WAR 06-11-2022-to-06-17-2022__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(256) 05-21-2022-to-05-27-2022__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(257) 05-28-2022-to-06-03-2022__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(258) 06-04-2022-to-06-10-2022__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

________________________________________________________________________________________​

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North Korea ramping up weapons development, US and South Korean officials warn

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is looking to accelerate his nation's nuclear weapons development in a show of strength against Washington and regional neighbours.

www.abc.net.au

North Korea ramping up weapons development, preparing for nuclear test, US and South Korean officials warn

Posted 17h ago

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is doubling down on the nation’s arms build-up in response to what he describes as an aggravating security environment.

Key points:

• US and South Korean officials warn another North Korean nuclear test could be imminent
• North Korea has already fired 31 missiles since the beginning of this year
• China and Russia have vetoed proposed sanctions against North Korea in favour of renewed dialogue

Following a major political conference in Pyongyang, US and South Korean officials warned North Korea was pressing ahead with preparations for another nuclear test.

North Korea has already set an annual record for ballistic launches in the first half of 2022, firing 31 missiles during 18 different launch events.

They included the country's first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles in nearly five years.

Mr Kim's comments at the conference were published by North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency.

While the report did not specify any goals regarding testing, including the detonation of a nuclear device, the North Korean leader defended his accelerating weapons development as an exercise in sovereign rights to self-defence, and outlined more "militant tasks" to be pursued in the future.

What's behind the new missile testing?
North Korea has mastered the art of manufacturing diplomatic crises by provoking Western nations, and the United States in particular, with weapons tests and threats, before eventually offering negotiations aimed at extracting concessions on international sanctions.

North Korea has a history of dialling up pressure on Seoul when it does not get what it wants from Washington.

As Russia goes dark, Vladimir Putin could be taking cues from Kim Jong Un on how to quash dissent
Vladimir Putin has been steadily winding back the clock on Russia's democracy. Independent media outlets have been shuttered, Western businesses have left and free speech has effectively been stamped out.

Read more
Though the state news agency's report on the meeting did not include any comments specifically referring to South Korea, it said the participants clarified "principles and strategic and tactical orientations to be maintained in the struggle against the enemy and in the field of foreign affairs".

While the United States has said it would push for additional sanctions if North Korea conducted another nuclear test, the divisions between permanent members of the UN Security Council make the prospects for meaningful punitive measures unclear.

Russia and China this year vetoed US-sponsored resolutions that would have increased sanctions, insisting Washington should focus on reviving dialogue.

Escalating tensions with neighbours
North Korea’s other regional neighbours are also feeling the renewed tension, with Japanese Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi making unusually strong remarks that Japan is on the front lines as neighbours try to up-end international norms.

North Korea has already fired 31 missiles this year during 18 different launch events.(AP: Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service)

"Japan is surrounded by actors that possess, or are developing, nuclear weapons, and that openly ignore rules," Mr Kishi said in Singapore at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier security meeting.

In May, China and Russia conducted a joint aerial patrol in waters close to Japan and Taiwan, their first since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"Joint military operations between these two strong military powers will undoubtedly increase concern among other countries," Mr Kishi said.

In his speech, Mr Kishi also criticised North Korea and its missile tests, saying the regime could not be allowed to threaten Japan, the region, and the international community.

ABC/Reuters/AP

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

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Learning to Think Nuclearly Again

A new nuclear era demands strategy, not just arms control.

foreignpolicy.com

Learning to Think Nuclearly Again
A new nuclear era demands strategy, not just arms control.

JUNE 11, 2022, 7:00 AM
By Michael Auslin, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

A few years ago, while visiting Air Force Global Strike Command in Louisiana, I crashed a B-52 bomber. I was attempting a low-level bombing run and fought the controls as the big plane went down. Covered with sweat from the effort, I climbed out of the pilot’s seat and exited the hyperrealistic training module to the instructors’ knowing smiles. My brief attempt to experience what it is like to be a part of the United States’ nuclear guardians bolstered my respect for their difficult effort—even as most of the country long ago forgot the mission that once defined the Cold War.

After a half-generation hiatus in the public mind, nuclear terror is back. In testimony redolent of the frightful 1950s, CIA Director William Burns warned Congress in April not to “take lightly” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s implicit threat to use nuclear weapons against the West should it continue to support Ukraine. Just days after Burns’s testimony, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that the risk of nuclear war was “considerable. … The danger is serious, real.” Longtime geopolitical analysts echo the warning that Putin might employ tactical nuclear arms in Ukraine if Ukrainian forces continue to bog down his invaders. If these assessments are accurate, is not inconceivable that the world is edging toward the most serious nuclear confrontation since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

Putin’s nuclear saber rattling over Ukraine should be enough to shock U.S. policymakers into recognizing that the United States’ nuclear holiday has ended. Yet even as they grapple with the latest Russian threats, Washington is faced with another looming nuclear challenge that may be even more dangerous in the long run. China is undertaking a “breathtaking expansion” of its nuclear capabilities and overturning more than a half-century of a relatively modest nuclear posture, according to congressional testimony in April by U.S. Navy Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command. Along with Putin’s reinsertion of nuclear threats into superpower relations, the specter of a major Chinese nuclear capacity may be the security earthquake that shakes awake the long-dormant Dr. Strangelove. That will be just in time, because current U.S. policies and strategic thinking—including the recently completed Nuclear Posture Review—are unlikely to adequately address the challenges of the new nuclear era.

Richard’s China assessment to Congress followed on the Defense Department’s 2021 Chinese military power report, which detailed Beijing’s nuclear modernization, most notably the Pentagon’s assessment that the People’s Liberation Army may quadruple its nuclear arsenal to as many as 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030. The report caused heartburn in Washington, providing yet more evidence that China is moving to challenge the U.S. military, which has 3,600 such weapons, and its position of global supremacy. Soon after the Pentagon released its report, a senior Chinese official confirmed that Beijing will continue its nuclear modernization, lending greater credence to the assessment despite other claims by Beijing, and further reports have documented China’s development of land-based missile complexes. Combined with news about China’s successful hypersonic vehicle tests in 2021, the consensus on Beijing’s nuclear ambition presents the Biden administration with a new long-term strategic challenge, even as it grapples with Russia’s nuclear threats.

Though U.S. policymakers and strategic thinkers have warily watched the dramatic modernization of China’s conventional armed forces over the past decade—and despite years of Russian nuclear modernization under Putin—they have largely ignored the nuclear dimension since the end of the Cold War. As the Soviet bloc disintegrated, the George H.W. Bush administration mothballed U.S. Strategic Air Command, and the shadow of mushroom clouds and schoolhouse “duck and cover” exercises retreated from the American imagination. Rusting fallout-shelter signs in abandoned buildings and rural areas are forlorn reminders of the decades when the nuclear balance of terror dominated international politics.


In those intervening decades, the national security community produced few new nuclear thinkers on par with legendary names such as Thomas Schelling, Albert Wohlstetter, and Herman Kahn. Even the capo di tutti capi of strategists, Henry Kissinger, launched his career with his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. Some Cold War-era scholars of nuclear policy, including British strategist Lawrence Freedman, Stanford University professor Scott Sagan, and the Federation of American Scientists’s Hans Kristensen, remain active. Others, such as former Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Sig Hecker, have narrowed their focus to North Korea’s nuclear program.

But since day-to-day nuclear command-and-control operations were moved from NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex to Peterson Air Force Base (now Peterson Space Force Base) in Colorado Springs at the beginning of the 21st century, the once-ubiquitous “wizards of Armageddon” largely have sat on the sidelines during a generation of war on terrorism. U.S. Strategic Command, the successor to U.S. Strategic Air Command, may continue its never-ending nuclear operations (what the strategic community calls the “nuclear enterprise”) and ensure that the United States’ aging nuclear triad remains the ultimate guarantor of U.S. security, but the role of great-power strategic conflict in U.S. defense policy is only quietly acknowledged and quickly pushed to the margins of the discussion over U.S.-China relations.

All that will change, thanks to the dramatic growth of China’s nuclear force and the shift of Sino-U.S. relations into a period of adversarial competition. Its nuclear capabilities long overlooked by those focusing on China’s conventional arms modernization program, China remained a small nuclear power, with only a few dozen weapons after its first nuclear detonation in 1964. Though Chinese nuclear doctrine was little studied in the West, enough emphasis was placed on its “no first use” policy to assure American thinkers that Beijing remained an essentially defensive nuclear state. Such an assessment was easy to make in the generally benign environment for U.S.-Chinese relations that held until the 2010s.
Even before the Trump administration began to push back against China’s increasingly aggressive policies, however, there were signs that the nuclear road between Beijing and Washington might not be as smooth as U.S. thinkers assumed. For the few strategists who took China’s nuclear force seriously, the trick lay in determining what the Chinese understood as “defensive” in their nuclear doctrine. Did that refer to retaliation against a foreign nuclear attack on their homeland—akin to the doctrine of mutual assured destruction that kept nuclear war off the table throughout the Cold War—or something else? The answer became clearer starting in the mid-1990s, when senior Chinese generals threatened to destroy Los Angeles in response to a Taiwan crisis during private talks with U.S. officials. In July 2005, one of the deans of China’s National Defence University made similar threats. Whereas Americans considered a conflict over Taiwan to be similar to other wars where the United States might protect a sovereign state, Beijing was signaling not only that it might be rethinking its no-first-use policy, but that it would do so over territory it considers integral to China. In other words, starting a nuclear war over Taiwan would be defensive from Beijing’s point of view.

Yet as long as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) kept its nuclear arsenal at a limited level, China managed to stay below the threshold for attracting serious U.S. attention. After all, with approximately 3,750 U.S. and 4,500 Russian warheads currently in reserve or deployed, 250 Chinese weapons did not seem particularly threatening.

The recent Pentagon report on China’s military power was thus a shock to many U.S. strategists and set off a flurry of commentary. Yet, it should not have been a surprise. Chinese nuclear capacity has been creeping up in recent decades, and the latest estimate is that the PLA maintains between 270 and 350 deployed warheads. Coming just before the Pentagon assessment was news that Beijing was constructing up to 300 missile silos in three huge fields in the country’s desert interior, each potentially holding a missile with multiple warheads, further underscoring the apparent growth of China’s land-based strike capacity. Meanwhile, the PLA continues to develop its delivery capabilities, including nearly a dozen long-range and intercontinental ballistic missile types, 20 modernized H-6 nuclear-capable strategic bombers, and four JL-2 ballistic missile submarines, each of which can launch 12 missiles. With two more subs of that class coming online, the PLA Navy will have the ability to launch 72 sea-based missiles. As with the United States and Russia, however, China’s true numbers are a jealously guarded secret. That could well mean more warheads and missiles than open-source intelligence can reveal.

Regardless of the true numbers, and though still dwarfed by U.S. and Russian strategic forces, China thus maintains a viable nuclear triad and is expanding the numbers and types of missiles it deploys, such as midrange and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which can be used against U.S. forces in the Pacific region and Washington’s Asian allies. Beijing has also reformed its nuclear command-and-control system, putting nuclear weapons under the control of the PLA Rocket Force and maintaining strict control through the Central Military Commission, which is personally headed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Perhaps most shocking to U.S. analysts was last year’s evidence of successful tests of low-orbit, globe-girdling hypersonic missiles, moving China closer to a capability against which the United States has no defense. As Richard recently stated, China is in the midst of a “strategic breakout” with “explosive growth” that will shift the global nuclear balance.

The expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal is paralleled by the first major modernization of U.S. nuclear forces in a generation, begun under the Obama administration and continued during the Trump years. “America’s nuclear capability is atrophying,” Matt Pottinger, a deputy national security advisor in the Trump administration, told me. Each leg of the U.S. nuclear triad is long overdue to be updated or replaced, with the U.S. Air Force’s 175 planned B-21 bombers succeeding B-1s and 20 B-2s currently in service (the B-21 will be used for both conventional and nuclear missions), a new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, and the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent to replace the Minuteman III force. In addition, aging nuclear warheads will be refurbished or replaced, and many of the older analog systems will be upgraded with digital parts.

By some calculations, the total price tag for U.S. nuclear modernization will exceed $1.5 trillion, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates at least $634 billion will be required just through 2030.


China was not the primary driver of the United States’ nuclear modernization program. But strained relations—over the South China Sea, Taiwan, cyberattacks, and the origins of COVID-19, among other issues—and the deteriorating security environment in the Indo-Pacific risk maneuvering the two powers toward a nuclear arms race even as the United States tries to deal with a resurgent Russia, which further complicates U.S. strategic planning. Of particular concern is Beijing’s focus on hypersonic missiles, which could give China a “preemptive and undetectable first-strike capability,” according to Pottinger, whose view has been echoed by the recently retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. John Hyten.


If Washington and Beijing are indeed entering into a new and more complicated phase of their relations—and as tensions with Russia peak over Ukraine—then there are plenty of reasons to be worried that the United States is not well prepared for a new nuclear era. Over the past decade, China’s dramatic modernization of its conventional forces has shifted the balance of power in Asia, and increasingly there are questions about the ability of U.S. forces to deter and defeat the PLA should hostilities break out. Now, U.S. strategists must add into their calculations a more robust and expansive Chinese nuclear capability.
It is unwise for U.S. policymakers to assume that China’s dramatic increase in nuclear capability will have no impact on strategic stability. Understanding the risks posed by China’s buildup presupposes a level of U.S. understanding of China’s nuclear thinking that simply may not exist. “I’m not sure we have clearly communicated our red lines or understand those built into China’s doctrine,” warns Rep. Mike Waltz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee. Counting Chinese missiles, warheads, submarines, and the like may measure nuclear capability—but it can’t measure intention or reveal how the Chinese are thinking about the role of their nuclear weapons in foreign and security policy.

While recent years have seen a small resurgence in discussion of nuclear issues, there is far from a sustained focus on the new nuclear era. Perhaps topping the list of questions facing U.S. nuclear strategists and China specialists is understanding how Beijing’s new capabilities and growing capacity will play into its strategic and military planning over Taiwan. Indeed, some argue that Beijing’s nuclear buildup is primarily about Taiwan. Yet just as important may be Beijing’s vast claims in the South China Sea, where it has built new islands and militarily fortified atolls that it now claims as sovereign territory, or the Indo-Chinese border, where territorial disputes spilled over into violence in 2020. In all these cases, what Beijing might consider “defense” has to be factored in seriously by U.S. analysts.

Aside from these and other specific flash points, U.S. war planners and policymakers should examine more fundamental questions of strategic stability. Where are the most likely areas in which a conventional conflict could potentially escalate into a strategic exchange? Will a stronger nuclear deterrent embolden Beijing to rattle the nuclear saber during a crisis—or to call what it considers Washington’s nuclear bluff? Conversely, will its nuclear buildup embolden Chinese leaders to take greater risks at the conventional level? In terms of nuclear doctrine, it is critical to discover whether the Chinese are preparing to drop their no-first-use policy and move to a “launch on warning” posture, where a decision to strike the United States would be made on receiving information—often erroneous, as the Soviet Union discovered—that U.S. missiles were on their way. Knowing the relative weight that Chinese planners given to counter-value targets (such as U.S. population centers) versus counterforce targets (such as military bases) will be vital for top U.S. policymakers.

Continued.....

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

Understanding the link between nuclear doctrine and fast-developing new capabilities in warfighting is just as critical. How does cyberwar fit into Chinese strategic thinking? Waltz is particularly concerned that China’s anti-satellite capabilities will make space an early battleground, threatening conventional and strategic communications systems alike. And, as nuclear analyst Gerald Brown notes in an article on China’s nuclear forces, the organizational intermingling of the PLA’s conventional and nuclear forces raises serious questions about the Chinese leadership’s ability to control escalation during a crisis.

Intentions matter, and Americans must avoid mirror-imaging or assuming that Xi and other Chinese leaders see the world the way diplomats in Foggy Bottom or think tankers on Massachusetts Avenue do. How well do Americans understand the Chinese leadership’s intentions regarding nuclear weapons? In other words, can the United States be confident in its understanding of China’s nuclear strategy?


It’s past time that U.S. nuclear thinking be revitalized. Just as counting Chinese nuclear weapons gives an incomplete picture, at best, of Beijing’s strategy and doctrine, modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal will mean little without a much greater revival of sophisticated strategic thinking about nuclear weapons and a well-developed community of nuclear strategists.
The United States therefore faces a cultural problem: Can it recover its ability—lost since the end of the Cold War—to think nuclearly?

In many ways, Americans have lost the muscle memory of thinking in nuclear terms. During the decadeslong confrontation with the Soviet Union, the national security community had an entire vocabulary for sophisticated concepts, ranging from mutual assured destruction to nuclear escalation to the notion of signaling, that helped Washington communicate with the Soviets and think about how, if at all, nuclear exchanges could be deterred, could be controlled, or might impact conventional wars. Scenarios for the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield were as gamed out as full strategic exchanges.


Yet, as the late Janne Nolan pointed out in her 1989 book Guardians of the Arsenal, even those concepts were often divorced from the larger political context in which both policy and ultimate warfighting decisions were to be made. A generation after Nolan’s observation, U.S. planners face the same schism between political and operational thinking, aggravated in recent decades by the loss of political focus on questions of nuclear conflict.

The last serious nuclear crisis was over Cuba in 1962—two entire generations ago. The 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1983 Able Archer scare, and the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident all created mini-emergencies at most. Throughout the Cold War, nuclear strategists such as Schelling, Wohlstetter, and Nolan attempted to learn from various crises, fitting various scenarios into war-gaming and estimation activities. All foreign policy, especially when it was focused on Europe and Asia, was viewed at least in part through a nuclear lens, so as not to miscalculate or underestimate nuclear adversaries.

