WAR 07-21-2018-to-07-27-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(330) 06-30-2018-to-07-06-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...7-06-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(331) 07-07-2018-to-07-13-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...7-13-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(332) 07-14-2018-to-07-20-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...7-20-2018___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

====================

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-china-waging-quiet-kind-cold-war-against-051049862--politics.html

CIA: China is waging a 'quiet kind of cold war' against US

DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press
6 hours ago

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — China is waging a "quiet kind of cold war" against the United States, using all its resources to try to replace America as the leading power in the world, a top CIA expert on Asia said Friday.

Beijing doesn't want to go to war, he said, but the current communist government, under President Xi Jingping, is subtly working on multiple fronts to undermine the U.S. in ways that are different than the more well-publicized activities being employed by Russia.

"I would argue ... that what they're waging against us is fundamentally a cold war — a cold war not like we saw during THE Cold War (between the U.S. and the Soviet Union) but a cold war by definition," Michael Collins, deputy assistant director of the CIA's East Asia mission center, said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Rising U.S.-China tension goes beyond the trade dispute playing out in a tariff tit-for-tat between the two nations.

There is concern over China's pervasive efforts to steal business secrets and details about high-tech research being conducted in the U.S. The Chinese military is expanding and being modernized and the U.S., as well as other nations, have complained about China's construction of military outposts on islands in the South China Sea.

"I would argue that it's the Crimea of the East," Collins said, referring to Russia's brash annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which was condemned throughout the West.

Collins' comments track warnings about China's rising influence issued by others who spoke earlier this week at the security conference. The alarm bells come at a time when Washington needs China's help in ending its nuclear standoff with North Korea.

On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said China, from a counterintelligence perspective, represents the broadest and most significant threat America faces. He said the FBI has economic espionage investigations in all 50 states that can be traced back to China.

"The volume of it. The pervasiveness of it. The significance of it is something that I think this country cannot underestimate," Wray said.

National Intelligence Director Dan Coats also warned of rising Chinese aggression. In particular, he said, the U.S. must stand strong against China's effort to steal business secrets and academic research.

Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said increasing the public's awareness about the activities of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students or groups at U.S. universities could be one way to help mitigate potential damage.

"China is not just a footnote to what we're dealing with with Russia," Thornton said.
Marcel Lettre, former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said China has the second-largest defense budget in the world, the largest standing army of ground forces, the third-largest air force and a navy of 300 ships and more than 60 submarines.

"All of this is in the process of being modernized and upgraded," said Lettre, who sat on a panel with Collins and Thornton.

He said China also is pursuing advances in cyber, artificial intelligence, engineering and technology, counter-space, anti-satellite capabilities and hypersonic glide weapons. Army Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a congressional committee earlier this year that China is developing long-range cruise missiles — some capable of reaching supersonic speeds.

"The Pentagon has noted that the Chinese have already pursued a test program that has had 20 times more tests than the U.S. has," Lettre said.

Franklin Miller, former senior director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council, said China's weapons developments are emphasizing the need to have a dialogue with Beijing.

"We need to try to engage," Miller said. "My expectations for successful engagement are medium-low, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

Comments (254)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.france24.com/en/20180721-state-actors-likely-behind-singapore-cyberattack-experts

21 July 2018 - 09H35

State-actors likely behind Singapore cyberattack: experts

SINGAPORE (AFP) - State-actors were likely behind Singapore's biggest ever cyberattack to date, security experts say, citing the scale and sophistication of the hack.

The city-state announced Friday that hackers had broken into a government database and stolen the health records of 1.5 million Singaporeans, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who was specifically targeted in the "unprecedented" attack.

Singapore's health minister said the strike was "a deliberate, targeted, and well-planned cyberattack and not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs".

While officials refused to comment on the identity of the hackers citing "operational security", experts told AFP that the complexity of the attack and its focus on high-profile targets like the prime minister pointed to the hand of a state-actor.

"A cyber espionage threat actor could leverage disclosure of sensitive health information... to coerce an individual in (a) position of interest to conduct espionage" on its behalf, said Eric Hoh, Asia-Pacific president of cybersecurity firm FireEye.

Hoh told national broadcaster Channel NewsAsia that the attack was an "advanced persistent threat".

"The nature of such attacks are that they are conducted by nation states using very advanced tools," he said.

"They tend to be well resourced, well-funded and highly sophisticated."

Healthcare data is of particular interest to cyberattackers because it can be used to blackmail people in positions of power, said Jeff Middleton, chief executive of cybersecurity consultancy Lantium.

"A lot of information about a person's health can be gleaned from the medications that they take," Middleton told AFP Saturday.

"Any non-public health information could be used for extortion. Russian spy services have a long history of doing this," he added.

Medical information, like personal data, can also be easily monetised on criminal forums, said Sanjay Aurora, Asia Pacific managing director of Darktrace.

"Beyond making a quick buck, a more sinister reason to attack would be to cause widespread disruption and systemic damage to the healthcare service -- as a fundamental part of critical infrastructure ?- or to undermine trust in a nation's competency to keep personal data safe," he told AFP.

- Hyper-connected -
Wealthy Singapore is hyper-connected and on a drive to digitise government records and essential services, including medical records which public hospitals and clinics can share via a centralised database.

But authorities have put the brakes on these plans while they investigate the cyberattack. A former judge will head an inquiry looking into the incident.

Singapore officials have cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the attackers.

"With regard to the prime minister's data and why he was targeted, I would say that it's perhaps best not to speculate what the attacker had in mind," said David Koh, head of Singapore's Cyber Security Agency.

The hackers used a computer infected with malware to gain access to the database between June 27 and July 4 before administrators spotted "unusual activity", authorities said.

While Singapore has some of the most advanced military weaponry in the region, the government says it fends off thousands of cyberattacks every day and has long warned of breaches by actors as varied as high-school students in their bedrooms to nation states.

Earlier this month US intelligence chief Dan Coats described Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the "worst offenders" when it came to attacks on American "digital infrastructure".

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...rds-at-iraqi-border-post-agency-idUSKBN1KB0DV

World News July 21, 2018 / 4:45 AM / Updated 31 minutes ago

Militants kill 10 Iran Guards at Iraqi border post: agency

Reuters Staff
2 Min Read

DUBAI (Reuters) - Militants killed 10 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in an attack on a post on the Iraqi border on Saturday, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, the latest deadly clash in an area where armed opposition Kurdish groups are active.

The agency quoted a Revolutionary Guards statement as saying that several of the attacking “terrorists” were also killed in the fighting in which a munitions depot was blown up.

Provincial security official Hosein Khosheqbal told state television that 11 members of the Guards’ voluntary Basij forces were killed in the overnight violence in the Marivan area, which he blamed on the Kurdish armed opposition group PJAK.

“The latest news is that the Basij and Guards forces are in hot pursuit of the attackers,” Khosheqbal said.

The Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) — an outlawed group that seeks self-governance for Iran’s Kurds and has links to Turkey’s militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) — operates in the border area, along with other armed Kurdish groups based in northern Iraq.

