WAR 07-18-2020-to-07-24-2020___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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What If It Doesn’t End Quickly? Reconsidering US Preparedness for Protracted Conventional War - Modern War Institute

After two decades of focusing on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, the US Department of Defense has worked to reorient toward the possibility of conflict with a near-peer competitor. While the department […]

mwi.usma.edu

What If It Doesn’t End Quickly? Reconsidering US Preparedness for Protracted Conventional War

Patrick Savage | July 23, 2020


After two decades of focusing on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, the US Department of Defense has worked to reorient toward the possibility of conflict with a near-peer competitor. While the department has progressed in this area, one sub-set of preparation has been largely ignored: the defense enterprise needs to confront the non-zero possibility that it may have to fight not only a conventional war, but a protracted conventional war against another great power in the coming decades. To that end, the Department of Defense needs to revisit and question assumptions that it may still maintain about protracted warfare in order to prepare the United States for the potential of extended conflict with a near-peer adversary.

While the definition of conventional war is widely understood, that of protracted conventional war has been harder to come by. Conceptualizing it is even more difficult now, as the US understanding of war appears to have baked-in assumptions that it will be—because it is objectively desirable—a short war. In the late 1980s, RAND researchers considered any war with the Soviet Union that lasted more than thirty days to be protracted. More recently, Office of Net Assessment alum Dr. Andrew Krepinevich set a standard of any war lasting more than eighteen months as being protracted. This article considers any war between sovereign states that is measured in months or years as opposed to weeks or days as a protracted conventional war.

The United States’ last experience with fighting a war against a peer that could be called protracted and conventional—World War II—was almost seventy-five years ago. Many of the assumptions the United States still holds about protracted war are just as old. In cases where lessons from decades past may still be valid or have regained utility, they will need to be reconsidered in the current context. Failure to do so results in a paradoxical situation where the defense community embraces outdated assumptions, but fails to identify lessons that are still relevant to the current age. Several of the most notable—and potentially dangerous—faulty assumptions, the institutional manifestations of which seem baked in to the way that DoD approaches the problem of conventional warfare in general, warrant particular examination: that the United States will be the master of the new domains of warfare; that the potential for “decisive battle” still exists; that ample supplies of critical war material will always be available; and that the US homeland is untouchable.

Master of Its Domain

One of the most dangerous assumptions is that by the time the next major conflict breaks out, the United States will be able to achieve and maintain dominance over emerging domains of warfare like space and cyberspace, as well as in the more amorphous battle for information. This assumption is not exclusive to a protracted war, but becomes all the more critical in a conflict with a peer adversary.

Looking back to World War II, traditional measures of domain superiority did not help the Allies, even as they held advantages. In 1940, on paper, the French Army was widely considered the strongest military in the world. France had more tanks than Germany, with several models superior to anything the German Army possessed. Ultimately, however, Germany had the superior concept of operations of how to use the tanks and other new weapons in its Blitzkrieg. The United States cannot assume it will be the master of new tools from the onset of war, even if the individual tools themselves are technologically or even numerically superior to those of the adversary. Moreover, lacking any significant examples the relevant measures of superiority for domains like cyber and space are essentially unknown. A lack of experimentation, clinging to outdated concepts, and ignoring new or different lessons all factor in to an inability to imagine new concepts for old capabilities or disruptive capabilities in the face of “proven” concepts.

Going back further, World War I offers the same lessons for all sides. Before 1914, all major participants possessed most of the new weapons that would shape that war—machine guns, aircraft, long-range artillery, and others. All had been used before in grisly, but institutionally ignored, conflicts that previewed the slaughter to come. Despite this, these armies failed to understand or anticipate how these weapons would be used at scale, in the service of a large operational concept, or in the specific environment they would encounter in Europe from 1914 until 1918. Aircraft, for example, were at first used mainly for reconnaissance rather than bombing or air superiority. The warring parties would not fully understand some weapons that emerged during the war until the next one—as the tank in 1940 exemplifies. Training and experimentation can help to mitigate these risks, but the United States may not know how or which new domains or domain-specific capabilities will factor into the next major war until it is in the thick of it. Balancing preparedness with flexibility will be crucial.

An increasing number of voices are questioning the United States’ general military superiority vis-à-vis a near-peer competitor. If the United States is to prepare as much as possible for a potential near-peer protracted conflict, considering such questions can only be the beginning of a shift in how DoD approaches near-peer conflict, not the end. There must be an open, rigorous, intellectually honest, and continuous professional debate about the character of future war and a healthy fear that the most important changes may come from new or nontraditional domains.