Once the Cold War ended, so did this sense of urgency. Much of the focus of the post-Cold War nuclear studies community shifted away from deterrence to disarmament, nonproliferation, rogue regimes, and the enduring challenge of the North Korean nuclear program. All were worthy issues, even as the world’s other nuclear powers didn’t follow the new U.S. agenda.

Yet as tensions continue to grow between Beijing and Washington and meaningful confidence-building measures fail to take root, prudence dictates that the United States’ nuclear experts return to serious thinking about war planning, escalation ladders, off-ramps, signaling, counterforce targeting, command and control, and all the rest of the nuclear enterprise—all in the context of a variety of potential scenarios for nuclear escalation. The fragility of U.S.-Chinese political relations and the limitations of meaningful diplomatic dialogue mean that unsolved problems retain the potential of becoming crises—and in those crises, a more capable and powerful Chinese nuclear element may play a role.

To rejuvenate its capacity for strategic thinking, the United States needs to quickly get better at reading Chinese sources in the original language, so as to immerse as much as possible in the untranslated writings and statements of authoritative Chinese voices. So far, not nearly enough attempts have been made to really grapple with primary sources in Chinese or to translate or sponsor research by Chinese scholars.

Foreign-policy specialists and historians need to be brought into discussions and research on nuclear issues. U.S. Strategic Command should increase its outreach among academics and researchers—to help educate but also to be exposed to the perspectives of specialists not normally talking with nuclear planners. One hesitates to call for yet more university or think tank programs, but a renewed emphasis on training for the next generation of nuclear strategists is long past due. Above all, the United States must return to a discipline of strategic thinking, sponsoring serious cross-disciplinary discussions on nuclear issues, preparing the intellectual and policy landscape in advance of a crisis, and refraining from spasmodic and uncoordinated grasping at straws amid a crush of events.

A crucial role will be played by the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), whose current iteration was just completed as part of the National Defense Strategy. Though not yet released publicly, the NPR is already making waves for walking back then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s comments during the 2020 campaign that the “sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack.” The Biden administration initially indicated that its focus would be on arms control and reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy, according to the 2021 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Now, according to the Arms Control Association, the NPR “leaves open the option to use nuclear weapons not only in retaliation to a nuclear attack, but also to respond to non-nuclear threats” in extreme emergencies.

According to a Pentagon fact sheet, the Biden administration remains committed to “reducing the role of nuclear weapons and reestablishing our leadership in arms control,” as well as avoiding costly arms races. Yet the nuclear policies of both Russia and China may make those goals obsolete—or overtaken by events, as they say in government. The NPR will play a critical role if it can respond to geostrategic reality and help reinsert the nuclear issue into a broader, whole-of-defense framework integrating the highest-level political questions with operational plans.

Given Putin’s nuclear saber rattling, the NPR may understandably fail to set the stage for a pivot to Asia on nuclear issues. But the Kremlin’s threats only underline why it is not enough for the NPR to consider issues such as U.S. nuclear modernization—it is questions of strategy, intent, psychology, doctrine, and escalation that must come to the fore. Nuclear blackmail, attempts to curtail U.S. conventional operations, threatening allies, and even the use of tactical nukes must all be considered as options Beijing might pursue. Deterring such threats will require a more flexible and robust U.S. nuclear strategy tied to geopolitical scenarios and possible contingencies. But even more importantly, all these scenarios must be thoroughly thought through beforehand.

READ MORE
Activists wearing masks of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden pose with mock nuclear missiles in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Jan. 29, 2021.
We Need to Talk About Nuclear Weapons Again
Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats plunge the West into a debate it’s not ready for.
ARGUMENT | Azriel Bermant, Wyn Rees
A column of Russia's Topol intercontinental ballistic missile launchers at Red Square in Moscow, on May 9, 2012, during a Victory Day parade.
Why Washington Should Take Russian Nuclear Threats Seriously
Historically, states have escalated when facing the prospect of imminent defeat—and Putin has a track record of following through on his threats.
ARGUMENT | Stephen M. Walt

And if Biden truly intends to focus on arms reduction, then he must figure out how to do so with China, given that Beijing has, since the 1960s, steadfastly refused to enter any arms control talks or even set up a reliable nuclear hotline. The announcement that Biden and Xi agreed to explore talks on arms control during their mid-November 2021 virtual summit is welcome, but there is a long road ahead to reach substantive discussions. The White House must guard that the Chinese don’t use the tactic of talking about talks to endlessly delay meaningful engagement on nuclear issues.

Unlike with the multiple agreements and constant negotiations between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, the Chinese consistently fall back on their “no first use” pledge, defensive orientation, and low number of warheads relative to the United States and Russia as excuses for not joining any arms reduction talks. If the PLA is to have 1,000 warheads across multiple delivery systems in just a decade’s time—and with tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea at their highest level in decades—“there will be much talk about slowing that arms race down with arms control agreements, but that is unlikely to happen, as we learned during the first cold war,” University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer told me.

Wishing for dialogues about strategic stability will not make any substantive talks come about, nor should anyone believe that, after years of contentious Sino-U.S. ties, Beijing will suddenly have a change of heart and limit its nuclear arsenal. China refused the Trump administration’s attempts to bring it into strategic security talks and join U.S.-Russia negotiations over the New START treaty. Washington will have to figure out a different type of signaling. The new NPR could do its part by making clear that U.S. Strategic Command now takes China seriously as a nuclear threat and will be adjusting doctrine and operational activities accordingly.

A half-century after the U.S. reopened relations with Beijing, the specter of the world’s most populous nation becoming a full-on adversary with nuclear arms is the last outcome Washington wanted, especially in an environment where Russia’s nuclear brinkmanship has returned to geopolitics. U.S. policymakers have consistently underestimated China’s intentions, given a pass to its aggressive international behavior, and seemed hesitant to respond to the massive growth of its military. They must not make the same mistake with China’s ambitious nuclear armament plans. China has repeatedly surprised the United States, and while the thought of any nuclear conflict between the two may seem unthinkable, the risks from complacency are simply too high.

Many will see any resumption of serious nuclear planning as provocative and will want to continue reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy. They can take solace from the fraught, dangerous, and sometimes terrifying Cold War era. It was the unpleasant task of taking nuclear war seriously that likely prevented it from ever breaking out. In an imperfect world, that is the best that can be hoped for, and a lesson we ignore at our peril.



Michael Auslin is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the author of Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific.

 

[Housecarl]

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Austin: US hasn't changed Taiwan policy, China has - Breaking Defense

US Defense Secretary says US does not seek an "Asian NATO," but blasts China for "growing coercion" and "dangerous" activity in the region.

breakingdefense.com

Austin: US hasn’t changed Taiwan policy, China has
US Defense Secretary says US does not seek an "Asian NATO," but blasts China for "growing coercion" and "dangerous" activity in the region.

By COLIN CLARK
on June 11, 2022 at 11:32 AM

SINGAPORE: In what was billed as a major policy speech, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told hundreds of defense and civilian leaders from around the Indo-Pacific of the stakes of the persistent contest between supporters of the rules-based international order versus Russia and China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “reckless war of choice has reminded us all of the dangers of undercutting an international order rooted in rules and respect,” he said. “Let’s use this moment to come together in common purpose. Let’s use this moment to strengthen the rules-based international order. And let’s use this moment to think about the future that we all want.”

The death and destruction sown by Putin’s forces across Ukraine raise “urgent questions for us all: Do rules matter? Does sovereignty matter? Does the system that we have built together matter? I am here because I believe that it does. And I am here because the rules-based international order matters just as much in the Indo-Pacific as it does in Europe.”


READ Breaking Defense’s coverage of the Shangri-La Dialogue

Of course, Putin has broken all those rules by invading Ukraine and in the manner in which his troops have murdered civilians and indiscriminately reduced non-military targets to rubble.


The breaking of those rules has dominated discussions here at the Shangri La Dialogue. Speaking here last night, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made his country’s view clear: “Ukraine may be East Asia tomorrow.” Driven by that, Japan plans to double its defense spending over the next five years and will provide $2 billion in patrol boats and other maritime security assistance for Indo-Pacific countries, the prime minister said. He didn’t name the recipients, but it would presumably be targeted at the Pacific island states, who face off with Chinese coast guard and militia ships on a regular basis in their economic zones.

The US is taking similar actions. In a symbolic gesture, the brand new commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan, became the first of her position to attend the Shangri La Dialogue. Austin, more concretely, announced that the “first major US Coast Guard cutter (will be) permanently stationed” in Oceania-Pacific.

RELATED: US-China defense leaders discuss Russia, Taiwan and crisis communications

But the fundamental question here is, will China take Putin’s behavior as license to invade Taiwan?

Austin, who spoke with Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe in some detail about Taiwan Friday, took pains to make America’s policy on Taiwan crystal clear in a way that one close observer of the scene described as “remarkable.” Austin’s recitation of US policy:

“We remain firmly committed to our longstanding one-China policy—guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances.

“We categorically oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side.

“We do not support Taiwan independence.

“And we stand firmly behind the principle that cross-strait differences must be resolved by peaceful means.”

China, which has protested US arms sales to Taiwan, will not have liked his pledge to assist “Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability.”

The most interesting twist to Austin’s presentation was his claim that, while US policy toward Taiwan hasn’t changed, Beijing’s has.

“So our policy hasn’t changed. But unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be true for the PRC… We’ve witnessed a steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan. That includes PLA aircraft flying near Taiwan in record numbers in recent months—and on a nearly daily basis.

“We remain focused on maintaining peace, stability, and the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. But the PRC’s moves threaten to undermine security, and stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific. That’s crucial for this region, and it’s crucial for the wider world,” Austin said.

In the last few days, some Chinese have criticized Japan for trying to help create an Asian NATO because it declared it will seek closer relations with the alliance. Japan has especially worried about the People’s Republic of China’s intentions regarding Taiwan, which sits uncomfortably close to Japanese islands.

China has long regarded the prospect of a regional multilateral alliance with great trepidation. Austin tackled the issue headlong.

“Let me be clear. We do not seek confrontation or conflict. And we do not seek a new Cold War, an Asian NATO, or a region split into hostile blocs. We’ll defend our interests without flinching.” The US, he said, seeks a region marked by ”expanding security, not one of growing division.”

Lest there be any confusion on the part of China or other countries in the region, Austin said “the Indo-Pacific is our center of strategic gravity.” He said it’s going to be “central” to the Biden Administration’s forthcoming National Security Strategy “and to my Department’s National Defense Strategy.”

The defense secretary criticized China for what he called an “alarming increase” in “unsafe aerial intercepts and confrontations at sea by PLA aircraft” and ships. He mentioned the recent lasing of an Australian P-8, which endangered the crew. He also cited PLA fighters responsible for a “series of dangerous intercepts of allied aircraft operating lawfully in the East China and South China Seas. That should worry us all.”

Clearly intending to both signal China and US allies and partners in the region, Austin made an unusual reference in a policy address to new weapons.

He said the US is “on the cusp of delivering prototypes for high-energy lasers that can counter missiles. And we’re developing integrated sensors that operate at the intersection of cyber, EW, and radar communications.” Now, close observers of the military know that digital radars have made the possible for years. Many of the F-35’s most potent capabilities, for example, derive from its mingling of offensive cyber and EW, as well as its ability to fuse threat data.

At the end of Austin’s speech, an assistant professor at Tokyo International University, Jeffrey Ordaniel, asked him about the fake islands China built by destroying some of the South China Sea’s most pristine coral reefs.

“When China started building artificial islands in the South China Sea, the United States said there would be consequences,” Ordaniel said. “China completed those artificial islands. The United States also said that there will be consequences if China militarized those islands. China militarized those islands anyway, stationing bombers and fighter jets. So I guess many of us here are curious, what will be different in the Biden administration’s approach to the South China Sea? Because it seems that the current policy is not working or at least not changing the behavior of China.”

Austin’s answer may have been more revealing than he’d like as he struggled to offer on specifics. He said, “We’ve seen allies and partners grow closer together and work together in a more deliberate way to make sure that they have the ability to protect their interest and our territorial borders.” He added that “like-minded countries bond together to to create new capabilities,” which may have been a reference to the AUKUS agreement and the decision of Australia to buy nuclear attack submarines and the three countries to cooperate on advanced technologies like hypersonics, cyber and quantum.

Austin ended with this somewhat rambling conclusion: “So the effect has been that, that it’s had an effect, that there are some consequences, and those consequences are a much more united region and a region that has focused ever so much more on a vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, so I think I think there have been consequences.”

The inevitable question is, do China and the other countries in the region think there have been consequences?

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

As War Rages in Ukraine, Turkey Expanding Its Soft Power in North Caucasus

Although Turkey is no longer as dramatically active in the North Caucasus as during the 1990s, when it backed Chechen aspirations for independence, Ankara is quietly expanding its use of soft power mechanisms there. As Russian analyst Andrey Areshov writes, these overtures toward the...

jamestown.org

As War Rages in Ukraine, Turkey Expanding Its Soft Power in North Caucasus
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 19 Issue: 86
By: Paul Goble
June 9, 2022 05:38 PM Age: 2 days

Although Turkey is no longer as dramatically active in the North Caucasus as during the 1990s, when it backed Chechen aspirations for independence, Ankara is quietly expanding its use of soft power mechanisms there. As Russian analyst Andrey Areshov writes, these overtures toward the region—increasingly apparent in the wake of the Azerbaijani-Armenian war of 2020 and even more since the start of Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine—encompass relationships with the numerous and active North Caucasian émigré groups in Turkey. Such links expand Turkish influence in the North Caucasus and undermine Russia’s control; but unfortunately, Areshov says, the Kremlin is distracted by other concerns and has failed to recognize what is going on. Because Russia’s government has not taken the necessary steps to counter what Turkey is doing, a branch of the “Turkic World” is now at risk of growing inside the current borders of the Russian Federation, the analyst contends (Fond Strategicheskoy Kultury, June 4).

Fears about Turkey’s new moves and its use of North Caucasian diasporas have been a regular focus of the Russian analytical community since the end of the 2020 Second Karabakh War. At that time, Russian commentators like Dmitry Rodionov asserted that what Turkey wants to do is create not just a union of Turkish states but a union of Turkic nations, including those whose populations are within Russia’s borders. “No one will say this aloud,” including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Moscow writer continued. But that is precisely what is going on, he insisted (Rhythm of Eurasia, January 11, 2021; see EDM, November 16, 2021). Others have made similar points (Kavkazsky Uzel, January 17, 2022).

But it is Areshov’s recent article that provides the most comprehensive survey of Turkey’s activities there now and why Moscow should but is not paying attention. In the 1990s, he notes, Turkey actively supported the Chechens and others seeking independence by providing them with training bases. Those are now for the most part closed, although some still exist (Nordic Monitor, December 13, 2021). Instead, they have been replaced by more symbolic Turkish actions, like attention paid to the deadly events of 1864, honoring Jokhar Dudayev (the first Chechen president) with toponyms in Turkey, as well as efforts to involve young people from the North Caucasus in Turkish educational projects (Star.com.tr, October 1, 2013; Vzglyad, December 23, 2021). Because more vigorous measures have declined, Moscow assumes it does not face a problem. But the soft power Turkey is using is working effectively (Fond Strategicheskoy Kultury, June 4).

The Turkish government is working hard to involve young people from the North Caucasus and their diasporas into its orbit in what Areshov describes as “a war in the shadows.” As evidence, the Russian analyst specifically points to the activities of Gulenist groups, which Ankara ostensibly opposes but sometimes makes use of, the work of Turkey’s directorate for religion and its Agency for Cooperation and Coordination (TIKA), and, especially, projects carried out by the TUGWA youth group, which is closely tied to Erdoğan (T.me/playing_in_the_shadows, November 11, 2021; Fond Strategicheskoy Kultury, June 4, 2022).

According to Areshov, Ankara is “activating its work in Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria and attempting also to influence Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Adygea, Chechnya and Stavropol Krai” (Fond Strategicheskoy Kultury, June 4; Serdalo, March 18). He adds that TUGVA alone has organized approximately 50 youth programs across the North Caucasus; some of these initiatives are online while others involve having students from the region go to Turkey, helping émigrés visit their homelands, or placing Turkish instructors in North Caucasus universities (Gazetaingush.ru, February 18, 2022; EADaily, April 26, 2021) Areshov says that TUGVA has distributed some $5 million to Muslim groups in the North Caucasus and elsewhere in Russia since the start of this year’s Ramadan. He concludes that “under conditions of the special military operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine,” there can be “no doubt that Turkey and its ‘longtime friends,’ ” such as the United Kingdom, will exploit “this opportunity to create additional problems for Russia on the southern flank, including within its state borders,” in the North Caucasus (Fond Strategicheskoy Kultury, June 4).

In this, Areshov suggests and others confirm, the numerous North Caucasus diasporas in Turkey are playing a special role, one made even more important by the ways in which the Internet has linked them to their communities in their homelands (Kirj.ee, December 10, 2021). At the same time, the war in Ukraine has cost Moscow the influence it once had and used among diaspora organizations in Turkey and elsewhere (Windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com, May 4, June 7).

Two developments in Turkey underline this new role for the various North Caucasus emigrant populations there. On the one hand, Ankara, which has long opposed research into these communities, now is allowing more and even appears interested in calling attention to them. As a result, for example, the International Crisis Group recently published a special investigation about Muslims of Russian origin who live in Turkey (Crisisgroup.org, July 12, 2021). And on the other hand, some Turkish politicians are now prepared to talk about the possibility of recognizing as “genocide” Russian actions against North Caucasian nations. Given the reluctance of Turks to use that term lest it lead to discussions of the tragic events of 1915, that is a remarkable shift. And it only became possible because Ankara now sees the North Caucasus as a place where it can win points if it agrees with those like the Circassians, Ingush and Chechens, who insist that they have historically been victims of an intentional Russian policy of national destruction (Gumilev-center.ru, November 20, 2013; Natpressru.info, May 29, 2021). One possible additional reason for this is that Turkey is presently competing in the region not only with Russia but with Iran, a country even less unwilling to talk about genocides than Turkey has been (Kommersant, January 26, 2021).

