WAR 03-17-2018-to-03-23-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(312) 02-24-2018-to-03-02-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...3-02-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(313) 03-03-2018-to-03-09-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...3-09-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(314) 03-10-2018-to-03-16-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...3-16-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

==========

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://apnews.com/e986bb95dc7249a3...-leaders-to-sign-security-agreement-in-Sydney

Southeast Asian leaders to sign security agreement in Sydney
By TREVOR MARSHALLSEA
Today

SYDNEY (AP) — Southeast Asian leaders will sign an agreement on regional cooperation against violent extremism as the risk to the region grows due to militants fleeing Islamic State group losses in the Middle East, an official said on Saturday.

The memorandum of understanding on cooperation to counter international terrorism will be signed by the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and Australia, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said.

It includes a package of joint initiatives and programs that will enhance regional security and contribute to building counterterrorism capability throughout Southeast Asia, he said.

“We must recognize that national security cannot be achieved in isolation from regional security,” Dutton told a counterterrorism conference that coincides with a special ASEAN leaders’ summit in Sydney.

“A nation cannot be assured of its own safety while there are threats at its doorstep,” he added.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last month urged reluctant allied nations to address a growing crisis by taking responsibility for their citizens who have been detained as foreign fighters for the Islamic State group in Syria.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are currently holding thousands of IS detainees, including hundreds of foreign fighters from a number of nations.

Dutton said 220 Australians went to Syria and Iraq to fight with militants before the Islamic State movement’s self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed. He did not say how many had been captured, but at least one is in custody in Turkey.

“One of the greatest challenges to Australia and the Southeast Asia region is posed by these individuals returning to our shores,” Dutton said.

“There are now more individuals within our communities who wish to do us harm than ever before,” he added.

Australia had suffered six extremist attacks since 2014 and authorities had disrupted another 14 plots, Dutton said.

The disrupted plots include an alleged attempt to smuggle an improvised explosive device aboard an Etihad Airways airliner at Sydney Airport last July. Four Sydney men were charged in relation to the plot allegedly directed by the Islamic State movement.

Dutton also pointed out that international cooperation had helped government troops recapture the southern Philippine city of Marawi from militants last year.

“While most extremists were killed or captured, some are understood to have gone into hiding, posing an ongoing threat to Philippines and regional countries,” Dutton said.

At the height of the Marawi fighting, about 40 foreign militants traveled to the southern Philippines to join hundreds of Filipino militants in the lakeside city. Fourteen of the foreigners are known to have been killed by troops. It’s unclear what happened to the others, Philippine officials said.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is expected to skip the ASEAN weekend summit which is meeting for the first time in Australia, a dialogue partner but not a member nation.

Hundreds of demonstrators protested in downtown Sydney on Friday night and Saturday against Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc over the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority and other human rights issues.

___

Associated Press reporter Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...fect-nuclear-deal-iran-official-idUSKCN1GT07P

World News March 17, 2018 / 12:48 AM / Updated 4 hours ago

New European sanctions would affect nuclear deal: Iran official

Reuters Staff
3 Min Read

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Any new European sanctions against Iran will have a direct effect on the nuclear deal struck between world powers and Tehran, Iran’s deputy foreign minister said Friday, according to state media.

“In case some European countries are following steps to put non-nuclear sanctions against Iran in order to please the American president, they will be making a big mistake and they will see the direct result of that on the nuclear deal,” Abbas Araqchi said, according to state media.

“It’s better that European countries continue their current action to persuade America to keep its promises in the nuclear deal and for that country to effectively execute the deal in all its parts with good will and in a productive atmosphere.”

Araqchi’s comments were in reaction to a Reuters report that Britain, France and Germany have proposed fresh EU sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missiles and its role in Syria’s war to try to persuade Washington to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of a number of sanctions as part of the deal. Senior Iranian officials have repeatedly said their missile program is not up for negotiation.

The proposal is part of an EU strategy to save the accord signed by world powers that curbs Tehran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons, namely by showing U.S. President Donald Trump that there are other ways to counter Iranian power abroad.

Trump delivered an ultimatum to the European signatories on Jan. 12. It said they must agree to “fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal” - which was sealed under his predecessor Barack Obama - or he would refuse to extend U.S. sanctions relief on Iran. U.S. sanctions will resume unless Trump issues fresh “waivers” to suspend them on May 12.

If America pulls out of the agreement then the nuclear deal will be finished, Araqchi said, according to a report published by the Mehr News agency on Saturday.

“If America exits the deal and unilateral sanctions return, we will definitely not continue the deal because it will not serve our interests,” Araqchi was quoted as saying.

Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Mark Potter

 

[danielboon]

@zerohedge
6 minHá 6 minutos
Mais
CHINA FOREIGN MINISTRY URGES U.S. TO CAUTIOUSLY HANDLE TAIWAN ISSUE TO AVOID HARMING PEACE IN TAIWAN STRAIT

 

[danielboon]

Poroshenko says Ukraine ready to repel military offensive from Russia Подробнее: https://eadaily.com/en/n

so many war fronts appearing by the hour Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced that Ukraine is ready to repel Russia in case it launches a military attack against his country. He made the statement during his trip to Donbass.

“They have been lulling us for dozens of years saying Russia is a peacekeeping nation and they were doing so with the only aim to make us unprepared for a Russian attack. But I state: such mistake will never be repeated; let Russia know that we are ready to a repulse, and we shall save nine grams of lead for everyone who comes with a sword to us,” the Ukrainian leader said in Kramatorsk.

According to him, in 2014, Moscow deployed its forces along the Ukrainian borders to have an opportunity to attack. Poroshenko said that he knows about more than 35,000 Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, 700 land battle ships, armored vehicles, artillery systems and multiple launch rocket systems delivered from Russia.

He also noted that mercenaries fighting against Kiev are being trained in Crimea, Rostov and Belgorod regions.

These bellicose statements made by Poroshenko are evidently connected with a new stage of the confrontation in south-eastern Ukraine. As EADaily reported earlier, on March 16, the Ukrainian president announced that the counter-terrorist operation (ATO) is finished and a new phase of the punitive operation in Donbass starts.
Подробнее: https://eadaily.com/en/news/2018/03...ready-to-repel-military-offensive-from-russia. https://eadaily.com/en/news/2018/03...ready-to-repel-military-offensive-from-russia

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
www.france24.com/en/20180318-israel-strikes-gaza-strip-destroys-new-hamas-tunnel

21:17 (Paris time) REVISITED
NEWS

Israel
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Gaza Strip
Middle East

Israel launches strikes on Gaza, ‘destroys’ new tunnel

Israeli forces on Sunday knocked out a tunnel in the Gaza Strip dug by Hamas militants to mount cross-border attacks, the military said.

Israel's military carried out an air raid overnight against an underground Hamas facility in the Gaza Strip and destroyed a separate tunnel under construction that could be used for attacks, it said Sunday.

No casualties were reported in either operation, which came after an explosive device was detonated near the Gaza border with Israel, the latest in a string of such incidents.

Israel's military said the operation to destroy the tunnel involved new technology it has been working on to detect them.

"Our policy is to act resolutely against any attempt to harm us and systematically eliminate the terror tunnel infrastructure, and we will continue doing so," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

The new tunnel under construction by Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, was being dug to link up with an older one in the south of the Palestinian enclave, according to military spokesman Jonathan Conricus.

The new tunnel had not reached Israeli territory and was within several hundred metres of the border fence, near the Kerem Shalom goods crossing and in the area of the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, he said.

Israel had been monitoring the work before the operation, said Conricus.

It was destroyed by filling it with an unspecified material and explosives were not used, he said, declining to elaborate further.

Israeli soldiers carried out the operation from the Israeli side of the border fence, he said.

Conricus also did not describe in more detail what he said was an underground facility struck in the air raid in the central Gaza Strip. "It was a subterranean complex, a military complex," he said.

Gaza resident Amal Malaka spoke of her fear as the strike was occurring.

"We heard the sound of shelling, the whole of the house shaking and the windows too," she told AFP. "My children were afraid and the girls fell down from the bed."

Late Saturday, an explosive device went off in the northern Gaza Strip near Israel's border fence, the army said in an earlier statement, with no casualties reported.

Israel had already retaliated once in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, with tanks targeting a Hamas observation post.

According to Palestinian sources, the tank fire slightly injured one person.

Two explosive devices were detonated Thursday along the border, which had already provoked Israeli attacks on Hamas positions.

On February 17, four Israeli soldiers were wounded by an improvised explosive device on the border, sparking intense military retaliation.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but Israel held Hamas responsible as the de facto power in the Palestinian enclave.

Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2014. The strip has been under an Israeli blockade for around a decade.

(AFP)
Date created : 2018-03-18

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.rferl.org/a/us-says-pak...etwork-militants-within-borders/29105243.html

Pakistan

U.S. Says Pakistan Doing 'Bare Minimum' Against Militants Within Its Borders

March 17, 2018 03:10 GMT

Pakistan is doing the "bare minimum" needed to address U.S. demands that it stop the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network from operating within its borders, a senior U.S. official has said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, provided to reporters on March 16 his assessment of Pakistan's efforts to counter the militants since U.S. President Donald Trump announced last year that he would withhold $2 billion a year in military aid unless Islamabad takes more vigorous action.

"The Pakistanis have wanted to appear responsive," but "they have done the bare minimum to appear responsive to our requests," said the official.

