans to position more forces within striking range of China are still a work in progress

Yet it lards that sober message with faith in eventual success via vaporware or hopium:

The U.S. military is still more capable than its main adversaries. The Chinese have their own obstacles in developing the capability to carry out a large-scale amphibious assault, while the weaknesses of Russia’s military have been exposed in Ukraine….
New tactics have been devised to disperse U.S. forces and make them less of an inviting target for China’s increasingly powerful missiles.
The Pentagon’s annual budget for research and development has been boosted to $140 billion—an all time high. The military is pursuing cutting-edge technology it hopes will enable the military services to share targeting data instantaneously so that U.S. air, land, sea and space forces, operating over thousands of miles, can act in unison, a current challenge….
Many of the cutting-edge weapons systems the Pentagon believes will tilt the battlefield in its favor won’t be ready until the 2030s, raising the risk that China may be tempted to act before the U.S. effort bears fruit.

We’ll interrupt this recap to point out that the US bizarrely assumes it will be able to gain meaningful ground on China, that China will either stand still or not progress as quickly. Yet if you look at the ASPI critical technologies study we cited yesterday, you will see China dominates in categories relevant to military hardware and battlefield coordination: advanced materials and manufacturing; artificial intelligence, computing and communications; defense, space, robotics, and transportation.
Back to the Journal:

Deterring China from invading Taiwan, a longstanding U.S. partner that Beijing claims as Chinese territory, defines the challenge….The U.S. needed to demonstrate it could prevent Beijing from seizing the island in the first place—a requirement included in the Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy issued in 2022…
A more recent wargame conducted by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff showed the U.S. could stymie a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and force a stalemate if the conflict was fought later in the decade, although high casualties on both sides would result. That simulation assumed that the U.S. would have the benefit of new weapons, tactics and military deployments that are currently being planned at the Pentagon.

So the US will only be able to fight China to a draw if US new wunderfaffen become operational soon enough and the US succeeds in executing a major revamp too.
More on capability-building:

The Army, which saw its electronic warfare, short-range air defense and engineering capabilities atrophy amid budget pressures and the previous decades’ wars, is moving to develop a new generation of weapons systems that can strike targets at much longer ranges. It is planning to deploy a new hypersonic missile in the fall though its utility against Chinese forces will depend on securing basing rights in the Pacific.
The Navy, which is confronting budget pressures, personnel shortages and limits to American shipbuilding capacity, is currently planning to expand its fleet to at least 355 crewed ships, a size still smaller than China’s current navy. In the near term, the U.S. will have around 290 ships.

A CBO report dated January 31, 2023 is much less bullish about hypersonic missiles, including their combat-ready date:

CBO reached the following conclusions:

Technological challenges must still be overcome to field hypersonic missiles. The fundamental remaining challenge involves managing the extreme heat that hypersonic missiles are exposed to by traveling at high speeds in the atmosphere for most of their flight (unlike cruise missiles, which fly in the atmosphere at lower speeds, or ballistic missiles, which mainly fly above the atmosphere). Shielding hypersonic missiles’ sensitive electronics, understanding how various materials perform, and predicting aerodynamics at sustained temperatures as high as 3,000° Fahrenheit require extensive flight testing. Tests are ongoing, but failures in recent years have delayed progress.
Both hypersonic and ballistic missiles are well-suited to operate outside potential adversaries’ antiaccess and area-denial (A2/AD), or “keep-out,” zones. The Department of Defense has developed a strategy to use accurate, long-range, high-speed missiles early in a conflict to neutralize the A2/AD zones being developed by potential adversaries, such as China and Russia. Both hypersonic missiles and ballistic missiles equipped with maneuverable warheads could provide the combination of speed, accuracy, range, and survivability (the ability to reach a target without being intercepted) that would be useful in the military scenarios CBO considered. However, many missions do not require such rapid strikes. For those missions, less costly alternatives to both hypersonic and ballistic missiles exist, including subsonic cruise missiles. Hypersonic weapons would mainly be useful to address threats that were both well-defended and extremely time-sensitive.

Click to expand...

Again to the Journal:

The general [Clint Hinote] has pushed to equip cargo planes with cruise missiles to boost allied firepower, the use of high-altitude balloons to carry sensors and electric “flying cars” to carry people and equipment throughout the Pacific island chains—ideas that have led to experiments but so far no procurement decisions.
He thinks a future Air Force could rely more on autonomous, uncrewed aircraft and deploy fewer fighters.

Mind you, Russia went down that path a long, long time ago, resulting its layered offensive missiles and its best-in-breed air defense systems.
The cheery closing thought, from Hinote:

“I think we’ve got a recipe for blunting” a Chinese attack, he said. “I just think you have to reinvent your force to do it.”

Now if this article isn’t worrisome enough merely based on a careful reading for relying on magic technological saves or massive operational improvements, another big red flag is its few, scathing mentions of Russia. The article does acknowledge the danger of China and Russia cooperating and Russia’s strong capabilities in hypersonic missiles. But the references to Ukraine are dismissive:

…the weaknesses of Russia’s military have been exposed in Ukraine….
A conflict in the Western Pacific might also give Russia’s military, which has been badly battered in Ukraine, the confidence to carry out President Vladimir Putin’s goals of reviving Russian power in what it believes to be its traditional sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe.

Mind you, I do not believe this take is entirely or even mainly the result of Pentagon spokescritters hewing to the party line. My impression is most of them believe it. We discussed the latest Defense Intelligence Agency’s Worldwide Threat Assessment, particularly regarding its underestimation of Russia. If we can’t get that right, when we’ve been trying to gin up a war with them since 2014, why should we have any more confidence in our assessment of China?
The US is managing to talk itself into a different type of delusion with respect to Russia. Remember the Anthony Blinken interview with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, which was widely depicted as presenting a peace plan? In

jward · Mar 7, 2023

fact it did no such thing. It was a formula for keeping the conflict going, just at a lower boil. As we wrote:

The Blinken/State vision seems to be:
US and NATO support Ukraine > *Magic* > War ends > US and NATO support Ukraine

We and others have speculated that Blinken’s peace gestures are insincere, merely to appease various constituencies that want to see the war end and also intended, if possible, to depict Russia as not interested in negotiating.

The latter claim is to a fair degree true, but that is due to the now-clear Western position that the most it is prepared to do is stop a hot war but continue arming Ukraine so as to restart at a convenient time. Russia recognized that it is at war with NATO and it needs a durable solution. Given the West’s stated lack of interest in a lasting peace, plus its pride over its duplicity, Russia has no choice but to keep going until it has prostrated NATO or alternatively, increased pressure on major fault lines (for instance, Douglas Macgregor has said NATO would fracture if Poland were to enter Ukraine).
Consider this section from a February Wall Street Journal story, in which NATO plans to make Ukraine an official, as opposed to de facto, NATO-lite member:

Germany, France and Britain see stronger ties between NATO and Ukraine as a way to encourage Kyiv to start peace talks with Russia later this year, officials from the three governments said, as some of Kyiv’s Western partners have growing doubts over its ability to reconquer all its territory.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week laid out a blueprint for an agreement to give Ukraine much broader access to advanced military equipment, weapons and ammunition to defend itself once the war ends…
A British official said another goal of the NATO pact would be to change the Kremlin’s calculus. If Moscow sees that the West is prepared to scale up its military assistance and commitments to Ukraine over time, it could help persuade Moscow that it can’t achieve its military objectives.

This must be one of the British officials that also believes (per British MoD press reports) that Russia has committed 97% of its armed forces to Ukraine and Wagner forces in Bakhmut are fighting with shovels
The West is completely open that it plans to keep arming Ukraine no matter what. It expects Russia to agree to a peace deal despite Ukraine being a ticking time bomb by design. It further expects Russia to negotiate when it’s becoming obvious that the US/NATO ability to supply enough artillery and equipment will drop off even further come sometime in the summer. Recall that the press has reported that Ukraine’s daily ammo fire has dropped from 3,000 to 4,000 shells to more like 2,000 and Ukraine is demanding 250,000 shells a month. Not only can the West not provide that, but even that is not enough to match Russia’s estimated 600,000 shells a month.

In addition, and due to the pressure of time, I was not able to confirm the sourcing, but in recent broadcast, Alexander Mercouris, citing a Western source (perhaps the BBC?) said Ukraine had only 300 artillery platforms, which he noted was down from about 1000 when the war started. If that it true, you can stick a fork in Ukraine. We pointed out that Russia had recently deployed a very effective counter-battery device called the Penicillin, which allowed Russia to detect the location of artillery fire using sound waves and ground impact. Unlike radar, the Penicillin does not put out signals that can be read, so it can’t be located and destroyed.