If the Kremlin does start to pay attention to this trend, it is likely to restrict Turkish actions in the North Caucasus with even more draconian repressions. But for the moment, Moscow is distracted by the conflict in Ukraine. And it may also be constrained by an unwillingness to alienate Turkey lest Ankara take steps such as dropping its opposition to the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to include Finland and Sweden—an issue the Russian leadership cares even more about.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Global nuclear arsenal to grow for first time since Cold War, think-tank says

The risk of such weapons being used is the greatest in decades, a leading conflict and armaments think-tank said.

www.reuters.com

June 12, 20223:35 PM PDTLast Updated an hour ago

• World

Global nuclear arsenal to grow for first time since Cold War, think-tank says
Reuters

STOCKHOLM, June 13 (Reuters) - The global nuclear arsenal is expected to grow in the coming years for the first time since the Cold War while the risk of such weapons being used is the greatest in decades, a leading conflict and armaments think-tank said on Monday.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Western support for Kyiv has heightened tensions among the world's nine nuclear-armed states, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think-tank said in a new set of research.

While the number of nuclear weapons fell slightly between January 2021 and January 2022, SIPRI said that unless immediate action was taken by the nuclear powers, global inventories of warheads could soon begin rising for the first time in decades.

"All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies," Wilfred Wan, Director of SIPRI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme, said in the think-tank's 2022 yearbook.

"This is a very worrying trend."

Three days after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a "special military operation", President Vladimir Putin put Russia's nuclear deterrent on high alert.
He has also warned of consequences that would be "such as you have never seen in your entire history" for countries that stood in Russia's way. read more

Russia has the world's biggest nuclear arsenal with a total of 5,977 warheads, some 550 more than the United States. The two countries possess more than 90% of the world's warheads, though SIPRI said China was in the middle of an expansion with an estimated more than 300 new missile silos.

SIPRI said the global number of nuclear warheads fell to 12,705 in January 2022 from 13,080 in January 2021. An estimated 3,732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2,000 - nearly all belonging to Russia or the United States - were kept in a state of high readiness.

"Relations between the world's great powers have deteriorated further at a time when humanity and the planet face an array of profound and pressing common challenges that can only be addressed by international cooperation," SIPRI board chairman and former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said.

Reporting by Johan Ahlander; editing by Niklas Pollard and Bernadette Baum

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Chinese Defence Minister says nuclear arsenal 'for self-defence' in warning to Taiwan

China's Defence Minister says China has made "impressive progress" in developing new nuclear weapons but will only use them for self-defence, and never use them first.

www.abc.net.au

Chinese Defence Minister says nuclear arsenal 'for self-defence', in warning to Taiwan
Posted 20h ago20 hours ago, updated 19h ago

China has made "impressive progress" in developing new nuclear weapons but will only use them for self-defence, and never use them first, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe told delegates at the Shangri-La Dialogue.
Key points:

• China has been developing its capabilities for over five decades, its Defence Minister says
• He says the ultimate goal of China's nuclear arsenal is to prevent nuclear war
• The US says it appears Beijing is deviating from decades of nuclear strategy based around minimal deterrence

The defence chiefs of China and the United States held face-to-face talks for the first time over the weekend, with both sides standing firm on their opposing views over Taiwan's right to rule itself.

On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Mr Wei met on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore for nearly an hour.

Mr Wei said talks went "smoothly". A Chinese defence ministry spokesman later said Mr Wei reiterated Beijing's firm stance on Taiwan, which is that it is part of China.

Beijing has always had a firm stance on Taiwan, believing that it is part of China.

On Sunday, in response to a question about reports last year on the construction of more than 100 new nuclear missile silos in China's east, Mr Wei said China "has always pursued an appropriate path to developing nuclear capabilities for protection of our country".

He added that nuclear weapons displayed in a 2019 military parade in Beijing — including upgraded launchers for China's DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles — were operational and deployed.

China and US defence chiefs meet to smooth relationship, but both sides trade barbs over Taiwan

The first face-to-face talks "went smoothly", but Beijing and Washington remain polarised over several volatile security situations.

Read more
"China has developed its capabilities for over five decades. It's fair to say there has been impressive progress," he said.

"China's … policy is consistent. We use it for self-defence. We will not be the first to use nuclear [weapons]."

He said China only sought peace and stability, and was not an aggressor, he called on the US to "strengthen solidarity and oppose confrontation and division".

He said China firmly rejected "US smearing, accusations and even threats" in Mr Austin's speech on Saturday.

The US State Department last year called China's nuclear build-up concerning and said it appeared Beijing was deviating from decades of nuclear strategy based around minimal deterrence.

It called on China to engage with it "on practical measures to reduce the risks of destabilising arms races".

Taiwan open to engaging with China 'in goodwill'
Relations between Taipei and Beijing have been at their lowest in decades, with China increasing political and military pressure to get the island to accept its sovereignty.

Does Taiwan want independence? It's complicated
The threat of conflict has raised the question of Taiwan's independence, but it's a complicated issue. So what do Taiwanese Australians think?

Read more
But Premier Su Tseng-chang on Sunday said Taiwan did not want to close the door to China and was willing to engage in the spirit of goodwill, but on an equal basis and without political preconditions.

"As long as there is equality, reciprocity and no political preconditions, we are willing to engage in goodwill with China," he said, reiterating a position President Tsai Ing-wen had repeatedly made in public.

"As for China's harassment of Taiwan with military aircraft, warships, unreasonable suppression and political actions, the one being most unreasonable is China," he added.
"Taiwan does not want to close the door to China. It is China that has used various means to oppress and treat Taiwan unreasonably."

Reuters

 

[Housecarl]

Bad enough about all the gear the Taliban got ahold of and the "logistical holes" gear is falling through going to Ukraine....

Posted for fair use.....

Illicit Trade Of Chinese Shoulder-Fired Surface-To-Air Missiles Increasing

Small Arms Survey said it is still too early to say what might happen with the thousands of MANPADS flowing into Ukraine.

www.thedrive.com

Illicit Trade Of Chinese Shoulder-Fired Surface-To-Air Missiles Increasing
Small Arms Survey said it is still too early to say what might happen with the thousands of MANPADS flowing into Ukraine.
BYHOWARD ALTMANJUN 13, 2022 2:29 PM
THE WAR ZONE

via Armament Research Services
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HOWARD ALTMANView Howard Altman's Articles

Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the illicit trade of advanced Chinese-designed shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, also known as man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, according to a new report from the independent monitoring group Small Arms Survey.

Previous assessments by Small Arms Survey – an associated program of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies designed to track trends related to small arms and other light weaponry and armed violence – and others have shown more limited illicit distributions of these weapons globally. MANPADS, in general, have been in the news of late as massive numbers of U.S.-made Stingers and other advanced types from many other nations have flowed into Ukraine, but this new report only covers data collected relating to the period between 2011 and mid-2021, before Russia launched its all-out invasion.

Countries with reports of illicit possession of advanced MANPADS by armed groups, 2011–2021; Source: Small Arms Survey

What Small Arms Survey's new analysis of data from 2011-2021 did uncover is a major trend in the illicit proliferation of advanced Chinese MANPADS. This new report notes that more than two decades ago, for instance, open-source intelligence and defense news company Janes was able to find evidence of just one model of advanced Chinese MANPADS in the inventories of non-state actors.

Since then, that number has markedly increased.

Small Arms Survey has now identified 49 ‘reported’ or ‘substantiated’ cases of “advanced Chinese-designed MANPADS in the possession of (or in transit to) at least 17 different armed groups in seven countries since 2011,” according to the report released today.
The arms-monitoring organization said the weapons in question include complete FN-6-series MANPADS, which date back to at least the 1990s and is derived from the Soviet-designed Igla-series, obtained by non-state actors in Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, and Syria. There report also documents apparent instances where gripstocks – a term for the reusable component of many MANPADS systems to which actual missiles are attached before firing – for the more modern QW-18 were attached to Cold War-era SA-7 “Strela-patterned launch tubes in Gaza.”

Images 1–3: QW-18 pattern gripstock displayed by Hamas in Gaza and found on the Jihan. Notes: Markings on gripstocks displayed by Hamas (left and bottom right) and found on the Jihan (top right). The gripstocks have the same manufacture date (‘2005’) and lot number (‘02’). Sources: Defense-arab.com (2017) (left and bottom right); confidential (top right). (Small Arms Survey graphic)

The report notes that while many of the QW-series MANPADS identified since 2011 were acquired or intended for armed groups supported by Iran, nailing down a direct connection to that nation is not easy.

Still, “evidence gathered by UN investigators and images posted on social media point to the Iranian government as the source of many” of those systems. UN investigators, the survey noted, “identified Iran as the most likely source of QW-18 pattern MANPADS and other weapons found on the Jihan, a dhow interdicted off the coast of Yemen in 2013. The US government and analysts from Conflict Armament Research [CAR] also concluded that Iran was the source of the shipment."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/860103255677915136

View: https://twitter.com/SaudiEmbassyUSA/status/860103255677915136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E860103255677915136%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone


CAR is a separate independent group focused on investigating arms trafficking in conflicts around the world.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East and Central and Southwest Asia, could not immediately comment on the most recent Small Arms Survey findings.

The increase in illicit Chinese-designed MANPADS to the CENTCOM region echoes what a January Middle East Institute report said is a rise in China’s legal arms exports there.

Some estimates indicate that “between 2016 and 2020, China increased the volume of its arms exports to Saudi Arabia […] from $35 million in the period between 2011 and 2015 to $170 million in 2016 – 2020.”

That also applies to exports to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the report states, “which increased from $45 million to $121 million during the same periods.”

Small Arms Survey also noted the acquisition of North Korean MANPADS by armed groups in the Middle East. Imagery from Gaza and Syria show multiple North Korean HT-16 pattern MANPADS in the possession of Hamas and various Syrian armed groups.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/881597606471901184

View: https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/881597606471901184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E881597606471901184%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone


The Syrian groups appear to have obtained their illicit HT-16 MANPADS from government stocks, according to Small Arms Survey. It is unclear where Hamas obtained their HT-16s, which could have come directly from North Korea or indirectly via a third party with access to North Korean weaponry, such as Iran.

Still, the largest source of illicit MANPADS remains the so-called first-generation systems designed by the former Soviet Union.

“First generation SA-7-pattern MANPADS remain the most numerous and widely proliferated illicit MANPADS worldwide,” the organization states.

Those systems were found in 23 of 32 countries where MANPADS have been located and in 12 countries, they were the only kind found.

The SA-7s – combined with other Soviet-era MANPADS found, like the SA-14, SA-16, or SA-18, which are all variants of the Igla design – account for 81% of all reports identified by model and 85% of the substantiated reports.

“The continued prevalence of illicit Soviet MANPADS, which the Survey also identified as widely proliferated in its 2013 study, is the result of decades of Cold War-era overproduction and prodigious Soviet arms exports — the effects of which will continue to be felt for years to come.”

While old Soviet-origin systems make up the majority of illicit MANPADS, the survey also found small numbers of U.S., British, Pakistani and Polish systems seized in Afghanistan, Libya, Mexico, and Ukraine. The MANPADS recovered in Mexico, Small Arms Survey said, was a single first-generation US FIM-43 Redeye launcher that may or may not have contained a missile.

In Ukraine, where Russia and the insurgents it has backed have been waging war since 2014, authorities “seized several components for third-generation Polish Grom MANPADS from pro-Russian militants in 2014–2015. The seizures are the first documented cases of illicit acquisition of Grom-series MANPADS.”

The report, which as already noted only contains data compiled up to the middle of last year, does not address the current situation in Ukraine, where the U.S. alone has delivered more than 1,400 Stinger systems.

View: https://youtu.be/49BpFQ8gm7I


"The situation in Ukraine is too fluid to speculate about the status of the imported weapons, including MANPADS," Small Arms Survey Senior Researcher Matt Schroeder told The War Zone Friday afternoon.

“There is always a risk of capture and loss of arms and ammunition during armed conflict, and the subsequent trafficking of these weapons—whether they are lost by the Russian or Ukrainian side,” said Schroeder. “It is impossible to predict what will happen to the weapons that are abandoned, lost, or captured during the current conflict.”

Small Arms Survey, however, “found no evidence of widespread international trafficking of munitions from eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2020.”

What that portends for the future is unknown, Schroeder said.

However, the Ukrainian government “has a lot of experience securing weapons deployed in combat and countering arms trafficking from conflict areas. Ukrainian authorities have identified, secured, and disposed of thousands of caches of arms and ammunition, both in the east and in the rest of the country since 2014,” he said.

Jonah Leff, operations director for Conflict Arms Research, told The War Zone that Ukraine needs to heed the lessons of past conflicts when it comes to maintaining control of its ever-growing MANPADS supply

Exporting nations, in partnership with Ukrainian officials, should be "keeping detailed records of supplies and end use and monitoring and verifying such deliveries," Leff said.
While "obviously complex and challenging in an environment like Ukraine," Leff said that "we’ve learned a lot of lessons from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and haven’t changed practices as a result. The blowback from Ukraine could be quite significant for years to come not only in the region, but further afield in Africa and the Middle East."

While the future of MANPADS in Ukraine is unknown, the U.S. has previously raised the issue of these weapons being used during a conflict or crisis illegally finding their way into the hands of third parties.

In a 2017 Senate hearing, for instance, then-Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo testified that he was worried about advanced weapons slipping out of Venezuela during the crisis there.

Of specific concern, he said, were the advanced Russian-made 9K338 Igla-S MANPADS, also known as the SA-24.

The U.S. government, among others, has long been concerned about MANPADS winding up in the wrong hands.

Relatively easy to transport and use, the fear has long been that they could just as easily be employed to try to shoot down commercial airliners as warplanes on the battlefield.

After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency supplied Stinger missiles to Afghan rebels. When that war was over, American authorities began an expensive and complex effort to buy back any missiles that hadn't been fired. Similar efforts were taken to retrieve MANPADS used in other conflicts to prevent their proliferation. Recovering MANPADS was one of the missions being run out of the CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, at the time of the infamous terrorist attack on the nearby U.S. consulate in 2012.

Poland may have figured out a way to at least keep unauthorized users from operating them.

View: https://youtu.be/GhikvLWUiX8


Polish state-owned defense contractor Mesko had at one point designed a system preventing unauthorized use of its Grom shoulder-fired heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, according to a November, 2021 report by CAR. Apparently the first confirmed instance of an end-use control system being fitted for MANPADS, this could be the at least a partial answer to longstanding fears about what terrorists and criminals might do if they obtained such weapons.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

 

[Housecarl]

I figured this would be better here than necromancing an older thread like the one regarding Turkish operated Leo 2s in Syria for example. Note the carriage of drones on the vehicle...HC

Posted for fair use.....

Rheinmetall

Here, you will find the latest press releases.

www.rheinmetall.com

13 Jun 2022
A new tank for a new era
Rheinmetall presenting KF51 Panther at Eurosatory 2022 – a game changer for the battlefields of the future

Rheinmetall is debuting its new KF51 Panther at Eurosatory 2022. The latest member of Rheinmetall's family of tracked vehicles (KF is short for "Kettenfahrzeug", i.e., tracked vehicle), the KF51 Panther is destined to be game changer on the battlefields of the future. The main battle tank concept sets new standards in all areas – lethality, protection, reconnaissance, networking and mobility. Rheinmetall will be unveiling the vehicle at a ceremony on Monday, 13 June 2022 at 14:00 at Stand F241-240.

All weapon systems are connected to the commander's and gunner's optics and the fire control computer via the fully digitalised NGVA architecture. This enables both a hunter-killer and a killer-killer function and thus instantaneous target engagement – in the future also supported by artificial intelligence (AI).

Lethality: With its main armament, the 130mm Rheinmetall Future Gun System, the KF51 Panther offers superior firepower against all current and foreseeable mechanised targets. In addition, further armament options are available to provide concentrated firepower for long-range strikes and against multiple targets.

The Rheinmetall Future Gun System (FGS) consists of a 130 mm smoothbore gun and a fully automatic ammunition handling system. The autoloader holds 20 ready rounds. Compared to current 120 mm systems, the FGS delivers over fifty percent greater effectiveness at significantly longer ranges of engagement. The FGS can fire kinetic energy (KE) rounds as well as programmable airburst ammunition and corresponding practice rounds.

A 12.7 mm coaxial machine gun complements the main weapon. Several options for the integration of remotely controlled weapon stations (RCWS) offer flexibility for proximity and drone defence. The KF51 Panther presented at Eurosatory 2022 is equipped with Rheinmetall's new "Natter" (adder) RCWS in the 7.62 variant.

Integrating a launcher for HERO 120 loitering munition from Rheinmetall's partner UVision into the turret is equally possible. This enhances the KF51's ability to strike targets beyond the direct line of sight.

Survivability and force protection: The Panther has a fully integrated, comprehensive, weight-optimized protection concept, incorporating active, reactive and passive protection technologies. Without a doubt, the concept's most compelling feature is its active protection against KE threats. It increases the level of protection without compromising the weight of the system.

Rheinmetall's Top Attack Protection System (TAPS) wards off threats from above, while the fast-acting ROSY smoke/obscurant systems conceals the KF51 from enemy observation. Moreover, its digital NGVA architecture enables integration of additional sensors for detecting launch signatures. Thanks to its pre-shot detection capability, the KF51 Panther can recognize and neutralize threats at an early stage. Designed to operate in a contested electromagnetic environment, the KF51 is fully hardened against cyber threats.