"We continue to make very specific requests, and when provided with very specific information, they have responded," he said. "But we have not seen them pro-actively take the steps that we expect and know they are capable of."

The United States, in particular, is demanding that Pakistan move against Taliban leaders who support a continuation of the war in Afghanistan and oppose participating in peace talks with Kabul, the official said.

But the country's powerful security services still seem to be supporting the Afghan Taliban, the official said, most likely because it sees the Taliban as aligned with Islamabad's interest in keeping India from influencing Afghanistan.

"We are continuing to look for real action, not just words, from Pakistan on the Taliban and Haqqani sanctuaries," the official said.

"We need to sustain the pressure," he said, adding that the administration is willing to "give it more time, it deserves more time."

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://breakingdefense.com/2018/03/guns-drones-augmented-reality-army-seeks-infantry-revolution/

Acquisition, Intel & Cyber, Land

Guns, Drones, & Augmented Reality: Army Seeks Infantry Revolution

The catch, of course, is that the Army's tried to field all these things before -- and failed. Why would things go any better this time around? Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue has an answer for that.

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on March 16, 2018 at 6:51 PM
18 Comments

There’s a revolution afoot in America’s infantry. New guns to replace the M4 carbine, M16 rifle, and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. A new mini-drone to scout ahead. A new tactical network to link scattered units. A new night vision sight that displays targeting data like a fighter pilot’s Heads-Up Display. New tactics to use all of the above and new VR simulators to train on. All these innovations could be in the hands of US Army infantry within “a few years,” Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue told reporters Friday.

The catch, of course, is that the Army’s tried to field all these things before — and failed. Why would things go any better this time around?

First, the technology’s gotten better. This stuff is real, Donahue said. “We’ve already seen and touched a number” of potential Squad Automatic Weapons (basically a heavy assault rifle or light machinegun), Donahue said. “We’ll be getting our first prototypes here in about a year.”

Army troops have field-tested palm-top mini-drones, notably in the PACMAN exercises in Hawaii, and the Defense Secretary’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force is funding procurement for the Army. Special Operations Forces are already using an early version of network devices. And the new night vision sight can be issued to combat units “in six to seven months.”

That brings us to the second big difference: speed. Last fall, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley created eight Cross Functional Teams to accelerate modernization by bringing together experts from across the bureaucracy, led by one- and two-star combat veterans with the clout to push things through. This spring, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis created his own high-level, high-speed team, the Close Combat Lethality Task Force, specifically to improve the infantry.

Brig. Gen. Donahue has three jobs: He sits on the Secretary’s inter-service task force, he leads the Army’s Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team, and he commands the Infantry School at Fort Benning. Each CFT is different, he said. “Ours is definitely the most broad as far as what we have a mandate to do,” he explained: not just new equipment — his focus in today’s interview — but also training and human performance.

In another sense, however, the Soldier Lethality team is tightly focused. Unlike past programs, they are not trying to come up with General Issue gear for a million GIs. Instead, “we’re focused on the 100,000 active, National Guard, and…Reserve that actually close with the enemy,” he said: infantry, scouts, armored vehicle crews, plus some frontline specialists such as forward observers (who call in artillery and airstrikes) and medics. “We call that the close combat 100,000.”

By focusing on 100,000 soldiers out of a million-strong Army (active, reserve, and Guard), the Soldier Lethality task force cuts both the time and cost to field its innovations by about 90 percent.

Going Fast

The Cross Functional Teams just stood up in November but they’ve crammed years of work into the last five months. Donahue’s CFT quickly identified new night vision devices as low-hanging fruit and put together a formal requirement for them — a process that normally takes years — “in about five weeks,” he said. They’ve also done three “test points” with soldiers using the equipment. “Once the budget’s passed and we have the money,” he said, they can get the sights to Army troops — and potentially Marines and special operators, who are also very interested — in “six to seven months.”

While the device is called Enhanced Night Vision Goggles – Binocular (ENVG-B), it’s much more than a night sight. Yes, it combines light amplification with infrared in a dual-camera setup (hence “binocular”) that provides depth perception, a major improvement to aiming at night. But it also has an augmented reality display that Donahue considers the first step towards giving foot troops the kind of computerized Heads-Up Display (HUD) used by fighter pilots.

For example, soldiers can link the goggles to their weapon, then turn on a targeting reticle (i.e. cross-hairs), superimposed over their field of view to show exactly where their shot will land. “What we’re seeing in the initial testing is they’re shooting significantly better,” he said.

Soldiers can also link the goggles to their wireless networking device, which automatically shares tactical data across the force. Instead of looking down at a compass, map, or a handheld GPS — which takes their eyes off the target — they can see their heading superimposed on their view of the real world. The goggles can even display tactical data from the network, for example a red dot to indicate an enemy’s been spotted in a specific direction.

Donahue’s Cross Functional Team is working closely with the network CFT, led by Maj. Gen. Pete Gallagher, to get all this to work in combat. Donahue’s CFT is also working with Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais’s Synthetic Training Environment CFT on how to load training scenarios into the goggles so they allow troops to train with virtual obstacles and enemies. (It’d be a bit like a militarized version of Pokémon Go).

Overall, said Donahue, everything the squad carries will have to be compatible with an Adaptive Soldier Architecture. The goal is set of common standards that will allow the Army to field new updates quickly, rather than laboriously kludging together pieces of kit that were never designed to be compatible.

Donahue also has a Lethality Analysis Team conducting a rigorous study of every piece of equipment issued to the infantry. “If you put something onto an F-35 or an M1 tank, you know exactly what that does,” he said. “We don’t have that same data of what happens if you put something into a squad.” Donahue wants every piece of kit examined to reduce weight, reduce power demands — batteries are a major burden in the field — and to increase combat power.

That includes new weapons. The Marine Corps already replaced some of their M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW) with the much lighter M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR), going from 23 pounds to nine and improving accuracy, albeit at the price of halving the rate of fire. Currently, the Marines are replacing all their M16 rifles and M4 carbines with M27. The Army is set to follow suit, albeit not necessarily with the same weapon. The service’s Next Generation Squad Weapon, originally meant to replace the M249 alone, will now also evolve into a replacement for the M4 and M16.

That second-stage weapon, the carbine replacement, will have to be significantly lighter than the M249 SAW replacement, Donahue said. (He consistently said “carbine” today, not “rifle,” which probably rules out the Marines’ M27 as too heavy). The technology to get all the desired capabilities in a lighter package is “not right there yet,” he said.

But the Army’s not looking at a long development program. Army Secretary Mark Esper recently promised the Squad Automatic Weapon replacement by 2023. As for the carbine, Donahue said, “you’ll see it a couple years after the replacement of the SAW.”

 

[danielboon]

Trump says he will meet Putin to discuss ‘arms race that is getting out of control’

US President Donald Trump said he will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the not too distant future to discuss an arms race that Trump called “out of control.” He also congratulated Putin on his election victory.
Trump answered a question about Putin as he was holding a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House.

“We will be meeting in the not too distant future to discuss the arms race which is getting out of control,” Trump said, expanding on the content of the phone call with Putin on Tuesday.He reaffirmed his commitment to maintaining America’s military spending.“We are going to remain stronger than any other nation in the world by far,” he said. “We will never allow anyone to have anything close to what we have.” At the proposed meeting, they would also discuss Ukraine and North Korea, Trump said.

The US currently spends around $700 billion on its military, more than any other country in the world. This includes $640 billion on weapons and personnel, and $60 billion for wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, as well as other countries.

The Pentagon published its Nuclear Posture Review in February, in which it named North Korea, China and Russia among its main security threats.Earlier in March, Putin announced that Russia had developed a number of advanced weapons systems, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile. Other recently unveiled cutting-edge munitions include hypersonic missiles, a nuclear-powered drone submarine and a mysterious laser combat system, the exact purpose of which remains unclear.

Putin strongly denied that this was an attempt to revive an arms race between Russia and the US however, stating in an interview with NBC that the weapons were intended to provide a credible nuclear deterrent. In December 2017, Moscow announced it would scale down military spending, saying that it had no interest in pursuing a “pointless” arms race.

Russia’s President has reaffirmed his commitment to not engage in a new arms race, after securing a decisive re-election victory on Sunday.

“Of course, we will have to and we will pay the necessary attention to further strengthening the country's defense capabilities,” Putin said on Monday, at a meeting with other candidates who had run for president. “No one is going to fuel any arms race. We, on the contrary, are seeking to build constructive relations with all the countries of the world.”https://www.rt.com/usa/421843-trump-putin-meeting-arms-race/

 

[danielboon]

 

[danielboon]

1 Thessalonians 5:3
For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. [Trump] “We will be meeting in the not too distant future to discuss the arms race which is getting out of control,” Trump said, expanding on the content of the phone call with Putin on Tuesday.He reaffirmed his commitment to maintaining America’s military spending.“We are going to remain stronger than any other nation in the world by far,” he said. “We will never allow anyone to have anything close to what we have.”

 

[danielboon]

Russia launches large-scale military exercises on border with Ukraine
uawire.org
http://uawire.org/russia-launches-large-scale-military-exercises-on-border-with-ukraine could someone please post this article thanks

 

[northern watch]

Russia launches large-scale military exercises on border with Ukraine
Tuesday, March 20, 2018 9:00:46 AM
UAWire

On Monday, March 19, in various areas of Russia, and also in the annexed Crimea, large-scale artillery exercises of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation began, reported the press service of the Southern Military District of Russia.