The Lure of “Decisive Battle”

Another assumption held from even further back in the modern age is the idea that militaries should seek decisive battle as the key not only to a successful campaign but to a short war. Historian Cathal Nolan holds this as a central theme in his book, The Allure of Battle. The desire for a decisive battle is understandable—while under some circumstances, a drawn-out conflict could be advantageous, it is generally something states wish to avoid. Where problems arise is when a state hopes for the best—a quick and decisive war—and fails to account for the full range of alternatives, one of the worst of which is a protracted war.

In the case of the United States, the proposition that a military victory can be both rapid and decisive (militarily at least) was ingrained in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and subsequently was reflected in the “Two Major Regional Conflicts” (Two MRC) force-sizing construct. This construct was geared toward what was thought to be the new post–Cold War norm: regional threats like North Korea, Iran, and Ba’athist Iraq. As characterized in the Secretary of Defense’s Annual Report in 1996, the Two MRC construct called upon the United States “to fight and decisively win two MRCs that occur nearly simultaneously.” With various modifications, this served as the US force-sizing construct until the 2018 National Defense Strategy shifted focus to defeating one great-power adversary and deterring another.

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Though the Two MRC construct is no longer the reference for US force planning, its impact on military thinking will not soon fade. The United States has largely conflated the idea of war with the idea of the decisive battle, and DoD has come to see war in itself as being a decisive battle. Its influence also lingers in that it provides a poor framework for how to address an era in which the United States is confronted both by multiple near-peer adversaries and a number of regional adversaries, all of which may attempt to take advantage of US distractions in another part of the world to make gains in their own.

Both sides in both world wars sought the decisive battle. It took four years of slaughter during World War I—and a German Army bled dry of personnel by casualties, desertion, and finally mutiny—to end that conflict. World War II ended only after the Allies had inflicted prolonged destruction on the Axis powers, culminating in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan and the long-term occupation of Axis countries. As Nolan argues, single battles in themselves do not accomplish much other than speeding the attrition of supplies and manpower. As he writes in The Allure of Battle, attrition becomes the “overwhelming strategic reality” in large-scale, protracted conflicts like the world wars. The United States must realize that war may not end decisively, with examples of decisive wins in recent history being small victories in Grenada or Panama, decisive military victories with political indecisive endings like Desert Storm, or ones that are still ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan where the outcomes are debatable. Accepting less than decisive outcomes might be preferable to the cost of reaching for one, of risking defeat, or of the dangers of miscalculation and escalation.

The Arsenal of Democracy

DoD would also benefit from questioning assumptions about supplying a protracted conventional war in the twenty-first century. Chief among these is that the United States can simply mobilize its economy as it did for both world wars. World War II saw the nation retool its economy and churn out warships, tanks, aircraft, guns, and other equipment. DoD’s existing plans for mobilizing the economy in a large-scale war or crisis takes for granted that industry can be not only mobilized, but mobilized quickly. Joint Publication 4-05, Joint Mobilization Planning states that the industrial base will be “expanded,” will “surge production,” and will “accelerate output” without detailing how the expanding, surging, or accelerating will be accomplished. It only mentions in passing obstacles and side effects with little or no discussion of how to mitigate them.

While such nationwide mobilization is not necessarily impossible, the modern economy has made this increasingly difficult, time consuming, and expensive. As Mark Cancian wrote in War on the Rocks, today’s economy is optimized for efficiency, not for massive wartime production. A major conflict with a near-peer adversary would rapidly burn up the United States’ and allies’ relatively small stockpiles of munitions and equipment more quickly than industry could keep up with—especially as supposedly low-intensity wars have rapidly used up munitions at a faster rate than the military’s logistics systems can accommodate.

During the past twenty years of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, the United States has come to rely on “just in time” logistics to supply its forces in these low-intensity operations against irregular enemies. This is also true of civilian supply chains, as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated. When a protracted crisis hits, “just in time” logistics simply lacks resilience against shocks and disruptions. During a protracted conventional conflict where getting supplies to their destination will be buffeted by shocks and disruptions, “just in time” could end in disaster. However efficient this method may be for companies during peacetime, cutting costs and healthy profit margins do not win wars.