Since the Penicillin was put into production, various commentators have pointed out that Russia has been taking out many more weapons platforms. My impression from Dima at Military Summary is that the average is over 2 a day.
Even if only 2 a day, 60 platforms in a month is 1/5 of what Ukraine is alleged to have left. And as Brian Berletic has repeatedly documented, US weapons deliveries and the dollars attached to them keep falling, to the degree that the US has stopped disclosing the numbers of what it is sending, merely naming the type of weapon or support.
And so the delusion produces confused messages. Again from the February story:

President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he needed to start considering peace talks with Moscow when the three leaders met in Paris earlier this month, people familiar with the conversation said….
While London, Paris and Berlin see the possibility that Kyiv may have to seek talks with Russia after an expected counteroffensive this spring that could help it regain more territory, other Ukraine backers think there should be no negotiations as long as Russian troops remain on Ukrainian soil

Ukraine’s backers are acting like gamblers hoping they can wager their way out of big losses. No, Ukraine is not to sue for peace now. It’s to settle after a win, even if it were to prove to be a modest win, mainly for the sake of the face of its funders.
And how is that supposed to happen?
Russian officials have reported that Ukraine is massing more troops, up from 25,000 to now over 30,000 in Zaporzhizhia, presumably to try an offensive to the south, aimed either at Melitopol or Mariupol. The wags speculate that Ukraine will assemble 40,000 and perhaps as many as 60,000 men, with the target time expected to be late March/early April.
But these troops will be short on tanks, ammo, and air cover. And Russia has been building major fortifications in the region since Surovkin took over in October, and per Alexander Mercouris, has about 90,000 there now. If an attack looked likely, Russia would almost certain increase its force level there.

And while Ukraine is supposedly preparing for its big, last ditch counter-offensive, it is also wasting more men and materiel in Bakhmut. Russia has achieved operational encirclement. Men can’t get out without serious survival risk. But Ukraine announced Monday it is still contesting Bakhmut, most experts believe by attempting to force open a transportation route. But even if they succeed, to what end? If they can get enough troops out to recover the cost of forcing open a corridor, that might be a worthy gamble. But if they think they can do more than further delay the full capture of Bakhmut, it’s more evidence they have lost their minds.
For much more detail on the grim state of play in Bakhmut, see Moon of Alabama’s new post Why Bakhmut Is Falling.
Now of course wars are uncertain, and perhaps Russia will make a spectacular blunder. But absent that, it’s hard to see any reason for Russia to end the war before its aims are met. And the US and NATO keep feeding more cannon fodder into the Russian killing machine.

"US Is Not Yet Ready For Great Power Conflict", Yet Still Plots Against China; WSJ | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Walrus Whisperer · Mar 8, 2023

The end days are approaching at rocket speed, you all!

OldArcher · Mar 8, 2023

Walrus Whisperer said:
The end days are approaching at rocket speed, you all!

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

OA

jward · Mar 8, 2023

ISIS in February 2023 | Noticeable escalation leave 80 civilians and 27 regime soldiers dead, amid subsiding operations in SDF-controlled areas • The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

user8

Although the Counter-ISIS International Coalition command and the leaders of Syria Democratic Forces announced the elimination of the so-called Caliphate of the “Islamic State” in March 2019, recent developments on the ground indicate that ISIS has not been fully eliminated. ISIS continues launching military operations and counter-attacks which are met with security campaigns by Coalition forces and their Syria Democratic Forces partner throughout SDF-controlled areas, in addition to military operations by Russian and regime forces against ISIS cells in areas under their control. However, ISIS cells are still able to exploit opportunities to create a security vacuum and carry out assassinations, which clearly indicates that the “Islamic State” is still alive and kicking.

In the 103rd month after the declaration of “Al-Baghdadi’s Caliphate”, ISIS carried out seven operations, including armed attacks and explosions, in areas controlled by SDF, killing four persons: one civilian and three members of the Internal Security Forces (Asayish) which are operating in areas controlled by the Autonomous Administration.
Further details on these operations are as follows:

February 11: An Asayish member was killed in an attack by unknown gunmen, believed to be of ISIS cells in Deir Ezzor
February 17: A civilian was injured after being shot by gunmen of ISIS in Abo Hamam town in eastern Deir Ezzor countryside within SDF-held areas, where he was taken to the hospital to receive proper medication.
February 21: A member of Al-Asayesh was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on a motorbike, who are likely to belong to ISIS, in Al-Harijiya village in northern Deir Ezzor countryside.
February 23: A civilian from Tayeb Al-Fal working in oil investment was shot dead by gunmen on motorbikes, who belong to ISIS cells near Al-Hreiji village in Deir Ezzor.
February 25: Gunmen on motorbikes, believed to be ISIS members, have thrown a hand grenade on the house of an oil investor in Hawayj Zaiban town in Al-Raghib neighbourhood in eastern Deir Ezzor countryside. According to reliable SOHR sources, the attack took place after ISIS members demanded “Zakat” from the owner of the house.
February 26: Members of ISIS cells on a motorcycle opened fire on a checkpoint of the Internal Security Forces (Asayish) in Abu Hardoub town in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor, killing an Asayish member and injuring others, before the attackers escaped.
February 26: ISIS members on motorcycles opened fire on a column of oil trucks near the entrance of Al-Busayrah city in eastern Deir Ezzor, forcing the trucks to stop. SDF-backed security forces were put on high alert after the attack on the convoy which was on its way to Al-Hasakah.

In the past month, SOHR activists also documented the participation of the International Coalition in 11 joint security operations with SDF, namely raids and airdrops, arresting 140 members of ISIS cells.
Also, these operations seven six ISIS members dead, where units of the anti-terrorism forces of SDF, with aerial support from the International Coalition, launched a campaign on February 10, to pursue ISIS cells in the vicinity of Abo Al-Naital village in northern Deir Ezzor countryside, where clashes erupted between them and ISIS members with machineguns, causing the death of a Syrian member and an Iraqi commander of ISIS, coinciding with International Coalition firing flare grenades over the region.

Meanwhile, the International Coalition forces confirmed the death of an ISIS commander called “Ibrahim Al-Qahtany” in an airstrike committed by its forces with participation of anti-terrorism units of SDF, five days after SOHR announced the death of two ISIS commanders, one of which is Syrian and the other is Iraqi, on February 10. It is worth noting that the commander who was targeted was responsible for planning the attacks of prisons and detention centres holding ISIS members within SDF-held areas, where weapons and ammunition were in his possession.

On February 17, an SDF patrol, backed by International Coalition helicopters, stormed a house in the area between Al-Sabha and Ibriha in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor, along with blocking roads leading to that area. Via loudspeakers, SDF forces asked the suspect, who was called “Muhannad Al-Saray Al-Fadgham,” to surrender, but he refused. Clashes erupted between the two sides, which led to the death of the suspect. It is worth noting that Al-Fadgham was an ISIS commander, and he had been arrested and released on several occasions.

On the same day, February 17, Coalition Forces and SDF carried out a joint operation, targeting an ISIS commander who was holed up in a house in Al-Hajanah village in the northern countryside of Deir Ezzor. The operation left a commander known as “Hamza Al-Homsy” and his escort dead, while four members of US forces were injured during.
While on February 22, SDF-backed Counter-terrorism Units, backed by Coalition helicopters, stormed a house in Jadid Ekaydat town in the east of Deir Ezzor, searching for ISIS cells. The unites asked ISIS members, via loudspeakers, to surrender, but they resisted, before clashes erupted between both sides, which resulted in the death of two “ISIS” members.

In the Syrian desert, however, ISIS continued its operations in areas under the control of the Syrian regime and its allies, especially in Al-Rasafah desert, the surrounding areas of Jabal Al-Bishri in Al-Raqqah, the frontlines of Ithriyah and other frontlines in the eastern countryside of Hama, the desert of Al-Sukhnah, Palmyra in Homs countryside, Deir Ezzor desert and the administrative border between Al-Raqqah and Deir Ezzor.
According to SOHR sources, ISIS has carried out 17 attacks in the past month, killing 27 regime soldiers and proxy militiamen, including two Iranian-backed militiamen. In addition, 80 civilians were killed in the same period in ISIS attacks in the Syrian desert.
Here is a regional distribution of those attacks:

Deir Ezzor desert: Seven operations left five combatants, including two Iranian-backed militias, dead.
Homs desert: Six operations left 77 civilians, including at least a woman, and 15 combatants dead.
Hama desert: Two operations left three civilians dead.
Al-Raqqah desert: Two operations left seven combatants dead.