About 8,000 servicemen and nearly 1,400 pieces of military equipment are involved in the maneuvers, among them the Tornado, Grad and Uragan multiple launch rocket systems; Khosta, Msta-S and Akatsiya self-propelled artillery mounts; and self-propelled Khrizantema anti-tank missile systems.

During the exercises, the Russian military will also work on a “combined” method of transferring military equipment.

http://uawire.org/russia-launches-large-scale-military-exercises-on-border-with-ukraine

 

[danielboon]

SPECIFIC TIMEFRAME, VENUE OF RUSSIAN-U.S. SUMMIT WERE NOT DISCUSSED DURING PHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN PUTIN, TRUMP - PESKOV

13:19
KREMLIN PRESUMES WASHINGTON HAS HEARD BOTH PUTIN'S ADDRESS TO FEDERAL ASSEMBLY, SUBSEQUENT STATEMENTS THAT RUSSIA NOT GOING TO GET INVOLVED IN ARMS RACE - PESKOV

13:19
PUTIN, TRUMP AGREE TO INSTRUCT LAVROV, POMPEO TO BEGIN PREPARATIONS FOR RUSSIAN-U.S. SUMMIT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE - PESKOV

13:19
PUTIN, TRUMP AGREED IN TELEPHONE CALL THAT ARMS RACE WOULD BE UNDESIRABLE - PESKOV http://www.interfax.com/news.asp

 

[danielboon]

15:51
EXPOSURE OF PLOTS FOR CHEMICAL WEAPONS PROVOCATIONS IN SYRIA PREVENTED U.S., COALITION FROM STRIKING AT GOVT FORCES - RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY

15:49
UK not sharing with Moscow info received in course of Skripals inquiry - Russian Foreign Ministry

15:49
OVER 4O TONNES OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS LEFT BEHIND BY MILITANTS FOUND IN SYRIA - RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY

15:47
British authorities didn't give Russia any info on Skripal case, so it is absurd to demand anything from Moscow - Russian Foreign Ministry

15:47
CHEMICAL WEAPONS PRODUCTION WORKSHOPS FOUND IN SYRIAN AREAS FREED FROM MILITANTS - RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY http://www.interfax.com/news.asp

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuc...ager-seeks-fy19-funding-for-new-nuke-designs/

Nuclear Triad

Nuclear warhead manager seeks FY19 funding for new nuke designs

By: Aaron Mehta  
17 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The agency in charge of managing America’s nuclear warheads is in discussions with the Office of Management and Budget about getting funding to start work on two new nuclear capabilities sought by the Trump administration.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within the Department of Energy, is a key player as the government seeks to create both a low-yield warhead for its submarine-launched ballistic missile and a new sea-launched, nuclear-capable cruise missile.

But while the Pentagon has identified those two systems as vital to national interests, and has set aside $22.6 million in fiscal 2019 for a low-yield ballistic warhead, the NNSA’s budget request for FY19 doesn’t contain any funds to support that work.

“We are leaning as far forward as we possibly can, working with OMB and [the Department of Defense]” on the question of FY19 funds, said Lisa Gordon-Haggerty, the NNSA head, during congressional testimony Tuesday.

Philip Calbos, acting deputy administrator for defense programs at NNSA, later added that it would be “beneficial” for the agency to be able to begin work on the two new systems in ’19, rather than having to wait until money is put into the FY2020 request.

The officials did not clarify how they would go about getting that money added to the budget request, but it could come as either a supplemental request from the administration or through Congress during the authorization and appropriations process. Members of the House Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee seemed open to that option during Tuesday’s hearing, with several members saying they looked forward to talking with the agency officials in a smaller setting.

The Nuclear Posture Review laid out the need to invest in both a short-term development of a low-yield nuclear warhead that could be put on the Navy’s Trident ballistic missiles, as well as a new nuclear-capable cruise missile that can be launched by naval vessels.

But while the DoD is ready to invest in the near-term capability, the NNSA appears to have been unable to incorporate the final decisions of the NPR, as it was building its budget at the same time.

Calbos described the NNSA’s portion of work on the submarine-launched ballistic missile as “a moderate level of effort, again relatively speaking, at a moderate cost. And we believe we can fit it in, in the near term.” That is in line with the belief, expressed by defense officials, that the agency should be able to simply modify a handful of the W76-1 warheads already undergoing a service life extension.

As Trump seeks new nuke options, weapons agency head warns of capacity overload
In an exclusive exit interview, Frank Klotz, who retired on Jan. 19 as the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, warns that his agency is stretched to the limit.
By: Aaron Mehta

And because the submarine-launched ballistic missile capability is not as near term, that should not impact the series of currently ongoing warhead life-extension and modification programs — assuming those all stay on track.

Both officials said they believe the warhead modernization efforts currently underway will not be impacted by the additional projects, but acknowledged that the real driver of keeping things on track comes down to stable funds.

“This is not a one-, two-, three-year effort. It took us a while to reach the point we are in, in respect to the enterprise, and it will take us a while to get it back on secure footing for the next several decades,” Calbos said. “Technically, we have the workforce that can do it. We’re beefing up the enterprise so it can do the work it needs to do. We need sustained funding for many years.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuc...ar-warhead-for-submarines-set-at-485-million/

Nuclear Triad

DoD’s cost of low-yield nuclear warhead for submarines set at $48.5 million

By: Aaron Mehta  
1 day ago

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon expects to spend $48.5 million over the next five years developing a new low-yield nuclear capability for submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

That figure was included in written submissions to Congress, obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists and shared with Defense News ahead of upcoming hearings about the defense budget. It represents only the defense department’s expected expenditure for the new warhead, and does not include funding from the Department of Energy.

Per the testimony, there is $22.6 million set aside to help develop the warheads in fiscal 2019 and $48.5 million spread over the life of the Future Years Defense Program, or FYDP, a series of projected numbers that cover through FY23.

That includes $19.6 million in FY20, $3.2 million in FY21, $1.5 million in FY22 and $1.6 million in FY23. Those numbers are just projections and could change depending on need or changes in technical difficulty — notable, as the National Nuclear Security Administration has yet to figure out the full design and is still working out the technical requirements.

But the fact the money is largely up-front is in line with what has been said publicly by government officials about the timeline for the W76-1, the existing SLBM warhead design currently going through a life extension program.

That extension production line is scheduled to shut down in FY19, but NNSA director Lisa Gordon-Hagerty told senators at a March 14 hearing that the government is sorting through right now whether they would need to extend that production run to accommodate the lower-yield options.

The lower-yield option “shouldn’t have a significant” impact on the current W76-1 production, Gordon-Hagerty said, adding that she did not expect any special testing or simulations would be required for the low-yield option as opposed to their more destructive cousins.

However, she also noted that there is currently no money in place from NNSA’s budget to work on the W76 variant, signaling that the $48.5 million DoD expects to spend will not be the final cost of the weapon design. NNSA handles development and production on the warhead itself, while DoD handles the delivery systems.

Easy modification?
The Nuclear Posture Review raised eyebrows with its call for a low-yield warhead for the submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The plan involves a “near-term” solution in which the NNSA would modify a small number of existing W76 SLBM warheads to turn them into low-yield weapons. Just how many warheads would be modified is classified.

The agency is already in the process of doing a life extension on the W76 warheads for those weapons, with Robert Soofer, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, telling reporters ahead of the NPR’s publication that the plan is to set aside a few of those warheads and make them less powerful, instead of developing a brand-new system.

“All this would require us to reserve the last X number, tens of warheads, and instead of doing a full [life extension], do the primary only. It doesn’t require additional capacity,” Soofer said of developing the capability. On the Navy side, the service would “just take that warhead and make sure they can qualify” an SLBM on a sub.

The Pentagon has argued that developing low-yield nuclear weapons is needed to counter threats from China and particularly from Russia, which has invested significantly in its own low-yield weapons in what U.S. officials believe is part of its “escalate to deescalate” strategy. Under that concept, Russia would be willing to use a small nuclear weapon, assuming NATO allies — when faced with using a strategic nuclear weapon or not responding at all — will back down in a conflict.

However, members of the nonproliferation community, such as Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, counter that a low-yield weapon will be destabilizing, particularly given the rhetoric from the Trump administration over nuclear weapons.

“Providing any president with new, more usable nuclear capabilities deserves serious contemplation at any time. The fact that it is this president, with his bellicose rhetoric and threats of ‘fire and fury,’ make it even more important,” Young said. “This is not something that should be rushed through in a little over a year, even if such speedy action is nominally possible.”
For more coverage of America’s nuclear arsenal, click here.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...killed-in-kashmir-attack-police-idUSKBN1GX1X8

World News March 21, 2018 / 7:03 AM / Updated 10 minutes ago

Four Indian soldiers, four militants killed in Kashmir attack: police

Reuters Staff
1 Min Read

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Four Indian soldiers and four suspected militants were killed in a gunbattle near the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the disputed region of Kashmir on Wednesday, a senior police official said.

The militants attacked security forces carrying out a search operation in forests around Kupwara, 95 km (60 miles) north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, said Shamsher Hussain, senior superintendent of police in Kupwara.

The gunbattle was continuing, he added. “Indian troops killed four armed militants. We also lost two army men and two police officials in the gunbattle,” he said.

India accuses Pakistan of training and arming militants and helping them infiltrate across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir. Pakistan denies those allegations.

The South Asian neighbors have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.

Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari, Writing by Rupam Jain, Editing by Andrew Heavens

 

[danielboon]

‘Peace through strength!’ Trump says ‘getting along with Russia is a good thing’

US President Donald Trump has hit back at 'the Fake News Media' over its criticism of him congratulating Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election victory, saying “getting along with Russia is a good thing.”


Trump made the comments on Twitter on Wednesday, hitting back at media coverage of his phone call with Putin in the aftermath of the Russian election result. The US leader noted that his predecessor Barack Obama had also called Putin, after the latter won Russia’s 2012 presidential race.

In a follow-up tweet, Trump said Russia “can help solve problems,” including issues regarding North Korea, Syria and the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).Trump’s call with Putin sparked an avalanche of criticism in the US media, with many even claiming it was proof of collusion between the Trump administration and the Russian state. In his tweets Wednesday, the US president dismissed the claims, accusing the media of being “crazed” and of wanting him to excoriate Putin.

During Tuesday’s phone call the two presidents discussed the importance of coordinated efforts to limit an international arms race and spoke in favor of developing practical interaction in various areas, such as combating international terrorism. A statement from the Kremlin said Putin and Trump focused on overcoming problems in bilateral relations and had also discussed North Korea, Syria and Ukraine. https://www.rt.com/usa/421964-trump-putin-call-election-victory/

 

[danielboon]

16:29 GMT
EU unveils plans to make big tech companies pay more taxes
The European Union on Wednesday unveiled plans to make big tech companies pay more taxes. The move could, if endorsed, hit online US firms like Google and Facebook, AP reported. The European Commission says that digital companies must pay their fair share, adding that EU member countries should be able to tax firms that make profits on their territory even if they aren’t physically present. It would concern any country where a firm’s annual revenue exceeds $8.6 million, or which has more than 100,000 users or more than 3,000 digital service business contracts in a tax year. The commission estimates that up to 150 companies could be affected, around half of them from the US.

15:40 GMT
African states agree to giant trade bloc, Nigeria, S. Africa won’t sign up
African leaders agreed on Wednesday to form a $3 trillion continental free-trade zone encompassing 1.2 billion people. However, its two biggest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, did not sign up, Reuters reports. The African Union started talks in 2015 to establish a 55-nation bloc that would be the biggest in the world by member states. The aim is to increase intra-regional trade, which sits at a measly 15 percent of Africa’s total commerce. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, host of an AU summit in Kigali, declared the meeting a success after 44 African nations signed up to establish the free trade bloc within 18 months.

14:56 GMT
Macron to address US Congress during visit in April – House Speaker Ryan
French President Emmanuel Macron will address the US Congress during a visit to Washington next month, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives said Wednesday. “France is not only our oldest ally, but one of our strongest,” AFP quoted Paul Ryan as saying. “I look forward to welcoming President Macron to the US Capitol to address a joint meeting of Congress on April 25.” Ryan described the invitation as a special opportunity “to build on the historic relationship between our countries, and to reaffirm our commitment to defeating terror both domestically and around the world.” President Donald Trump will host Macron at the White House on April 24, as the French leader kicks off his two-day state visit.

14:23 GMT
Russia, US interested in peaceful political settlement on Korean Peninsula – Kremlin
The interests of Moscow and Washington with regard to North Korea are similar, although there are differences in tactics, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. “There may be some disagreements on the methodology and tactics,” TASS quoted him as saying. “The strategic goal is the same, it cannot be different – we are all interested in denuclearization and peaceful political settlement on the Korean Peninsula,” Peskov said. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held a telephone conversation on Tuesday, during which they discussed, among other issues, the situation on the Korean peninsula and noted the importance of reducing tension by peaceful means.

13:10 GMT
Merkel says 2015 migrant influx in Germany won’t be repeated
German Chancellor Angela Merkel renewed a promise on Wednesday that the migrant influx of 2015 won’t be repeated as she embarks on her fourth term. She acknowledged in her first speech to parliament since being sworn in last week that the debate about migration has “divided and polarized our country to this day.” The chancellor said that Germany, which allowed in over a million migrants in 2015 and 2016, can be proud. However, she said that this “exceptional humanitarian situation… should and must not be repeated.” Merkel also said she will “always defend” a 2016 agreement with Turkey, aimed at curbing migrant arrivals and the activities of smugglers, although the deal has many opponents.

12:43 GMT
Manila, Beijing discuss joint S. China Sea projects amid signs of easing tensions
Philippines Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano visited Beijing on Wednesday for talks on possible joint development projects in the South China Sea. Cayetano was scheduled to meet with his counterpart Wang Yi and with newly-appointed Vice President Wang Qishan, a close ally of President Xi Jinping, amid signs of an easing of tensions in the disputed waterway, AP said. Manila and Beijing have long tussled over islands and reefs in the South China Sea. Since taking office in 2013, Xi has taken a hard line on issues of Chinese sovereignty. Kicking off his second five-year term on Tuesday, Xi declared at the legislature that China would never cede “one inch” of its territory. Beijing rejected an international tribunal’s 2016 ruling invalidating much of its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea in a case brought by the Philippines. https://www.rt.com/newsline/

 

[danielboon]

Taiwan an example for region: US official

The nation’s democracy and resulting development are an example for the Indo-Pacific region, a visiting US Department of State official said yesterday as he reiterated Washington’s commitment to supporting Taiwan’s international participation and helping it defend its democracy.

Alex Wong (黃之瀚), deputy assistant secretary at the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, made the remarks in a speech at the 50th annual Hsieh Nien Fan (謝年飯) banquet hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Taipei.

It was the only public appearance Wong is expected to make during his three-day visit, the first by a US official since Washington on Friday last week enacted the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages high-level visits by Taiwanese and US officials.

However, the American Institute in Taiwan has denied a link between Wong’s visit and the new legislation, a stance echoed last night by AmCham Taipei chairman Albert Chang (章錦華), who said that they were classmates at Harvard Law School and that he agreed to visit months ago.

“Tonight should be about looking forward. Yes, we have done much to deepen US-Taiwan relations, but my message tonight is this: Let’s do more,” Wong said.

Taiwan’s constitutional democracy is an example for the entire Indo-Pacific region, because dynamic, broad-based and sustainable economic growth can only arise in the stable and certain conditions created under a constitutional government, Wong said.

“For that example to have the most force, for that example to do the most good, Taiwan can no longer be excluded unjustly from international fora,” Wong said.

Denying Taiwan the chance to share its experiences in public health, humanitarian relief and sustainable development would be unjust for anyone who could benefit from them, Wong said, pledging continued joint efforts between the US government and private sector to ensure that “Taiwan’s stellar international example shines brightly.”

Wong also lauded Taiwan’s efforts to forge close economic ties with nations throughout the Indo-Pacific region via the New Southbound Policy, which he said is vital to consolidating the free and open rules-based order in the region.

“The final thing I am certain of is the US’ support for Taiwan,” Wong said, adding that Washington would continue to bolster Taiwan’s ability to defend its democracy and ensure that its people can travel on their chosen path free from coercion.

In her opening remarks, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had a light-hearted exchange with Wong, when she jokingly said she was “allergic” to Harvard Law School because she was not admitted.

Tsai then expressed her gratitude to US President Donald Trump’s administration and the US Congress for supporting the act.

“We also welcome deputy assistant secretary Wong as the latest to be here following visits by senior US officials at the state department, department of commerce, small business administrations and more,” she said. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/03/22/2003689780

 

[danielboon]

US Battleship Iwo Jima Docks at Cyprus Port

The USS Iwo Jima docked at Limassol port on Monday morning for refueling and crew R&R, reports said.

Sailing from Haifa in Israel, the Iwo Jima, which has a crew of 2,500 U.S. naval personnel, has been in the eastern Mediterranean for two weeks to take part in the Juniper Cobra (JC18) military drill with Israel. According to an announcement by the Amphibious Preparedness Team (ARG), posted on the U.S.-Navy website, JC18 allows the U.S. and Israel to increase interoperability between their various military forces.

Reports earlier in March that the ARG has been deployed in the eastern Mediterranean to protect ExxonMobil drilling activities off Cyprus have been denied by the U.S.“Reports that the US 6th Fleet is in the eastern Mediterranean to protect ExxonMobil are totally baseless,” Johnny Michael, a spokesman for the United States European Command, said when asked about the situation.

Michael underlined that the ARG “conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operations, often in concert with allied and interagency partners, to advance U.S. national interests and security and stability in Europe and Africa”. http://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/03/19/us-battleship-iwo-jima-docks-at-cyprus-port-photos/

 

[danielboon]

Turkish Troops Fire at Fleeing ‘PKK Suspects’ on Greek Border

Turkish border troops fired warning shots at a group of suspects attempting to cross Evros river into Greece on Tuesday.

One man managed to escape and was arrested near the Greek village of Kastanies. He is being held on “protective custody” for illegally entering the country.

Greek authorities have nor released his name. He was holding a Turkish passport issued at the city of Adana, in southern Turkey.

The incident happened in the area, where earlier in the month two Greek soldiers inadvertently crossed into Turkey, were arrested and are still held in a prison in Edirne.

The group was spotted on the Turkish side of the river, by an army patrol which fired warning shots.

Three suspects were arrested by the Turkish troops, according to a report in the Anadolu News Agency, which says that two of them were PKK suspects.