Fortress America

Since the mid-nineteenth century, America has enjoyed two oceans to protect against most adversaries and competitors. While Japan inflicted a devastating attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, after that initial attack, neither Germany nor Japan could repeat such success on US soil during World War II. The Axis powers could touch the continental United States in some ways for the rest of the war, but they were relatively minor and ineffective, aside from attracting some headlines and triggering local fears.

The United States can no longer primarily depend on geography for protection. Nor can it assume that the threat of potential nuclear escalation would dissuade a great-power adversary like Russia or China from launching a non-nuclear strike against the homeland under the right circumstances or pressure—which could be created during a protracted conflict. DoD leadership is gradually realizing the homeland is at risk from near-peer adversaries, although some were realizing it long before the return to great-power competition.

Russia and China now field sophisticated conventional strike capabilities that hold the continental United States in their ranges. They could deploy conventionally armed cruise missiles—such as Russia’s 2,500-kilometer–range, submarine-launched Kalibr—from air, land, and sea platforms at a comfortable distance. The Russian state arms export agency advertises an export model of the Kalibr—the Klub-K—that operates from a nondescript shipping container. Strikes on the US homeland could not only reach US military forces and citizens—they could cripple key supply and transportation hubs; damage factories of key weapons, munitions, other supplies and technology; strike infrastructure; and inflict terror and panic. This is all to say nothing of potential unconventional kinetic threats from enemy special operations forces or aligned third-party groups.

Conventional kinetic attacks are not all that threaten the US homeland. Nonkinetic capabilities like cyberattacks have already damaged the United States and others, with both key military and civilian networks and infrastructure targeted. If intensified, cyberattacks could challenge not only US abilities to wage war, but also to function as a nation, and could raise questions of escalating the conflict into physical domains with conventional or even potentially nuclear strikes in retaliation. US adversaries have also already demonstrated a willingness and ability to effectively employ psychological warfare, using influence operations to subvert narratives and sow social division. In a protracted conventional war against a great power determined to win, one must assume that a US adversary can and will strike the homeland in multiple ways.

The Way Forward

Across the world, multiple conflicts offer possible previews of the next major war, much in the same way the Russo-Japanese War did for World War I or the Spanish Civil War did for World War II. Conflicts in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen—among others—demonstrate how assumptions about protracted war are being challenged by the use of unmanned systems, misinformation and influence operations, and kinetic and nonkinetic attacks on infrastructure and industry. The back-and-forth setbacks for the warring parties, the displacement of civilians, and the long durations of these conflicts all offer warnings.

Despite such warnings, there has been almost no discussion of protracted conventional war in the national security community, let alone within DoD. Some individual analyses have drawn attention, such as Dr. Krepinevich’s recent and detailed report on fighting a protracted war with a near-peer competitor. Work like Dr. Krepinevich’s is an excellent start, but disparate, individual voices are not enough. A cultural shift must occur within DoD and the national security community on what the United States can expect from a twenty-first-century version of protracted conventional war with a near-peer adversary, and those communities and stakeholders must examine how the country is prepared for such a conflict. The defense enterprise will need to identify and change how it does business in order to better prepare for protracted war—both internally, and externally with US allies and partners that would be indispensable in such a conflict. Otherwise, DoD must be willing to assume high levels of risk in some areas if it is unable to reprioritize resources.



Patrick Savage is a research associate in the Joint Advanced Warfighting Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. He holds a master’s degree in security studies from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Institute for Defense Analyses, or of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

 

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America’s New Quest for Adequate Nuclear Deterrence

Being able to conduct a nuclear test is not the same as performing one.

nationalinterest.org

July 22, 2020 Topic: Security Region: Americas Tags: NuclearDeterrenceCongressFundingWar
America’s New Quest for Adequate Nuclear Deterrence

Being able to conduct a nuclear test is not the same as performing one.

by Patty-Jane Geller

Nuclear testing is a hot-button issue once again. First, days after reports that administration officials had discussed resuming tests, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) amended its version of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, adding $10 million for nuclear test readiness.

This action sparked immediate criticism, with opponents raising fears of provoking an all-out global arms race. Then, the House Appropriations Committee included a provision in its annual appropriations bill prohibiting the use of funds to conduct a nuclear test. On Monday, the House voted to include that same prohibition in its annual defense policy bill.