Here are further details on ISIS attacks in February:

February 3: A member of the National Defence was killed and another member was injured due to the explosion of a landmine that was likely planted by ISIS cells, in Kabajib area on the road between Damascus and Deir Ezzor in the southern desert.
February 4: Two members of the regime’s National Defence were killed due to the explosion of an IED that was planted by unidentified gunmen, who are believed to belong to ISIS, targeting a military vehicle near Al-Hail oil field eastern of Al-Sokhna area in eastern Homs countryside.
February 5: A regime soldier was killed in an attack by ISIS cells, taking advantage of the foggy weather, on regime positions and members of the National Defence in Palmyra desert in Homs countryside.
February 10: A regime soldier was killed by unidentified gunmen, who are likely to belong to ISIS, in Deir Ezzor.
February 12: ISIS members kidnapped 75 men and women this evening in an area to the east of Palmyra city. According to SOHR sources, the abductees were collecting truffle when they were kidnapped and their vehicles were taken over. SOHR sources confirmed later the death of 16 civilians, including a woman, and three regime soldiers, among those kidnapped by ISIS. While on February 17, ISIS cells released 25 people, who were kidnapped on February 12, while they were collecting truffle in Palmyra area in eastern Homs desert after they were investigated and it was confirmed that they had no connection to regime forces and its militias, while the fate of 34 other people remains unknown.
February 12: A regime soldier was shot dead yesterday by gunmen belonging to ISIS cells, near his house in regime-controlled Saalo village in eastern Deir Ezzor.
February 12: Three regime soldiers sustained various injuries in a landmine explosion which targeted a military vehicle that was carrying them, in Haribsha-Al-Harir desert in the southern Deir Ezzor desert which is under the control of regime forces and Iranian militias.
February 14: A civilian was directly shot dead and another was kidnapped by ISIS members, while the civilians were collecting truffle in Duwaizin area eastern of Okairabat in eastern Aleppo countryside. However, the fate of the kidnapped civilian was revealed.
February 15: Two civilians were killed in an attack executed by “ISIS” cells on a group of truffle pickers in the east of Tel Salmah in the countryside of Oqairabat district in Salamiyah countryside east of Hama. That came in light of “ISIS” exploiting the preoccupation of the international community with the destructive earthquake which hit Syria, to execute attacks through traps and targets.
February 18: The number of civilians killed in the violent attack that was carried out by “ISIS” yesterday raised to 61 persons from Al-Sukhnah area east of Homs, as well as the death of seven members of a regime forces stationed at a checkpoint in Al-Dubayat in Al-Sukhnah countryside in Homs desert. According to sources, ISIS members on motorcycles carried out the attack, ISIS deadliest attack in 2023, using medium and light weapons. The attack targeted truffle pickers and a checkpoint of regime forces, causing the death of 61 civilians, while some have run away, but their fate remains unknown.
February 18: Two members working for Iranian militias from Al-Quriyah city in the east of Deir Ezzor were killed due to the explosion of a landmine planted earlier by ISIS in Deir Ezzor desert.
February 19: Six members of the National Army from Al-Safira area in Aleppo countryside, were killed in an ambush by ISIS cells while collecting truffle in Tuwainan area in Al-Raqqa countryside.
February 21: Two regime soldiers were killed by the explosion of an old landmine in Huraybishah area in Homs desert, while searching for truffle.
February 25: A regime soldier sustained injuries by the explosion of an old landmine planted earlier by ISIS in Deir Ezzor desert. The soldier was taken to a hospital.
February 25: A regime captain was injured in an ambush by ISIS cells in Al-Sokhna desert in eastern Homs countryside, where he was taken to a hospital in Homs.
February 26: Four regime soldiers sustained serious injuries by the explosion of an old landmine, while they were searching for truffle in Al-Zabari desert in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor. The injured soldiers were taken to the military hospital in Deir Ezzor city.
February 27: Residents found the body of a regime soldier who was killed by ISIS cells a few days earlier, while he was picking truffle in the desert of Shuaeib Al-Thekr area west of Al-Tabqah in the western countryside of Al-Raqqah.

Islamic State’s abductees: ignored and unaccounted
Although nearly 47 months have passed since the International Coalition’s announcement of the defeat of ISIS which was a dominant force east of Euphrates River, and with the recent developments over the past period, however, silence still surrounds the issue of ISIS’s abductees. All sides remain quiet and provide no clarification on the fate of thousands of abductees, where fear continues to grow for the lives and fate of the abductees, including Father Paolo Daololio, Bishops John Ibrahim and Paul Yazji, Abdullah Al Khalil, a British journalist, sky News journalist and other journalists, in addition to hundreds of abductees from Ain Al Arab (Kobani) area and Afrin, as well as the people of Deir Ezzor.

With the continuing crimes and violations against Syrian civilians, including death threats against SOHR workers by the Islamic State and other killers and criminals in Syria, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights renews its vows to continue its work by monitoring, documenting and publishing all violations and crimes that committed against the Syrian people.
We, at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, renew our call to the UN Security Council to refer those war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria to the International Criminal Court so that all the criminals and killers of the Syrian people are brought to justice.

SOHR has been all along warning against ISIS resurgence and stressing that the defeat of ISIS in Syrian territory, as declared in 2019, was “symbolic”, as ISIS has been only eliminated as a controlling power in populated areas. The daily attacks by ISIS fighters and cells throughout Syria, clearly indicate that the “Islamic State” is still alive and kicking. While the frequent security campaigns and military operations by regime forces, Russia, International Coalition, and SDF have all failed so far to curb or hinder ISIS’s escalating activities.

The Syrian Observatory also points out that it had already warned, well before “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” declared itself as a “Caliphate State” in Syria and Iraq, that this organization did intend to work for the Syrian people and serve their interest, but rather ISIS continued to kill innocent Syrians, who had been suffering the brutality of war and violence and became displaced.

Furthermore, the “Islamic State” recruited children in the so-called “cubs of the caliphate”, controlled the wealth and resources of the Syrian people and harnessed them to build a “caliphate”, and traded openly back and forth with one of Syria’s neighbouring countries.

ISIS in February 2023 | Noticeable escalation leave 80 civilians and 27 regime soldiers dead, amid subsiding operations in SDF-controlled areas • The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Although the Counter-ISIS International Coalition command and the leaders of Syria Democratic Forces announced the elimination of the so-called Caliphate of the “Islamic State” in March 2019, recent developments on the ground indicate that ISIS has not been fully eliminated. ISIS continues...

www.syriahr.com

jward · Mar 9, 2023

LTG (R) Mike Flynn
@GenFlynn

Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews is an American hero of the highest order. I am in tears listening to his testimony, for him and the 13 US Military killed that day and the many others wounded. God help us in our quest for leadership and accountability in our military and our country. The chain of command, all the way to the POTUS, failed our men and women on this day and their failure caused the needless death and suffering of Americans. This is why war sucks and Tyler is an example of what bravery looks like.

Pray for these young men and women serving in our armed forces. When leadership breaks down, the results are devastating.

God bless our troops

kanekoa.substack.com
@KanekoaTheGreat

Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a U.S. Marine Corps sniper, tells Congress that he was denied permission to shoot the suicide bomber in Afghanistan that killed 13 service members and over 170 civilians:
"Plain and simple, we were ignored. Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety... The withdrawal was a catastrophe, in my opinion. There was an inexcusable lack of accountability."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1633536237532499968

View: https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1633536237532499968?s=20

Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews lost his right arm and left leg in the explosion.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1633536705767821312

View: https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1633536705767821312?s=20

OldArcher · Mar 9, 2023

jward said:
LTG (R) Mike Flynn
@GenFlynn

Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews is an American hero of the highest order. I am in tears listening to his testimony, for him and the 13 US Military killed that day and the many others wounded. God help us in our quest for leadership and accountability in our military and our country. The chain of command, all the way to the POTUS, failed our men and women on this day and their failure caused the needless death and suffering of Americans. This is why war sucks and Tyler is an example of what bravery looks like.

Pray for these young men and women serving in our armed forces. When leadership breaks down, the results are devastating.

God bless our troops

kanekoa.substack.com
@KanekoaTheGreat

Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a U.S. Marine Corps sniper, tells Congress that he was denied permission to shoot the suicide bomber in Afghanistan that killed 13 service members and over 170 civilians:
"Plain and simple, we were ignored. Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety... The withdrawal was a catastrophe, in my opinion. There was an inexcusable lack of accountability."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1633536237532499968
View: https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1633536237532499968?s=20

Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews lost his right arm and left leg in the explosion.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1633536705767821312
View: https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1633536705767821312?s=20

Satan and his minions that are in positions of authority, do not care one bit, for American fighting personnel. For Satan, the higher body count, the better. You will NEVER see competent leadership in the US Government. If you do see anyone competent, Satan will have made an incredible blunder…………….

OA

jward · Mar 9, 2023

Satan may scheme, but God is not mocked, and all works for the good of those who love him, & men plan while Gods laugh...

My sincere apologies to the OP, I know this weeks thread is wildly off it's intended content, and that I bear some portion of blame for it's being off topic
:: heads to that ole dog house o' mine.. hopin' there is something new to read n/or watch since the last time I was there ::
:rdog:

jward · Mar 9, 2023

A Strategy of Denial for the Western Pacific

Elbridge Colby

The primary threat to core U.S. interests is that China could dominate Asia, and from that position atop more than half the global economy, undermine Americans’ prosperity, freedom, and even security. This is not a merely speculative fear. Beijing is pursuing regional hegemony over Asia, and if successful, it will very likely pursue the kind of global preeminence that would enable it to directly intervene in and exercise a domineering influence over Americans’ lives.
As a result, nothing else in the international system is as fundamentally dangerous to U.S. interests as Chinese hegemony over Asia. Accordingly, U.S. policy must prioritize avoiding that outcome, but must do so in ways that correlate the risks and costs the American people incur in doing so with the stakes, which are vital but not genuinely existential. In practice, this requires working together with Asian states in an antihegemonic coalition focused on denying Beijing dominance over the region.

Contrary to some commentary that suggests the military dimension in this dynamic is not that important, the U.S. military’s role in this strategy is central. This is because Beijing will likely not be able to dominate Asia without resorting to military force. While China has enormous and growing economic and other nonmilitary forms of influence, it is finding it difficult to use its leverage to get neighboring countries to accept what would essentially be a tributary relationship. Its efforts to do so have largely backfired—as demonstrated in places such as Australia, India, Japan, and Taiwan—and an increasingly aggressive China’s standing (as reflected in global polling) has declined precipitously.1
The bad news is China has another option: military force. Unlike economic sanctions, decisive and direct military force can compel other countries to do things they really do not want to do.