The Turkish semi-official agency says that one of the suspects had been carrying out activities in northern Iraq for the PKK, while the other had joined the PKK in Germany and was jailed for a year in 2016 for trying to illegally cross from Turkey to Bulgaria. http://greece.greekreporter.com/201...fire-at-fleeing-pkk-suspects-on-greek-border/

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
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https://breakingdefense.com/2018/03...212.921307898.1521655489-850249063.1521529213

The End Of The American Way of War; The Cold War Really Is Over

By PAUL MCLEARY
on March 21, 2018 at 6:12 PM
119 Comments

The American way of war — using overpowering industrial might, crushing firepower, and owning the sea and skies — may have come to an end, a top Pentagon official says.

For the past two decades, “the Chinese and the Russians have been working to undermine that model,” said Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development. By spending billions on modernizing their militaries and fielding new technologies like artificial intelligence and hypersonic missiles at a faster clip than the Americans, the two countries have changed the way the United States must approach future conflict.

“I want to really stress that everything should be circled back to what the problem statement is, what the problem definition is, which is defeating the Chinese or Russian potential theories of victory,” Colby told an audience at the annual directed Energy Summit, co-sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The answer, as much as there is one, will be found in a combination of technology, training, and doctrine, “but we should be taking initiative. They’ve gone after our theory of victory? We should go after their theory of victory so we have a better deterrent.”

One of the architects of the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy, which underscored the view that Washington has entered an era of “long-term strategic competition” with Moscow and Beijing, Colby used his remarks to lay down a a series of challenges for defense industry types in the audience.

The traditional method of slowly testing and evaluating new technologies for year, or even decades, “ain’t gonna work any more…we need to change,” he said. Chinese and Russian defense officials don’t keep such long development schedules, and the U.S. tech industry has scoffed at working with the Pentagon thanks in part to the cautious, time-consuming schedules so anathema to tech Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Taking decades to field aircraft like the F-35 or Ford-class carriers might provide long-term stability, but “it doesn’t matter if we’re stronger in the global context if we lose in the Pacific or Europe” tomorrow, Colby warned.

To the defense industry, Colby said bluntly, “we’re not interested in something that’s kind of a whiz-bang thing that’s not connected to a plausible deployment or not nestled within operational concepts. We do want to encourage breakthrough and creative, kind of, activity and investment in technology, but it’s got to be something that we can actually use.”

To underscore the Pentagon’s concerns with today’s challenges from peer competitors, on Tuesday Taiwan scrambled several warships and aircraft to monitor Beijing’s aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, after it entered the Taiwan Strait.

The move comes about a week after Pacific Command chief, Adm. Harry Harris, told a Senate panel that the removal of term limits to allow Chinese President Xi Jinping to stay in office indefinitely should be seen as a warning sign of more provocative action in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

Harris, President Donald Trump’s nominee to become ambassador to Australia, said China seeks regional hegemony and to force America out of the region. China is investing heavily in hypersonic missiles, fifth generation aircraft and upgunning military sites on fake islands in areas claimed by other countries in the South China Sea, and is pouring record amounts into its military buildup.

In Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin last month boasted that his country has developed “invincible” new cruise missiles, including hypersonic missiles, that can punch through U.S. defenses.

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. James Inhofe (the likely next chairman of the committee) asked Gen. John Hyten, head of Strategic Command, “if that happens, what kind of defense do we have against hypersonic threat?”

Hyten, worryingly, wasn’t sure. “We have a very difficult — well, our defense is our deterrent capability,” he said. “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us, so our response would be our deterrent force, which would be the triad and the nuclear capabilities that we have to respond to such a threat.”

The Pentagon has called for the development of so-called “low yield” nuclear weapons that can be launched from submarines to meet the lower Russian threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

Underscoring Colby’s concerns, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, told today’s summit, “no one can sit in the classified briefings I do and learn what our adversaries are doing right now, and not feel a keen sense of urgency to invest in these technologies.”

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/al-qaeda-3-0-turning-face-near-enemy/

Al-Qaeda 3.0: turning to face the near enemy

22 Mar 2018 | Isaac Kfir

After the deaths of Osama bin Laden and several other leaders in 2011 and 2012, followed by the rise of Islamic State, many considered al-Qaeda ‘a spent force’. But in an important brief, (with an expanded version for the Lowy Institute), leading terrorism scholar Bruce Hoffman argues that Ayman al-Zawahiri has used the past seven years to rebuild al-Qaeda. So while counterterrorism specialists have celebrated the rolling up of Islamic State’s ‘caliphate’, al-Qaeda’s resurgence shows that much work remains to be done.

Zawahiri cut his teeth in Egypt’s jihadi culture—he was arrested at 15, joined the Muslim Brotherhood and later led Egyptian Islamic Jihad—but he’s no charismatic leader. Following the death of Osama bin Laden and the rise of the Islamic State, Zawahiri opted to focus on three key objectives.

Survival: In 2011, al-Qaeda faced irrelevancy. It lacked an operational space and existed at the mercy of the Afghan Taliban. That may explain why Zawahiri swore allegiance to Mullah Mansour, Mullah Omar’s successor, in 2015. When Mansour was killed in a US drone attack and Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada became the new leader of the Taliban, Zawahiri pledged allegiance to him. That allowed Zawahiri to remain hidden somewhere along the Afghan–Pakistan border.

Reorientation: In the 1990s and 2000s, as al-Qaeda was asserting itself on the global stage as the premier Salafi–jihadi terrorist group, its ideology and action inspired tremendous bloodletting, especially among Muslims. By the 2010s, Zawahiri recognised the limited value of that approach and reoriented the organisation away from mass casualty-terrorism, especially against Muslims.

To highlight how attuned Zawahiri is to shifting perceptions, he clearly noted that by the late 2000s, pollsters were pointing out that public opinion, especially in Muslim-majority countries, had shifted against suicide bombing. In Lebanon, for example, 74% of the population thought that such attacks could be justified in 2002; by 2007, that support had fallen to only 34%. At that time, WorldPublicOpinion.org noted that large majorities in Egypt (88%), Indonesia (65%) and Morocco (66%) opposed attacks on civilians.

Zawahiri’s al-Qaeda even chastised Islamic State, accusing it of ‘deviation and misguidance’ and saying that the group ‘exceeded the limits of extremism’. That has meant that the prospect of another al-Qaeda–inspired 9/11 has decreased, as Zawahiri appreciates that such an attack is likely to harm his cause more than to help it.

Rebuilding: Zawahiri has had to deal with an organisation that had been decimated. It had lost leaders, key ideologues, strategic thinkers and fighters. Al-Qaeda was also facing a major challenge from Islamic State and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who publicly rejected Zawahiri’s order to keep al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra affiliate separate from Islamic State.

Because Zawahiri couldn’t compel Islamic State’s compliance, he opted to engage in a franchising program. A key aspect of the rebuilding was using secure communications to spread al-Qaeda’s message. Secure communications have also allowed Zawahiri to reconstitute al-Qaeda’s Shura Majlis (advisory councils). This allows al-Qaeda to adopt a ‘glocalist’ strategy that links local grievances to its globalist campaign.

Zawahiri’s careful three-prong strategy has enabled al-Qaeda to knit together ‘a global movement of more than two dozen franchises’ through which it now commands around 20,000 men in Syria, 4,000 in Yemen, 7,000 in Somalia and 3,000 in Indonesia. These are all strategically important locations from which al-Qaeda can and will seek to advance its brand.

Interestingly Zawahiri appears to have adapted the ideas of his arch-enemy, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, who argued that after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, it was time for the Arab Afghans (Arabs who had made the hijrah (migration) to Afghanistan) to shift their attention to the near enemy—‘apostate’ Muslim regimes and Israel. Zawahiri had argued that the mujahedeen should focus on the far enemy (the US and the West in general), as it was Washington that was keeping the Arab leaders in power.

Zawahiri’s current strategy seems to indicate that al-Qaeda is moving away from its initial focus, the far enemy, and focussing instead on the near enemy, specifically Arab countries with fragile governments. There are many such governments across the Muslim and Arab World, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb.

‘So where are you,’ Zawahiri asks his followers in his latest message. ‘Where is your Islamic zeal? Where is your eagerness? Where is your settlement of your duties for the inheritance of your fathers?’

Hoffman has provided a powerful reminder that we can’t bask in the defeat of Islamic State. We must reorient our attention to al-Qaeda, which remains committed to freeing Muslim lands, ending the suffering of Muslims at the hands of the infidels and restoring the Muslim umma (nation) to its old glory.

In recognising that al-Qaeda remains a potent force, counterterrorism policymakers face several challenges, such as how to disrupt its operations through activities such as limiting its use of encrypted messaging, which terrorists seem to increasingly rely on, without undermining basic rights.

An additional challenge is addressing low-intensity conflicts, civil wars and flagrant abuses such as those ones inflicted on the Rohingya, the Cham and others, which feeds the Salafi–jihadi narrative of the West’s moral relativism. There’s evidence that both Islamic State and al-Qaeda are using the Rohingya as a rallying cry.

Clearly, the demise of the caliphate has been a huge boost to the counterterrorism world, but Hoffman’s briefs are a timely reminder that we ignore al-Qaeda at our peril.

AUTHOR
Isaac Kfir is the director of the National Security Program and head of the Counter-Terrorism Policy Centre at ASPI. Edited image courtesy of Hamid Mir via Wikimedia Commons.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/trump-north-korea-iran/

Trump, North Korea and Iran

20 Mar 2018 | Mohammed Ayoob

President Donald Trump has stunned allies and adversaries alike by accepting North Korean President Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet with him in May to discuss North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The speed with which he made the decision—all of 45 minutes—and even without consulting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has since been fired, was typical of Trump’s unique decision-making style based on instinct rather than reason.