Alarmism over the administration’s mere discussion of nuclear testing distracts from any reasoned conversation of a legitimate issue worthy of debate: the state of nuclear test readiness. Conducting a nuclear test is no easy, routine task, and if the SASC amendment is approved, then the $10 million would not be spent on conducting one. Rather, it would be used to maintain the capabilities and infrastructure necessary to conduct a nuclear test, should the need arise.

The United States has been under a self-imposed nuclear testing moratorium since 1992. Instead of testing, the Department of Energy has relied on a program called “Stockpile Stewardship” to certify U.S. nuclear weapons will work as intended. The program uses a combination of scientific experiments and computer simulations. Experts have testified this program allows the federal government to have a great deal of confidence our nuclear stockpile remains safe, secure, and reliable—without resorting to nuclear testing.

While the Stockpile Stewardship Program has sufficed for the last twenty-four years to certify the nuclear stockpile, it does not eliminate any future need to conduct a nuclear test. When President Bill Clinton signed a 1993 directive establishing the program, he also mandated that the U.S. maintain the ability to conduct an explosive nuclear test within twenty-four to thirty-six months of a presidential decision to do so. Even as he pursued a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Clinton recognized the need to maintain a testing capability in order to ensure the ability to keep our nuclear deterrent safe and reliable.

That need remains just as strong today. One reason to conduct a nuclear test is technical. Should a flaw be discovered in one or more types of our nuclear weapons, testing might be the only means to verify we have corrected the problem.

For example, there is disagreement over how aging affects the plutonium used in the cores of nuclear warheads. Most of our current warheads were manufactured during the height of the Cold War. If scientists discover that the decades-old plutonium is beginning to affect the safety or reliability of nuclear warheads, then they might need to test to determine if the bulk of the stockpile can still function. Computer simulations, while very useful, are only as good as their inputs.

Another possible reason for a test is geopolitical, i.e. driven by actions of U.S. adversaries that might affect our national security. For example, were an adversary to develop a defense against nuclear weapons that calls into question the effectiveness of U.S. nuclear warheads, then the United States might need to test its warheads in that simulated contested environment.

Should the United States find itself in one of these situations, then having some level of readiness to test will mitigate the risk to the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Successful deterrence depends on our adversaries believing that our nuclear weapons will work as intended.

So long as there continues to be no reasonable path to nuclear disarmament, the United States must maintain a strong nuclear deterrent. Looking forward potentially hundreds of years into the future, it defies logic to assume that the United States will never again need to test a nuclear weapon, especially as the nuclear arsenal continues to age.

But today, our test readiness is weak. Prior to 1992, the United States tested nuclear warheads in underground holes at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. Unused for almost thirty years now, nearly all of the capabilities needed to conduct a test have eroded. To resume testing, the United States would likely need to start from scratch—from acquiring geological tools that no longer exist to regaining the intellectual know-how to test a nuclear explosive. It’s unclear whether Nevada would even still work as a test site.

In its latest annual report to Congress, the Energy Department noted the potential difficulty of meeting the twenty-four- to thirty-six-month test readiness requirement. Fully complying with domestic regulations, agreements, and laws would “significantly extend the time required for execution of a nuclear test,” the report noted.

With this information, the SASC’s initiative to authorize a small amount of funding for test readiness only makes sense. While there is no annual appropriation for nuclear test readiness, the Energy Department currently exercises some capabilities at the national security laboratories to practice test readiness, such as conducting scientific experiments that do not result in nuclear explosions. A designated $10 million for test readiness within existing budgets would help bolster these and similar capabilities.

The SASC amendment does not herald an imminent return to nuclear testing, and should not warrant such reactionary testing prohibitions in any final policy or spending bill. Rather, Congress should follow the example set by the SASC and continue to debate the merits of this issue that affects the credibility of the U.S. strategic deterrent, our main defense against Russia’s and China’s growing nuclear arsenals.

Improving test readiness would comply with Clinton’s direction and add to U.S. national security. Congress funds readiness for all other military contingencies. There’s no reason to make nuclear test readiness taboo.

Patty-Jane Geller is a policy analyst specializing in nuclear deterrence and missile defense at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.

 

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5th Fleet CO: China Laying Groundwork in Middle East to Pose Future Threats; International Coalitions Pushing Back Against Iran - USNI News

The head of naval forces in the Middle East said Chinese actions in the region don’t pose a threat today but could lead to challenges down the road, with China laying the groundwork to gain economic and military leverage over countries in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Vice Adm...

news.usni.org

5th Fleet CO: China Laying Groundwork in Middle East to Pose Future Threats; International Coalitions Pushing Back Against Iran

By: Megan Eckstein
July 23, 2020 1:08 PM

The head of naval forces in the Middle East said Chinese actions in the region don’t pose a threat today but could lead to challenges down the road, with China laying the groundwork to gain economic and military leverage over countries in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.