Earlier this month, the Revolutionary Guards said they had killed three militants in a security operation near the border with Iraq, and nine militants were reported killed by the Guards last month further north on the border.

There is little coordination between Iranian and Iraqi forces over security of the porous border that has also been used by Islamic State to enter Iran.

Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said on Tuesday that security forces in southwest Iran arrested four suspected Islamic State operatives who were planning attacks.

In June 2017, Islamic State militants carried out coordinated attacks at the parliament building in Tehran and the mausoleum of Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini south of the capital, killing at least 18 people.

Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Ros Russell

 

[Zagdid]

The US Navy’s new anti-ship missile scores a hit at RIMPAC, but there’s a twist

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2...le-scores-a-hit-at-rimpac-but-theres-a-twist/ (fair use)
By: David B. Larter   1 day ago

WASHINGTON — The U.S. surface fleet’s brand-new anti-ship missile was used as part of the barrage of rockets and missiles that put an end to the landing ship tank Racine on July 12 during the Rim of the Pacific exercise, but it wasn’t shot by the Navy.

The U.S. Army shot the Naval Strike Missile from the back of a truck using its Palletized Load System in a demonstration that is likely to raise eyebrows in China. The missile, a joint venture between the Norwegian company Kongsberg and Raytheon, was fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Barking Sands, Hawaii, at the former USS Racine, which was floating 55 nautical miles north of Kauai, Hawaii.

Joining the U.S. Army was the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force, which fired Mitsubishi’s Type 12 surface-to-ship missile.

The Navy inked a contract with Raytheon to start buying the NSM for its littoral combat ships and likely its future frigate. The Army’s shot successfully detonated on target, according to U.S. Pacific Fleet officials.

The shots dovetails with a concept that the Army and the JGSDF have been developing, known in some circles as “archipelagic defense,” which in essence calls for the use of ground forces to deny Chinese forces free movement through the theater by deploying anti-ship and anti-air missiles throughout the island chains that pepper the Asia-Pacific region.

Deploying ground forces armed with anti-ship and anti-air missiles throughout islands, while leaving those forces open to attack, complicates what many analysts see as China’s goal of exercising de facto military control of 1.7 million square miles of the East and South China seas.

In a 2015 article in Foreign Affairs, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments analyst Andrew Krepinevich argued that deploying ground forces to the first island chain (a region that refers to a line of islands that runs from Japan’s southern tip through the East and South China seas) could change China’s game plan.

“If Washington wants to change Beijing’s calculus, it must deny China the ability to control the air and the sea around the first island chain, since the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] would have to dominate both arenas to isolate the archipelago,” he wrote. “The United States must also integrate allied battle networks and strengthen allied capabilities — both of which will help offset the PLA’s efforts to destabilize the region’s military balance. By and large, those goals can be achieved with ground forces, which would not replace existing air and naval forces but complement them.”

The concept has gained traction in some circles, but the Army has been touch-and-go on the notion as it balances security concerns in Europe, said Jan van Tol, also an analyst with CSBA.

“Archipelagic defense has some merit to it, and there was initial excitement when we started talking about this a few years ago, but it has seen less emphasis recently, especially as the Army is focusing more in Eastern Europe,” he said.

The former head of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. Harry Harris, told a conference audience in Hawaii in 2016 he wanted the Army to think about ways of using its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System and 155mm Paladin artillery to target ships from land.

“One thing I can tell you: The question of the role of land forces in ensuring access to, and maneuver in, shared domains is something the U.S. and our friends, partners and allies must address,” he said. "Not only as a matter of security, but also a matter of economic prosperity. ... Our adversaries get this.

“If we get this right, the Army will kill the archer instead of dealing with all of its arrows.”

 

[Lilbitsnana]

I don't know how I missed this current one. I had so many things I had been wanting to post here since Saturday night. guess I am blind.

 

[Housecarl]

I don't know how I missed this current one. I had so many things I had been wanting to post here since Saturday night. guess I am blind.

It's ok. It's been a pretty "busy" week just starting out.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...temala-no-injuries/ar-BBKY0lQ?ocid=spartandhp

Shots fired at vehicle carrying US official in Guatemala, no injuries

1 hr ago

GUATEMALA CITY, July 22 (Reuters) - Shots were fired at a vehicle carrying a U.S. embassy official in southern Guatemala on Sunday evening but there were no injuries, a spokesman for the Central American country's national police said.

A spokesman for the embassy confirmed the incident and said U.S. officials were working with police to investigate.

"It seems the incident did not have a political motivation, nor was it directed at the embassy," he said.

Shots were fired by a group of residents, who were pursuing those responsible for a crime in the southern city of San Vicente Pacaya, as the vehicle was passing through the area, police said.

Police said they helped the diplomat return home after the incident.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu Writing by Julia Love Editing by Paul Tait)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/nato-naval-fleets-exercise-in-the-black-sea/

NATO naval fleets exercise in the Black Sea

By George Allison - July 20, 2018

Two NATO Naval Groups are participating in Breeze 2018, a Bulgarian-led annual naval exercise.

The exercise started on the 13th of July and will end today off coast of Bulgaria in the Black Sea region.

NATO say BREEZE is designed to ‘enhance the interoperability of the participating units and strengthen cooperation by practising different warfare techniques in a multi-dimensional scenario’. Multinational participating forces and their crews will be tested in a wide range of warfare tactics focusing on regional security.

NATO is participating with two naval groups, Standing NATO Maritime Group Two (SNMG2) and Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group Two (SNMCMG2) which assembled in Burgas, Bulgaria for the harbour phase dedicated to last minute coordination and operational details.

Standing NATO Maritime Group Two (SNMG2) includes the flagship, Dutch frigate HNLMS De Ruyter, Turkish frigate TCG Fatih and Romanian frigate ROS Regele Ferdinand and Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group Two (SNMCMG2) is composed of the flagship, German auxiliary FGS Rhein, Turkish minehunter TCG Anamur and Romanian minesweeper ROS Lt Lupu Dinescu.

Exercise Breeze 2018 provides an excellent opportunity for NATO forces to train and build interoperability with additional Allied maritime forces. The groups presence in the Black Sea is part of an overall increased focus on the Black Sea region increasing the presence of the Standing NATO Maritime Groups in the Black Sea from approximately 80 days in 2017 to 120 days planned in 2018.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/german-air-force-only-has-four-active-typhoon-jets/

German air force only has four active Typhoon jets

By George Allison - July 23, 2018

According to local media, the German air force only has four combat-ready Typhoon jets out of 128.

The Luftwaffe is dealing with a “massive problem” that has left all but four of its 128 Typhoon jets unavailable for combat missions, according to a report by German news outlet Spiegel.

It’s understood that the readiness issues are compounded by a lack of air-combat missiles. Because of that shortfall, only four of the fighters are currently ready for combat missions, according to Spiegel. According to the article:

“The problem is complicated. Put simply, all “Eurofighters” on the wings have a sensor that detects enemy jets or attacks and warns the pilot. About half a year ago, it was discovered that the pod is no longer properly cooled.”