Trump’s decision to meet with the North Korean leader has broader implications in the arena of nuclear non-proliferation. The most important of these is the message this decision has sent to Iran. The irony that the same administration that’s considering imposing fresh sanctions on Iran and withdrawing from the JCPOA—the nuclear agreement that has almost indefinitely postponed Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons—is willing to talk directly with a nuclear-capable North Korea hasn’t been lost on the Iranians.

Trump’s divergent approaches towards North Korea and Iran are all the more surprising because where there have been differences between the two countries’ attitudes toward the United States, it’s North Korea that stands out as the more threatening of the two.

Iran has never fought a war with the United States. The closest the two countries have ever come to trading blows was during Iran’s war against Iraq. In that war, when Iraq was clearly the aggressor, it acted as a proxy both for the United States and for Saudi Arabia in their attempts to nip the Islamic Revolution in the bud.

North Korea, on the other hand, fought a very bloody war against the United States and its ally, South Korea, from 1950 to 1953 that led to at least 33,652 American battle fatalities. North Korea has constituted a real military threat, through both conventional and nuclear weapons, to America’s close allies, South Korea and Japan. In addition, North Korea has threatened the US homeland and, according to recent reports, is close to developing an ICBM capability that can reach as far as Washington, DC.

The Chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, confirmed these reports at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. In the same hearing, General Dunford categorically declared, ‘North Korea certainly poses the greatest threat [to the United States] today.’

Iran, on the other hand, has never posed a threat to the US homeland or threatened to incinerate American allies, such as Saudi Arabia next door, with nuclear weapons. Its threats against Israel are rhetorical rather than realistic given Israel’s conventional and nuclear capabilities that can inflict tremendous damage on Iran. In fact, it was Israel that constantly threatened Iran with attacks on its nuclear facilities in the run up to the JCPOA.

The principal lesson that Iran is likely to draw from America’s decision to negotiate with North Korea at the highest level, while threatening Iran both with withdrawal from the JCPOA and the imposition of new sanctions, is that it’s North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and delivery capabilities that have brought the American president to the negotiating table.

This is bound to give Iranian hardliners further ammunition to attack the Rouhani government for making the compromises it did in relation to Iran’s nuclear program to get economic sanctions lifted. Their criticism implies that had Iran developed nuclear weapons instead of signing away its right to do so, the American president would have gone running to Tehran to negotiate a nuclear deal more favourable to Iran than the JCPOA.

America’s rhetoric about re-imposing sanctions on Iran, as well as Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw from the JCPOA while agreeing to negotiate with North Korea at the highest level, has made Iranian moderates such as Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif look stupid in the eyes of an Iranian public still waiting for the economic benefits that were supposed to accrue to them in return for giving up Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Trump’s sacking of Tillerson, principally because Tillerson had opposed Washington’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, and the appointment of Iran-hawk and blatantly Islamophobic Mike Pompeo in his stead, has sent a clear message to Iran that the United States is about to renege on its commitment to JCPOA.

Furthermore, there are reports that another anti-Iran hawk, John Bolton, is likely to be appointed National Security Adviser, replacing HR McMaster. This is likely to strengthen the Iranian sentiment that Iranian–American relations are once again destined to descend into unadulterated antagonism, as was the case before President Barack Obama came to power.

Given President Trump’s predilection for impulsive actions, some American commentators are even predicting another war in the Middle East, this time against Iran. The negative consequences of such a war both for the United States and for the region will be far worse than President George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As a leading American analyst commented, ‘Bush went to war against Iraq, not Iran, because he knew that [Iran] was a much tougher nut to crack. If Trump becomes enmeshed in a new war in the Middle East [against Iran], his presidency will almost surely go down in history as a catastrophic failure.’

AUTHOR
Mohammed Ayoob is Senior Fellow, Center for Global Policy, Washington DC, and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Michigan State University. Edited image courtesy of Flickr user Stephan Harmes.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.longwarjournal.org/arch...jnim-releases-high-level-production-video.php

Al Qaeda group JNIM releases high-level production video

BY CALEB WEISS | March 21, 2018 | weiss.caleb2@gmail.com | @Weissenberg7

The Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), al Qaeda’s branch in Western Africa and the Sahel, released a new video today highlighting its activities across the region. Multiple training camps and military raids were showcased in the group’s high-level production.

The video began with a short speech from Ayman al Zawahiri, to whom JNIM pledges allegiance, where the al Qaeda emir incited his followers in North Africa and across the Sahel to target France and its allies in the region. It then shifted to a well-produced clip showing JNIM fighters in various areas across Mali. This included the deserts of northern Mali to the Sahelien landscape of the country’s central region. In some areas, fighters were congregating in the open, indicating a lack of fear of aircraft or detection.

At least two training camps were then highlighted. One, which has been previously featured in photos, is located in central Mali. The other, referred to as the “Jerusalem” training camp, is located somewhere in the northern deserts.

JNIM assaults in various locations across the region were the main focus of the video.

The first JNIM attack featured occurred inside Burkina Faso, which was last year’s raid on a Burkinabe gendarme outpost near Arbinda. JNIM has claimed eight attacks in Burkina Faso since last year. Many more in Burkina Faso are carried out by Ansaroul Islam, a US-designated terrorist group with strong ties to JNIM.

Assaults in the northern Kidal region, as well as the central regions of Mali are featured. Scenes from the Gao region were also shown, including the May 2016 suicide bombing at Gao’s airport which killed a Chinese peacekeeper.

Special focus was given to the Jan. 27 assault on a Malian army position near Soumpi in the Timbuktu region. At least 14 Malian soldiers were killed in that raid. Jihadist fighters were seen overrunning the camp and graphically killing the Malian soldiers. JNIM showed its forces capturing copious amounts of weapons and ammunition before withdrawing from the base. At the time, JNIM announced it also lost four of its combatants during the battle. The four, which appear to be two Arabs, a Fulani, and a Tuareg, were given a eulogy in today’s video.

The production then ended with a short speech from the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman. Abdel Rahman has been featured in several videos from different al Qaeda groups across the world. Today’s JNIM video also represents a shift in its production capabilities. Several scenes were shot with GoPro (or similar) cameras, while others were shot with commercial drones. The overall quality was also better than other productions released by the group.

JNIM was formed early last year via a merger between al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) Sahara branch, Ansar Dine and its Katibat Macina, and AQIM’s Al Murabitoon. The group swore allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri, Abdelmalek Droukdel, the emir of AQIM, and Mullah Haibatullah of the Taliban. It is led by veteran Tuareg jihadist leader Iyad Ag Ghaly.

Despite a French counterterrorism operation, targeting from G5 Sahel troops, and a UN peacekeeping operation in Mali, al Qaeda’s forces have persisted in expanding its insurgency. Al Qaeda still retains the ability to operate openly in Mali and strike in various locations across West Africa, including a large-scale terrorist attack in Burkina Faso’s capital earlier this month. Its violence is also spreading further south in Mali and into other areas of the Sahel. Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 53 al Qaeda-linked attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso, according to data compiled by FDD’s Long War Journal, while last year there were 276.

Screenshots from the video:

Militants in central Mali:



Burkina Faso attack footage:



Central Mali training camp:



Jerusalem training camp in northern Mali:





Drone footage:



Soumpi attack:





Caleb Weiss is an intern at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributor to The Long War Journal.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.longwarjournal.org/arch...ary-will-not-pursue-taliban-into-pakistan.php

US military will not pursue Taliban into Pakistan

BY BILL ROGGIO | March 20, 2018 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio

A Pentagon spokesman said that the US military will not conduct hot pursuit of Taliban and allied jihadist fighters from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Additionally, the spokesman said that the military would be fine if the Taliban was operating on the Pakistani side of the border.

“We have no authority to go into Pakistan,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mike Andrews told Pajhwok Afghan News. US forces could ask for authority to chase Taliban fighters as they cross the border into Pakistan, but approval for such action “would certainly be the exception and not the norm,” he continued.

“Say, for example, we have troops in contact and then the Taliban forces go across the border,” Andrews told Pajhwok. “They are clearly inside Pakistan then. There’s no change with regards to respecting the territorial sovereignty of Pakistan.”

In the past the US military has defended its right to pursue Taliban forces retreating into Pakistan under its “inherent right of self defense.” [See LWJ report, Pakistan closes NATO supply route after latest US cross-border attack.]

Past US incursions into Pakistan

The US military has in rare cases pursued Taliban fighters as they crossed the border into Pakistan after battling US forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan has responded furiously to such incursions.

In one of the most publicized instance, in Nov. 2011, US attack helicopters opened fire on Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s tribal agency of Mohmand. The Pakistani military claimed that 28 Pakistan troops, including two officers, were killed and 11 more were wounded. The Taliban fighters retreated to a Pakistani military outpost when the US opened fire. It is widely believed that the Pakistani troops were providing cover for the retreating Taliban force.

Pakistan responded to the Mohmand attack by closing the border to NATO supply trucks and also revoked the US military’s use of the Shamsi Airbase in Baluchistan province. The Shamsi Airbase was used as both a NATO logistics base and as a key node in the CIA’s Predator and Reaper drone campaign in North and South Waziristan.

Two high profile incidents occurred in 2008. The first was in June, when US troops pursued a Taliban force from Kunar into Mohmand, and killed 11 fighters. The Pakistani government claimed that the US killed Frontier Corps troops, but the US released video of the incident showing the Taliban being targeted as they fled from Kunar into Mohmand.