Vice Adm. James Malloy, who has led U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command since December 2018, said China has had a small naval force in the Middle East for a decade now – both contributing to international anti-piracy patrols as well as building up a military complex in Djibouti. More recently, China has begun investing in ports and other facilities as part of its Belt and Road initiative, which in many cases has left poor countries economically beholden to China when they can’t pay back loans used for critical infrastructure improvements.


Speaking at a Middle East Institute event online on July 22, Malloy said China wasn’t doing anything militarily in the Middle East that concerned him yet, but he said that the foundation was being laid for China to gain influence in the region and to eventually disrupt the rules-based order meant to keep peace and safe flow of commerce in the busy waterways there.

“What concerns me in this region is not the combat capability in the near term. But what concerns me is all levers of national power that come to play. And when I take a look at this region, I only have to look east to be able to see what the future might look like, in the South China Sea – and I see economic coercion, I see military coercion, depending on what lever works, to be able to bend the reality or the facts on the ground to a different rule-based reality,” Malloy said.
“And so you pick your country out there in some sort of disagreement with China, and you see how the levers are being applied. And then you move into this region and you say, 15 years from now, you’ve got investment in East Africa, you have some contracts for building of some port facilities, and then you’ve got a military complex working out in the Horn of Africa. What does this look like when now, after all of this, the weapons-exporting in this area, what does this look like when there’s a desire to change the facts on the ground from the international rules-based order that you mentioned that has been a good thing for the entire globe, but to bend it now to a different rule base – and the people that might disagree with that, now there are levers to be applied across the DIME (Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economic), if you will, across each one of these countries that is now beholden in some way or the ability to be coerced on some way by that country (China) now moving into this region. We see signs of that: China is already on the record saying that they want to end the weapons embargo on Iran. …. That concerns me as a global partner, not just looking at my military challenges of the day – I’m not challenged by China in this region today, I am not – but what does this look like 10 years from now?”


More immediately, Malloy said he is focused on “nefarious activities” from Iran in two categories: utilizing the maritime environment for these activities, such as weapons trafficking; and taking actions in the maritime to intimidate regional actors and merchant traffic, such as seizing tankers and putting mines in the water.

“I cannot sit idly and watch this creeping coercive activity at sea without setting a defensive posture that can respond to it, and making sure that everybody understands that my first mission is to be able to respond to those types of threats – deter them if I can – but if I cannot deter them, to respond very forcefully to them,” the vice admiral said.
“I don’t worry about capability, because I know what capability we bring to bear, and it is substantial. It is a defensive shield and it is an offensive weapon behind that defensive shield, that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind how that would end.”


Malloy drew a strong contrast between Iran’s activities and U.S. and coalition activities in the region over the last year or so: Iran conducted a mine attack on four ships at anchor in a harbor, attacked two ships sailing in the Gulf of Oman, shot down a U.S. drone flying in international air space, attempted to seize one tanker in the Persian Gulf and then successfully seized another shortly afterwards, and illegally shipped weapons to Yemen. On the other hand, the U.S. and its partners stood up Operation Sentinel to act as eyes and ears in the maritime domain and help keep merchant traffic safe, and held a massive International Maritime Exercise in the fall to rehearse defensive warfighting skills.

On Operation Sentinel, Malloy said there are now eight partners helping patrol the waters from the surface and from the air, and share information with other militaries and with merchant traffic.


The coalition “is threat-based but it does not threaten. It provides a deterrence because there is a large body of evidence that says this activity, this state-sponsored activity, is driven by a desire to be clandestine, to obfuscate, to deny. If you watch the rhetoric that came out after the clearly mining activity that happened from Jask and from Chabahar (in Iran) to Fujairah (in the United Arab Emirates) and into the Gulf of Oman: we didn’t do it, nobody saw it, that type of thing. … It is clear that one of the things that deters this type of activity is the ability to document, to be able to report this activity at sea. And so one of the lines of effort for us is the deterrent value that providing our sentries and our sentinels at sea, coordinated with each other, providing that surveillance capability, has acted as a deterrent to that activity since Sentinel has stood up.”