Coalition: The Center of Gravity

If China can gain sufficient military advantage over its neighbors, it may convince them to accept its hegemony given the plausible alternatives they will face. And the best way for Beijing to operationalize such advantage is not to fight all its potential opponents at once, but to pursue a focused and sequential strategy against the antihegemonic coalition arraying against it, seeking to pick it apart or short-circuit it.
The USS Annapolis (SSN-760) loads a Mk 67 sub-launched mobile mine in Apra Harbor, Guam, in May 2022. Naval mines would contribute directly to a defense of Taiwan by denying the PLA Navy sea control and the ability to project power across the Taiwan Strait. U.S. Navy

The key for Beijing is to strike at the coalition’s center of gravity: perceptions of Washington’s willingness to come to the stout defense of those to which it has committed. Only if they believe Washington can and will stand with them will Asian countries judge it prudent to take the risks necessary to check Beijing’s ambitions. If they do not have this confidence, they will fear being isolated and punished by China and thus will likely cut a deal with Beijing. If Beijing can pick off enough countries in this fashion, it could achieve regional hegemony without having to fight World War III. Indeed, given how sensitive Asian countries are to China’s strength and how lucrative it is to be in its good graces, Beijing may not have to fight many—or even any—wars to attain regional dominance.

A Denial Defense

To prevent this, Washington needs to ensure an effective denial defense along the first island chain, one that includes Taiwan within its perimeter. Denial defense is a military strategy derived from the nation’s geopolitical goal, which is to provide sufficient defense for our allies that they believe it prudent to stand up to China together with us—and thus prevent Chinese domination of Asia. If the United States can succeed in this military strategy, the coalition should stand strong and resist attempts by Beijing to crack it apart. Even better, Beijing might see this strength and never try to break it apart in the first place.

Taiwan plays an especially salient role in this strategy. Washington’s credibility in Asia is, practically speaking, linked to Taiwan’s defense. If Beijing could take Taiwan, it would break out of the first island chain that currently constrains its military power projection. As the recent Congressional Research Service report to Congress on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) points out, China’s “military strategy focuses primarily on preparing for a conflict involving the United States over Taiwan.” The report also highlights the PLA Navy’s 340-ship fleet, its air forces with several hundred fourth-generation fighters, and a large, advanced conventional missile force.2 Thus, if the United States and its allies can prevent China from subordinating Taiwan, they can protect other U.S. allies in Asia, enabling the coalition to stand strong, checking Beijing’s ambition to regional hegemony.

In practical terms, a denial defense strategy generates a minimum military standard of being able to prevent China from seizing and holding the key territory of our allies—essentially, the core political and economic areas of a country. If China cannot seize and hold these areas, it will not be able to bring enough coercive pressure on a resolute ally to abandon the coalition. History and logic indicate that most countries are prepared to hold on even in the face of bombardment, blockade, and harassment if it is a matter of their independence and autonomy, especially if they believe relief will arrive. Crucially, this creates a need for a forward defense for U.S. allies against China.

Alternative Strategies Will Not Work

A U.S. Marine sights his weapon in deep jungle vegetation during an exercise in Japan. The Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 efforts are rightly focused on capabilities that will be brought to bear in a denial strategy. U.S. Marine Corps
Alternative U.S. and allied strategies will not work or will, if attempted, result in costs grossly out of proportion to the stakes for the American people. For example, relying on the threat of large-scale first use of nuclear weapons to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or other allies is simply not credible; Beijing is unlikely to believe Washington would follow through. And if the United States did, China could respond with a nuclear attack that would leave the United States devastated, without having reversed China’s gains—hardly a good strategy.

Neither would a strategy relying primarily on cost imposition or horizontal escalation be likely to work. Such strategies would emphasize inflicting costs on China, for instance through measures such as blockades and attacks on Chinese interests beyond the first island chain, with the goal of persuading Beijing to relent. To be clear, such measures could be essential or useful elements alongside a denial defense, but not as the primary line of effort for the U.S. and allied militaries.

Horizontal escalation is unlikely to work because Beijing almost certainly would prize victory over Taiwan and in the first island chain over its interests in places such as South Asia, the Middle East, or Latin America. A blockade-reliant strategy is also unlikely to work for several reasons. Militarily, if the United States and its allies do not contest China forward, the PLA could adapt to challenge a distant blockade, negating the strategy over time. Moreover, a strategy relying on blockade would essentially allow China to assault U.S. allies in the western Pacific at will, increasing the chances they would fold and that the coalition—the center of gravity for Washington’s overall strategy—would fail.
Even if effectively implemented, a blockade is unlikely to work as a primary victory mechanism. China has enormous economic capacity and could weather much of the effects of an embargo; indeed, it appears to be strengthening its ability to do so through measures such as dual circulation.3 At the same time, Beijing could reduce the efficacy of such an effort by exploiting sympathetic or profiteering third parties, ranging from Russia through the Middle East and even to parts of Europe. Further, China’s famously strong nationalism will make it willing to put up with a lot of pain to prevail in a conflict over Taiwan.

Finally, full-scale economic warfare against China is a poor strategy for the United States because it does not credibly match the demands of the military strategy with the stakes for the American people. Such an action would be met with a comparable response from Beijing, with devastating consequences for Americans’ livelihoods. Moreover, rather than providing a clear end point and set of escalation boundaries, such a strategy would turn the war into a contest in pain tolerance, and it is highly unlikely that the United States would be more prepared to prevail in such a contest with China over Taiwan and the western Pacific.

A Chinese J-15 fighter prepares to land on board the aircraft carrier Liaoning during flight operations in December 2021. A denial defense strategy would require containing or sinking PLAN units inside the first island chain. Xinhua/Alamy
Many navalists, however, find horizontal or cost-infliction strategies appealing.4 To advocates of these strategies, navies and their associated forces offer attributes such as global scale, mobility, and the ability to threaten maritime commerce, so why not shape national strategies based on those attributes? But this is the wrong way to approach the problem. The military must conform to the strategy the nation needs, not the other way around. And the strategy the nation needs is a forward denial defense that can prevent China from subordinating U.S. allies along the first island chain in ways that keep the costs and risks to American citizens at a level proportionate to the stakes at issue. If the U.S. military is not so shaped, then it needs to adapt, even if that requires dramatic change.

It is important to emphasize, though, that a forward denial defense is not a static, unimaginative, or fixed defense. It is about meeting a standard—denying China’s ability to subordinate a U.S. ally—not prescribing how to do it. Indeed, forward denial defense is consistent with unorthodox, imaginative, and nonlinear forms of military action and force structure, so long as they materially and efficiently contribute to the goal. It is consistent with any number of different approaches to military operations: high-tech and low-tech; at sea, in the air, space, and cyberspace, and on the ground; at long-range and short. If a naval mine meets the standard better than a long-range hypersonic missile, so be it. But the reverse is true, too: If a new approach is required to make a denial defense work, even at the expense of treasured old platforms and ways of operating, so must it be.

jward · Mar 9, 2023

Implications for the Navy and Marine Corps

A denial defense strategy will have far-reaching implications for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
Responsibility for a denial defense of Taiwan will be shouldered in large part by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Here, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday and Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger testify before the House Armed Services Committee in May 2022. U.S. Navy (Sean Castellano)
First, it necessitates prioritizing China not in some generic sense, but by revamping the U.S. Sea Services to be able to shoulder much of a forward denial defense along the first island chain. This is especially important because the western Pacific and the strategic depth to its rear (from the U.S. perspective) are maritime environments. Naval forces are thus critical—at the front lines, in depth, and in supporting the fight. The Marine Corps is laudably adapting to this reality with Force Design 2030, which specifically seeks to reshape the force to meet the looming threat from China and is consistent with a denial defense strategy. In particular, Force Design 2030, if realized, would provide a strong and resilient forward-deployed blunt layer—one that would present military and political challenges to Beijing while also reinforcing allied confidence in U.S. strength and staying power. That said, given the scale of the China challenge, the Sea Services must work to integrate their forces, posture, plans, and vision with the Air Force, Army, Space Force, and key allies, especially Australia, Japan, and Taiwan. Given China’s enormous size and power, there is simply not enough material advantage for unnecessary duplication or unlinked efforts.

Moreover, this thoroughgoing prioritization must be carried through immediately in every part of the Navy and Marine Corps. People often say China is a long-term problem. But this is misleading. China is a long-term problem only if we can deter or defeat it in the short term. It is like acute heart disease: A patient is lucky if he can make it a long-term problem. And achieving that often requires urgent, drastic steps, such as having a stent put in, before concentrating on longer-term measures such as changing one’s diet or exercise habits. Similarly, the United States must ensure the security of its position in Asia in the near-term, not simply prepare for long-term strategic competition. To qualify for the marathon, we must first sprint.