The second incident took place in Khyber in November, when US forces launched rocket attacks and ground strikes into the Tirah Valley, a known haven for al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Lashkar-e-Islam. Seven people were reportedly killed and three were wounded in the strikes.

Three other cross border incursions took place in the fall of 2010, when US helicopters attacked Haqqani Network fighters as they fled back into the Pakistani tribal agencies of North Waziristan and Kurram after the terror group attacked US bases in Khost and Paktia provinces. More than 50 Haqqani Network fighters were reportedly killed in the Kurram attacks. Pakistan claimed two Frontier Corps troops were killed.

Currently, the US leaves the heavy lifting in Pakistan to covert airstrikes using unmanned Predators and Reapers against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas. There have been eight such strikes inside Paksitan so far in 2018.

In addition, the US carried out a unilateral special operations raid in May deep into Pakistani territory and killed Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Abbottabad, which was not far from Pakistan’s top military academy.

US military OK with the Taliban residing in Pakistan

The Pentagon spokesman also said that the US military can accept the Taliban presence inside Pakistan just as long as Afghanistan was secured.

“If the Taliban reside in Pakistan and we are able to provide safety and support and to help secure districts and provinces within Afghanistan, I think that is a tradeoff that we’re willing to make,” Andrews said, according to Pajhwok. “Because it’s not necessarily about these people over in Pakistan, it is about the Afghan people.

“But that’s something within Pakistan, that’s something the nation of Pakistan has got to resolve. Now we’re going to stay focused on Afghanistan.”

Additionally, Andrews said that the US military is “hopeful Pakistan will take action because not only do we feel it is going to serve Afghanistan, but it’s going to help protect Pakistan, India and the entire region.”

Pakistan routinely denies that the Taliban or any other jihadist group is permitted to use the country as a safe haven, and instead blamed India for regional instability. The Pakistani victim narrative falls apart when looking at how the government and military allow the Afghan Taliban, including the Haqqani Network, and groups allied jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Mullah Nazir Group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat-ul-Mujahideen, Hizbul Mujahideen, and Jaish-e-Mohammed to operate in the open without fear of reprisal from the state. [See LWJ report, In response to Trump, Pakistan claims no terrorist groups operate on its soil.]

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.stripes.com/news/us-afg...gn-fighters-in-northwest-afghanistan-1.518183

US, Afghan special operations target ISIS foreign fighters in northwest Afghanistan

By CHAD GARLAND | STARS AND STRIPES
Published: March 22, 2018

About one in 10 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan are foreign fighters, the top U.S. general in the country said Thursday, in a statement touting recent U.S. and Afghan operations targeting the group.

Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-K, has now spread from eastern Afghanistan to the country’s northwest, where fighters were believed to be receiving foreign fighters and weapons. Most of its foreign fighters are from within the region.

The foreign IS-K fighters “are primarily Pakistani Pashtun,” said Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, in a statement. “They have another segment of Islamic Movement Uzbekistan. And then there’s probably ten percent that’s from a variety of sources around the world.”

Military officials estimated the group had about 1,100 fighters throughout the country as of November. Military officials declined to provide a new estimate Thursday.

“There is no formal tracking or census mechanism in place,” said Navy Capt. Thomas Gresback, a U.S. forces spokesman.

A joint Afghan-U.S. special operations raid early Thursday in an isolated village in the northwestern Jowzjan province was the latest in a series of operations targeting the group.

On Jan. 28, Afghan forces captured Khitab Aka, the head facilitator of foreign fighters for the group in Jowzjan province. On March 16, a U.S. airstrike took out Aka’s replacements, Omair and Abu Samaya, the equivalent of platoon leaders, as they met in neighboring Sar-e Pul province.

An Afghan Special Security Forces night raid on the group’s headquarters in Jowzjan, also on March 16, led to the deaths of 13 more fighters. Officials said the terrorists believed the area to be a safe haven. Earlier this month, the group released a video highlighting its supposed successes in Afghanistan and calling on new recruits from all over the world to join it there.

The Islamic State affiliate, named for the region that includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, sprouted in eastern Afghanistan in late 2014. Since 2016, U.S. and Afghan special operations forces have been battling the group mainly in the eastern province of Nangarhar, the deadliest province for U.S. forces last year.

“Every day, we’re going against IS-K,” Nicholson said in a statement this week. “They were in southern Nangarhar. If you were to go there today, you would see some of the valleys that have been liberated from IS-K: the populations returning, the kids going back into school.”

Out of the 2,450 ground operations conducted by either joint or Afghan forces from June to December, 420 targeted IS-K.

In the past two months, more than 140 IS-K fighters have been killed by U.S. and Afghan operations, officials said this week.

“There will be no safe haven for any terrorist group,” Nicholson said. “We continue to strike them wherever we find them. We continue to hunt them across the country.”

garland.chad@stripes.com
Twitter: @chadgarland

 

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...a7f68bff0fc_story.html?utm_term=.66261ad9f288

National Security

Energy Secretary Rick Perry promises more triggers for nuclear weapons

By Paul Sonne March 22 at 4:54 PM Email the author

The U.S. military is concerned that the government isn’t moving quickly enough to ramp up American production of the plutonium cores that trigger nuclear warheads, as the Trump administration proceeds with a $1 trillion overhaul of the nation’s nuclear force.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the Cabinet official who oversees the nation’s nuclear labs, promised in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that he would meet the Pentagon’s demands, even though the only lab capable of producing the triggers hasn’t made one suitable for a nuclear weapon in years.

“It is important for us to be able to send a clear message that we can get it done, we can get it done on a timely basis and get it done in a way that taxpayers respect is thoughtful about their concerns,” Perry said in a rare appearance by the nation’s top energy official at the Senate body overseeing the military.

Known as “plutonium pits” because they rest inside nuclear bombs like a pit inside a stone fruit, the roughly grapefruit-size spheres are a critical component of nuclear weapons because they trigger nuclear fission when squeezed by explosives. They require replacement as they degrade over time or end up destroyed during regular checks of the nation’s nuclear weapons.

At issue is the Pentagon’s demand that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) — overseen by the Energy Department — be able to produce 30 plutonium pits a year by 2026 and 80 a year by 2030 to sustain the military’s plans for its nuclear weapons.

[The U.S. glimpses possible common ground with Russia]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is just coming back on line after suspending pit production years ago because of safety concerns. The lab recently restarted its operation but is still producing only research-and-development pits that are unsuitable for U.S. weapons. The lab would require a sizable expansion to ramp up to 80 pits a year.

Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, who oversees U.S. nuclear forces as the head of Strategic Command, said he was worried about whether the nation’s nuclear establishment will be able to meet the requirement, despite assurances from officials at the Energy Department and NNSA.

“I still have concerns,” Hyten said in a Senate testimony earlier this week. He said he was “very nervous” that the requirement might be met only “just in time.”

Hyten warned that the nuclear weapons the Pentagon is developing — new bombers, submarines, ICBMs, low-yield submarine-launch ballistic missiles, air-launch and sea-launch cruise missiles — all require reliable warheads. He expressed concern about the age of some plutonium pits being used.

Nearly all current pits were produced between 1978 and 1989, according to the Pentagon. There is some debate about how long they can last and whether the military in fact needs such high production levels. In 2006, a study by two of the nation’s nuclear labs assessed that majority of plutonium pits for most nuclear weapons have minimum lifetimes of at least 85 years.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has discontinued many of the nuclear weapons capabilities the nation built up during the Cold War. The country began to rely largely on dismantling existing nuclear weapons for plutonium pits and stockpile management, particularly as defense spending priorities diverted to the global war against terrorism.

Now the United States is facing a reckoning as Russia and China also race to advance their nuclear arsenals and much of the infrastructure the military relies on to support its nuclear capabilities ages out. The United States no longer operates the full range of facilities capable of producing nuclear weapons and for nearly two decades stopped producing plutonium pits altogether.

“Past assumptions that our capability to produce nuclear weapons would not be necessary and that we could permit the required infrastructure to age into obsolescence have proven to be mistaken,” the Trump administration said in the nuclear weapons policy it published in February. “It is now clear that the United States must have sufficient research, design, development, and production capacity to support the sustainment and replacement of its nuclear forces.”

Perry highlighted the Trump administration’s decision to budget more funding for the NNSA for that purpose in his testimony Thursday. The 2018 spending bill that the House approved Thursday allocates $10.6 billion to weapons activities within the NNSA — which includes infrastructure updates, maintenance and repairs — an increase from $9.2 billion in 2017 and $8.85 billion in 2016. The administration has requested $11 billion in 2019.

But doubts persist about whether the agency charged with stewarding the country’s nuclear weapons can achieve such a complex task, while escaping a past marred by cost overruns and safety incidents.

The administration faces billions of backlogged repairs to aging facilities. At one point in recent years, chunks of the ceiling were falling out at the Y-12 complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a facility established during the Manhattan Project to enrich uranium for the first atomic bombs.

“When I go to Oak Ridge, and I’m in facilities that were built in some cases before I was born, and that’s a spell ago, then it becomes abundantly clear to me,” Perry, who is 68, said Thursday.

For the first 13 months of the Trump administration, the NNSA lacked a Senate-confirmed director chosen by President Trump, resulting in lost time on some of the most pressing political decisions to be made on nuclear matters.

Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, a former health physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was sworn in to administer the agency on Feb. 22. The Trump administration had kept in place an Obama-era appointee, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, in the meantime.