Controllability and networking: The KF51 Panther features an innovative operating concept. It is basically designed for a three-person crew: the commander and gunner in the turret and the driver in the chassis, where an additional operator station is available for a weapons and subsystems specialist or for command personnel such as the company commander or battalion commander.

Designed in accordance with NGVA standards, the tank's fully digital architecture enables seamless integration of sensors and effectors both within the platform as well as into a networked "system of systems". Operation of sensors and weapons can be transferred instantly between crew members. Each operator station can take over the tasks and roles from others, while retaining full functionality. Since the turret and weapons can also be controlled from the operator stations in the chassis, variants of the KF51 Panther with unmanned turrets or completely remote-controlled vehicles are also planned in the future.

Reconnaissance and situational awareness: Thanks to the panoramic SEOSS optical sensor and EMES main combat aiming device, the commander and gunner are both able to observe and engage targets independently of each other, both day and night, while a stabilized daylight and IR optic with integrated laser rangefinder is available to both. In addition, via a display in the fighting compartment, the crew has a 360°, round-the-clock view of the vehicle's surroundings. Integrated, unmanned aerial reconnaissance systems enhance the crew's situational awareness in built-up areas and in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle. With these, the crew can also conduct reconnaissance under armour protection and share the results with other actors in a networked manner.

Mobility: The KF51 Panther builds on the mobility concept of the Leopard 2. With an operational weight of just 59 tons, it delivers far greater mobility than current systems and has a maximum operating range of around 500 kilometres. Without prior preparation, it fits into the AMovP-4L profile, something no other current main battle tank upgrade can do. Consequently, the KF51's tactical and strategic mobility set it apart.

Logistics: Thanks to Rheinmetall's innovative development approach, users, maintenance specialists, logisticians and procurement experts from all current and future user nations can play an active role in shaping the vehicle's future. Rheinmetall has longstanding experience in establishing global supply chains in order, in cooperation with user nations, to make sure that a large share of production is carried out in-country, thus helping to create and/or preserve sovereign capabilities and capacities.

Future viability: In developing the KF51, Rheinmetall not only set out to modernize existing main battle tank concepts. Starting from scratch, it completely reconceived the platform. The KF51 Panther can be easily updated and equipped with the latest capabilities and functions. Its advanced, modular, open NGVA system architecture enables iterative development, which can then be updated in harmony with innovation cycles. The KF51 is the first representative of a new generation of combat vehicles. Soon, future innovations will enable environmentally friendly peacetime operations and further optimization regarding automation and combat effectiveness.


Learn more about the Panther KF51

View: https://youtu.be/fTBA5tQsDbE

_____________________________
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Posted for fair use.....

Rheinmetall

The Panther is the first of its kind: Rheinmetall's radically new main battle tank concept drawing on some of the latest technologies.

www.rheinmetall-defence.com

Panther KF51 main battle tank
Future tanknology


The Panther is the first of its kind: a radically new MBT concept not constrained by yesterday’s technology. Drawing on some of the latest technologies, the Panther was designed from the ground up to deliver the

• highest lethality on the battlefield, combined with an
• integrated survivability concept and connected by a
• fully digitised NGVA data backbone to enable
• next-generation operational capabilities and automation.

This enables a reduction in crew size, which paves the way for unmanned turret options and Human-Machine Teaming.

Highly lethal
Unrivalled lethality overmatch with the 130 mm Future Gun System (FGS) and optimised sensor-to-shooter links.
Highly protected
The first MBT adopting an integrated survivability concept of on and off-platform sensors coupled with active, reactive and passive protection and a dedicated top attack protection system.
Fully digitised
The first for an MBT: The Panther is designed around a digital architecture complying with the NGVA standard. This is the key enabler for future decision support and automation systems.


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Lethality


The Panther fulfils the core capability of “dominate and destroy”. With the Rheinmetall Future Gun System consisting of a 130 mm cannon, a fully automated ammunition handling system and the additional armament options of the HERO 120 loitering ammunition, the Panther has concentrated firepower for long-range strikes in multi-target engagements.
Rarely has the sheer power of an MBT gun been more impressive. The Future Gun System, developed by Rheinmetall, enables a 50 per cent longer kill range to be achieved (than 120 mm) with an unrivalled rate of fire due to the autoloader performance. A 12.7 mm co-axial machine gun complements the main gun. Multiple Remote Controlled Weapon Station (RCWS) integration options give flexibility in proximity and drone defence. The optional HERO 120 loitering ammunition capability expands the Panther’s strike capability to non-line-of-sight targets and can be mounted depending on role and mission requirements.
All weapons are connected with targeting sights and the fire control computer through the fully digitised architecture, allowing for hunter-killer and killer-killer operation, seamless target engagements and future AI decision support.

(Interactive image at source. HC)





Survivability
The Panther employs a ground-breaking, fully integrated, comprehensive, weight-optimised survivability concept. In addition to classic measures, the Panther’s digital architecture enables on and off-board survivability, with active, reactive and passive protection technologies.
The Panther is configured with a pre-shot detection capability, enabling it to strike first. Threats from above are defeated by the Rheinmetall TAPS (Top Attack Protection System). The ROSY smoke obscurance system is provided as part of the survivability system, which fully integrates with the digitised architecture to allow additional defence measures. The standout survivability feature is undoubtedly the active KE protection, which increases protection levels without affecting the system weight.
As a system designed to operate in a contested electromagnetic spectrum, the Panther is fully cyber hardened.
Reactive and passive protection

• Sensor-based reactive system
• Passive protection

Active protection

• Protection against large-calibre KE
• Protection against ATGM

ROSY smoke obscurance system
Top attack protection system (TAPS)
Mine protection
Rheinmetall drones
Pre-shot detection capability




Mobility
The combat weight of just 59 tonnes provides far greater mobility than current systems. This puts it in a battle-winning weight category and it also fits the tunnel profile AMovP-4L without preparation: a requirement that no current MBT upgrade fulfils. Consequently, the Panther excels in tactical and strategic mobility.
Combat weight: < 50 t
Range: > 500 km
Fits tunnel profile AMovP-4L 9 t

The concept
The Panther is a truly software-defined tank fully enabled to collect and disseminate information on the multi-domain battlefield. Deep integration of modern BMS and software-defined communication systems enables forces to operate in collaborative combat environments such as cross-platform sensor-to-shooter links.
The Panther is designed to control assigned unmanned aerial vehicles such as on-board or off-board drones, loitering ammunition and a range of uncrewed ground vehicles.
The fully digitised system and common crew stations are the enablers for true Human-Machine Teaming and control of wingman UGVs that cover capabilities such as platoon-level air and drone defence.




Commandability
Based on the needs of the crew, we have developed workstations that are unmatched in their integration.
The Panther is designed for a crew of three, supporting future force structures with reduced numbers of soldiers. Two crew stations are located in the chassis, with one dedicated to the driver and an optional station dedicated to a company commander, a drone operator or a wingman pilot.
The fully digitised NGVA architecture allows for seamless sensor and effector integration both within the platform and cross-platform. Sensor and weapon control assignments can be passed between crew members instantly. Each workstation can hand over and take over tasks and roles from others with no reduction of functionality. As the turret and weapons control are also provided to the chassis based work stations, future upgrades being planned include unmanned turrets and remotely operated Panthers.




Partnership potential
Join the Panther Leap and help jointly shape the system. By engaging with Rheinmetall’s innovative development approach, operators, maintainers, logisticians and procurement professionals of all current and future user nations can enable the future – together shaping the Panther habitat.
Rheinmetall has pedigree in creating global product supply chains and engaging with user nations in order to provide substantial national industrial content and sovereign capability.




Sustainability

With the Panther, a completely new MBT concept is being brought to life: one that is not limited by considerations of current MBTs. It is designed from the ground up so that it can be easily updated and equipped with the latest capabilities and features. The NGVA modular open-system architecture enables spiral development that can be regularly updated in line with innovation cycles.
The Panther is the first of a new MBT family. In the near future, there will be further innovations that support environmentally friendly peacetime operations and further optimisation in terms of automation and effectiveness.




Further information


News
13 June 2022: Rheinmetall presenting KF51 Panther at Eurosatory 2022 – a game changer for the battlefields of the future
Download brochure

 

[jward]

China's growing nuclear arsenal creates new global threat, may topple 70 year old power dynamic: Expert
Experts caution that China is still some years away from achieving its goals

By Peter Aitken | Fox News

Hoffman on Blinken saying Iran could develop nuclear weapon in weeks: 'Major issue for US national security'
China’s nuclear ambitions may lead to a tripolar landscape and further proliferation as it seeks to place itself equal to the U.S. and Russia.

"It's one thing to have a kind of bilateral nuclear superpowers know the world as it is now, but headed towards a trilateral, trilateral situation the potential for accidents and miscalculations just naturally grows," James Anderson, acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under President Trump, told Fox News Digital. "And that's unfortunate."
The international landscape has remained in a bipolar dynamic between the U.S. and Russia as the two dominant powers due to a policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) thanks to their virtually unmatched nuclear arsenals. That power balance has remained in place for over 70 years.

Fu Cong, center, the director general of the Foreign Ministry's arms control department, attends a press conference on nuclear arms control in Beijing, China, Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022. The top Chinese arms control official denied Tuesday that his government is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, though he said it is taking steps to ensure its nuclear deterrent remains viable in a changing security environment. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

However, China has recently invested far more heavily in its nuclear arsenal and capabilities, developing a wide array of nuclear weapons in its land, sea and air-based delivery platforms that aim to bring it up to that same level as the U.S. and Russia. John Kirby in Nov. 2021 said the Pentagon’s "number one pacing challenge is the People’s Republic of China."
In 2020, the Pentagon estimated China possesses an arsenal in the "low-200s," but that number is set to "at least double" over the next decade. A report from the Pentagon last year claimed that China "likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the [Defense Dept.] projected in 2020."
Should China achieve that level of power, it would upset the bipolar dynamic since MAD would no longer remain effective: If any two powers strike at each other, the third stands to gain significantly from the conflict. Mutual destruction is no longer assured, and that necessarily forces all nations to alter their behavior and policies.

GERMAN INTEL REPORT SHOWS IRAN STEPPED UP ILLEGAL ATTEMPTS TO AID NUKE PROGRAM

The one seeming silver lining rests in the difference between the American, Russian and Chinese arsenals: Even with its aggressive expansion, China still has a lot of ground to make up compared to its rivals.
"I think if we're using pure numbers, they still have a ways to go, especially including on what we kind of consider Russia's reserve capabilities," Matt McInnis from the Institute for the Study of War told Fox News Digital.
"China still has somewhere in the range of, you know, maybe probably around 300 or so, three or 400," he explained. "The likelihood is they're going to get up to, based on the current estimates from the US government, up to 700 weapons by 2027, probably a thousand by 2030, and it could be heading north from there … You're not going to really probably get parity until well, until the middle of the century."

FILE PHOTO: Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (L) inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing December 4, 2013. (REUTERS/Lintao Zhang/Pool//File Photo)

China’s aggressive expansion would lead to a potential tripolar international dynamic, in which it sits equal to the U.S. and Russia and offsetting the delicate balance and potentially leading to greater nuclear proliferation in other countries.
"I think that's another potential risk that we definitely have to consider," Anderson explained. "That's certainly a relevant case here, given the Indian-Chinese rivalry. They have fought border wars and clashed recently, and I think you would be very concerned now and become increasingly so as the PRC embarked upon this nuclear expansion."
McInnis also pointed to the Middle East as a candidate for accelerated proliferation should China achieve its goals, but speculated that the countries closest to China - namely South Korea and Japan - would certainly consider changing their non-nuclear policies.

US, JAPAN PREPPING STATEMENT TO ‘DETER’ CHINA ACTION IN INDO-PACIFIC REGION: REPORT

"What Japan and India do is the most interesting question," McInnis said. "And I think it's something to be aware of - the risk that they are incurring if they continue to pursue other power that dramatically changes the nuclear balance in the region."
Treaties remain a critical element of the bipolar landscape, but the developing tripolar landscape has not presented a clear opportunity to try and develop similar agreements: Any agreement on arms control would need Russia’s participation, which seems far off with relations between Moscow and Washington at a low following the invasion of Ukraine.
"I'm personally not optimistic that now is a realistic time for [negotiations], because the Russians obviously are not interested in any type of cooperative negotiations with us while war is raging in Ukraine," Heino Klinck, Senior Advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research, told Fox News Digital. "I don't think we would even want to broach anything that smacks of any kind of cooperation with the Russians."

Chinese naval fleet passes through naval mine threat area during the China-Russia 'Joint Sea-2021' military drill near the Peter the Great Gulf on October 15, 2021 in Russia. (Sun Zifa/China News Service via Getty Images)
The inability to develop meaningful arms control leaves the U.S. at a disadvantage as it works to find some way to cooperate with China and reign in the pace of proliferation.
"If you look at Secretary Blinken's recent speech, obviously, the administration is looking where possible for opportunities to cooperate [with China]," Klinck said. "I think even if an opportunity for some sort of cooperative arms control agreement is unrealistic ... it should be part of standard American talking points when engaging with the Chinese."
Klinck argued that U.S. is unlikely to get "any kind of positive response" from China.

SAUDIS WOULD DEVELOP BOMB ‘THE NEXT DAY’ IF IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL LED TO WEAPONS CAPABILITY

"I think they’re just going to push back," he said.
All three experts also advised that China’s arsenal isn’t the only element that requires strict scrutiny: Any nuclear arsenal is just posturing unless China also changes doctrine.
A key component of the MAD policy focuses on "first strike," which maintains that a country is capable of destroying an opponent’s arsenal while surviving the weakened retaliation; therefore, rendering their opponent unable to continue the war.

https://www.foxnews.com/apps-products?pid=AppArticleLink
The opposite, a "no first use" doctrine, instead posits that a country will not use nuclear weapons unless first attacked by such. China has so far maintained a NFU policy, and would likely change it in the event that it planned to stand equal to the U.S. and Russia.
"We need to seriously think about … reevaluating our own policy in that regard if we are facing a world power like China willing to adopt a first strike," McInnis said. "I think that we need to be thinking - we need to be communicating our willingness to shift policy if we see China move in that direction."

Peter Aitken is a Fox News Digital reporter with a focus on national and global news.

Posted for fair use

China's growing nuclear arsenal creates new global threat, may topple 70 year old power dynamic: Expert

A tripolar international landscape would occur once China has obtained enough nuclear weapons which may incentivize adversarial neighbors to become nuclear powers in self-defense.

www.foxnews.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Return from the Grave: The Domestic Nuclear Attack Threat

American concern for a domestic nuclear attack atrophied after this policy change. The Cold War had ended without a nuclear crisis; so, too, had the age of terrorism. As the world advanced into the Digital Age, a full-scale nuclear war seemed completely incomprehensible, much less a more conventiona

thestrategybridge.org

Return from the Grave: The Domestic Nuclear Attack Threat

Robert T. Wagner
June 15, 2022

It’s as if we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Soviet Union collapsed and said to ourselves, ‘Well, I guess we don’t need to worry about that anymore.’”
—Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen[1]

The domestic nuclear attack threat is dead, or so many in the American national security community thought. In their estimation, it died with the threat of international terrorism, which evoked concerns of nuclear terrorism. Even with the re-orientation of the National Defense Strategy to emphasize strategic competition, the inherent risks seemed far too great for a nuclear-armed superpower to ever consider seriously threatening, let alone actually using, nuclear force ever again. Consequently, the United States has neglected to adequately prepare for this threat in recent times. With Russia now threatening nuclear escalation towards the West as it wages war against Ukraine, the homeland has been revealed to be one of the greatest vulnerabilities of American national security.

INTO THE DIRT: THE APPARENT DEATH OF THE NUCLEAR ATTACK THREAT

The events of September 11, 2001, ushered in a new era for the national security apparatus that emphasized international terrorism and rogue state threats, and perceptions of the domestic nuclear attack threat followed suit. Concerns rose that al-Qaeda was developing an improvised nuclear weapon, which thrust nuclear terrorism to the forefront of nuclear security policy. In a 2006 joint statement with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, President George W. Bush stated that nuclear terrorism “is one of the most dangerous international security challenges we face.”[2] This echoed the sentiments of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the National Planning Scenarios, which listed a hypothetical nuclear attack with a 10-kiloton improvised nuclear device by terrorists as Scenario 1.[3] Even popular culture reflected this concern with the 2002 release of the movie The Sum of All Fears, which was based on a Tom Clancy novel about a nuclear attack on the Super Bowl by terrorists.[4]

Of course, this shift occurred roughly a decade after the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.[5] Long gone were the days of nuclear attack drills and fear of impending nuclear war with another superpower. The repulsive nature of Cold War-era doctrine, such as mutually assured destruction, seemingly ensured that those days were gone for good. After all, the potential consequences to any aggressor—and the rest of mankind—had effectively deterred the use of nuclear weapons for the duration of the Cold War.[6] With a nuclear war between great powers out of the question in the minds of most policymakers, the threat of nuclear terrorism became the primary concern.

However, despite the consternation, international terrorists never launched a nuclear terrorist attack, and the national security community was quick to move on to more pressing threats. With one condemning line, the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America stated, “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.”[7] Given that terrorism had been the primary source of concern for a nuclear incident for roughly two decades, it appeared that this threat could be declared dead.