According to other reports, Germany’s air force is in ‘dire straits’ and funds are urgently needed to modernise its weaponry and systems.

“The Luftwaffe is at a low point,” Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, who took over as chief of staff of the air force about a month ago, told 200 industry executives. Gerhartz said his assessment followed visits to various air force sites and discussions with troops that revealed serious deficits in the readiness of aircraft and other equipment.

“Aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spare parts, or they aren’t even on site since they’re off for maintenance by the industry,” he said. According to Reuters, he said a 400-hour inspection of the Eurofighter combat jets now took a total of 14 months, twice as long as planned, and this was unacceptable.

His comments followed recent reports by the defence ministry and the German parliament’s military ombudsman that revealed significant gaps in military equipment and personnel.

4 COMMENTS

 

[Pinecone]

Putting on my woo hat here, but if six months ago the "pods are no longer properly cooled" makes me wonder if it is a software problem. Some little Chinese part that no longer works. If so, it is a coincidence or by design. I really have no idea. I bet someone here can say and hopefully assure me that it is another problem. Hopefully less sinister.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm…..

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/asias-worst-nightmare-collapse-north-korea-26501

July 22, 2018

Asia's Worst Nightmare: A Collapse of North Korea

The good news is that this collapse has the potential to be a win-win for nearly everyone.

by Jamie Metzl

In fact, North Korea’s leaders have recently come to this realization and minor economic reforms allowing managers to set wages and farmers to keep more of their harvest have begun. Economic reform, however, cannot work in North Korea without political reform. Greater access to information and freer movement of people and goods are essential underpinnings of a reforming economy. These same reforms would also undermine the legitimacy of the regime and ultimately force it to choose between shutting down economic reform to maintain totalitarian control or allowing the spark of political change to ignite that will, over time, become inextinguishable. With no logical path forward, the DPRK government will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, as we may already be seeing in the recent wave of high-level executions.

As a member of the U.S. National Security Council staff in the later 1990s, I worked with colleagues on plans for responding to the potential collapse of the North Korean government. As a self-induced famine ravaged the country, we considered what we might do when the regime finally succumbed to the inevitable consequence of its own insanity. Almost twenty years later, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is still there and those predicting its imminent collapse have continually been proven wrong. But today, the North Korean madness may well be nearing its endgame. I predict it will be gone within a decade.

The continued survival of North Korea’s government is based on its ability to harness absolute terror against its population, its possession of nuclear weapons, and its access to economic resources. Although North Korea requires all three of these to survive, contradictions between what it takes to secure each will make the regime’s demise all but inevitable over time.

Terror against its people stands at the core of the North Korean system. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK reports “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” including torture, murder, rape, and mass gulags containing over 120,000 people in what the Commission believes constitute “crimes against humanity.” Without deploying terror to control every aspect of people’s lives, the regime would collapse.

(Recommended: North Korea's Deadly Chemical Weapons )

After witnessing the first Gulf War, where Saddam Hussein was more vulnerable to invasion because Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons, Pyongyang accelerated its own nuclear program. North Korea has now conducted three nuclear tests, fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, and is racing forward with nuclear miniaturization and weaponization.

(This first appeared in 2015.)

The further development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, however, will ultimately put it at odds with China, its essential benefactor. North Korea’s only meaningful trading partner, China provides Pyongyang with 90 percent of its energy imports and most of the food going to its military. Beijing has carefully struck a balance between gently pressuring North Korea to slow its nuclear program and maintaining the DPRK through aid, primarily because China fears U.S. troops on its border in case of collapse.

(Recommended: North Korea's Deadly Chemical Weapons Shop of Horrors )

But because North Korea’s continued nuclear weapons push will justify the U.S. military’s ongoing rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific, the acceleration of missile defenses in South Korea and Japan that will undermine China’s nuclear deterrent, and Japan’s active reconsideration of its military capabilities, China’s need to keep a lid on North Korea’s nuclear program will ultimately conflict with the DPRK’s nuclear drive. Moreover, China will rightly come to perceive the North’s nuclear program as being designed primarily to limit Beijing’s influence over Pyongyang. This will likely prove unacceptable to the Chinese, who will be forced to increase economic pressure on North Korea by reducing aid, making China-DPRK relations decline even more than they have since the 2013 execution of Jang Song-Taek, Kim Jong-Un’s uncle and the then-point person in North Korea-China ties.

Recognizing the potential for reduced Chinese assistance, Pyongyang has begun looking for other financial options. Its longtime friend Russia, relishing these days in poking the West, would be a good choice but for its ongoing financial crisis. South Korea, which once provided significant aid to the North for little in return under former President Kim Dae Jung’s “Sunshine Policy,” will not be fooled again without significant concessions. With few options for aid, economic reform will by default become the North’s only real choice.

In fact, North Korea’s leaders have recently come to this realization and minor economic reforms allowing managers to set wages and farmers to keep more of their harvest have begun. Economic reform, however, cannot work in North Korea without political reform. Greater access to information and freer movement of people and goods are essential underpinnings of a reforming economy. These same reforms would also undermine the legitimacy of the regime and ultimately force it to choose between shutting down economic reform to maintain totalitarian control or allowing the spark of political change to ignite that will, over time, become inextinguishable. With no logical path forward, the DPRK government will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, as we may already be seeing in the recent wave of high-level executions.

The good news is that this collapse has the potential to be a win-win for nearly everyone. The North Korean people will end their terrible suffering, North and South Korea will be reunified under South Korean law, potentially following a UN-administered transitional period and referendum, the specter of a rogue nuclear nation at the heart of Asia will be removed, and China will gain a valuable trading partner in a unified Korea and access to Seoul’s high tech economy and northern Korea’s natural resources through high quality rail, road, and communications links. American troops could even be maintained below the 38th parallel to ease China’s fears of encirclement, with the long-term international relations of a unified Korea being up to the Korean people.

North Korea is a historical relic, destabilizing force, and human rights abomination. The Korean people and the world will be far better off without it.

Jamie Metzl is author of Genesis Code and a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council. He served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Follow him on Twitter @JamieMetzl.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm…..

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.38north.org/2018/07/lsigal072318/

The Washington Post’s Impatient Reporting

By: Leon V. Sigal
July 23, 2018
Commentary, Foreign Affairs

Talk about getting a story half-right. The Washington Post right-hand lead story on Sunday, July 22, reports that the lack of immediate progress from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s talks in Pyongyang last week “has frustrated the president, who has fumed at his aides in private even as he publicly hails the success of the negotiations.”

What the story got right was that negotiating denuclearization will take patience.

Pompeo, with the support of President Trump, has been trying to get that message across ever since July 1, when National Security Adviser John Bolton told “Face the Nation” that Pompeo will be discussing a “plan” with the North Koreans on “how to dismantle all of their WMD and ballistic missile programs in a year.” Bolton’s timeline turned denuclearization into “mission impossible.”