Malloy noted that if Iran wasn’t doing anything illegal then it wouldn’t have any issue with the work Sentinel was conducting.


“If you look at the mission that unites us, whether it be [the standing Combined Maritime Forces unit] or whether it be [the International Maritime Security Construct stood up last year], it’s not anti-this, anti-that, anti-anything. It is promoting maritime security, promoting the free flow of commerce, assuring the merchant fleets that we are out here patrolling and protecting that legitimate flow. There’s nothing anti about that. It’s not anti-Iran, it’s not anti- any country, because any country that promotes that shouldn’t have anything to worry about, with that positive vision for the region. And it is a common denominator that all of us can get onboard with.”

In addition to the formal CMF and IMSC organizations, Malloy said dialogue is constant between like-minded partners in the area. Last summer, Malloy hosted a maritime security conference in Bahrain, where 5th Fleet is headquartered, with more than 30 heads of navy from regional partners to talk about maintaining maritime security. Just last week, he said, they held a similar meeting virtually to continue the ongoing effort to keep peace and security in the Middle Eastern waters.


The meeting, Malloy said, “brought together many nations in common themes that all can agree to to balance out this nefarious one-off acting that we see on the other side. So speaking with the rule of law, speaking with the international community and a common joining element that way.”




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Afghanistan teenager's husband was among Taliban attackers she killed when family was targeted: report

The 15-year-old Afghanistan girl hailed a hero after she gunned down a group of Taliban attackers who raided her home and killed her parents was married to one of the assailants, according to a new report.

www.foxnews.com

Afghanistan teenager's husband was among Taliban attackers she killed when family was targeted: report
Her husband had reportedly joined the Taliban during their brief marriage

By Lucia I. Suarez Sang | Fox News

The 15-year-old Afghanistan girl hailed a hero after she gunned down a group of Taliban attackers who raided her home and killed her parents was married to one of the assailants, according to a new report.


Qamar Gul, 15, was celebrated as a “hero” after she was pictured posing with the rifle she used to defend herself from the Taliban attackers.

“I am proud I killed my parents’ murderers,” she was quoted as saying this week. “I killed them because they killed my parents, and also because I knew they would come for me and my little brother.”

AFGHAN TEEN WIELDING AN AK-47 KILLS TWO TALIBAN FIGHTERS AFTER PARENTS WERE MURDERED: OFFICIALS

However, her heroic story was much more complex than just her protecting herself and her younger brother, 12-year-old Habibullah.


Family members and local officials told the New York Times this week that the teenager was actually married to one of the attackers, who was attempting to forcefully snatch her up as part of a family feud.


Ghor Province is described by the newspaper as being a “particularly brutal” area for women as girls are bartered at a young age.

Gul’s mother, Fatima, was married twice before tying the knot with Shan Gul Rahimi, whose brother was her second husband and died in a violent clash with the Taliban in the 1990s, according to the report.

Rahimi was described as a “stalwart fighter” – despite having lost one hand years ago – who frequently helped the local militia fending off Taliban attacks. It wasn’t clear whether he was also on a government payroll, the Times reported.


In 2016, he reportedly arranged for Mohamed Naeem, a man from an adjacent village, to marry his daughter Qamar as his second wife. In exchange, Rahimi would marry Naeem’s teenage niece as his second wife.

“Naeem was his son-in-law, and they got along very well too,” said Sebghatullah, Rahimi’s nephew told the Times. “It all turned upside down at once.”

US CLOSES FIVE MILITARY BASES IN AFGHANISTAN AS PART OF TALIBAN PEACE DEAL

It was not exactly clear when Naeem joined the Taliban. Relatives and local officials said it happened over the course of the last two years, at which point his private life deteriorated, particularly because he was chased for debts he owed.

According to relatives, Naeem had a falling out with his parents over his treatment of his first wife, because he was spending all his time with his new and younger bride. After one argument, Naeem reportedly took Qamar Gul and left the home – first staying with his in-laws and then moving to Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold.

The Times reported that during a trip to visit her family, Qamar Gul refused to return to her husband, at which point her father said he would keep her until Naeem paid off the debts that he owed people in the village.

“Naeem’s niece wasn’t happy with the marriage because Shah Gul was much older than her. But Qamar Gul wasn’t arguing much — she said she was OK with whatever her father had decided, but that Naeem had to pay back the debt,” Zabihullah Rahmani, a relative told the newspaper.