LONG FORGOTTEN: THE DECLINE IN PREPAREDNESS
American concern for a domestic nuclear attack atrophied. The Cold War had ended without a nuclear crisis; so, too, had the age of terrorism. As the world advanced into the Digital Age, a full-scale nuclear war seemed completely incomprehensible, much less a more conventional conflict between nuclear-armed superpowers. As then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen lamented in 2010 about the lack of nuclear warfare expertise in the Pentagon, “We don’t have anybody in our military that does that anymore.” He continued, “It’s as if we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Soviet Union collapsed and said to ourselves, ‘Well, I guess we don’t need to worry about that anymore.’”[8] Instead, as China and Russia began projecting their power through liminal warfare, defense and security resources were dedicated to countering these threats, namely cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns. Modern warfare experts thought that future conflicts would be fought purely as such, not with nuclear force, so it seemed that the nuclear attack threat had gone to the grave for good.[9]

Moreover, domestic preparedness for a nuclear attack has long been declining in the United States. Despite the concern for nuclear terrorism over the past two decades, natural disasters have long overtaken the concern for a nuclear detonation and civil defense at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As H. Quinton Lucie laments, “The United States has not had a comprehensive strategy to protect its civilian population and defense industrial base, or to mobilize and sustain the nation during time of war, in almost 25 years.”[10] While this observation is made in the broader context of general war, its applicability to domestic nuclear attack preparedness is clear. After all, even a single incident would require a massive number of resources to successfully mitigate.[11]

To make matters worse, many state and local officials are openly relying on the federal government to step up and lead in the aftermath of such an event. In a 2019 Federal Emergency Management Agency PrepTalk, emergency manager and health physicist Brooke Buddemeier spoke of his experience asking these officials about their needs after a nuclear attack. As he recalled, the most common response was, “Nuclear detonation? That’s a fed thing, right? Wait for the guys in green to save the day?” As he concluded, “Nobody really has a plan for the aftermath of a nuclear detonation…In fact, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what the response needs even are, and what the role of federal, state, and local agencies is.”[12] Concerningly, these observations were solidified by the research findings of another study, which identified several gaps in domestic nuclear detonation response capabilities.[13]

BACK FROM THE DEAD: RUSSIA’S THREATS OF NUCLEAR ESCALATION
In his 1922 poem “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot ominously warns the reader, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”[14] In a March 2022 keystone conversation hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen added the modifier “radiation dust” to this somber warning.[15] Obviously, Secretary Cohen was speaking of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has implied threats of nuclear escalation should the West interfere with his military action in Ukraine.[16] While these threats have serious implications for the United States’ ability to project power overseas, they have revealed another concerning weakness of American national security: the home front, particularly in the context of a nuclear crisis. After all, as the previous section described, America’s ability to handle such an incident is, at best, questionable.

Of course, the overall threat of an intentional nuclear attack remains very low, because the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons remains very high, even by President Putin’s standards. However, when Russia cut off communication with the Department of Defense, some warned there was an increasing likelihood for a misunderstanding to lead to an unintended nuclear incident.[17] Furthermore, even a single nuclear detonation could have massive strategic implications for the United States. The potential scale of any such event and unprecedented magnitude of the consequences demand attention.[18]

CONCLUSION
The nuclear attack threat was thought to have died with the age of international terrorism. However, Russia’s threats of nuclear escalation following its invasion of Ukraine have awoken it from the grave. Despite this resurrection, old concepts of civil defense and domestic nuclear detonation preparedness have yet to revive with it. As such, the United States is unprepared to address this threat, revealing a significant weakness of national security on the home front that demands immediate attention.

Robert T. Wagner is a Department of Army Civilian, and holds a Master of Arts Degree in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School. His research interests include homeland defense, civil military relations, and emergency preparedness. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

 

[Deena in GA]

Thank you for your work in putting these threads together! It is much appreciated!!

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use....

Russian State TV Argues Over Using Nuclear War to Threaten U.S.

The group argued about whether Russia should threaten the U.S. with nuclear war or by launching an intercontinental ballistic missile, among other suggestions.

www.newsweek.com

Russian State TV Argues Over Using Nuclear War to Threaten U.S.

BY ZOE STROZEWSKI ON 6/14/22 AT 5:10 PM EDT

A group of Russian officials who appeared on state television held an intense discussion on how best to show the U.S. the full extent of the threat Russia poses to its national security.

The group, identified as a military expert, multiple political scientists and a member of the State Duma, argued over whether Russia should threaten the U.S. with nuclear war or by launching an intercontinental ballistic missile, among other suggestions.

Julia Davis, a reporter with The Daily Beast, shared a clip of the exchange with English captions on Twitter on Tuesday. Newsweek was unable to confirm whether the state television discussion also took place on Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1536736345766387713

View: https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1536736345766387713?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1536736345766387713%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Frussian-state-tv-argues-over-using-nuclear-war-threaten-us-1715850


Since Ukraine was invaded in late February, the U.S. has drawn Russia's ire over aid, including weapons, to Ukraine and packages of unprecedented sanctions against Russia. The full context surrounding the state television discussion was not immediately clear, but the clip began with a man, identified as military expert Alexei Leokov, saying that "Russia should get used to becoming an empire.

"Since we're an empire, we should act like an empire," he said.

Andrey Gurulyov, a member of the State Duma, then chimed in to suggest that weapons, presumably Russia's, should "pose a threat, first and foremost, to the territory of the United States of America, and not only nuclear weapons."

"They should understand there could be a strike against Miami, Texas or any other state," Gurulyov said. "Then, they'll tuck their tail in. They aren't very brave over there. This is our truth and what we should aspire to and confidently move toward that."

Dmitry Drobnitsky, who was identified as a political scientist, then suggested that U.S. elites "for the most part" don't feel very vulnerable, and that they don't believe Russia would strike.

"There is only one way to convince them, which would be to launch a Sarmat [missile]," he said. "I understand the desire of many to go to heaven, but I'm in no rush to go there."

Another man floated the idea that Russia could "place something serious" in Nicaragua, but Drobnitsky interjected to say that "there is not one in Latin America" that Russia can rely on apart from "Cubans and Chileans." Drobnitsky added that they should stop talking about Latin America and said that any moves involving the region were "just fantasies."

Another man who had not spoken yet in the clip—neither his name nor position were specified—said that some say a Sarmat missile "works well against sanctions."

"It's an important argument, but I agree that no one believes it would be used. And why not?" the man asked.

READ MORE

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Dmitry Abzalov, another political scientist, responded that "they're convincing everyone that the Russians wouldn't move on that," in a seeming reference to U.S. officials.

Another member of the group said that the Russians "would" do so with no problem. Another said that the U.S. officials "don't understand anything about Putin." Due to crosstalk and the pace of the conversation, it was not immediately clear who in the group made both of the statements.

The same unidentified man who made the comment about the Sarmat missile and sanctions said that if Russia was moving toward a confrontation with the U.S., it needs to understand how long the "operation" in Ukraine would last.

"Many things could be solved economically, but some issues fundamentally change everything," he added.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Defense Department for comment.

 

[jward]

Israel and Iran: Five minutes to Armageddon?
Mark Toth, Opinion Contributor

6-8 minutes



Israel and Iran are rapidly approaching an inflection point over Tehran’s nuclear program, and what was the atomic equivalent of a controlled clash between the two countries is now devolving into an unconstrained chain reaction. In late May, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations agency tasked with globally overseeing nuclear technology and use, reported that Iran possesses enough fissile material to construct a nuclear bomb. Jerusalem’s long-feared specter of Tehran becoming an existential threat to Israel is now very real and imminent.

Iran’s amassing of 95 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HEU) is deeply concerning. Sufficient HEU mass is required for a nuclear chain reaction to sustain itself and Tehran has ominously crossed that minimum threshold. More telling, however, is Iran’s decision to enrich its HEU stockpile to 60 percent — a level significantly beyond the 3 percent to 5 percent HEU enrichment needed to produce fuel for medical experiments and nuclear power plants. Spoken or not, Tehran is clearly aiming for 90 percent HEU enrichment, the level necessary to build an atomic bomb.
For Israel, it is 1981 redux — when then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his security Cabinet authorized Operation Babylon to destroy Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear facility. Iraq’s atomic threat was largely theoretical in nature in 1981; Iran’s today is far more dire and will be exponentially more difficult to eliminate.
The ayatollahs have been down this path before, targeting Israel and Saudi Arabia. Known as the Amad Plan, Iran intended to build five 10-kiloton nuclear warheads by 2003, according to documents seized from a Tehran warehouse in 2018 by Mossad, Israel’s espionage agency. Iran even had begun developing an atomic test site in the “Mars-like dead zone” of the Lut Desert, roughly 500 miles northeast of Dubai or 1,500 miles east of Tel Aviv.

Guardrails aimed at avoiding this crisis — tenuous as they were — are fast dissipating. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is all but dead. Brokered by the Obama administration in July 2015, the accord was intended to severely curtail Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons. The Trump administration badly undercut the JCPOA by unilaterally withdrawing in May 2018. The agreement was by no means perfect; however, it did serve to stunt Iran’s uranium enrichment while buying Jerusalem valuable time to plan and refine military options, if needed.

Despite stated interest in returning the U.S. to the JCPOA, President Biden failed to capitalize on the five-month window of opportunity he had at the beginning of his administration to engage Tehran’s moderates. Hard-liners ended up dominating Iran’s June 2021 elections, resulting in arch-conservative Ebrahim Raisi being elected as Iran’s new president.
Iran under Raisi is increasingly combative and noncooperative. On June 6, Rafael Grossi, director-general of the IAEA, reported to the agency’s board of governors that Tehran had failed to provide “explanations that are technically credible” with respect to finding nuclear materials at “three undeclared locations in Iran.” Further, Iran began installing “advanced IR-6 centrifuges” in clusters, thereby chillingly accelerating Tehran’s enrichment of uranium by as much as 50 percent.
In response, the IAEA board censured Tehran, resulting in Iran cutting off IAEA camera feeds that monitored Iran’s nuclear activities. Grossi believes, if left unaddressed, the IAEA’s inability to evaluate Iran’s atomic sites in real time likely will be a “fatal blow” to the JCPOA.

The Pentagon fully realizes that time is not on Israel’s side, nor that of the U.S. and its allies. In March, now-retired Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then commander of U.S. Central Command, testified in a Senate hearing that Iran has “3,000 ballistic missiles,” including variants capable of reaching Tel Aviv, while assessing Tehran’s nuclear “breakout” is now measured in “weeks,” not “months.”
Israel concurs. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett acknowledged on June 12 Iran is “dangerously close to getting their hands on nuclear weapons.” Earlier, Jerusalem — in an atypical disclosure for Israel — declared it has sufficiently extended the range of its U.S.-supplied Lockheed Martin F-35I Adir stealth fighter-bombers to complete any missions tasked to them in Iran. Israel’s message to the ayatollahs was loud and clear: Israel can reach deep inside Iran and exit Iranian air space unseen. Either abandon pursuit of nuclear weapons or risk getting hit.

If forced to attack Iran’s nuclear program, Israel’s primary target would be destroying the centrifuges enriching HEU in Natanz, Fordow and elsewhere — all of which are buried deep underground. It is the only military means by which Jerusalem could avert Tehran from reaching the 90 percent HEU enrichment level. Numerous tertiary targets also would need to be eliminated. Iran Watch lists 38 known nuclear-related sites in total.
Jerusalem’s planning must anticipate Hezbollah, Hamas and other Tehran-backed militias aggressively responding in kind if Israel launches a raid into Iran. In all likelihood, before Israel’s air forces could return to Israeli airspace, massive volleys of rocket fire would be hitting the country from Lebanon, Gaza and Syria — and possibly even from Iran itself. Striking Iran’s nuclear facilities would be only the beginning, not the end, of a hot war between Israel and Iran.

Prepared or not, Israel and Washington both appear to be out of time — Iran’s threat is substantial, and it is only intensifying. Until now, Jerusalem’s “war between wars” covert approach against Iran was sufficient to tactically frustrate Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, largely via sabotage and assassinations of key Iranian nuclear physicists. It no longer is — not when HEU is 60 percent enriched. Measured in Doomsday Clock terms, it is five minutes to midnight in Jerusalem and Tehran — and in Megiddo, the historical biblical site of Armageddon in Israel.

Mark Toth is a retired economist, historian and entrepreneur who has worked in banking, insurance, publishing and global commerce. He is a former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis, and has lived in U.S. diplomatic and military communities around the world, including London, Tel Aviv, Augsburg and Nagoya. Follow him on Twitter @MCTothSTL.

Israel and Iran: Five minutes to Armageddon?

Israel and Iran are rapidly approaching an inflection point over Tehran’s nuclear program, and what was the atomic equivalent of a controlled clash between the two countries is now devolving into a…

thehill.com

 

[jward]

Construction Of Airbase On Tinian Island In Case Guam Gets Knocked Out Has Begun
The alternate airbase facilities now under construction on Tinian would offer an alternative to Andersen Air Force Base if Guam gets attacked.


Satellite imagery shows major construction at Tinian International Airport that we can say with near certainty is linked directly to plans to expand the facility's ability to act as a divert airfield for the U.S. military in a crisis. More than a decade in the making, the project is intended to provide a vital alternative operating location to the U.S. Air Force's massive Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam, just to the southwest of Tinian, should that base be put out of action for any reason. Concerns about Andersen's vulnerability, specifically to a Chinese missile barrage, during the opening stages of potential future conflict in the region have been growing in recent years, something highlighted in The War Zone's previous reporting on this proposed airfield expansion effort.

A satellite image obtained by The War Zone of Tinian, taken on June 6, shows a section of land cleared just to the northwest of Tinian International Airport's main runway. A pre-existing access road runs east-west through roughly the center of the apparent work area. A review of historical satellite imagery available through Planet Labs shows that work at this site began in early May.

A satellite image showing Tinian International Airport on June 6, 2022. Construction work is clearly visible at the northwestern end of the airport. PHOTO © 2022 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION
The new construction seen in the June 6 image aligns with known plans to add a new taxiway and aircraft parking apron, among other things, on the north side of Tinian International Airport as part of the Tinian Divert Airfield project. A ground-breaking ceremony was held on the island in February of this year to mark the formal start of this work, which will cost approximately $161.8 million and is excepted to be completed by October 2025.

A close-up of the construction area at Tinian International Airport. PHOTO © 2022 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

An annotated satellite image of Tinian International Airport with the planned locations of the new parking apron and taxiway that are now under construction as part of the Tinian Divert Airfield project shown in gray. The purple and yellow lines are portions of two proposed routes for a fuel pipeline that is also part of the complete construction effort. USAF
The divert airfield project traces its roots back to at least the early 2010s, when environmental impact assessments first began regarding proposed construction options on both Tinian and the neighboring island of Saipan. Tianan and Saipan are both U.S. territories that are part of the larger Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Guam is also a U.S. territory, but is not part of the CNMI.

In December 2016, the U.S. Air Force made a formal decision to pursue the Tinian option. The Department of Defense and authorities in from the CNMI signed a 40-year lease deal enabling the construction effort to proceed in 2019. The U.S. Navy's Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Marianas (NAVFAC Marianas) is currently managing the divert airfield project, but plans to turn over the new facilities to the Air Force when they are ready.
The complete divert airfield effort is also set to include the construction of new fuel storage facilities at Tinian's main port on the southern end of the island and a pipeline linking them to the airport, as well as various associated roadway improvements.

An annotated satellite image showing the full scope of planned construction as part of the Tinian Divert Airfield project. USAF

A closer look at the planned construction at Tinian's port in support of the divert airfield project. USAF
It's also unclear whether any of the construction work that the U.S. military conducted on Tinian to help prepare the island for Exercise Valiant Shield 22, which included roadway improvements, was in any way tied to the work on establishing the divert airfield. Valiant Shield is a major joint-service field training exercise held biennially in various parts of the western Pacific. This year's iteration began on June 6 and is slated to wrap up on June 17.

A U.S. Navy sailor assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 drives a front-end loader as part of a road construction project on Tinian as part Valiant Shield 22. USN / Lt. Tyler Baldino
Valiant Shield 22, which includes various training activities on and around Tinian, as well as Guam and Saipan, only underscores the strategic significance of this particular region as a whole and highlights the reasons for starting the divert airfield project in the first place.
The U.S. military does already make use of the airports on Tinian and Saipan for exercises and trains to utilize them during various contingency scenarios. The U.S. Air Force and the Marine Corps have both practiced deploying contingents of combat jets to Tinian International Airport in the past. Mobile arresting gear systems have been employed in some instances to provide an added margin of safety for fast jets operating there and the Marines employed them there for short field operations.

A US Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet 'catches the wire' at Tinian International Airport during a past exercise. USMC / Lance Cpl. J. Gage Karwick

US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle combat jets at Tinian International Airport during Exercise Pacific Iron 21. USAF / Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Sutton
There is another, separate airfield on Tinian, known as North Field, which was originally built to support B-29 bomber operations during World War II, and some limited improvement work has been done there in recent years, as well. However, it remains primarily suitable for training related to conducting transport and air assault aviation operations from remote or austere locations, including during exercises like Valiant Shield.

US Navy MH-60 Seahawk helicopters operating from Tinian's North Field during an exercise in 2013. USMC / Lance Cpl. Antonio Rubio
However, at present, Tinian, as well as Saipan, has nowhere near the airfield infrastructure available at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. At the same time, concerns about the vulnerability of Andersen, as well as other established U.S. military facilities on Guam, especially to missile strikes in the opening phases of a potential high-end conflict in the Pacific against China, have only grown in recent years.

A satellite image of Andersen Air Force on Guam taken while Exercise Cope North 2020 was underway. The inset shows a variety of U.S. and foreign military aircraft arrayed for a promotional photo. PHOTO © 2020 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION
Even after the divert airfield project is complete, Tinian's airfield facilities will pale in comparison to those on Guam. Still, they will give the Air Force, as well as other branches of the U.S. military, a more viable and immediate alternative to Andersen, especially when it comes to supporting larger aircraft, like aerial refueling tankers and cargo planes, should flight operations come to a halt on Guam as a result of enemy action or for any other reason.