What the Post story got wrong was not bothering to report whether Pompeo was authorized to put any offers as well as demands on the negotiating table and, if not, whether the failure to do so caused the North to respond the way it did.

The Post quoted liberally from skeptics and opponents of negotiations in and out of the Trump administration. It cites a “half-dozen White House aides, State Department officials and diplomats” as sources. How many of the unnamed “White House aides” are close to Bolton? How many of the other insiders have had any experience negotiating with North Korea?

The story said, “U.S. negotiators have faced stiff resistance from a North Korean team practiced in the art of delay and obfuscation.” When officials met in early June with Pompeo’s interlocutor, Kim Yong Chol, to arrange his visit, Kim “said he was authorized only to receive a letter Trump had written to Kim Jong Un. When US officials tried to raise substantive issues, Kim Yong Chol resisted and kept asking for the letter. Unable to make headway, the Americans eventually handed over the letter and ended the meeting after only an hour.” During Pompeo’s July 6-7 visit to Pyongyang, when he raised the repatriation of US Korean war remains, “the North Koreans insisted they were still not ready to commit to specific plans, according to diplomats familiar with the discussions.” When a working-level meeting was arranged to discuss the issue at the demilitarized zone on July 12, “the North [Koreans], however, kept U.S. defense officials waiting for three hours before calling to cancel, the diplomats said.” They instead asked for a meeting at the general-officers level.

The story quotes North Korea’s over-the-top reaction to the Pompeo meeting,[1] denouncing the “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization” but ignored the substance of its objections:

The U.S. side never mentioned the issue of establishing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula which is essential for defusing tension and preventing a war. It took the position that it would even backtrack on the issue it had agreed on to end the status of war under certain conditions and excuses. As for the issue of announcing the declaration of the end of war at an early date, it is the first process of defusing tension and establishing a lasting peace regime on the Korean peninsula, and at the same time, it constitutes a first factor in creating trust between the DPRK and the U.S.

Reporters failed to ask: Did Pompeo neglect to address the key US commitment at the Singapore Summit “to build a lasting and stable peace regime” in Korea? Did that lead to the North’s delayed response on the US remains? Did the North Koreans raise the peace process during the June 15 general-officers’ meeting?

Contrast the Washington Post account with CNN’s report of a teleconference by the US commander in Korea, General Vincent Brooks, with the Aspen Strategy Forum on Friday, July 20. Despite all the talk about lack of progress, he noted that the peninsula had “gone now 235 days without a provocation,” and that he had seen a slowdown in the operating tempo of North Korean armed forces. “We’ve seen some changes in terms of how much time they’re spending in the field. Some of that might be attributed to fuel shortages; some of that might be because of the renewed engagement,” he said. He added, “We are confident we’ll succeed in transferring some of the remains. Not all of them, but some of them.”

Nor did Brooks hyperventilate about intelligence reports of continuing North Korean nuclear and missile production in advance of any detailed agreement: “We don’t overreact to things like that,” he said. “If those things are true, what does it mean to us as we go forward?… It could mean several things…We know what our end point is and we know what [they’ve] agreed to, so let’s keep our eye on that and not get distracted.”

Then Brooks delivered his main message:

Our challenge now, candidly, is to continue to make progress but to make that progress in an environment that is essentially void of trust, and without trust, we’ll find it difficult to move forward. So, building that trust while that pressure continues and while the efforts for diplomacy continue is the order of the day. In many ways, the lack of trust is the enemy we now have to defeat.

The North needs to take viable action to back up Kim Jong Un’s summit commitment to denuclearize, Brooks said, but he emphasized that building trust was not a job for the North Koreans alone. “There has to be demonstrable action in that direction, or we cannot be satisfied and we probably can’t be friends, and we probably won’t be at peace,” Brooks told the audience. “So, we have to see something moving in both directions simultaneously in order to get us there.”

That’s called diplomatic give-and-take, and whatever the impatience in some parts of Washington, it will take time.

[1]
“FM Spokesman on DPRK-U.S. High-Level Talks,” KCNA, July 7, 2018, emphasis added.

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Hummm…..

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.38north.org/2018/07/gshinjlee071818/

Back to the Basics: Above and Beyond CVID with North Korea

By: Gi-Wook Shin and Joyce Lee
July 18, 2018
Commentary, Foreign Affairs

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s high-profile post-summit visit to North Korea—the first to follow Kim and Trump’s initial meeting—ended without much progress, revealing the Trump administration’s struggle to craft a strategy that will jumpstart denuclearization efforts. Nearly a month after the June summit in Singapore, both the US and North Korea are still sending mixed messages as to whether and how they will approach denuclearization, fueling skepticism about North Korea’s willingness to give up its nuclear weapons and hinting at the US’s lack of a coherent strategy in dealing with the regime.

The US has continuously reiterated its goal, before and after the June summit, to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) of North Korea. Contrary to its spoken commitment, however, no discussion of CVID appears in official documents shared or co-drafted with North Korea, inviting criticism of Trump’s loud yet (allegedly) ineffectual negotiating skills from those who believe that a deal could and should be made on the firm basis of CVID.

The Trump administration may still be occupied with the concept of CVID. In truth, though, CVID is no longer a realistic goal with North Korea and it is highly unlikely that Kim would accede to such an arrangement. We need to face this reality and recognize that denuclearization will not and cannot be permanent or irreversible as long as there is a desire to reverse it. Furthermore, denuclearization will not by itself put an end to the longstanding North Korean threat to the outside world. Any denuclearization deal—big or small, vague or specific—with the current North Korean regime is almost certainly reversible, but such a deal with a normal North Korea would be considerably less so. In this regard, future negotiations with North Korea should focus on not just denuclearization but also the normalization of the country.

As the Trump administration enters a second round of negotiations with North Korea, we should keep in mind that our diplomatic approach should be in accord with this bigger, more comprehensive goal. Denuclearization is only one of many hurdles—along with the tackling of human rights violations that are of great concern to the US Congress—in achieving a non-aggressive, normal North Korea with no need for nuclear armament.

CVID? Let’s Be Honest
Despite all the hype and media frenzy, recent progress with North Korean denuclearization pales in comparison to some of the previous breakthroughs with the regime. North Korea promised denuclearization in 2000 and 2007 as well as in the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but none of these promises were enough to prevent the North from going nuclear. Under the framework of the Six-Party Talks from 2003 to 2008, North Korea pledged to denuclearize multiple times. The 1994 Agreed Framework engaged North Korea to freeze its graphite-moderated plutonium production reactors and related facilities and allow inspections in exchange for light water reactors—but officially collapsed in 2002 with the revelation of North Korea’s clandestine highly enriched uranium-based nuclear program. The recent destruction of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site is also reminiscent of 2008. That year, although not as significant a step forward as destroying test tunnels, North Korea demolished a cooling tower at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Complex to prove its commitment to freezing its nuclear weapons program—only to reopen the site five years later.