TALIBAN, DESPITE 'PEACE' TALKS, LED THE WORLD BY FAR IN 2019 TERRORIST ATTACKS, STUDY FINDS

However, it appeared Naeem had other thoughts and in the early hours of July 17, he and about a dozen Taliban fighters surrounded the Gul’s hillside home and barged in.
Rahimi and Gul’s mother, Fatima, were killed first, both shot multiple times. Qamar Gul grabbed her father's AK-47 and began spraying the attackers in the yard. She shot two of them dead and wounded a senior Taliban commander.
The attackers fled the scene as neighbors and local militia fighters began arriving. Naeem was one of the attackers killed.

The Taliban confirmed an operation took place in the area, but denied any of the group’s fighters had been killed by a woman.

Meanwhile, activists are demanding the government protect Qamar Gul, with some calling for her to be sent to live outside of Afghanistan for her own safety.

Lucia I. Suarez Sang is a Reporter & Editor for FoxNews.com.

 

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New Details Emerge About F-15 Intercept Of Iranian Airbus Over Syria

American officials now say the Iranian airliner drifted from the established air route through the area and did not identify itself when prompted.

www.thedrive.com

New Details Emerge About F-15 Intercept Of Iranian Airbus Over Syria
American officials now say the Iranian airliner drifted from the established air route through the area and did not identify itself when prompted.

By Joseph Trevithick
July 24, 2020


U.S. officials now say that a U.S. Air Force F-15 only came within 5,000 feet of an Airbus A310 airliner belonging to Iran's Air Mahan during an incident over Syria yesterday. They have also stated that Air Mahan Flight 1152 appeared to deviate from the established flight route and did not respond to radio calls to identify itself while flying over a strategic garrison near the city of At Tanf that U.S.-backed Syrian forces operate, prompting the intercept in the first place.

Details about exactly how the July 23rd incident went down remain limited. Supposedly, the F-15's intercept prompted Mahan Air Flight 1152, which was on its way from the Iranian capital Tehran to Beirut in Lebanon, to make an evasive maneuver leading to several injuries among the passengers on board. The U.S. military has established a deconfliction zone around the garrison at At Tanf that stretches 55 miles in all directions, which it says is a no-go zone for forces aligned with the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad, including Russian and Iranian-backed groups. American aircraft, especially F-15E Strike Eagles based in neighboring Jordan, routinely patrol the area to keep foreign combat aircraft out and reportedly require all planes, even commercial airliners, to identify themselves while passing over.



U.S. Says Its F-15s Intercepted Iranian Airliner That Made Erratic Maneuvers (Updated)By Joseph Trevithick Posted in The War Zone
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Fox News has now reported that U.S. forces saw that Mahan Air Flight 1152 had "drifted from [the] established air route" and sent two F-15s to investigate. ABC News says that the aircraft did not identify itself in response to radio calls, leading to the combat jets flying closer to visually inspect it.

4)
Why did the U.S. warplane need to do an interception?

“A U.S. official told ABC News that the F-15 approached the airliner to visually inspect it after it did not respond to their radio communications to identify itself.”US confirms fighter jet flew close to Iranian jetliner above Syria, leading to passenger injuries
— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) July 24, 2020​

A U.S. official also told Fox News that the F-15s had come within around 5,000 feet of the airliner at the very closest, after approaching from behind on a parallel course, during the intercept. U.S. Central Command had issued a statement yesterday saying that the combat jets had come to within around 3,290 feet from the A310.

U.S. military’s Central Command had previously said the American fighter jet had come 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) from Iranian airliner last night over Syria
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) July 24, 2020​

That same official said that at least one of the F-15s had received a tonal alert about being in close proximity to another aircraft, but that this is "fairly standard” and there was “no risk” of the two planes actually hitting each other. Typically, collision avoidance systems, such as the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), produce auditory and visual alerts based on the estimated time and space separating two aircraft.

Mahan Air routinely uses its commercial flights to Beirut to smuggle weapons, including precision guidance kits for rockets, U.S. officials have claimed for years
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) July 24, 2020​

For example, two planes with TCAS installed that are closing on each other at a speed of 300 knots will get particularly serious notifications telling them to change course in some fashion when they are 25 seconds away from hitting each other, which translates to a distance of around 2.1 nautical miles. However, it's not clear exactly what collision avoid capabilities the American combat jets had available at the time of this encounter.