"The divert initiative in CNMI will create the only divert airfield in the Western Pacific and provide the U.S. Air Force the capability to conduct either temporary or sustained refueling operations from an additional location in the region," now-retired Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh, then the service's Chief of Staff, had said in 2016 when the decision was made to establish the divert field on Tinian, rather than Saipan. “It will also give us another location to use when supporting contingency or natural disaster responses in the region.”
At that time, the expectation was that the expanded facilities at Tinian International Aiport would be able to support up to 12 aerial refueling tankers and host the additional personnel necessary to support those operations. It is important to note that, at least based on information from initial environmental impact assessments, the exact scope of the planned construction work on the island has changed, at least to some degree, over the years.

An annotated satellite image of proposed divert airfield related construction on Tinian from a draft environmental impact assessment that predates the decisions to select Tinian over Saipan to host these facilities and to with the "North Option" rather than "South Option." The scope of the North Option shown here differs from the planned construction areas as depicted in the final environmental impact assessment that was published in 2020.

“We don’t have any plans to station airmen or assets at the Tinian divert location," Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), had said in an interview with the Marianas Business Journal newspaper in 2020. "We do want to build it out such that we can use it for divert — primarily for tanker aircraft and mobility aircraft."
The “airfield, roadway, port, and pipeline improvements will provide vital strategic, operational, and exercise capabilities for the U.S. forces," Air Force Brig. Gen. Jeremy Sloane, commander of the 36th Wing, headquarters at Andersen on Guam, said during the groundbreaking ceremony earlier this year, pointing to a potentially broader vision for how the facilities might be utilized.

From the beginning of the project, U.S. military officials have also highlighted how the expanded divert airfield on Tinian will offer a valuable additional operating location for various peacetime activities, including responses to natural disasters in the region.
The construction work on Tinian is part of a larger effort to expand facilities and general basing options in the Pacific region that includes improvements on Guam itself. This has included work on the island's Northwest Field, which is now capable of supporting operations involving fighter jets, including F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, and other aircraft.
Additional U.S. military base expansion work has been taking place on Wake Island, another U.S. territory in the Pacific some 1,500 miles to the northwest of Guam. You can read more about this island's significance and the work being done there specifically in this past War Zone piece.

A map giving a very general sense of the distances at play between the locations in question, which also underscores their strategic significance. In the far western Pacific are Guam and Tinian (as well as Saipan), with Wake Island and then Hawaii further to the east. The vertical dotted line shown on the map is the International Date Line. Google Maps
The U.S. military is also working with allies and partners across the greater Pacific region to provide additional base facilities that could be used in various contingency scenarios. Last year, the Pentagon submitted a $27 billion plan covering various efforts to challenge China in the Pacific, which included $4.67 billion for "Power Projection, Dispersal, and Training Facilities" in the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands, among other locations. Those three archipelago nations are all sovereign states, but are heavily linked to the United States through an international agreement called the Compacts of Free Association (COFA).

When it comes to the new divert airfield on Tinian, it is worth noting that it is well within the range of the same threats as Andersen, though it would then force an opponent to devote additional resources to the overall task of neutralizing airfields in the region. This is something the Air Force, as well as other branches of the U.S. military, appears to be well aware of as evidenced by the service's current focus on distributed concepts of operations from remote and austere locations, including highways. Improved base defenses, as well as simply attempting to deceive opponents as the locations of deployment aviation elements, are also increasingly topics of discussion.
"You want to confuse the enemy about where you actually are," Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told Aviation Week's Brian Everstine in an interview in March. "So some decoys in other locations will be helpful to do that."


Still, more basing options are definitely better than fewer. The U.S. military's work to expand airfield facilities on Tinian is just one part of a broader effort to ensure American combat aircraft have places to operate from in a future large-scale conflict, or any other major contingency, in the Pacific.
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com

Construction Of Airbase On Tinian Island In Case Guam Gets Knocked Out Has Begun

The alternate airbase facilities now under construction on Tinian would offer an alternative to Andersen Air Force Base if Guam gets attacked.

www.thedrive.com

 

[jward]

Strange Debacle: Misadventures in Assessing Russian Military Power
Christopher Dougherty​

June 16, 2022
​

Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine has befuddled most defense analysts and Russia experts. They expected Russia’s larger and better-equipped forces would quickly dispatch Ukraine’s military and force its government to surrender. Instead, Ukrainian resilience has bested Russian incompetence, creating an initial Ukrainian upset that has now settled into brutal, attritional combat in the Donbas. After over 100 days of the most intense combat Europe has seen in decades, the outcome remains very much in doubt.

I recently appeared on an episode of the War on the Rocks podcast along with two Russia experts — Michael Kofman and Dara Massicot — and military historian Gian Gentile to discuss how analysts misjudged Russia’s armed forces and their invasion of Ukraine. Several themes emerged from the discussion, including the difficulty of predicting combat performance, the corruption and “gun-decking” (falsification of reports) within the Russian armed forces, and the lunacy of the initial Russian war plan, which didn’t reflect their military strategy, doctrine, exercises, or past operations, or even basic military principles like having a single commander.

Others have taken a more critical approach. The historian Philipps Payson O’Brien, for example, wrote an article for The Atlantic early in the war comparing the Western failure to grasp Russian weakness to misguided assessments of French vulnerabilities prior to its defeat by Germany in 1940. He argued that Western analysts overlooked Russian weakness because they fixated on weapons systems and doctrine and ignored key factors like logistics, leadership, and morale. O’Brien is a serious thinker whose arguments merit engagement. He raises important questions about how analysts and policymakers assess military power. Yet he makes key errors and misjudges defense analysis and the Russian military experts.

Russia’s divergence from its doctrine and basic military principles noted during the podcast undercuts O’Brien’s comparison of Russian performance in 2022 to French performance in 1940. France failed in 1940 partly because it doggedly followed flawed planning and doctrine. Russian operations, by contrast, are failing because they appear to have thrown planning and doctrine out the window.

During the Battle of France, each side operated in ways that conformed with their pre-war thinking. France’s “methodical battle” doctrine was designed for deliberate attritional warfare like World War I, rather than rapid armored maneuver. German commanders conversely envisioned armor penetrating enemy lines and exploiting breakthroughs. As noted by Robert Doughty in The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine 1919-1939, analysts examining the coming conflict prior to 1940 predicted that the battle would turn on whether German forces could penetrate French defenses, then sustain and exploit that breakthrough.

Clarifying this issue is about more than historical pedantry. It gets to the heart of how defense analysts think about military power. Doctrine, corroborated with data from exercises, wargames, operations, and intelligence, helps analysts understand how an opponent is likely to operate. It is critical to understanding military effectiveness and predicting military performance. This helps explain why estimates of Russian performance in Ukraine have been wrong — they assumed Russian operations would follow their doctrine, and yet they mostly haven’t.

Russia’s battalion tactical groups exemplify this issue. O’Brien notes the failure of these units, which comprise infantry, armored vehicles, artillery, air defense, and supporting forces into a unit of about 800 troops. There’s a problem with this observation though: Russian forces don’t appear to have been operating in these groups during their worst engagements with Ukrainian forces. Instead, Russian commanders pushed small units forward without combined-arms support, with predictably poor results. Western defense analysts have long debated the efficacy of battalion tactical groups, but no credible analyst would have predicted that the Russians wouldn’t use them, opting instead to send unsupported small units into a gantlet of ambushes. When Russian forces have deployed in these groups, they’ve been badly understrength.

This is just one of a host of unforced errors — from the failure to destroy the Ukrainian Air Force on the ground to the inadequate use of artillery fire and infantry to screen armored columns — that Western analysts failed to predict because they were so far outside expected Russian behavior.
O’Brien argues that Western analysts’ obsession with technologies and doctrine blinded them to flaws in Russia’s ability to execute complex operations. Instead, he believes analysts should focus on command and control, logistics, leadership, and morale — all of which he cites as critical to executing a complex operation like invading all of Ukraine. I strongly agree with these focus areas, but analysts have been paying attention to them for years. During a wargame several years ago, Massicot presciently cited command and control and logistics as factors that would limit Russia’s ability to execute complex operations against NATO. Kofman has argued that such limitations, along with Russia’s active defense strategy, would push Russia toward opportunistic strategic raids to upset the international order (while China becomes a new hegemon), rather than the sort of massed assault they’ve launched against Ukraine. If Western analysts erred regarding Russian logistics and command and control, it was in assuming Russia was aware of its limitations and would craft limited war plans to minimize them, rather than exacerbate them by launching a massive multi-pronged invasion of the second-largest country in Europe.

Leadership and morale are more difficult to assess. Western analysis has long questioned the quality of Russian leadership, especially at the junior level. Unlike western militaries, which devolve many responsibilities to professional non-commissioned officers, Russian officers oversee every aspect of their units. These demands place a heavy burden on junior leaders who, because of Russia’s recruiting difficulties, may not be up to the task. Likewise, these personnel challenges and persistent issues like hazing raise questions about Russian morale. However, Western analysts are reluctant to move from raising questions to basing assessments on leadership and morale. First, these issues are intangible and difficult to assess without firsthand knowledge. Second, morale is dynamic and contingent — the motivated Finnish forces that imposed heavy casualties on the Red Army during the Winter War, for example, became the cynical veterans of the Continuation War in Väinö Linna’s classic novel Unknown Soldiers. Third, modern analysts are hesitant to emphasize these attributes as it gets dangerously close to racist or essentialist descriptions of national character that have historically led analysts astray.

It is worth considering an alternative path of events. Russia pursues a realistic strategy to fatally weaken Ukraine, rather than rapidly seize it. It appoints one commander to lead the operation. It develops a plan to seize limited objectives like the Donbas that follows its doctrine and exploits its advantages in firepower and massed armor and minimizes its logistical shortcomings. It informs its troops about the upcoming operation and trains them realistically. It does, essentially, what it has belatedly started doing now after abandoning its initial plan. Russia might still have failed following this more reasonable course, but it likely wouldn’t have performed like a laughingstock.

This counterfactual sounds like a justification for flawed analysis, but it’s crucial to understanding warfare and how U.S. defense analysts think about it. When we design a wargame or build a computer model, we assume adversaries are competent. There are obviously gradations — Chinese leadership rates better than North Korean, for example — but we assume opponents will make reasonable, informed decisions if possible. This approach has downsides. It can overestimate competitors and lead to overallocation of resources. Alternatively, it can obscure exploitable weaknesses in enemy decision-making processes.

There are many reasons defense analysts assume competent foes, but three are salient. First, as Carl von Clausewitz famously said in On War, war is the realm of chance and uncertainty. Every military has good and bad days, so analysts focus on underlying strengths and weaknesses rather than more ephemeral qualities like individual leadership or morale. Second, defense analysis supports decades-long strategies and weapons purchases. The F-35 aircraft program, for instance, began when Boris Yeltsin was Russia’s president and will outlast Putin’s regime. These decisions can’t focus on ephemeral assessments based solely or even mostly on current events. Third, the defense analytic process tends to be cautious and conservative when assessing risk. Many Pentagon analysts reportedly assumed Russian forces were capable and competently led and that their equipment would work as advertised. They also assumed Russian plans would be sound and would follow the most likely or most dangerous course of action. Despite the likelihood that this perspective led them to overestimate Russian performance, this approach is preferable to the alternative.

Overestimation of a foe leads to misallocation of resources or missed opportunities. Underestimation of a foe, as Russia is discovering, leads to catastrophe.
Nevertheless, Western analysts clearly overestimated Russia’s armed forces, which have demonstrated critical flaws and vulnerabilities. Some failings, like logistics, command and control, and coordination between air and ground units were known (but perhaps not fully appreciated) before the war. Others are more surprising, such as their inability to gain air superiority or use ground-based air defenses — a longstanding strength of Soviet/Russian forces — to prevent Ukraine’s air force from operating.

 

[jward]

The relevant question now is, what lessons U.S. defense analysts should take from Russia’s disastrous performance? Answering this question is key to guiding strategy in the present conflict — particularly regarding war aims — as well as U.S. defense strategy moving forward. The obvious temptation is to discount the potential performance of Russian forces. While tempting, this would be foolhardy.
In the near term, this approach would likely underestimate Russia’s capacity to resist Ukrainian counter-offensives. Russian forces clearly lacked the logistical and command capacity to execute audacious regime-change operations, but these shortcomings will be less problematic in a defensive posture nearer Russian territory. A maximalist strategy to expel all Russian forces from pre-2014 Ukrainian territory might therefore be morally satisfying, but militarily infeasible.

Longer term, this perspective would undercut NATO solidarity and military investments needed to sustain post-war European security, stability, and prosperity. Russia’s armed revanchism has been so unsettling in part because Europe and the United States downplayed the Russian threat from 1990–2014. Underestimating Russia’s resilience and determination to achieve its security goals in the 1990s was perhaps understandable. Doing it again today would be inexcusable.
Beyond Europe, analysts and policymakers may be lured into underestimating the capability of China’s People’s Liberation Army, particularly its ability to invade Taiwan. Like Russian forces, the People’s Liberation Army has personnel shortcomings caused by a dearth of high-quality recruits. It uses equipment, doctrine, and an “active defense” military strategy like Russia’s. Its status as the army of the Chinese Communist Party has raised concerns about corruption. To make matters worse, unlike Russia’s military, the People’s Liberation Army hasn’t fought a war since its failed invasion of Vietnam in 1979. Analysts could be excused for seeing a paper tiger crouching amidst these flaws.

However, China is not Russia and the People’s Liberation Army is not the Russian military. China’s economic power and growing technical sophistication — aided by unprecedented industrial espionage — have given it an ability to build advanced weaponry at a scale far exceeding that of Russia. China is aware of its challenges in developing good leaders — witness its discussions of the “two inabilities” and the “five incapables” — and is taking steps to address them to include much more rigorous training and assessment. Chinese military reforms over the last 20 years, combined with President Xi Jinping’s counter-corruption policies, have created a more professional and accountable force.

And yet, like Russian forces prior to their invasion of Ukraine, the performance of the People’s Liberation Army remains a massive unknowable factor. Analysts can make informed assessments based on weapons systems, doctrine, exercises, and intelligence products, but these assessments will always struggle with uncertainty — and U.S. defense analysts tend to translate uncertainty into risk. There’s no way to eliminate this uncertainty, but there are steps that the U.S. intelligence and defense communities could take to reduce the area of uncertainty or at least better understand its borders.

First, U.S. analysts need to improve their understanding of adversary leadership and its potential behavior during a crisis or conflict. From my perch in the Pentagon, it seemed like analysis of Chinese or Russian leadership was “stove-piped” or divided into separate analytic streams. CIA analysts focus on national leaders, while the Defense Intelligence Agency and military service analysts examine military leadership: both key individuals and the leadership cultures of adversary forces. Few analysts, however, could combine these areas of expertise to represent Russian or Chinese leadership in a crisis simulation or a wargame. Instead, these efforts often rely on experts in adversary military forces and doctrine, which can lead to problematic assessments if, as in Ukraine, enemy leaders act contrary to their doctrine.

Second, analytical specialists should think more holistically — and in concert with generalists — about adversary military performance. On this point, I agree wholeheartedly with O’Brien’s critique. Too often, analysis focuses on a particular aspect of warfare, like air combat, and excludes the infrastructure and missions that support that aspect. Aircraft, ships, tanks, and missiles are just weapons. They need information, command and control, and logistical support to become combat capabilities.

Third, analysis should better account for real-world conditions. A common flaw in examinations of Russian and Chinese weapons systems is to use a maximum effective range to create a radius, draw a big red circle, and declare it a “no-go zone.” Such representations appear to be rigorous analysis, but tend to vastly overstate combat capability, especially where factors like countermeasures, weather, and confusion constrain system performance.

Fourth, analysts should expand their mental models to consider a wider range of potential conflict scenarios. One reason U.S. analysts misjudged Russian performance in Ukraine is that they primarily examine potential conflicts between Russia and NATO, such as a limited thrust into the Baltic states. U.S. understanding of Russian military performance was therefore specific to a different kind of conflict under different conditions. Expanding the set of conflict scenarios can broaden our thinking and expose overlooked issues.

Fifth, analysts should be explicit about their assumptions and the limitations of their understanding. In my experience, analysts were loath to revisit assumptions, which were often sensitive topics that required months or years of deliberation to develop. Opening them up for debate can feel like unraveling a precisely woven tapestry, but it’s key to uncovering potential flaws in our thinking. Likewise, being explicit about what analysis cannot or does not say is crucial. Senior policymakers often press for clear answers, and replying with “it depends,” or “I don’t know” can feel like failure, but it’s important for leaders to have a clear sense of the uncertainty they face.

The common theme of these recommendations, and of the discussion from the podcast, is humility. Warfare is an incredibly complex endeavor and boiling it down into a prediction through simplistic analysis has the accuracy of a stopped clock: occasionally right, but mostly wrong. Instead, the complexity of war is best understood through the synthesis of multiple factors using inclusive, multi-disciplinary approaches. Still, no methodology, no matter how effective, can overcome the uncertainty of warfare to arrive at the right answer. Instead, whether assessing the outcome of the war in Ukraine or a potential war over Taiwan, we must continually strive to be a little less wrong each day.

Strange Debacle: Misadventures in Assessing Russian Military Power - War on the Rocks

Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine has befuddled most defense analysts and Russia experts. They expected Russia’s larger and better-equipped forces

warontherocks.com

 

[Housecarl]

There's a lot of room to play with for interpretation in that statement.....HC

Posted for fair use.....

Russia will use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty is threatened - Putin

UKRAINSKA PRAVDA - FRIDAY, 17 JUNE 2022, 18:53 Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia is not threatening the world with nuclear weapons, but warns that it is ready to use them in the event of a threat to [Russia's] sovereignty.

news.yahoo.com

Russia will use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty is threatened - Putin

Ukrayinska Pravda
Fri, June 17, 2022, 8:53 AM·1 min read

UKRAINSKA PRAVDA — FRIDAY, 17 JUNE 2022, 18:53

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia is not threatening the world with nuclear weapons, but warns that it is ready to use them in the event of a threat to [Russia’s] sovereignty.