Gordon-Hagerty has promised to prioritize resolving the plutonium-pit issue and escape the past problems at the NNSA, where big projects have resulted in cost overruns and mismanagement.

For much of the Cold War, the United States produced plutonium triggers at a facility called Rocky Flats outside Denver. The facility shut down in 1989 months after federal agents raided the premises due to environmental crimes.

Nearly two decades later, the United States resumed a limited operation to manufacture plutonium pits in 2007, this time at Los Alamos.

By then, the NNSA was in the midst of plans to build a bigger plutonium pit production facility at the lab, which would have increased capacity and added protections against earthquakes. But the NNSA canceled the project in 2012 after spending nearly half a billion dollars on designs as cost estimates spiraled out of control.

Around the same time, the existing Los Alamos production line was shut down amid safety incidents documented last year in reports by the Center for Public Integrity. The lab only recently restarted the operation.

Now the NNSA must decide how to expand production of plutonium pits to meet the Pentagon’s requirements by 2030. Under one option being considered, less ambitious “module” buildings would be constructed at the existing Los Alamos site.

An alternative would include repurposing one of the most problematic projects the Department of Energy has ever undertaken, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, to produce pits instead of fulfilling its original purpose of turning weapons-grade plutonium into reactor fuel.

The facility is billions of dollars over budget and still only partially built. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have tried to kill the project, but Congress has continued funding it primarily due to political support from the South Carolina delegation.

The NNSA is due to deliver its final recommendation to Congress about how to expand plutonium pit production by May 11.

The Senate committee members pointed out that the NNSA took three years to analyze where the new production facility should be housed and still failed to issue a decision. The former Texas governor said he would be “greatly concerned” if the new timeline isn’t met.

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Paul Sonne covers the U.S. military and national security. He previously reported for the Wall Street Journal from Moscow, London and Washington. Follow @PaulSonne

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.defense.gov/News/Articl...-discusses-future-of-directed-energy-weapons/

Senior DoD Official Discusses Future of Directed Energy Weapons

By Marine Corps Sgt. David Staten DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, March 21, 2018 —As stated in the National Defense Strategy, the United States needs to invest and accelerate the modernization of key capabilities to build a more lethal force.

Michael D. Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, today spoke to more than 500 senior leaders from the U.S. government and defense industry to explore the impact of integrating directed energy capabilities into the national security enterprise at the 2018 Directed Energy Summit at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center here.

Directed energy weapon systems employ lasers, microwaves and particle beams against enemy targets.

Griffin has been in this arena since the 1980s and worked for the first three directors of the original missile defense agency.

“Directed energy was then in our view an important part of our future portfolio because only directed energy could offer the kind of extended magazine, if you will, the extended range, speed of light delivery of the kill,” Griffin said. “It was the only way that in the long run you could see yourself competing with the threat and coming out on top.”

Directed energy has gone through a lot of evolutions over the years, Griffin added.

For many years, he said, the Congress and national policy fundamentally did not support the development of directed energy as a warfighting tool.

“So I think that has changed,” he said. “When I have discussions on the Hill, there is very much -- a lean-forward posture now.”

China is flexing its muscles in the Indo-Pacific region and Russia is resurgent, Griffin told the audience.

“You don't build islands in the South China Sea and militarized them with benign intentions,” he said. “You don't get on TV and brag about your 4,000-mile intercontinental hypersonic nuclear delivery system with benign intentions.”

Superpower Competition

Griffin said there’s a recognition that superpower competition is again on the rise, and the United States must modernize its military if it wants to maintain its position of global preeminence.

“We will not win in a man-to-man fight,” Griffin said. “We have to have the technological leverage. That realization was responsible for the creation of my office, to elevate the role of technology maturation and deployment and I believe it is responsible for the renewed interest in directed energy weapons.”

And, directed energy is more than big lasers, the undersecretary said.

The undersecretary asked his audience to consider directed energy systems such as high-power microwaves, different laser designs and particle beam weapons.

“Each of these systems has its own advantages and each has its own disadvantages,” he said. “We should not lose our way as we come out of the slough of despondence in directed energy into an environment that is more welcoming of our contributions. We should not lose our way with some of the other technologies that were pioneered in the ’80s and early-’90s and now stand available for renewed effort.”

In his capacity as undersecretary for research and engineering, Griffin said he is going to be very welcoming of other approaches that may not have had a lot of focus in recent years or decades.

Directed Energy Venues

There are four venues, he said, in which directed energy can serve: land, air, sea and space.

He urged the audience to not forget that because the technologies are fundamental and can be applied across those domains, all of which are important to them.

The basing strategies, the warfighting tactics, techniques, procedures, the logistics support requirements, the manpower that is needed for support, all of these things are different and are required to be different because of the different venues in which they will have to operate, he added.

“I would urge us not to think that one size fits all,” Griffin said. “I would urge us not to think that there can be a lead service for directed energy. I would urge us to not willow the competition down too quickly. I would urge us to keep a lot of arrows in our quiver as we go forward figuring out how we're going to translate directed energy technologies into warfighting systems that are going to defend this country and our allies.”

America should also take advantage of the brain power that traditional U.S. allies and partners can offer in the development of these technologies so they can be developed together, the undersecretary said.

“The United States will always be stronger for its alliances, he said.

Griffin told a story about when he worked for NASA during the Reagan administration. He had the opportunity as the administrator of NASA to become familiar in great detail with the 14-nation partnership that put the international space station together. At first he was suspicious of the partnership but later understood how misguided he was.

“I came to believe that we got much more out of the international collaboration on the space station than we ever gave up in terms of revealing of our own capabilities and technologies,” the undersecretary said.

“The way to technical superiority is to run faster and work harder and not to try to wall off our own capabilities,” Griffin said. “So, as we explore directed energy technologies, where there are opportunities, I will be looking for careful and measured but still very real cooperation with our allies and partners. I think in the long run that will benefit us.”

 

[northern watch]

Intel Crab‏ @IntelCrab · 1h1 hour ago

Breaking: #Ukraine has put air force on combat alert as #Russia launches provocative patrols near border.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.stripes.com/news/army-h...e-fire-drills-on-okinawa-in-a-decade-1.518327

Army holds its first comprehensive live-fire drills on Okinawa in a decade

By MATTHEW M. BURKE | STARS AND STRIPES
Published: March 23, 2018

CAMP SCHWAB, Okinawa — Even the Army’s cooks and mechanics need to know how to handle an advancing enemy.

Soldiers from Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 10th Regional Support Group recently took to the field at Camp Schwab for the Okinawa-based unit’s first comprehensive live-fire exercise on the island in a decade.

Many of the soldiers are new to the Army or have job duties like paralegal, truck driver and supply specialist that don’t usually involve squeezing the trigger on an M4 rifle.

The day-and-nighttime training was designed to ensure that all are ready for any situation that might pop up in the Pacific.

It accomplishes many things, 10th RSG leadership said — from exposing young soldiers to near-combat conditions to making sure they’re familiar with Army weapons systems.

“It gets us prepared for the worst,” said 10th RSG paralegal specialist Pvt. Daiviah Walker, 22, of South Florida. “Not to say the worst is coming, but just for anything that may happen in the long run. At least we’ll know what to do.”

While such training isn’t new — it takes place yearly on the small-unit level — this was 10th RSG’s largest and most comprehensive effort on Okinawa in years, featuring approximately 100 soldiers, or about 80 percent of the group.

The Army has a relatively small footprint in Japan. Of the approximately 50,000 servicemembers stationed here, only about 2,000 are soldiers. On Okinawa, they are based out of the small coastal base called Torii Station.

Two months of intensive planning culminated in Wednesday’s maneuvering and live-fire drills, said 10th RSG 1st Sgt. Tennyson Grant, 39, of Los Angeles.

Their task was to relieve a unit in a frontline defensive position and engage an attacking enemy, he said. Squad leaders led things off with reconnaissance and put fire support in place, which in this case was Army Special Forces’ mortarmen far from the battlefield. They would then bring their soldiers up to the line.

On Wednesday morning, the soldiers awoke bleary-eyed in the jungle, the result of heavy rains and lightning storms the night before. They picked at Meals Ready to Eat while cleaning their weapons and awaited ammunition and orders.

Once locked and loaded, the first group marched toward its position — a series of fortified trenches atop a hill overlooking a jungle valley with mountains in the distance.

Squad leaders coordinated with Special Forces forward observers and called in the grid before them. Riflemen took their positions.

Targets popped up in the valley but retreated seconds later, signifying enemy ground troops moving forward and hitting the deck. Clouds of dust burst behind the soldiers as they took turns firing.

“You guys were accurate,” said one of the range control observers.

Grant said the daytime portion “went absolutely awesome.”

“The soldiers were pumped up; they were ready to get after it,” he said. “They trained really hard to get to this point and this was the culminating event. I give them an A-plus.”

Pvt. Deovian Taylor, 19, a unit supply specialist from Atlanta, said the training was challenging, but she loved it.

“This is not something we do on a daily basis,” she said. “This is my first time coming to the field since I’m new in the Army.”

The groups’ executive officer, 1st Lt. Hannah Stark, 23, of Shippensburg, Pa., said all soldiers need to know these “basic soldier skills.”

“The fact that we do have paralegals out here in the same section as a mechanic and a cook, it really shows cohesion, the idea that we’re not just our [military occupational specialty]; we’re all soldiers,” she said.

burke.matt@stripes.com