And there are multiple reasons Beijing might strike in this decade.5 The most pressing is the “Shugart Window”—the assessment that China may judge the 2020s to be its best opportunity to retake Taiwan in terms of relative military advantage over time.6 Others point to Xi Jinping’s own personal calculus and his apparent desire to solve the Taiwan problem during his leadership tenure. Still others suggest China’s economy may decline, increasing Beijing’s incentive to act before it weakens. In any case, Beijing can now clearly see that a coalition is coalescing against it and may judge that its future economic growth and security are in question if it does not act. This fear is not mere speculation. Rather, an increasing chorus of senior Biden administration officials and military officers have stated that Beijing has moved up its timeline to address the Taiwan issue, that overwhelming force is Beijing’s best strategy, and that an invasion is a distinct threat.7

These ominous warnings rule out the Sea Services taking a knee to focus exclusively on modernization. This might have been a reasonable position ten years ago, when Beijing could not hope to take Taiwan. It no longer is now that Taiwan’s defensibility is increasingly in question. The United States needs an all-hands-on-deck effort to ensure its military is ready now.
But the Sea Services also must modernize for the future. The United States cannot succeed in the near term merely to set itself up for failure in the longer term. Accordingly, the U.S. military must ensure the readiness to take on China now and modernize for the future fight at the same time. This modernization effort will require urgency on the part of the defense establishment, given the long lead times needed to bring about changes in force structure and posture.

Priorities

It is important to be clear about what prioritizing a denial defense against China means. It means not taking chances nor cutting it close. To the contrary, it will require extra effort and, as necessary, resources, to ensure a workable denial defense. To continue the earlier metaphor, just as someone at risk of acute heart disease should take multiple precautions to avoid heart failure, the Sea Services must build appropriate redundancy into their plans, posture, and concepts to guard against failure in the nation’s most important strategic priority.
A denial defense strategy also means helping Taiwan defend itself. Here, Taiwan military forces conduct live-fire training during Exercise Han Kuang in 2019.
In part, this challenge is a function of time. Because the threat is already upon us, the Sea Services must ensure they can employ a forward denial defense of Taiwan both in the short and long term. It is also a function of uncertainty around concepts of operations, technology, and allied decision-making. In simple terms, the United States cannot afford to bet its future on one approach to deterring or defeating China. It cannot have single points of failure. It requires strategic redundancy—more than one way to contribute materially to a denial defense.
This means the Department of Defense should not bet solely on either exquisite new technologies or only the tried and true. The former, as in the examples of the DDG-1000–class destroyers, the littoral combat ships, and the Army’s Future Combat System, risks programmatic failure. But failing to exploit new technologies and concepts of operation risks the Sea Services being outpaced by an advancing PLA that is building not just a large force but also a cutting-edge one.

Similarly, the Sea Services should not bet entirely on either a long-range force operating largely from outside PLA striking range or solely on stand-in forces. The former may not live up to expectations in the event of war and may risk allied defection if it undermines confidence in U.S. resolve, while the latter may be too vulnerable to attack within the densest parts of Beijing’s strike envelope. Accordingly, the Navy and Marine Corps must pursue them together, both to guard against programmatic and operational failure and to present greater military difficulties and strategic dilemmas for Beijing and the PLA.
What should be deprioritized, then, is almost everything else (save the nuclear deterrent). This includes naval operations and posture in theaters other than Asia, including Europe and the Middle East, as well as capacity and presence for its own sake rather than warfighting efficacy. The basic point is that U.S. naval forces should prepare to mount an effective and politically credible denial defense of Taiwan, along with the nuclear deterrent needed to back it up. Everything else should be scaled down, pushed to the back, and, if need be, eliminated. This includes symbolic or assurance-oriented presence operations not connected to a robust blunt layer, as former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work has compellingly argued.8

The reason for all this stems from a simple proposition: The main purpose of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps is to fight and win the nation’s most important wars at a reasonable cost to the American people—not policing the sea lanes, showing the flag, or “facilitating—or deranging international trade.”9 By far the most significant threat to Americans’ prosperity, freedom, and security is China dominating Asia and from that position, the global economy. The Navy and the Marine Corps ought to be clear that their overriding responsibility lies in preventing this baleful outcome through a denial defense along the first island chain, and all other missions unconnected to this goal must take a back seat to that.
The Sea Services must now be laser focused on this core task to make the best use of the enormous resources the American people allocate to defense, as the Marine Corps is so commendably doing. Americans already spend a far greater proportion of their wealth on defense than almost any of their allies. It is therefore incumbent on the defense establishment to make the best use of that money as possible.

At the end of the day, this agenda will require more money. Our allies do need to spend more, but they will not be able to match China alone. The simple fact is the United States will need to spend more just to match China’s buildup. But the American people are most likely to support such an increase if they see the Navy and Marine Corps hyperfocused on implementing a strategy of denial.

A Strategy of Denial for the Western Pacific

The Sea Services will play a central role in denying China hegemony over Asia.

www.usni.org

Housecarl · Mar 9, 2023

Hummm......

Posted for fair use......

AUKUS: Aussies to buy 3-plus subs from US, build more from UK designs, reports say - Breaking Defense

Australia faces "huge political risk in this, and huge costs. It's going to be an extremely bumpy ride," says Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

breakingdefense.com

AUKUS: Aussies to buy 3-plus subs from US, build more from UK designs, reports say

Australia faces "huge political risk in this, and huge costs. It's going to be an extremely bumpy ride," says Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

By COLIN CLARK on March 09, 2023 at 10:01 AM

SYDNEY — Australia is likely to get at least three Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines to bridge the looming capability gap between its Collins-class submarine retirements and the arrival of the first Australian-built boats, under the defense technology agreement known as AUKUS.

That looks to be the most immediate decision by the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, along with the Lucky Country committing to building and deploying a fleet of attack boats.

Leaks about the AUKUS submarine decision, published by a half dozen international wires and major newspapers, poured across the dam of secrecy in the last 24 hours. The formal announcement of the plan by the American president and the prime ministers of Australia and Britain is expected Monday in San Diego, perhaps with the symbolic backdrop of the Pacific Ocean and a nuclear-powered submarine. Breaking Defense was first to report the location of the meeting.

Per the reporting, Australia is poised to buy an initial three Virginia-class subs, with the option to add two more if necessary. That will bridge a gap as Australia builds up its nuclear and shipyard workforces, design and build highly secure shipyards where the boats can be built and maintained with limited chances of espionage occurring, and train its submariners in how to manage one of the most strategic weapons on earth.

Virginia-class subs will probably require an additional production line to ease the already considerable strains on America’s sub shipyards, said Malcolm Davis, an expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Both the US Congress and the Navy are deeply concerned that efforts to bolster Australia’s sub fleet do not cut into America’s ability to build enough attack subs to meet its own requirements. As a result, Australia may have to bear much of the cost of building and running a new production line.

Down the line, reports indicate, the Royal Australian Navy will then build and deploy its own unique subs, derived from Britain’s Submersible Ship Nuclear Replacement (SSNR), successor to the Royal Navy’s Astute-class. The Australian subs will likely use Lockheed Martin’s combat system, so they are compatible with the Collins-class and the American sub fleet.

RELATED: Growing signs Australia’s new nuclear sub will be British design

This means, notes Davis, that Australia will operate at least two classes of nuclear boats, which will certainly complicate sustainment and logistics at a time when the country’s military will be learning how to design, build, operate, fight and maintain a new class of weapon.

Why is Australia taking on the risk of, essentially, developing two production and support lines?

“I think the capability gap really has them spooked, so that’s why they’re doing this,” Davis says. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pledged in early December that the US “will not allow” a capability gap to appear between Australia’s Collins-class sub retirement, planned for 2039, and the deployment of its first nuke powered attack subs.

What will happen to the conventionally-powered Collins boats as the US boats come on stream? “From six, they might slowly taper down until most of the Collins may be basically tied up at the dock,” says Davis.

What do Australian experts make of what they’ve heard so far? Davis says his country faces “huge political risk in this, and huge costs. It’s going to be an extremely bumpy ride.”

Initial reaction from influential defense voices here were not positive. Ben Packham, defense reporter at Australia’s biggest and arguably most influential paper, The Australian, posted a tweet saying the possible purchase of two different classes of nuclear boats “sounds completely nuts.”

If this is the ‘optimal pathway’ to get nuclear subs it sounds completely nuts. Why would we, having done the hard yards to get Virginia-class boats, then embark on yet another nuclear sub program with all of its own diabolically difficult issues?
theaustralian.com.au
Australia ‘set for two types of nuclear submarines’
Leaks from both sides of the Atlantic suggest Australia will buy not one but two types of nuclear submarine – the US-designed Virginia-class and a future

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1633676984764239872

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Kym Bergmann, editor of the Australian Pacific Defense Reporter, published an editorial castigating his country: “Let’s hope that the rumours [about two nuclear sub classes] are incorrect because otherwise this is looking like a thoroughly bad deal for Australia. As well as costing a vast amount of money – tens of billions of dollars – the effect on national security for the next 30 years will be minimal.”

For his part, Davis of ASPI wonders if it might make more sense to put the brakes on the sub deals and wait for the American B-21 bomber to be available for Australian purchase: “Would we be better off in investing on B-21s in terms of impactful projection?” That awkward term has been used by Defense Minister Richard Marles and appears to refer to the burgeoning ability of Australia to engage in long-range strike and power projection.