Source: Putin's speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum

Quote from Putin: "One irresponsible politician would blurt something out, then another - at a very high level, by the way, at the level of, say, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the top officials there are holding forth on this subject.

And we’re supposed to say nothing? We answer accordingly. As soon as we answer, [everyone] latches onto that: ‘Look, Russia’s issuing threats!’ We are not threatening! But everyone needs to know that we have it and we will use it if necessary to protect our sovereignty."

Background:

• Maria Zakharova, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, suggested on 12 June that Russia could use nuclear weapons in Poland.
• Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, stated that a possible nuclear conflict would destroy the European continent if nuclear weapons are returned to Ukraine.
• US President Joe Biden has warned that Russia would face extremely severe consequences if it used nuclear weapons.
• Dmitry Rogozin, director of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, "joked" that the Kremlin could launch a nuclear strike on Sweden and Finland if the two countries join NATO.

--------

Posted for fair use.....

Putin considers entire Soviet Union to be historical Russian territory

KATERYNA TYSHCHENKO - FRIDAY, 17 JUNE 2022, 20:00 Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the Soviet Union is historical Russian territory. Source: Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum; video from the forum posted by RIA Novosti Quote: "What is the Soviet Union...

news.yahoo.com

Putin considers entire Soviet Union to be historical Russian territory

Ukrayinska Pravda
Fri, June 17, 2022, 10:00 AM·1 min read

KATERYNA TYSHCHENKO – FRIDAY, 17 JUNE 2022, 20:00

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the Soviet Union is historical Russian territory.

Source: Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum; video from the forum posted by RIA Novosti

Quote: "What is the Soviet Union? It’s historical Russia. As it happens, it ceased to exist. And I want to emphasise that in recent history we have always treated the processes of sovereignisation that have occurred in the post-Soviet area with respect."

Details: Putin claimed that Russia has "brotherly" relations with Kazakhstan and is interested in strengthening those relations. "Who would ever think of spoiling relations with Kazakhstan?" he asked.

He also made it clear that there would have been no Russian aggression in Ukraine and no occupation of Crimea if there had been "good relations" and "partnership" between Ukraine and Russia.

Quote: "It would have been the same with Ukraine, absolutely. If we had had good allied relations, or at least a partnership between us, it would never have occurred to anybody…

And, by the way, there would have been no Crimea problem. Because if the rights of the people who live there, the Russian-speaking population, had been respected, if the Russian language and culture had been treated with respect, it would never have occurred to anybody to start all this."

Background: The USSR comprised the present-day territories of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Turkmenistan and Estonia.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

Posted for fair use.....

German public changes mind on presence of US nukes, with 52% now in favor, poll reveals

Russia’s monthslong war in Ukraine appears to be swaying Germans’ stance on storage of U.S. nuclear weapons after decades of staunch advocacy for removal of NATO’s most powerful deterrent.

www.stripes.com

German public changes mind on presence of US nukes, with 52% now in favor, poll reveals

By JENNIFER H. SVANSTARS AND STRIPES • June 17, 2022

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Russia’s months long war in Ukraine appears to be swaying Germans’ stance on storage of U.S. nuclear weapons after decades of staunch advocacy for removal of NATO’s most powerful deterrent.

For the first time, a majority of respondents in a recent survey supported maintaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Germany, with some favoring the modernization and expansion of those munitions, German national and international news service Tagesschau reported earlier this month.

Panorama, a TV magazine of German public broadcaster ARD, surveyed 1,337 eligible voters from May 30 to June 1, asking what they would like to see done with the nuclear weapons still believed to be stored in Germany’s Eifel region.


In a 2019 NATO parliamentary assembly report, the alliance accidentally published the locations of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, which included a site at Buechel Air Base. Although the report was later redacted, the location of the weapons had long been considered an open secret.

Just over half of poll respondents, 52%, expressed support for keeping the weapons in Germany. And of those, 40% said the status quo should remain, while 12% said the munitions should be modernized and augmented, according to the survey.

Meanwhile, 39% said the weapons should be withdrawn.

It’s believed that about 20 U.S. nuclear warheads are stored at Buechel Air Base, a German installation near the city of Cochem, about 43 miles from the U.S.-operated Spangdahlem Air Base.

Neither NATO nor the U.S. and German governments will disclose precise numbers and locations for security reasons. But NATO has said the U.S. has deployed a limited number of B-61 nuclear weapons to locations in Europe.

Germany recently chose Buechel to be the future home of 35 American-made F-35 aircraft. They will fill the role of the aging Tornado jets, which Germany has relied on for decades.

The move is seen as strengthening Germany’s role with regard to NATO’s nuclear deterrence policy.

The U.S. Air Force’s 702nd Munitions Support Squadron, which falls under Spangdahlem’s 52nd Fighter Wing, operates from Buechel, overseeing reserve munitions in support of the German air force and directly supporting NATO operations, according to an Air Force fact sheet.

The ARD poll results contrast sharply with surveys taken as recently as two years ago.

A 2020 public opinion poll taken for the Munich Security Conference found that 66% of Germans believed “that Germany should completely abandon deterrence with nuclear weapons,” according to an excerpt of the October 2020 Munich Security Report.

Of the 31% of respondents who at the time supported Germany’s continued reliance on nuclear deterrence, a majority said the country should rely on France and the United Kingdom for such measures rather than the U.S., according to the report.

Germans’ move away from pacifist tendencies as a result of Russia’s unprovoked invasion has been mirrored in the government. Chancellor Olaf Scholz steered $107 billion to modernize the military and put it on a better footing among NATO counterparts. However, Scholz’s government has come under intense criticism for failing to deliver promised weapons to Ukraine in a timely manner.

The war in Ukraine has reignited fears in Europe and the U.S. of nuclear war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has at times threatened to use nuclear weapons to express objections to U.S. and NATO military assistance provided to Ukraine.

Under a “nuclear sharing arrangement” with allies, if NATO conducted a nuclear mission in a conflict, the weapons would be carried by allied aircraft and supported by conventional forces across the alliance, according to NATO.

JENNIFER H. SVAN
Jennifer reports on the U.S. military from Kaiserslautern, Germany, where she writes about the Air Force, Army and DODEA schools. She’s had previous assignments for Stars and Stripes in Japan, reporting from Yokota and Misawa air bases. Before Stripes, she worked for daily newspapers in Wyoming and Colorado. She’s a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

RELATED STORIES

• Buechel Air Base in southwestern Germany selected as destination for future F-35 fleet
• NATO chief seeks to hold Germany to its commitments as cornerstone of nuclear strategy

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

Who Is Deterring Whom? The Place of Nuclear Weapons in Modern War - War on the Rocks

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, old questions about nuclear deterrence have been revisited by a broad swath of academics, scholars, and

warontherocks.com

WHO IS DETERRING WHOM? THE PLACE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN MODERN WAR
JEFFREY LEWIS AND AARON STEIN
JUNE 16, 2022
COMMENTARY

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, old questions about nuclear deterrence have been revisited by a broad swath of academics, scholars, and pundits who have spent the past three decades acclimated to a climate of dramatically reduced nuclear risk. For those of us working in what has been a niche subfield, the attention has been both validating and, at times, surprising.

What is not often said is that nuclear deterrence is working and, as a result, both the United States and Russia face constraints in how they approach conflict that involves the other. Nuclear deterrence has limited the escalation of the conflict in profound ways, despite brutal fighting, heavy casualties, and the supply of substantial amounts of Western weaponry to Ukraine. This is welcome news, but there is a caution: There is no guarantee that it will continue to do so, nor can there be. The management of escalation means that the United States and NATO will have to accept that they too face limits in how to approach the conflict. It would be unwise to hand-wave away Russian nuclear threats, or to dismiss as so many have the Russian threat to use nuclear weapons, based on a warped understanding of deterrence theory.

Nuclear deterrence has contained this conflict in profound ways. The existence of Russian nuclear weapons has thus far deterred the United States from directly intervening in the conflict — and this is exactly how this is all supposed to work. The threat of nuclear escalation can be deeply frustrating, especially for many in the United States that have never experienced any external limitation on how American military power can be used in support of declared foreign policy goals. Russia has nuclear weapons and, within minutes, can kill millions of people. This reality is far different from the circumstances leading up to the invasion of Iraq or the toppling of Moammar Gadhafi. These constraints have become increasingly frustrating for many advocates of greater American intervention in Ukraine.

For his part, President Joe Biden gets it, and has been clear from the outset of the conflict that he would not place U.S. ground forces in Ukraine. In rejecting a so-called “no-fly zone” over Ukraine that would require direct combat between the forces of both countries he explained,”that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys.”

At the same time, American nuclear weapons, as well as those of France and the United Kingdom, have deterred Russia from striking lethal arsenals piling up across the border in Poland for delivery into Ukraine. The Western weapons that have been so important in blunting Russia’s invasion are a perfectly legitimate military target, whether those weapons are in Poland or Ukraine. U.S. officials, however, have drawn a red line against Russian attacks on NATO states — and Russia, to date, has been deterred from striking equipment and supplies on the Polish side of the border.

Many observers have expressed frustrations with the constraints imposed by nuclear deterrence, particularly in the United States, and have sought to dismiss the role of nuclear weapons to support more aggressive policy suggestions. In one such example, former commander of U.S. European Command, Gen. (ret.) Phillip Breedlove, quipped:

We are constantly reacting to Putin. We should be the ones dictating the substance and tempo of this engagement. We are almost fully deterred, while Putin is almost fully undeterred.

Deterrence, by definition, frustrates the objectives of the combatants. And the way in which nuclear deterrence enforces these limits is through the risk of catastrophic harm. A deterrent relationship is one in which our choices are sharply constrained by existential fear. Nuclear deterrence is supposed to feel awful, because it relies on a cruel assessment of human nature: People respond best of all not to love, joy, or pleasure but to the threat of unyielding pain. “There’s a logic to deterrence,” the historian Alex Wellerstein has argued, “but it is always coupled, in the end, with raw terror.”

The success, to date, of nuclear deterrence in containing escalation has been obscured by the vocal frustration of those who believed that the existence of U.S. nuclear weapons might somehow have prevented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact that the United States had no defense obligation (comparable to NATO’s Article 5) to come to Kyiv’s aid. This seems to reflect a profound misunderstanding of what nuclear deterrence is and how it functions. Nuclear weapons have never provided a blanket protection for all states from conventional violence. The Cold War began with a Soviet-sponsored invasion of South Korea, after all. And there were numerous instances of conflict throughout the Cold War, including cases when states without nuclear weapons attacked those with the bomb. Nuclear deterrence provides no guarantee, merely an incentive in favor of caution. Sometimes a leader may believe that the risk of escalation constrains an opponent more than it does her. In this case, there is the possibility of greater conventional violence beneath the nuclear threshold. Scholars know this problem as the stability-instability paradox, although its root causes aren’t paradoxical at all. It is simply down to the confidence and risk tolerance of the combatants.

There is, therefore, no guarantee that deterrence will continue to hold. Indeed, much of the rhetoric among a certain segment of the chattering class indicates an unreasonable level of confidence that escalation to nuclear war is impossible. As Anne Applebaum wrote, “There is no indication right now that the nuclear threats so frequently mentioned by Russian propagandists, going back many years, are real.” Eliot Cohen is of the same mindset, writing that it is “Unforgivable — truly unforgivable — if the wealthy and powerful West yields to a much weaker enemy.” These analyses share an absolute certitude that Vladimir Putin would never, under any circumstances, initiate the use of nuclear weapons, or that, if he would, this decision would have nothing to do with his perception of his adversaries’ actions.

We find such certitude baffling.

It is, of course, true that both Russian and American officials manipulate risk, and that both have powerful interests in avoiding a nuclear war. But that does not mean the risk is a figment of our imaginations. Our reading of most nuclear crises from the Cold War is that, while both Washington and Moscow sought to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, there were always opportunities — by misperception, accident, or simply chance — for the nuclear powers to stumble into a nuclear war neither side wanted. Many officials in the Kennedy administration were confident that Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev would seek to avoid nuclear war under any circumstances, even if the United States were to invade Cuba. They were also certain that there were no Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba. On the latter point, they were wrong. These kinds of historical near-misses may send a shiver down one’s spine, but that is precisely the point. Without the risk that something might go horribly wrong, nuclear deterrence would cease to function. For a world leader to feel the pinch of nuclear deterrence restraining her, she must believe that at some point things might go catastrophically wrong.

Tom Schelling argued that analysts were mistaken to talk of the brink of nuclear war as if it were the “sharp edge of a cliff where one can stand firmly, look down, and decide whether or not to plunge.” A better description, he argued, was a “curved slope.” A leader might edge his or her country out onto this slope, but “the slope and the risk of slipping are rather irregular; neither the person standing there nor the onlookers can be quite sure quite how great the risk is, or how much it increases when one takes a few steps downward.”

The United States and Russia have edged, ever so carefully, out onto this slope. The Biden administration, for example, carefully weighed the risks of providing rocket systems to Ukraine that can strike targets on the Russian side of the border before deciding, correctly in the authors’ view, that such systems should be provided. This step seems safe enough. But we should acknowledge that we do not really know and that there remains a risk of slipping. Tread carefully.

What about the next step? Will Biden hazard another footfall? Will Putin? And then there is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is possible that Ukraine will use these longer-range systems to strike targets inside Russia. It is possible that Putin, frustrated in his designs on Ukraine, might choose to target Western weapons as they pile up across the border in NATO countries. There are frequent calls for Biden to attack Russian aircraft over Ukraine or sink Russian ships in the Black Sea. What would the reaction to such escalations be? As onlookers, we simply do not know where the slope becomes too steep or if Putin or Biden might put a foot wrong — and neither do they.

In the face of uncertainty, leaders can try to infer what the other might be thinking. One way to do this is to listen to what an opponent says. It is tempting to dismiss statements by our adversaries and their red lines as cynical efforts to manipulate our fear of escalation for their political gain. There is, of course, some of that in their rhetoric, and in ours. And yet they do have red lines, as do we. Knowing where the slope becomes too steep is a very interesting game of chance.

The fact that this is difficult, frustrating, and ultimately terrifying does not mean that nuclear deterrence is failing. Anticipating the Russian reaction to each increase in the lethal support given to Ukraine is not “self-deterrence.” It is simply deterrence.

On the contrary, the irreducible risk that things might go terribly wrong is necessary for nuclear deterrence to function and has held up well in this conflict. It is a feature, not a bug. And so we want to say clearly that nuclear deterrence has worked during this conflict — it has deterred direct conflict between two great powers when each has powerful reasons to escalate. We accept that it does not feel successful, because successful nuclear deterrence is both frustrating and terrifying. It is frustrating because it limits our freedom of action, as it limits theirs, and terrifying, because it could all fail unpredictably and catastrophically. This is not an accident. It is a mechanism by which the balance of terror functions and this basic reality cannot be wished away, or simply dismissed to support policies that intentionally dismiss what are very real threats to using nuclear weapons. Russia has the means to use these weapons and has explained how they could choose to use them. No human knows how — in that moment —a leader will respond. The goal of deterrence is to never get to that moment of choice and, at least thus far in this war, the two sides have managed to do just that.



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Jeffrey Lewis is a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein is the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is the author of the book The US War Against ISIS: How America and its Allies Defeated the Caliphate.

Together, they co-host the Arms Control Wonk Podcast.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Army's autonomous HIMARS moving forward, will be at Project Convergence - Breaking Defense

The Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher program involves a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) modified with software to be controlled remotely and driven autonomously.

breakingdefense.com

• GLOBAL, LAND WARFARE

Army’s autonomous HIMARS moving forward, will be at Project Convergence

The Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher program involves a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) modified with software to be controlled remotely and driven autonomously.

By ANDREW EVERSDEN
on June 17, 2022 at 8:52 AM

EUROSATORY 2022: The Army is making incremental progress on its developmental Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher, but is still working through the exact requirements for the AI-enabled long-range fires capability.

The Army doesn’t currently have a program of record for the launcher, a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) modified with software to be controlled remotely and driven autonomously. US Indo-Pacific Command has a particularly keen interest in the system, due to its mobility and range that could provide effective shots against enemy anti-access/area denial capabilities.

“We’re in the maturation process of Autonomous Multi-domain Launcher. That includes, well, how might we use it?,'” said Jeffrey Langhout, director of the the Aviation and Missile Center at the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC). “This is the part of the process where we are trying to figure out what the requirement really needs to be.”

Langhout said that the team is currently in the process of integrating the autonomous, driverless technology that CCDC’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center is building, as well as artificial intelligence algorithms created by the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Integration Center that will serve as the “brains” of the HIMARS launcher, he said. Additionally, the service is developing the code to control the launcher from different locations. It also wants one soldier to be able to control multiple launchers.

Langhout is “very comfortable” with the driverless technology and the launcher code, but said the challenge is connecting it all into one larger integrated system. “Merging all that stuff together — it’s the first time we’ve done it and we really haven’t done it to this level,” he said.

According to Langhout, AML will “demonstrate the next maturation level” at Project Convergence later this year.

Regardless of if or when the launcher becomes a program of record, Indo-Pacific Command leaders are showing interest, given the distributed nature of warfare in the Pacific. He said that the Army is still “not as mature” in terms of figuring out how it will be used and is using modeling and simulation to figure out operating concepts.


But the service has floated around some ideas. Last year, the service released a video showing C-130s landing on an island, unloading a manned HIMARS and unmanned AML, which drove as part of a manned-unmanned team. They both fired at enemy threats and returned to the C-130s, which quickly departed. The video showed the launcher firing Precision Strike Missiles, one of the Army’s new long-range fires capabilities.