Too many past episodes have taught us that any nuclear deal with North Korea could quickly prove ephemeral, although the blame does not lie entirely with North Korea. Even if Trump could have gotten Kim to agree to the language of CVID, what would have been the real value of such deal when Kim, if not Trump himself, could easily scrap it at his convenience? CVID would have been useful in 2003 when it was first introduced as a framework for North Korea’s then still-nascent nuclear program. Today, we are no longer dealing with a country with nuclear ambitions, but one with clearly demonstrated nuclear capabilities. Kim’s shift of the country’s focus from nuclear development to economic development probably means that North Korea’s nuclear capability has reached a sufficient level. We need to be realistic when it comes to the likelihood (or unlikelihood) of the irreversible denuclearization of North Korea. North Korea has the techniques and manpower to assemble new nuclear weapons in just a few months or even weeks. At this very moment, North Korean nuclear engineers are likely training a future generation of nuclear experts so as to keep the country’s nuclear knowledge from ever being eradicated.

Verifiable denuclearization also faces great challenges. Unless Kim voluntarily produces a full declaration of North Korea’s existing nuclear infrastructure and stockpiles, it will be impossible to pinpoint all of the country’s nuclear and missile assets—which have, of course, grown drastically in recent years. Even with international or US inspectors free to roam the country—itself an extremely unlikely prospect—locating each and every uranium enrichment facility and hidden mobile missile launcher is simply unfeasible. A recent intelligence report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which points to evidence of North Korean efforts in the wake of the Singapore Summit to deceive the US about the true extent of its nuclear arsenal and infrastructure, further supports skepticism about the feasibility of CVID. Even with North Korea’s cooperation, the country’s disarmament process could take approximately ten years, according to a nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker who has visited North Korea’s facilities. Any goal of rapid denuclearization will be proven as unrealistic as it is aggressive. After all, North Korea witnessed what happened with Libya, Iraq and Ukraine and is determined that it would not share those countries’ miserable fate.

What is Kim Jong Un’s Agenda?
Much of pre-summit debate centered on the question of why Kim suddenly emerged from long-held silence to take the world’s center stage. Was he pressured by toughened sanctions, as Trump credits himself for? Or was it an expression of his confidence as a leader of a now de facto nuclear power, with more leverage for negotiation? Or has he simply been trying to buy time to avoid war—to get through Trump’s unpredictable and ruthless tenure as US president? In reality, all of the above have likely played some role in Kim’s seemingly surprising change of heart.

The North Korean economy appears to have especially suffered from China’s participation in the international campaign of maximum pressure sanctions, including the UN Security Council Resolution 2397, which forced an embargo on North Korean exports and a ratcheting down of essential imports to North Korea, such as petroleum and food. At the same time, North Korea has attained a satisfactory level of deterrence on the nuclear front. Thanks to his nuclear capabilities, Kim may have believed that he could now sit at the negotiating table with the US from a greater position of strength, if not quite its equal, and that Washington would be ready to offer legitimacy and rewards upon commitment to denuclearization. In the meantime, with a series of military threats from the US and the war of words with Trump—which stirred fears of war for many in both the US and Northeast Asia—Kim may have decided that it would be wise to avoid military conflict during Trump’s term. He may be just trying to run out Trump’s clock.

Whatever his motivations, Kim has already gained the upper hand. His vigorous “summit diplomacy” has greatly changed the political dynamics in the region. The North Korean leader first reached out to South Korea, taking advantage of its progressive government that was desperate to improve inter-Korean relations to reduce tension on the peninsula in time for the Winter Olympics. With South Korea’s backing, Kim secured a date for a then-unthinkable summit with the US, avoiding the imminent threat of war. Then, using the US card as leverage, he skillfully drew China closer to its side by holding three meetings with Xi, garnering Xi’s support and approval for North Korea’s strategy toward the US and demonstrating to the US that China had its back. Even Trump’s abrupt cancelation of the planned summit failed to catch North Korea off-guard. Rather, it triggered a surprising second round of the Kim-Moon summit, highlighting Kim’s strategic prowess.

In Singapore, Kim has shown the world that he should not be underestimated, while bringing home a propaganda victory to proclaim him as a “world-class” leader. He was also able to persuade Trump to suspend the US-ROK joint military exercises, assuaging North Korea’s longstanding paranoia—a move that has already created internal division in South Korea, while pleasing China. Even if Kim’s diplomatic success ends here, he can be assured of improved relations with Beijing and Seoul, which would make it difficult for them to actively rejoin the US’s maximum pressure campaign, including Trump’s renewed economic sanctions on North Korea—not to mention support US military action.

Is all of this bad news for the rest of us? Yes, if our goal is to defeat North Korea—but no, if we are willing to use these developments for the sake of a larger, long-term goal: building normal relations with North Korea and securing the country’s future as a normal state with no nuclear ambitions.

The Real Goal
In showcasing multiple summit meetings with Xi, Moon and Trump—all within the parameters of conventional “state-to-state” relationships—Kim strove to portray North Korea as a normal state and himself as a confident leader undertaking normal diplomacy. Such efforts may be insincere and ill-intentioned, but even so, our goal to engage North Korea in normal diplomacy should remain unchanged. Any information campaign seeking to transform the nation from the inside out should not only target the general public but also the Kim family. Allowing North Korea and Kim to experience firsthand what it feels like and means to be treated as a normal state and a normal leader according to the ordinary conventions of diplomacy is one—and perhaps the most important—means toward the transformation of North Korea, and the Kim-Trump summit deserves credit for doing just that.

While the Trump administration can easily be criticized for its failure to lay out a formal framework or a specific roadmap for denuclearization, we can still hope for more comprehensive changes that will enact necessary transformations in US-DPRK relations, stirring North Korea’s desire to slowly integrate into the international community even if doing so means forgoing nuclear weapons. Kim may be dreaming of becoming a normal state with nuclear weapons, but that is clearly not our agenda. Through a series of diplomatic engagements, we should help raise his appreciation for the benefits of being acknowledged, welcomed and protected by the international community to the point that he no longer feels compelled to rely on nuclear weapons for the survival of the regime and the state. Key stakeholders—China, South Korea and the US—should work together toward normalizing North Korea in all aspects—its economy, domestic and international politics, and its integration into international community and institutions.

Although there remains a strong belief among the stakeholders that denuclearization should be made on the firm basis of CVID, we should move above and beyond the rhetoric of CVID and go back to the basics. CVID will not be achieved in the current North Korean state—highly suspicious, mistrustful, and insecure—but it can be achieved under a normal state that no longer sees the need for nuclear armament for deterrence, survival or any other reason. All involved parties ought to hold this basic dictum in mind as we delve into the next round of diplomatic engagement with North Korea.

 

[Lilbitsnana]

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#Breaking: Press Secretary: Not only is #Trump looking to take away Brennan's security clearance, he’s looking into clearances of Comey, Clapper, Rice, McCabe.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/world/asia/us-military-afghanistan-advisers-.html

Insider Attack in Afghanistan Exposes Risks for Advisers at Center of Trump Strategy

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff
July 20, 2018

WASHINGTON — A Pentagon investigation into the death of an American soldier in Afghanistan is looking at whether an Army brigade that is at the center of the Trump administration’s new war strategy had followed proper security procedures designed to protect United States troops from insider attacks by Afghan forces they train.