However, political realities also play a part. Building a nuclear sub in Australia, the best known goal of the AUKUS agreement, will provide thousands of jobs in Adelaide. As Davis notes, losing those jobs in a key state for Albanese’s party, “would be a huge blow for labor.”

More Breaking Defense Coverage of AUKUS:

Housecarl · Mar 9, 2023

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

United States Versus China: Nuclear Weapons Strategies

China has established an asymmetric military superpower outside the realm of conventional weapons. This is equivalent, in military terms, to the disruptive

worldnationnews.com

United States versus China: Nuclear Weapons Strategies

USA
09/03/2023

Updated: 3 hours ago

China has established an asymmetric military superpower outside the realm of conventional weapons. This is equivalent, in military terms, to the disruptive nature that companies such as Uber, Netflix, Airbnb or Spotify have had in the private economy compared to the conventional economic sectors with which they compete. The property of these weapons is that at a fraction of the cost of those extremely expensive military systems, they can destroy or destroy them.

According to various US analysts, including Fareed Zakaria, Washington is complacent in the face of this challenge. According to Zakaria, the US defense budget was not only out of control but lacked strategic coherence. In his view, however ill-treated and dilapidated, the expansion is continuous. As he inexplicably points out, he pays little attention to threats such as attacks from space or cyber warfare, and, on the contrary, continues to spend billions of dollars on swimming pools or stage vehicles. (“Defense spending consensus is America’s bipartisan cancer”), The Washington Post, July 18, 2019.

The reason for this friendly attitude in the face of new challenges can be attributed to the sense of security that the United States derives from the overwhelming advantage over China in nuclear weapons. In fact, in 2020 the United States had 5,800 nuclear warheads compared to 320 in China’s hands. But the security that could be derived from it is more speculative than real. Indeed, until now China has maintained a policy of minimal nuclear disarmament. In other words, rather than engaging in a costly conflict with Washington in this regard, it aims to deter the least effective of its arsenal. To deter, however, that it has the ability to corrupt an immense number of interests of the United States of America.

That in two ways. First, matching the US military’s nuclear missile power with conventional weapons. A good example of this missile is the DF-26, which has a high firing accuracy of 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers and an explosive charge of 1,497 kilometers. With a large number of such missiles, China is positioned against us with strategic nuclear missiles. That is, those nuclear power plants are designed to be used less on the battlefield. (Sebastien Robin, “Why China’s DF-26 Guam missile is a killer and a nuclear killer,” National Studies, November 9, 2018).

The second approach aims to render ineffective the superiority of the US strategic nuclear arsenal. That is, intercontinental weapons, which are used to destroy states. The Chinese strategic deterrence strategy is based on the mobile and stealthy nature of its strategic nuclear weapons. By moving missiles placed on vehicles and submarines, they are difficult to locate and destroy. This gives Beijing the ability to maintain its capability against any US first strike.

Such strategic nuclear weapons include the following: the DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile for road mobility, capable of transporting 10 nuclear warheads 15,000 kilometers, and the JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile, capable of exceeding 9,000 kilometers of range. To implement this, China has six nuclear submarines, each of which can carry 12 missiles. In fact, the People’s Liberation Army has dozens of mobile rocket launchers – PLARF and launcher vehicle launchers – TEL. (Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s military parade shows Beijing is a missile superpower,” National Institute, October 1, 2019; Cary Huang, “China’s military show at risk of backfiring,” Inkstone, October 19, 2019; Greg Hadley, “China Now More ICBM Launchers than the US”, Air & Space Forces Magazine, February 7, 2023).

But in August 2021, China successfully tested a hypersonic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. This also contributes to the return of the numerical superiority of the American idler. It can travel at a speed five times that of sound and follow an undetermined trajectory (including a trajectory through the South Pole, which would allow the US to escape prematurely), without being detected in time by US defenses. (Memetri Svastopulo and Kathrin Hille, “China to test new space capability with hypersonic missiles”, Financial Times, October 16, 2021).

What can prove the first attack on the United States knowing that China can destroy in response to Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia or New York (or all at once)? As with its asymmetric weapons, which include hugely expensive weapons to destroy at a fraction of their cost, China’s minimal nuclear deterrence strategy relies on cutting-edge technology that can make nuclear supercapacitors redundant.

Chinese methods of warfare focus on precision and flexible military thinking. On the other hand, the American appears rigid and unimaginative. In the face of Beijing’s strategic creation, the United States’ military apparatus is imitating a real white elephant. Big, big, and beautiful, but lacking in leadership.

In the field of nuclear weapons, as in many other areas, however, Xi Jinping takes it upon himself to sow rigidity where precision and flexibility prevailed. So China is now trying to match the US strategic nuclear weapons capability missile for missile and silo for silo. In fact, China is in the process of building hundreds of fixed silos (partially underground missile launch sites) and aims to have 1,000 strategic nuclear warheads by 2030, possibly reaching 1,500 by 2035. It is worth adding that these were almost the same. the number of strategic nuclear weapons currently available in the United States. This was based on the mutual commitment that existed with Russia until a few days before the New START treaty. (Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The New Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs, May/June, 2022; Greg Hadley, cited above; Oren Lieberman, “China Could Have 1,500 Nuclear Weapons by 2035: Pentagon Report,” CNN, Nov. 29, 2022).

As it is, China’s 11th-throwing ability to destroy America’s strategic nuclear capability at a fraction of the cost is on par with the excesses of the ability to seek destruction. In short, nuclear weapons serve two purposes: a deterrence capacity capable of weakening a given course of action, and a retaliation capacity that discourages a nuclear rival from using them in the first place. The second, as we have seen, has already taken over China and the first is something that would avoid being in a position to give up its firm control of the theater of operations in its part of the world. That is, purely and simply, the possession and position of the greatest naval position in the world bordering on the sea, in these islands the military space, the proximity of the coast, the possession of a powerful arsenal of missiles; enough, in his avoiding any terror through Washington. Thus, with the United States in possession of strategic nuclear weapons, it would not significantly change the balance of power or the military balance between the parties. On the other hand, it would simply immobilize the bulk of a strategic nuclear capability that would be easy for the United States to locate and destroy.

Now, where Xi Jinping’s policy would make sense, if instead of thinking about a two-player game, you would think of a three-player game. In other words, China being a strategic match for the United States in nuclear weapons would be fully raison d’être in the context of the China-Russia alliance. This is consistent with the statements made by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on March 7 of the current year. According to them, not only is there a collision course between China and the United States, but the more unstable the world becomes, the more imperative the country’s relationship with Russia becomes. Measured in today’s terms, the joint strategic nuclear weapons capability that China and Russia could have would be double that of the United States, which would corner the latter.

In other words, to match the combination of both rivals, the United States had to double its force. However, there is nothing to suggest that these, in turn, will not increase their strategic advantage. According to Thomas Schelling, a great writer on game theory and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, an exercise between two nuclear superpowers on equal terms is equivalent to two gunmen in the old West. Whoever draws and fixes it first will have a big profit. This, basically, would be the most likely to destroy the strategic nuclear missiles available to the other side. However, the United States must be equally skilled against not one but two gunmen at the same time. Without a doubt, things were really difficult in Vienna. Especially since he couldn’t count on a friend of his stature.

Housecarl · Mar 9, 2023

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Iran is gearing up to attack Britain and the West

Story by Con Coughlin • Yesterday 10:00 PM
242926 284 Comments

With world attention understandably focused on the Ukraine crisis, we should not be surprised that rogue nations should be seeking to exploit the conflict in order to advance their own nefarious agendas.

For most of the past decade, British security officials, when asked to rank hostile states that threaten our national wellbeing, have put Russia in first place, with China coming a close second. Other threats, such as those posed by Iran and North Korea, as well as the continuing challenge presented by militant Islamist groups, have been deemed less immediate while still worthy of close monitoring.

The suggestion, therefore, that the Islamic Republic of Iran is now regarded as posing the second most potent threat to Britain in security circles shows just how much progress the ayatollahs have made in developing their military strength while the rest of the world has been distracted by the tragic events unfolding in Ukraine.

Western security officials have been obliged to revise their assessment of the Iranian threat following the alarming revelation by nuclear inspectors that uranium particles enriched to 83.7 per cent purity have been discovered at Iran’s Fordow plant, constructed deep beneath a mountain so that it cannot be targeted by Western air strikes.

The Fordow plant, which is specifically designed to enrich uranium and is located close to the holy city of Qom, was built in secret during the 2000s as an alternative to the Natanz facility, which fulfils a similar function. The Iranians desperately tried to conceal the existence of both plants from the United Nations, a clear breach of its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Work on Fordow began soon after Natanz’s existence was made public by opposition groups in 2002.

Another fiction that Tehran has tried to maintain over the past two decades or so is that it has no interest in developing nuclear weapons, and that all its nuclear activities are for peaceful objectives, such as providing alternative energy sources.

If that is the case, why have inspectors working for the UN-sponsored International Atomic Energy Agency found traces of uranium at Fordow that are just short of the 90 per cent enrichment level required to make nuclear weapons?

It is not the first time that inspectors have found undeclared traces of highly enriched uranium at Iranian facilities. Prior to the nuclear deal with Iran that the Barack Obama administration helped negotiate in 2015, the main cause of the stand-off between Iran and the West was Tehran’s refusal to explain the discovery of enriched particles at several sites.