“Those are concepts we see,” Langhout said. “Again, a concept that is by no means mature, or even for even decided upon, all part of what might work best in the INDOPACOM environment.”

Langhout said that AvMC received a request from the command to continue to develop the system, and eventually deliver it to a large test event in the Pacific “in a couple of years.”

The service successfully demonstrated the proof of concept for the launcher last June during a multi-round live fire demonstration for the Long-Range Fires Cross-Functional Team at Fort Still, Okla. The simulation featured simulations of the PrSM missiles’ longer and short-range capabilities across three islands scenarios, according to Defense News. Langhout said that the work last summer was “very, very basic” and that the platform is looking to increase its level of complexity moving forward.

“Last year, what we did was very, very elementary school stuff,” Langhout said. “Well, now we’re getting into middle school and high school level of complexity. And of course, we need to be at a PhD level by the time we actually would field it to a soldier.”


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[Housecarl]

This will determine the future of open source intelligence gathering by everyone.....

Posted for fair use.....

Ukraine war raises questions about military insight into commercial SATCOM - Breaking Defense

“We have seen a massive flow of commercial SATCOM capabilities come into theater and in many ways that has enabled us to kind of spread out our MILSATCOM capabilities and take advantage of those commercial SATCOM capabilities,” Brig. Gen. Chad Raduege said. “That has driven its own unique lesson...

breakingdefense.com

Ukraine war raises questions about military insight into commercial SATCOM
“We have seen a massive flow of commercial SATCOM capabilities come into theater and in many ways that has enabled us to kind of spread out our MILSATCOM capabilities and take advantage of those commercial SATCOM capabilities,” Brig. Gen. Chad Raduege said. “That has driven its own unique lesson learned in that we often don’t have quite the insight on the commercial side that we have on the military side."

By JASPREET GILL
on June 16, 2022 at 2:15 PM

Satellite imagery taken by Maxar on March 14, 2022, shows damage in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. (Courtesy Maxar)

WASHINGTON: The Russia-Ukraine conflict has expanded global military use of commercial satellite communications while raising questions about how much insight US European Command has into the commercial SATCOM industry, EUCOM’s chief information officer said this week.

Speaking at a C4ISRNET event Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Chad Raduege, who also serves as the director of EUCOM’s command, control, communications and computers/cyber directorate, said the war, now in its 113th day of conflict, has resulted in an “explosion of activity” for commercial SATCOM.

“We have seen no step down in performance and, in fact, in many ways, probably a step up in performance just because our commercial partners have been able to keep up with the technology and they’re putting newer and newer capabilities and technology into place,” Radeuge said. “And so that’s absolutely going to be one [area] that as we move forward, we will have to integrate in. The constellations that our commercial partners are putting up help fill in a whole bunch of gaps and make us more connected than ever.”

The increased focus on commercial SATCOM has raised questions for the command, such as how it approaches command and control for commercial SATCOM and how it understands priorities, Raduege said,

Although the Pentagon has become very accustomed to dealing with military-provided SATCOM, the command “went from about zero to 100” in terms of requirements in the European theater, he said, adding that there has been a demand signal for more connectivity. Getting those requirements delivered has been one of the major lessons learned for the service.

“We have seen a massive flow of commercial SATCOM capabilities come into theater and in many ways that has enabled us to kind of spread out our MILSATCOM capabilities and take advantage of those commercial SATCOM capabilities,” Raduege said. “That has driven its own unique lesson learned in that we often don’t have quite the insight on the commercial side that we have on the military side.”

Key hurdle with JADC2? No final destination

Raduege said the conflict has also created momentum forward on the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System, the service’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint-All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort.

“I think what we’re seeing as we go through this Ukrainian crisis and we see all the coordination that is required, we are realizing that there are some advanced capabilities that are allowing us to see and have more visibility and better connectivity with our…allies and partners,” he said. “And so whether its some sort of logistics application that allows us to track lethal aid as it comes into theater and gets transferred in as we develop command and control networks with our coalition partners and our alliance itself, all of those alignments work very well towards ABMS.”

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But when it comes to the Pentagon’s JADC2 vision, the biggest hurdle the department faces is that “there’s really no destination,” Raduege said.

There’s no indicator of what success will look like, he added, and having a more clearly defined near-term end goal for the effort would help.

“I think that the problem is this road will continue on,” he said. “We will always want to have more and more advanced JADC2-type capabilities. Once we get one connection that happens, once we get a fusion from one platform, there will be this growing insatiable appetite to have more and more connectivity and more and more sensors. I don’t know that actually getting to an endpoint is really feasible.”

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

In Denial About Denial: Why Ukraine’s Air Success Should Worry the West - War on the Rocks

Ukraine’s success in contesting the skies turns the West’s airpower paradigm on its head — it offers an alternative vision for pursuing airspace denial

warontherocks.com

IN DENIAL ABOUT DENIAL: WHY UKRAINE’S AIR SUCCESS SHOULD WORRY THE WEST
MAXIMILIAN K. BREMER AND KELLY A. GRIECO
JUNE 15, 2022
COMMENTARY

Ukraine’s success in contesting the skies turns the West’s airpower paradigm on its head — it offers an alternative vision for pursuing airspace denial over air superiority. Despite having one of the largest and most technologically sophisticated air forces in the world, Russia has failed to establish air superiority over Ukraine. And many Western analysts are surprised and bewildered. But the puzzlement is a sign of military myopia more than anything else.

Western air forces still follow a path first laid out by Italian Gen. Giulio Douhet, U.S. Army Air Corps’ Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell, and the Royal Air Force’s Air Marshall Hugh Trenchard. These founding fathers of airpower theory championed winning and maintaining “command of the air,” or, in today’s doctrine, “air supremacy.” Douhet suggested “to have command of the air means to be in a position to prevent the enemy from flying while retaining the ability to fly oneself.” This understanding was based on a popular reading of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s command of the sea, in which the goal is to seek out and destroy the enemy fleet in a decisive battle.

A century later, this vision remains firmly entrenched in the doctrine and ethos of Western air forces. But the air war in Ukraine, where neither side controls the skies, suggests that denying air superiority is sometimes a smarter operational objective than trying to gain it outright. U.S. Air Force leaders and defense analysts recognize the United States can no longer take air superiority for granted. But their solutions amount to searching for a technological silver bullet that will can nonetheless guarantee it. The war in Ukraine shows the Air Force should instead be doing more to exploit the potential of air denial.

Re-Imagining Corbett as an Airpower Theorist

In rethinking America’s approach to airpower, pundits should look to Mahan’s contemporary, the British naval theorist Sir Julian Corbett. Corbett regarded total command of the sea with skepticism, arguing the “most common situation in naval warfare is that neither side has the command.” He favored a relative, rather than an absolute, interpretation of command of the sea, calling for a “working command,” delimited in time or space — “sea control” in today’s parlance. Similarly, Douhet’s absolute rule of the skies may be desirable, but air forces may get by with more limited control of the airspace, or temporary and localized air superiority.

For Corbett, the corollary of sea control is sea denial. If a navy is not strong enough to gain command of the sea, he argued, it could still attempt to limit or deny the other side ability to make use of the sea. He referred to this concept as “disputing command,” and offered two main methods: a “fleet in being” and “minor counterattacks.” He envisioned an active defense, in which a smaller navy could avoid battle but still remain threatening as a “fleet in being” by staying active and mobile. “The idea,” he explained,” was “to dispute control by harassing operations, to exercise control at any place or at any [opportune] moment … and to prevent the enemy from exercising control in spite of his superiority by continually occupying his attention.” Additionally, an inferior navy could conduct minor counterattacks, or hit-and-run strikes, to try to take undefended ships out of action.

Ukraine’s Masterclass on Corbett in the Skies

Corbett’s strategy of denial in the naval realm is pertinent to the air domain as well. Ukraine has used mobility and dispersion to maintain its air defenses as a “force in being.” Operating a mix of Cold-War era, Soviet-made mobile surface-to-air missile systems Ukrainian defenders on the ground have kept Russian aircraft at bay and under threat. To do so they have used the long range S-300 family, medium range SA-11s, and short range SA-8 Gecko systems. Exploiting dispersion and mobility, as Corbett advised, Ukrainian air defenders have used “shoot and scoot” tactics, firing their missiles and quickly moving away from the launch site. “The Ukrainians continue to be very nimble in how they use both short and long-range air defense,” a senior Pentagon official concluded. “And they have proven very effective at moving those assets around to help protect them.”

Mounted on tracked vehicles, Ukraine’s surface-to-air missile systems are fleeting targets. Given the danger of flying over Ukraine, Russia relies largely on standoff sensors to find radar targets, lengthening the time required to engage Ukraine’s mobile systems. After firing, the defender can turn off the radar, pack up and drive away to hide in the ground clutter — forests, buildings, etc. During the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S.-led coalition hunted Iraq’s truck-mounted Scud missiles, but even with the advantage of air superiority, it still failed to achieve a single confirmed kill. In the skies over Ukraine, Russian aircraft are not only the hunter but also the hunted, further complicating the task of finding and destroying them.

As a result, there is a deadly “cat-and-mouse” game between Russian aircraft and Ukrainian air defenses. The Oryx open-source intelligence site reports that, since the start of the war, 96 Russian aircraft have been destroyed, including at least nine Sukhoi Su-34 and one Su-35 — equivalents to the American F-15. Ukraine started the war with a total of 250 S-300 launchers, but 11 weeks later, the Russians have only managed to knock out 24 of them, at least so far as Oryx has confirmed with photos and videos. Given how Ukrainian officials carefully manage information about their losses, caution is needed in drawing conclusions from our limited information about them. Still these figures suggest that the Russians are only able to attrite a small portion of the threat, and, compared to radar and battery command vehicles, the less important part at that. The best evidence may be Russian behavior itself. As a senior Pentagon official argued, “And one of the reasons we know … [Ukraine’s air defenses are] working is because we continue to see the Russians wary of venturing into Ukrainian air space at all and if they do, they don’t stay long … And I think … that speaks volumes …”

On the rare occasions that Russian jets and bombers fly into Ukrainian airspace, they generally fly low to the ground to evade radar detection. But solving one problem creates another — these tactics put Russian aircraft in the range of Ukraine’s anti-aircraft artillery and thousands of shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems, including American-supplied Stingers. To this end, Ukrainian defenders have exploited the homefield advantage, particularly their intimate knowledge of the local terrain. “We are hidden on familiar ground; he is exposed on ground that is less familiar,” Corbett observed. “We can lay traps and prepare surprises by counter-attack when he is most dangerously exposed.”

Ukraine describes its air defense strategy in exactly these terms — luring Russian planes into Ukrainian air defense traps. “Ukraine has been effective in the sky because we operate on our own land,” Yuri Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, stated. “The enemy flying into our airspace is flying into the zone of our air defense systems.” Even if Ukraine cannot secure air superiority for itself, it has still been able to deny it to the Russians. As long as Ukraine maintains an air defense in being, it will continually occupy Russian attention — the mere threat of targeting and strikes is enough to deny the airspace to Russian aircraft.

A New Era of Air Warfare

In this regard, the air war in Ukraine is likely to be the rule rather than the exception. It offers a harrowing glimpse into the future of air warfare, one in which medium-sized powers, not to mention other great powers, will increasingly control and deny areas of airspace to U.S. and other Western air forces.

The global spread of advanced, highly mobile long-range surface-to-air missiles, man-portable air defense systems, and loitering munitions — along with continued advancements in networked unmanned systems, dual-use robotics, sensors, and advanced materials — place the capabilities needed to contest air control in more adversaries’ hands. Iran, for example, has made successful use of combat drones, land-attack cruise missiles, and precision-guided short-range ballistic missiles against ISIL in Syria, Saudi oil facilities, and a U.S. air base in Iraq. Likewise, in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan combined combat drones with loitering munitions and precision-guided artillery to interdict Armenian forces, and even employed an Israeli-made LORA ballistic missile to target a bridge connecting Armenia to Karabakh. Small- and medium-sized states observing these events have surely taken notice and will seek to acquire such capabilities for themselves, ushering in an age of increasingly roboticized air forces with precision-strike capabilities that are effective but less costly than traditional manned combat aircraft.

Continued.....

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

In the past, financial, organizational, technological, and scientific hurdles confined the development and employment of air forces to major powers. Today, however, the democratization of technology — the declining costs of computing power and the internet’s global reach, along with the dual-use nature of many current and emerging technologies — make cheap but effective robotic airpower available to a much broader range of states.

Unfortunately, the West finds itself on the wrong side of a cost curve, insisting on expensive and exquisite capabilities — such as next-generation fighter jets and stealth bombers — to conduct deep strikes against enemy defenses. This Douhetian “shoot the archer” strategy has become unsustainable over time. On average, successive generations of American warplanes cost two-and-a-half times more to acquire than those they replace. The F-22 Raptor cost approximately $250 million apiece, far more than the $65 million F-15 Eagle it replaced: nearly a 400 percent increase.

As a result, American warplanes have become more capable, but the overall fleet size has gotten smaller. Nearly four decades ago, Norman Augustine, former undersecretary of the Army, commented wryly: “In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.” In a great-power conflict, the United States will lack the superior aircraft numbers (mass) to win a long and destructive war of attrition.

Searching for a New Paradigm

As Thomas Kuhn noted in his classic work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, as the world changes, an established paradigm — or set of foundational beliefs — may come to no longer match the observed reality. When this occurs, the paradigm itself comes into question, and an alternative paradigm must be created and accepted. Increasingly, the Western airpower paradigm — with the absolute requirement to control the air with manned aircraft — no longer holds true. And the United States Air Force must urgently come to terms with this paradigm shift.

To be sure, senior Air Force leaders have warned for years now that the uncontested rule of the skies that the United States enjoyed in the age of primacy is coming to a close. “I have a lot of trouble” with the idea of total and permanent air supremacy, Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, said recently. “I don’t see [that] as a viable thing to try to establish.” Acknowledging air supremacy is no longer achievable in a high-end fight, the Air Force is aiming instead for “temporary windows of superiority,” or the air equivalent of Corbett’s temporary and local control of the sea.

To achieve this, the Air Force wants to accelerate investment in the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter program — an integrated system of manned aircraft, drones, and other advanced capabilities — with each manned, sixth-generation aircraft expected to cost “multiple” hundreds of millions of dollars. The goal is to be able to penetrate advanced enemy air defenses and strike air and ground targets deep inside enemy territory in order to gain air superiority and facilitate close air support to ground forces. Of course, Corbett never advised using a small, expensive, and exquisite fleet to counter the enemy’s superior mass. Put simply, the Air Force has still not fully absorbed Corbett’s teachings.

Likewise, existing Air Force operational concepts and acquisition priorities overlook how air denial can act as a complement to air control. Hinote defines the Air Force’s challenge as “how we’re going to penetrate into those contested areas and how we’re going to create that effect of air superiority.” But penetrating contested airspace is only part of the challenge — and it may not even be the most important one. The other is denying those same advantage to the adversary. As Harry Halem and Eyck Freymann argue, “Without air control … China would be incapable of executing almost any military plan against Taiwan.”

Rather than striving myopically to burst the enemy A2/AD “bubble,” the Air Force would do better to exploit the defender’s advantage in the skies. By adopting an air denial strategy, the Air Force would aim to make it both difficult and costly for China or Russia to quickly seize territory and present it as a fait accompli. This calls for a paradigm shift in American airpower thinking.

Change Faster or Lose

The U.S. Air Force needs to come to terms with this paradigm change in two ways. First, it must “open the aperture” of airpower strategy and doctrine to recognize and respond to the growth and spread of roboticized air forces and precision-strike capabilities. Here the Air Force must put air denial on equal footing with the air superiority mission. This requires moving more rapidly toward unmanned and autonomous systems and swarming tactics with thousands of cheap small-sized drones. And it means moving away from the few and exquisite high-end fighters and bombers the Air Force continues to favor. This air denial strategy will therefore require a broader change for a service that still clings to fighter pilot culture and the old belief that Air Force operations should remain predominately centered on manned aircraft.

Instead of a small number of large, exquisite, and hard-to-replace manned platforms, a strategy of air denial calls for a mix of manned aircraft and large numbers of smaller, cheaper, unmanned aircraft and missiles. Air denial envisions employing sufficiently large numbers of smaller, low-cost weapons in a distributed way so they can survive the initial enemy air and missile strikes and keep the airspace contested. The return of mass is possible because unmanned systems cost a fraction of the price of manned aircraft, while advanced manufacturing can reduce the cost and speed of their production still further. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall acknowledged this reality, saying, “To have an affordable Air Force of reasonable size, we’ve got to introduce some lower-cost platforms.” He proposes pairing low-cost unmanned platforms with more expensive manned planes, and having a single pilot control multiple drones. The U.S. Air Force now needs to go even further, giving unmanned systems roles that go beyond being the loyal wingmen to high-end manned aircraft.

Finally, embracing a new paradigm calls for a review of the Key West agreement on service roles and missions. Specifically, it requires rethinking which service should have responsibility for air defense as well as ownership of systems like Patriot missiles and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. Part of the reason the Air Force continues to prioritize air superiority and offensive strike missions is simply bureaucratic politics — other services have primary responsibility for air defense. Given the centrality of air defense and denial to the future of air control, the Air Force should focus on protecting ground forces, not denying airspace. The alternative is for the Air Force to keep buying few and exquisite capabilities for conducting long-range penetration missions, while remaining indifferent to changing cost and effectiveness calculations. Though the impulse to hold tight to the Douhetian paradigm may be strong, the future of air warfare is denial.



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Maximilian K. Bremer is a U.S. Air Force colonel and the director of the Special Programs Division at Air Mobility Command. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense and/or the U.S. Air Force.

Kelly A. Grieco (@ka_grieco) is a resident senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

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