Cpl. Joseph Maciel, who was killed on July 7, was part of a group of soldiers assigned to protect American military advisers with the First Security Forces Assistance Brigade. He was with a team of roughly 25 trainers and soldiers that was attacked in Tarinkot, a town in the Taliban heartland, by what a local councilman described as an Afghan soldier who fired on the Americans.

The brigade’s roughly 1,000 soldiers are among the first conventional American forces since 2014 that are being sent into active fighting zones. They are spread across the country in small teams to help Afghan troops with training, intelligence and logistics.

Senior Pentagon officials, including Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army chief of staff, and commanders at the American-led coalition’s headquarters in Kabul have declined to discuss details of the deadly shooting, which also wounded two American soldiers and an Afghan interpreter.

But two American military officers said the Pentagon was investigating whether the team in Tarinkot included enough security personnel to protect it from insider attacks. Since the shooting, American troops in the region have tightened security for units working alongside Afghan forces, according to a third military officer. All three spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

More than 2,200 American forces have died in Afghanistan since 2001. But American officials are sensitive about Corporal Maciel’s death, given the high profile of the advisory brigade, which is on its first deployment and is a central part of the Trump administration’s strategy to exit the war by escalating training of Afghan troops.

In June, the advisory brigade’s commander, Col. Scott Jackson, said senior Afghan forces had pledged to protect the American trainers. “On Day 1, they uniformly said the most important thing to them is the safety of their advisers,” Colonel Jackson told reporters.

The team in Tarinkot had been looking for new housing quarters to replace destroyed barracks where American, Dutch and Australian troops had been stationed years earlier.

Abdul Karim Khadimzai, a local councilman from the surrounding Oruzgan Province, said it was not clear why the Afghan soldier fired at the American troops. The Afghan soldier was taken into custody, and several others were also arrested, according to a military document obtained by The New York Times.

In a statement, a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yosuf Ahmadi, said that the assailant had acted alone — but that the militant group appreciated the killing.

Corporal Maciel, from South Gate, Calif., was assigned to the First Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, which is protecting the advisory brigade with so-called Guardian Angel soldiers to safeguard against insider attacks.

The attacks on American troops by allied Afghan soldiers are a grim feature of the war, and highlight cultural tensions between the partnered forces.

In some cases, investigations have found, the Taliban ordered the attacks, which peaked in 2012 and accounted for 15 percent of coalition troops who were killed or wounded in Afghanistan that year. Coalition forces were targeted in four insider attacks last year, including one that killed three United States soldiers in eastern Afghanistan.

The surge prompted the creation of the Guardian Angel program, which is designed to ensure that American military advisers working with Afghan troops are more fully protected from insider attacks. Soldiers assigned to Guardian Angel duties receive special training, carry loaded weapons and wear body armor and helmets whenever American advisers are working with Afghans — even when inside secure bases.

As they have moved closer to the front lines, American troops in the southern city of Kandahar and in Oruzgan, Zabul and Daikundi Provinces work under stricter security guidelines when training Afghan soldiers. In some areas, Army troops are required to assign at least one Guardian Angel soldier to each military adviser; in others, several Guardian Angel soldiers might protect a small group of American forces that are working with a larger number of Afghans.

According to two additional American military officers, the team in Tarinkot was using more relaxed security protocols. More Afghans than were expected showed up for the July 7 mission, outnumbering the Americans and making security more difficult, according to one of the officers.

Another one of the officers, who has worked with the advisory brigade, cited intelligence that was shared among American units in southern Afghanistan weeks earlier and that indicated that the Taliban were planning an insider attack at a small base near Kandahar, where the team was based. But the intelligence reports did not mention Tarinkot.

In recent months, the advisory brigade had stepped up its security measures to ward off insider attacks and to ensure that the Afghan soldiers were properly screened before working alongside American troops, the officer said.

Some of those measures included seizing and searching the cellphones of Afghan soldiers for any connections to the Taliban, the officer said. He said the Afghan soldiers who were training in Tarinkot then started bringing backup phones and concealing them from the American advisers.

Even before the July 7 attack, two Defense Department officials said, the brigade was struggling to find its footing — not just because its soldiers had recently arrived, but also because of its new role in areas of Afghanistan that American forces had not been in years.

Once they settled in, which took months, the advisers worked with little guidance and little understanding of the Afghan forces they were supposed to be training, said the Defense Department officials, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Jason Dempsey, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said it was unlikely the advisory brigade would have a lasting influence.

“They’re probably just figuring out who’s in the zoo just a few months before they have to leave, and then the next group will have to do this all over again,” Mr. Dempsey said.

But the next group is not expected to arrive in Afghanistan until three months after Colonel Jackson’s brigade leaves this fall, one of the military officials said. That means many Afghan troops will go without American training until then.

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

A version of this article appears in print on July 20, 2018, on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: American’s Death Exposes Risks in New Aghan Plan.


Related Coverage

U.S. Soldier Killed in Afghanistan Was Part of Guardian Angel Unit
July 11, 2018

U.S.-Led Mission in Afghanistan Lacks Troops for New Strategy
Nov. 9, 2017

Training Quick and Staffing Unfinished, Army Units Brace for Surging Taliban
Jan. 26, 2018

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.atimes.com/measuring-the-status-of-chinese-military-modernization/

China | Opinion

Measuring the status of Chinese military modernization

By William Holland July 23, 2018 1:56 PM (UTC+8)

Economics remains the guiding linchpin in measuring the broad status of China’s military modernization efforts, but this effort should not be performed in isolation. If US combat commanders want to measure the strength and reach of China’s military power, they will need to assess three interlocking components of Beijing’s strategic mindset.

First, proper characterization of Beijing’s current military strategy reveals a China interested in regional power projection. Its force-modernization efforts are guiding transformation efforts into a professionalized force with technologically advanced air and naval capabilities for sustained engagements. Initially aiming to project and protect regional national interests, Beijing invariably seeks to shape the decisions of competitors, parlaying with regional actors while shaping regional security architecture favorable to itself. This objective is achieved by fielding C4ISR (command, control, communication, computing, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities.

Second, as of this writing, China does not possess sufficient national power to act as a regional hegemon, for a national military strategy of regional hegemony would possess sustained influence to exclude regional competitors. In the case of China, it would mean adopting sufficient power to exclude US influence from East Asia. To prevail against other hegemons, China needs to succeed in long-term conflict with the US and its regional alliance members. This means major, sustained conflict with Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and the US simultaneously.

Third, current Chinese military power configuration possesses global aspects whose trends can strengthen sustained engagement abroad, if Beijing’s political base can sustain heavy political strain. This means Beijing must perform extensive military engagements abroad, exercises and arms sales beyond its immediate region, sustained forward presence in hostile territory, and unrestrained global reach – all while performing a constant pace of global operations.