The latest discoveries must certainly lay to rest any prospect of reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the flawed nuclear deal the West hoped would limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions. With experts warning that Iran could have enough material for a nuclear warhead within two weeks, it also means Britain and its allies need to give serious consideration to how they deal with the emerging threat to their security. Indeed, apart from its nuclear aspirations, Iran has been working hard to develop an arsenal of ballistic weapons capable of hitting targets in the heart of Europe.

Iran’s deepening desire to intensify its confrontation with the West is evident from the support it has given Russia in the Ukraine conflict, where Iranian drones have been involved in a number of attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. US national security officials have warned that Iran is aiming to expand its military support by providing ballistic missiles. Security sources have already reported that Tehran is supplying large quantities of bullets, rockets and mortar shells to sustain the Russian war effort.

At the same time, there is evidence that Iran is increasing its more low-level terrorist activities in Europe. The presence of Iranian hit squads in London sent to silence critics of the regime recently forced a prominent Iranian opposition channel to relocate to Washington. The British authorities could not provide adequate protection, a worrying indication of the poor state of preparedness of our security services to deal with Iran’s nefarious activities.

For far too long, the predominant view in Whitehall has been that the best way to contain the Iranian threat is to maintain a dialogue with the so-called “moderates” there in the hope that it will result in improved ties with the West.

Instead, all that has happened is that Iran has made significant advances in developing a nuclear threat, from acquiring weapons grade uranium to building ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The success of these developments, moreover, appears to have given the regime the confidence to adopt a more aggressive stance towards the West, one that, given the unpredictable nature of Iranian politics, must be a major cause for concern.

Rather than pandering to the ayatollahs, there now needs to be a major rethink of how we deal with Iran, one that takes full cognisance of the scale of Tehran’s hostile intent.

jward · Mar 9, 2023

Beginning to wonder if the telegraphed move to the Indo-pacific as the next engagement/arena has a scheduled layover with Iran. . .
..still think/hope that'll stay limited to targeted attacks of the people and places that make the boombooms, though.

jward · Mar 10, 2023

USAF Testing 'Mutant' Missiles That Twist In Mid-Air To Hit Their Targets

Joseph Trevithick

The U.S. Air Force is exploring a novel concept for increasing the likelihood of scoring a hit in air-to-air combat. The idea is to use an air-to-air missile with a nose that bends to get at the target before it can get away. The service views this as one path to giving current and future combat aircraft, including a sixth-generation stealth jet being developed under the Next Generation Air Dominance program, a new way to engage increasingly maneuverable threats.
The Air Force Research Laboratory highlighted what is formally known as the Missile Utility Transformation via Articulated Nose Technology (MUTANT) project at this week's 2023 Air and Space Forces Association's Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado. AFRL says that MUTANT leverages work that has been done over the past six years on related technologies, but notes the core concept takes advantage of related research and experimentation dating back all the way to the 1950s.

A graphic depicting a notional missile with an articulating nose section. USAF
"A more effective missile tends to have more range, maneuverability (g-capability), and agility (airframe responsiveness) with limited weight. The missile control actuation systems (CASs) affects all three of these metrics, and hence the ability to effectively close in on targets," AFRL's webpage on MUTANT explains. "Each CAS, or CAS combination, such as dual canards and fins, have distinct and strong implications to overall missile performance."
"CASs good for range (fins only) tend to be bad for maneuvering and agility," it adds. "CASs good for maneuverability and agility (canards, wings, jets, thrust vectoring) tend to be bad for range due to drag or additional weight."
The Israeli Rafael Python-5, as depicted in the video below, offers a good example of the kinds of complex control surfaces utilized on more traditional current-generation air-to-air missiles to provide high degrees of maneuverability.

MUTANT seeks to upend this basic calculus. In terms of traditional control surfaces, the conceptual missile designs that AFRL has been working with only have tail fins. As noted, this helps make the missile less draggy and extend its range.
Typically this comes at the cost of maneuvering and agility. However, the MUTANT concept adds a conformal section in the forward portion of the missile body that allows the entire front end to articulate away from the center axis.
With a traditional air-to-air missile, if the target begins to move away from the point of intercept that its guidance system has calculated, the entire weapon has to change course. With MUTANT, the idea is that this 'course correction' essentially can be achieved by having the front portion of the missile physically move to bring it more in line with where the threat actually is.
The AFRL video below provides a visual explanation of how the entire MUTANT concept is intended to work.

The articulating nose section could also help better focus the force of the weapon's warhead, which is typically relatively small on air-to-air missiles, on the target. It might help ensure the missile seeker, or seekers plural in the case of multi-mode designs, retains a lock, as well. Missiles with multi-mode seekers, especially ones that combine imaging infrared and active radar comments, often have those elements installed in complex ways that could impact the sensors' fields of view in certain engagement scenarios.

AFRL does note that "historically, [the] size, weight and power [requirements] of morphing technology has been prohibitive to a missile system level benefit," but says that "MUTANT is in the midst of tipping the scale in the morphing weapon’s favor."
To make this work in a missile-sized form, "AFRL developed an electronically-controlled actuation system comprised of compact electromagnetic motors, bearings, gears, and structures," the official MUTANT website says. "Careful design allows a circular pass-through for component wiring into the aircraft body."
MUTANT's articulating component is similar, in very broad strokes, to the articulating exhaust nozzle used on the short and vertical takeoff and landing capable F-35B variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, according to AFRL.

The potential technological hurdles also extend into the realm of material science. To be effective when utilized in an air-to-air missile, the articulating structure has to be able to withstand the high temperatures and other forces associated with high-speed flight. Furthermore, the weapon's entire front end has to be capable of withstanding the effects of rapidly changing direction in flight.
With these demands in mind, AFRL has been working on a "composite structure involving a metallic internal skeleton that is infilled with an elastomer." The MUTANT website says it expects the final design of this structure to be suitable for use on missiles traveling at high-supersonic speeds, where components could be exposed to temperatures in excess of 900 degrees Celsius, or 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit.

An AFRL graphic giving a very general overview of the high temperatures the MUTANT structures have to withstand at different speeds. USAF
There is clearly more testing needed to fully prove out the MUTANT concept before any steps are taken to actually integrate it into a real missile. AFRL has already conducted a number of ground tests of various components of the system in laboratory settings, as well as through the use of rocket sleds. The initial prototype design is based on a heavily modified AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missile.
AFRL says another round of ground testing is set to wrap up by the end of the 2024 Fiscal Year, "culminating in dual articulation and fin control in maneuvering" of the Hellfire-based prototype. Its website stresses that "the Hellfire is used for research purposes and is not necessarily the intended application" of the articulating system.

A composite image of the 'Mutant' Hellfire on a rocket sled before and during a testing. USAF
AFRL makes clear that developments like this are viewed as critical to the Air Force's broader future aerial combat vision.
"Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) requires broad advancement in manned and unmanned aircraft, their family of weapons systems, and the communication between them," AFRL says on its MUTANT webpage. "ACAS [articulation control actuation system] technology is directed at fulfilling future NGAD requirements through the intercept of highly maneuverable targets or threats at longer range with limited cost."
The Air Force's NGAD initiative is a multi-faceted effort that includes the development of advanced new aircraft, crewed and uncrewed, as well as new weapons, sensors, networking and battle management capabilities, advanced jet engines, and more. The expectation is that all of these systems will ultimately work together in a collaborative ecosystem and will help ensure the service maintains its qualitative edge, even against near-peer opponents like China or Russia. You can read more about NGAD, as a whole, here.

A rendering Lockheed Martin released in 2022 showing an advanced sixth-generation stealth combat jet. Lockheed Martin
With regards to MUTANT, specifically, the project comes as the U.S. military as a whole is faced with a future that includes a growing number of increasingly maneuverable aerial threats, including advanced combat jets, drones, and missiles. Uncrewed platforms, which do not have to account for the physical limitations of a human pilot, have the potential to be capable of particularly extreme maneuvers. This could make existing missile systems less effective against them.

Many of these potential future advanced aerial threats could well be flying at high supersonic or even hypersonic speeds while also maneuvering. The ability to intercept maneuverable hypersonic missiles is of particular concern to the U.S. military and is one area where MUTANT could possibly be of value.
It will certainly be interesting to see how the MUTANT project progresses and whether that technology ultimately winds its way into existing or future air-to-air missile designs.

USAF Testing 'Mutant' Missiles That Twist In Mid-Air To Hit Their Targets

The Air Force sees missiles with articulating noses as one way to take on increasingly maneuverable threats.

www.thedrive.com

jward · Mar 10, 2023

(LEAD) N. Korean leader inspects tactical guided weapons test apparently targeting S. Korean military airport: state media | Yonhap News Agency

이원주

(ATTN: RECASTS headline; UPDATES throughout with more info, photos)
By Yi Wonju

SEOUL, March 10 (Yonhap) -- North Korea announced Friday its leader Kim Jong-un oversaw a "fire assault drill" of an artillery unit a day earlier as he stressed the need to "overwhelmingly respond" to any war preparations by its "enemy."
Photos released by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) also showed Kim's daughter Ju-ae attending the "field guidance."