Eurocontrol via Wikimedia
A visual representation of a hypothetical interaction showing when Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems will produce a "traffic advisory" (TA) about the presence of a nearby aircraft, as well as more serious "resolution advisories" (RA) directing pilots to maneuver to avoid a collision.

It is possible that the pilots of Air Mahan Flight 1152 received a similar warning and may have overcorrected for any of a number of reasons. Online flight tracking software does show that the A310, which appears to have had its commercial ADS-B transponder on and configured appropriately the entire time, did relatively suddenly drop in altitude while near At Tanf. Other previously available data shows an earlier Air Mahan airliner making a very similar maneuver in the same general area of Syria on July 20, though there were no reports of another dangerous intercept at the time.

A close-up of altitude changes.
2020-07-23T...
...16:13:43Z 33.467613,38.939472 34000
...16:13:49Z 33.470856,38.925770 33875
...16:13:58Z 33.477036,38.904457 34275
...16:14:04Z 33.480835,38.890888 34350
...16:15:08Z 33.529083,38.746693 34150
...16:16:12Z 33.582779,38.601135 34025 pic.twitter.com/81yofGcmlL
— Gerjon | חריון (@Gerjon_) July 23, 2020​

This is a map showing the FIR (red), navigational aids (white dots) and airways on international aeronautical charts (yellow). Commercial airliners can be seen sticking close to these lines, mostly, and the line goes over the American-occupied area Al-Tanf, Syria. pic.twitter.com/gBlM4GCMFk
— Steffan Watkins (@steffanwatkins) July 24, 2020​

"The visual inspection occurred to ensure the safety of coalition personnel at At Tanf garrison," according to CENTCOM's statement from July 23." Once the F-15 pilot identified the aircraft as a Mahan Air passenger plane, the F-15 safely opened distance from the aircraft. The professional intercept was conducted in accordance with international standards."

For its part, the Iranian regime has been surprisingly reserved about this incident, which reportedly resulted in four people having to go to the hospital once Air Mahan Flight 1152 touched down in Beirut. State-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) was first to report there had been an intercept of any kind, initially incorrectly identifying the F-15 as belonging to Israel.

"The incident is under investigation," Abbas Mousavi, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said, according to Iran's PressTV. "Due political and legal measures will be taken upon completion of the information at hand."

Watch: Video relarased by #Iran StateTV purportedly shows the moment 2 #Israeli warplanes threaten #Iranian passenger plane in the #Syrian airspace. pic.twitter.com/982gEyQb2h
— Habib Abdolhossein (@HAbdolhossein) July 23, 2020​

#Iran’s state TV reporter who recorded the video says 2 #American jets approached MahanAir flight 1152 over Damascus which was traveling from Tehran>Beirut in #Lebanon and maneuvers by the pilot to avoid collision resulted in injuries among passengers.

pic.twitter.com/nHYSdPlH1A
— Hossein Ghazanfari (@TehranDC) July 23, 2020​

The theory that Israeli warplanes intercepted an Iranian civilian aircraft, IRM1152 is not possible, for the following reasons: [Thread] pic.twitter.com/Ihv005iA3z
— INTELSky (@Intel_Sky) July 23, 2020​

Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi also told U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the regime in Tehran would hold the United States "responsible" if anything happened to the Air Mahan A310 as it returned to Iran, PressTV also reported. Online flight tracking software showed that the aircraft returned to Iran last night along the same route without any further excitement.

What fallout there might be from this incident remains to be seen, but it does come amid a new period of increased friction between the United States and Iran. The U.S. government continues to pursue a policy of maximum pressure against the regime in Tehran, primarily through economic sanctions. However, this campaign may also now increasingly include covert activities, including cyber-attacks. Mysterious fires and other incidents, including an explosion at a centrifuge production building at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, have wracked Iran this month. Reports have suggested that at least some of these are actually acts of sabotage by Israel, possibly with American assistance.

Mahan Air has been under U.S. sanctions for nearly a decade and is heavily linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its external operations arm, the Quds Force, which is responsible for supporting proxy forces around the world, including in Syria and Lebanon. The U.S. government killed the previous head of the Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in a drone strike in Baghdad, Iraq, in January, which prompted an unprecedented Iranian ballistic missile strike on U.S. forces in that country and led to a particularly worrisome spike in regional tensions, the effects of which are still being felt.

Whatever may or may not have happened in the skies above At Tanf certainly underscores the continued risk of relatively routine activities leading to much more serious escalations.
We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.

Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com

 

[danielboon]

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