For Beijing to compete with the US abroad, it must shape its modernization efforts within a political framework determining whether its military predominately concerns itself with conducting regional operations or the pursuit of global aims.

Currently, China does not have sufficient economic or political power to sustain global engagements. For this to change favorably to China, its political leadership would need to examine the supremacy of ethnic Han leadership as the final composition of an efficacious mythology eradicating a century of humiliation while overcoming managed liberalization schemes in its current capital accounts.

It means an examination of the political composition of Chinese power.


Asia Times is not responsible for the opinions, facts or any media content presented by contributors. In case of abuse, click here to report.

China Opinion Chinese military expansionism Military Modernization People's Liberation Army power projection us hegemony

William Holland
William Holland is North American recruiter for Wikistrat global consultancy monitoring Pakistan's nuclear program.

6 Comments

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44923575

Somalia's al-Shabab carries out attack on military base

5 hours ago

Militant Islamists have stormed a military base in southern Somalia after detonating a suicide car bomb.

Al-Shabab says its fighters killed 27 soldiers in the raid, about 50km (31 miles) from the port city of Kismayo.

A government spokesman confirmed to BBC Somali that the militants had seized the base, before soldiers retook it after heavy fighting. Six soldiers and 87 militants were killed, he said.

Al-Shabab has been waging an insurgency in Somalia for more than 10 years.

A 22,000-strong African Union force is in the country to help the government fight the al-Qaeda-linked militants.

The US military also has a presence of several hundred troops in Somalia to carry out special operations and to train government forces.

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Some Somali government soldiers "fled into the jungles" following the attack on the base in Baar Sanguni, an al-Shabab spokesman, Abdiasis Abu Musab, said.

The sound of the blast and shooting was so loud that residents in the town of Jamame, about 70km from Kismayo, said they heard it, Reuters news agency reports.

"We heard a huge blast after early morning prayers. Then heavy exchange of gunfire followed. It was in the direction of Baar Sanguni," resident Osman Abdullahi was quoted as saying.

Government spokesman Aden Isaq Ali told BBC Somali the attack was repelled after the military sent reinforcements.

Troops were pursuing the militants, and had taken control of a key bridge, he added.

Al-Shabab did not say how many fighters it lost in the battle.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/7D5B/production/_100319023_somalia_control_640_v5-nc.png

The militant group carried out an assault in the same area last month.

At the time, it said its fighters had killed a US soldier, two Kenyans and nine Somali troops.

Al-Shabab has been driven out of many urban areas since 2011, however it still controls territory in rural areas and carries out gun attacks and bombings on military and civilian targets.

A truck attack in the capital, Mogadishu, on 14 October 2017 killed at least 500 people, in the deadliest bombing in Somalia.

A man accused of leading an al-Shabab unit which carried out the attack was sentenced to death in February.

 

[Shacknasty Shagrat]

A step in the sane direction.


SS


Steve Herman
‏Verified account @W7VOA
24m24 minutes ago

Steve Herman Retweeted 38 North

This will be seen as an important first step towards fulfilling a commitment made at the June 12 #TrumpKimSummit.

'
38 North
‏ @38NorthNK

New commercial satellite imagery of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station indicates that the #DPRK has begun dismantling key facilities, including the rail-mounted processing building and the nearby rocket engine test stand.

https://twitter.com/38NorthNK/status/1021483239091961858

 

[Housecarl]

A step in the sane direction.


SS


Steve Herman
‏Verified account @W7VOA
24m24 minutes ago

Steve Herman Retweeted 38 North

This will be seen as an important first step towards fulfilling a commitment made at the June 12 #TrumpKimSummit.

'
38 North
‏ @38NorthNK

New commercial satellite imagery of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station indicates that the #DPRK has begun dismantling key facilities, including the rail-mounted processing building and the nearby rocket engine test stand.

https://twitter.com/38NorthNK/status/1021483239091961858

We can only hope....

 

[Lilbitsnana]

Lee Hudson
‏ @LeeHudson_
32m32 minutes ago

This just in: Congress will prohibit the sale of #F35s to Turkey until a report is submitted on purchasing the S-400. The Hill is evaluating all foreign military sales to #Turkey not just @LockheedMartin's F-35.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://spacenews.com/air-force-gets-first-real-look-at-future-icbm-designs/

Air Force gets first real look at future ICBM designs

Boeing and Northrop Grumman discussed proposed ideas with the Air Force last month as the service faces a 2019 deadline to specify requirements for the GBSD ground-based strategic deterrent.

by Sandra Erwin — July 22, 2018

WASHINGTON — Boeing and Northrop Grumman have presented design options to the U.S. Air Force for a new intercontinental ballistic missile. The companies are pitted in a head-to-head competition to build hundreds of ICBMs that will replace decades-old Minuteman 3 missiles.

Both firms recently discussed their proposed ideas with Air Force leaders as the service faces a 2019 deadline to specify requirements and map out a procurement strategy for the ground-based strategic deterrent, or GBSD.

The companies submitted what is known as “trade studies” to help the Air Force draft program requirements before it releases a final “request for proposals” possibly a year from now.

“We offered the Air Force cost and performance trades for a deterrent that will address emerging and future threats,” Frank McCall, vice president of Boeing Strategic Deterrence Systems, said on Friday in a news release.

Carol Erikson, Northrop Grumman vice president for the GBSD program, confirmed in an email to SpaceNews that the company also submitted trade studies.

“Last month, the Northrop Grumman team presented the Air Force with recommendations for defining the GBSD requirements,” Erikson said. “This key program milestone was the culmination of years of analysis aimed at helping the Air Force finalize its GBSD design.”

McCall said the Air Force as this stage of the program is looking for “opportunities for cost savings” and the studies submitted by the industry will help to set priorities.
Later this year the Air Force is scheduled to begin a “system functional review” that is required in major weapon acquisitions to ensure that goals set for the program can be met within the projected budget and schedule.

An estimated $80 billion program, the GBSD is considered a “must win.” Either Boeing or Northrop Grumman, if selected, will own the U.S. strategic missile franchise for decades to come. The stakes also are high for engine suppliers. Each missile is powered by three solid-propellant rocket motors, and only two companies in the United States are able to produce these large rocket motors: Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital ATK). Aerojet has warned the Air Force and Congress that it needs at least one third of GBSD solid rocket motors production work to remain a viable supplier.

GBSD is seen as a major test for the Defense Department, which has not designed a new ICBM since the early days of the Cold War. The Minuteman was conceived in the late 1950s and first deployed in the early 1960s. The Minuteman 3 was introduced in 1970. It has been modernized over time, and the Air Force concluded it needs to start replacing aging missiles in the 2020s for safety reasons and to ensure it has a modern system to counter Russia’s nuclear threat.

The current ICBM force consists of 450 Minuteman 3 missiles located at bases in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. The Air Force said it plans to acquire more than 650 missiles under the GBSD program.