Kim inspected the "Hwasong artillery unit charged with important operational task of the Korean People's Army on the western front on March 9 and watched a fire assault drill," the KCNA said in an English-language report.
"He stressed the need to always stay alert for all sorts of more frantic war preparation moves being committed by the enemy recently and maintain and steadily train the powerful capability to overwhelmingly respond to and contain them all the time so as to thoroughly deter the danger of a military clash on the Korean Peninsula," it added.

Kim also emphasized that the fire assault subunits should be "strictly prepared for the greatest perfection" in carrying out two strategic missions: deterring war and taking the initiative in war "by steadily intensifying various simulated drills for real war in a diverse way in different situations."

Youtube

View: https://youtu.be/XKDzYcbkLuw

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (3rd from L) inspects the Hwasong artillery unit with his daughter, presumed to be his second child, Ju-ae, on March 9, 2023, in this photo provided by the Korean Central News Agency the following day. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

The North's leader "examined the actual war response posture of the 8th fire assault company under the unit charged with striking the enemy's operation airport in the direction of the western front," implying that the drills were aimed at striking the South's military airfields in case of a war.

"The fire assault company, which has trained its capability to carrying out strike missions in the definite and minute war posture of containing any military moves of the enemy at a time, fired a powerful volley at the targeted waters in the West Sea of Korea set under the simulated conditions of the major elements of the enemy operation airport, thus confidently demonstrating its capability to counter an actual war," the KCNA said.
The North appears to have test-fired at least six tactical guided weapons simultaneously, according to photos unveiled by its state media.

On Thursday, South Korea's military said the North fired at least one short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) toward the Yellow Sea from the North's western port city of Nampho at 6:20 p.m.
Pyongyang's latest provocation came as the allies are preparing to kick off the Freedom Shield exercise set to take place from Monday through March 23. The exercise is to proceed concurrently with the large-scale field training exercise, called the Warrior Shield.
Earlier this week, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim, said the reclusive country will regard any U.S. attempt to intercept its missile as a "clear declaration of war" and threatened to take "overwhelming" actions against military activities by Washington and Seoul.

This photo, released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on March 10, 2023, shows what appears to be tactical guided missiles being launched the previous day. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected the "Hwasong artillery unit charged with important operational task of the Korean People's Army on the western front on March 9 and watched a fire assault drill," according to the state media. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

This photo, released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on March 10, 2023, shows what appears to be tactical guided missiles being launched the previous day. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected the "Hwasong artillery unit charged with important operational task of the Korean People's Army on the western front on March 9 and watched a fire assault drill," according to the state media. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
julesyi@yna.co.kr

(LEAD) N. Korean leader inspects tactical guided weapons test apparently targeting S. Korean military airport: state media | Yonhap News Agency

(ATTN: RECASTS headline; UPDATES throughout with more info, photos)By Yi Wonju SEOUL, Ma...

en.yna.co.kr

jward · Mar 11, 2023

At least 36 killed in eastern DR Congo attack

Al Jazeera

Officials say attack targeted the village of Mukondi, about 30km (19 miles) south of the city of Beni in North Kivu province, an area rife with rebel activity.
At least 36 people were killed during an overnight attack on a village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A local official and the head of a civil society group said on Thursday the assailants were believed to be members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) – a Ugandan armed group based in eastern DRC that has pledged allegiance to ISIL (ISIS) and wages frequent deadly raids on villages.

The attack targeted the village of Mukondi, 30km (19 miles) south of the city of Beni in North Kivu province, an area plagued with rebel activity and which has been under military administration since 2021 in an attempt to restore order.
Provincial governor Carly Nzanzu Kasivita said on Twitter at least 36 people had been killed in the attack, which began on Wednesday evening.

The head of a local civil society group, Mumbere Limbadu Arsene, gave a provisional death toll of 44, including women, children and the elderly, and said several villagers were still missing.
“The modus operandi suggests it was the ADF because no bullets were fired,” he told Reuters news agency via telephone, adding some victims died trapped in their homes after attackers set them ablaze.
The ADF often wages attacks using machetes and hatchets.

Catch up on our coverage of the region, all in one place.
A local army spokesperson, Antony Mwalushayi, confirmed there had been an attack but did not give a death toll.
Kakuke Kilalo Emmanuel, a resident of the nearby village of Kalunguta, said he went to Mukondi on Wednesday but turned back after he saw people in a state of panic as the attack was unfolding.
Many Kalunguta residents have fled out of fear for their safety, he added.

Civilian massacres

The ADF was formed in 1995 by a coalition of rebel forces – including the Uganda Muslim Liberation Army and the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda – to fight against the Yoweri Museveni administration.
It is among the most violent groups in the DRC, and has been accused of a string of bomb attacks and civilian massacres. According to the Catholic Church in the country, the ADF has killed about 6,000 civilians since 2013.

US-based monitor the Kivu Security Tracker blames the group for more than 1,200 deaths in the Beni area alone since 2017.
The DRC government declared a state of siege in North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri province in 2021 in an attempt to stem rampant violence in the country’s vast mineral-rich east.
But the killings and rebel activity have not shown any sign of abating.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPRWS-wCpzE

jward · Mar 11, 2023

article is a few weeks old, but interesting

Can the Air Force Shield Its New ICBM from Cyberattacks?

As part of the development process for the Sentinel missile, the Air Force has been working with Northrop Grumman to engineer new command and control systems, computing infrastructure, and networking capabilities.

by Kris Osborn

While senior military leaders and members of Congress cite a long list of reasons why the Pentagon needs to deliver the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by 2029, there is one especially concerning issue related to the continued use of the upgraded Minuteman III ICBM. Simply put, it could be hacked.

Pentagon officials don’t elaborate on the specifics related to technical threats, but many make the general point that the Minuteman III ICBM is simply insufficient to address the threat environment of the twenty-first century. For instance, Russian and Chinese hacking capabilities and the fast-evolving development of space weapons and jamming technologies might undermine the Minuteman III’s ability to stay on target.
A recently published RAND study, titled “Modernizing the U.S. Nuclear Triad: The Rationale for a New Intercontinental Ballistic Missile,” takes up this question and cites comments from Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, on potential adversaries’ cyber capabilities.

The RAND report quotes Richard as saying, “I need a weapon that can fly and make it to the target. Minuteman III is increasingly challenged in its ability to do that. … “There is almost no possibility of an upgrade [to the Minuteman III] on that relative to the threat.”

By contrast, the new Sentinel ICBM, formerly known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, is being engineered with what RAND researchers call a “dedicated cybersecurity component tasked with integrating cyber requirements throughout the system design.” The report’s authors note that the Sentinel’s cyber focus is a “stark contrast to the Minuteman III, which was first developed and fielded before the invention of the internet and which senior defense officials have cautioned can no longer be retrofitted to meet evolving cyber threats.”
While many of the specifics aren’t available to the public, there are a number of areas where enemy cyberattacks might focus. For instance, computerized ground-based command and control networks could be targeted with intrusions, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, or malware. Guidance systems could be targeted by software-programmable radio frequency or electronic warfare signals seeking to “jam” an ICBM’s flight trajectory toward a target. Moreover, communications networks engineered to relay time-sensitive threat information to decision-makers could also be targeted with similar attacks.

For several years now, the Air Force has been working on implementing a seven-point cybersecurity effort intended to increase cyber resilience by finding and addressing potential vulnerabilities early in the developmental process. The intent, first outlined by Air Force Materiel Command years ago, is to “bake in” cyber protections by identifying possible risks during the prototyping and early digital engineering phases of development. Digital engineering is one reason why the new Sentinel is on track to emerge by 2029, as weapons developers had opportunities to examine multiple design models before committing to a single design. Given the fast-changing threat equation, addressing cybersecurity was likely a major part of this process.

As part of the preparation and technological maturation process for the Sentinel, the Air Force has been working with Northrop Grumman to engineer new command and control systems, computing infrastructure, and networking capabilities. One specific effort has involved finding ways to ensure that enemy intrusions cannot access any launch protocol systems.
The advanced command and control system is also likely to secure data transfers from threat detection systems to higher authorities, which could shorten the timeline between when senior decision-makers learn of a threat and responsive weapons systems are put on alert. This could incorporate space connectivity with fortified ground control stations in position to quickly integrate with ICBMs should there be an unanticipated attack.

The growing cyber-reliance of weapons systems reinforces the need to harden command and control networks and computer processing systems for America’s new ICBMs, as advanced connectivity can introduce both novel advantages and risks. This helps explain why the entire hardware and software infrastructure necessary to support the new Sentinel ICBMs is essentially being rebuilt with upgradeable and securely developed technologies.
Finally, along with designing and building the missiles themselves, prototypes of which already exist, the joint Northrop Grumman-Air Force effort will rebuild the entire ICBM infrastructure, including new launch facilities and launch centers. Northrop Grumman is reconstructing as many as 450 launch facilities.

Kris Osborn is the defense editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Can the Air Force Shield Its New ICBM from Cyberattacks?

As part of the development process for the Sentinel missile, the Air Force has been working with Northrop Grumman to engineer new command and control systems, computing infrastructure, and networking capabilities.

nationalinterest.org

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