After a three-way competition, the Air Force in August 2017 awarded a $349 million contract to Boeing and a $328 million contract to Northrop Grumman to mature the designs. If all goes as planned, competitors will present preliminary design reviews to the Air Force in 2020.

24 Comments

 

[Lilbitsnana]

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2h2 hours ago

#BREAKING: IDF confirms #Syrian Sukhoi Aircraft downed over the DMZ. #Israel #Syria


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55m55 minutes ago

Report: The #Syrians threaten to fire rockets at #Haifa and the surrounding area in response to the plane's downfall. They claimed that #Israel knew it was clearly a human error and that the #Syrian plane had no aggressive intentions. #Syria


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Seems to be confirmed that he died. #Syria #Israel


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2nd pilot MIA for now. #Syria #Israel


more details at link:
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ning-act-getting-closer&p=6955225#post6955225

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm…..

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://warontherocks.com/2018/07/the-real-roots-of-germanys-defense-spending-problem/

The Real Roots of Germany’s Defense Spending Problem

Barbara Kunz
July 24, 2018
Commentary

The 1970s were a decade of anti-war movements. Willy Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize for his détente policy toward the Eastern Bloc – and West German defense spending peaked at 3.13 percent of GDP in 1975. Clearly, those days are long gone.

Today, German-U.S. relations are at a low point, due in large part to President Donald Trump’s attacks on Germany’s defense spending. Trump has zoomed in on Berlin’s failure to live up to NATO’s 2 percent target, which the alliance adopted at its 2014 Wales Summit in response to the Ukraine crisis. The U.S. president repeatedly insists that many European countries, Germany in particular, do not invest enough in defense – a criticism that is anything but new. Demands for more German spending are no longer exclusively voiced in Washington. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently joined Trump in calling for Germany to spend more on defense.

In recent years, Germany has actually increased its spending by non-negligible amounts, and that trend will continue. Yet there can be no doubt that there is a problem with German defense spending.

More spending is needed, but the real issue is not with the percentage of GDP spent. The underlying problem is that despite the recent talk of “doing more,” Germany still lacks a strategic approach to security and defense – not only for itself, but also for Europe. The lack of financial resources for the German armed forces is only a symptom of this deeper issue, which has its roots in domestic political disagreements and Germany’s history and strategic culture. Spending more will not be the panacea. The real task at hand is to find a model for “European defense 2.0,” involving both NATO and the European Union, that can work toward both collective defense and stabilization south of Europe.

How Did We Get Here?
German defense spending was high until the end of the Cold War (2.4 percent of GDP in West Germany in 1989). Starting in the early 1990s, the defense budget shrank dramatically. In a post-Cold War strategic environment without any imminent threat, reunified Germany took full advantage of the peace dividend. Governments of all political stripes cut funding for the armed forces. The 2011 reform of the Bundeswehr, or German armed forces, brought about fundamental change: Not only was compulsory military service suspended and the number of personnel reduced, crisis management operation scenarios became the basis for planning. This implied inter alia that units were considered fully equipped if they had 70 percent of the necessary materiel at their disposal (and would borrow the rest from other units if needed during exercises or deployments). The result was the hollow Bundeswehr structures of today.

Today, investments in the Bundeswehr are desperately needed. For years, the annual report by the German Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces has painted a bleak picture of the state of the armed forces. Shortcomings affect personnel, materiel, and infrastructure. Equipment problems in particular receive considerable media attention, such as when it became known in late 2017 that none of the German navy’s six submarines were working. Earlier, a study by McKinsey had found that the Bundeswehr’s procurement system was dysfunctional.

This shortfall in investment has begun to change thanks to Vladimir Putin. Earlier warning signs like the 2007 cyber attack on Estonia and the 2008 Georgian war had little impact on German defense policies, but the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a watershed moment. Territorial defense and deterrence re-entered the picture for NATO, and thus for its member-states. Germany, for its part, became a framework nation leading a battalion battle group in Lithuania as a part of the alliance’s Enhanced Forward Presence. These new commitments came in addition to existing ones in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and elsewhere, putting a heavy strain on the Bundeswehr. With the upcoming adoption of the 2018 “Conception of the Bundeswehr,” that is, the operationalization of the 2016 White Paper on German Security Policy, the return of territorial defense will become official. Crisis management operations like those in Afghanistan or Mali and collective defense will officially be considered tasks of equal importance. In reality, however, defense planners will remain focused on collective defense. It will, of course, require considerable investment to both fill existing holes and make the Bundeswehr fit for its new tasks.

Against this backdrop, Germany’s previous government (composed of the same parties as the current one) decided to increase the budget after the Wales Summit from 35.1 billion Euro (41.16 billion USD) in 2016 to 42 billion Euro (49.25 billion USD) in 2021, when the current election period ends. This will amount to slightly under 1.3 percent of GDP if the economy grows as predicted. Many consider this insufficient in light of the needs at hand. To reach 2 percent by 2024, assuming linear economic growth, Germany would have to double its spending. Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen now advocates spending 1.5 percent of GDP in 2025, which would still require spending more than currently planned.

Deep-Rooted Political Divides
But even that 1.5 percent target faces political obstacles. The Bundeswehr’s shortcomings and security challenges notwithstanding, there is no consensus in Germany on the need to address these issues by spending more money. Not only is the opposition divided, but the rift goes right through the ruling grand coalition composed of Christian Democrats (CDU and CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD). While the Christian Democrats – notably Chancellor Angela Merkel and von der Leyen – argue for increased spending, Social Democrats warn against an “armament spiral” in Europe. During the 2017 election campaign, the SPD resolutely positioned itself against the 2 percent objective (although it already was part of the government coalition at the time of the Wales Summit). Leading representatives of the party describe spending 2 percent of GDP on defense as “wrong,” saying it has been imposed on Germany by the extremely unpopular U.S. president. Equating more defense investment with acquiescing to Trump certainly doesn’t make things easier for proponents of higher spending. Finally, critics note that if Germany were to reach 2 percent, which would amount to about 80 billion euros, it would have the largest defense budget in Europe, and by far. In light of the country’s history, particularly its role in starting two world wars, leading Social Democrats see this as a problem and argue that ramping up spending could reawaken fears of a militarist and imperialist Germany. The disagreements over defense spending have deep roots in Germany’s history and strategic culture.

There is no unified German take on the changed security environment and the solutions it requires. This is true not just for the political class, but for society at large. The debate around defense spending illustrates this divide. In a 2017 poll by the Körber Foundation, 52 percent of respondents said that Germany should continue to refrain from getting involved in international crises. The same poll reveals that 32 percent want to see increased defense spending (13 percent want a decrease; 51 percent want it unchanged). Although the annexation of Crimea and various terrorist attacks throughout Europe in the last few years came as a shock, Germans do not necessarily conclude that that solution should (or for that matter, can) be found in the military realm. Anything related to the Bundeswehr remains complicated, as public opinion is highly skeptical. It certainly doesn’t help that Germany’s biggest military effort in recent years – Afghanistan – can hardly be considered a success. As an anecdotal illustration of German strategic culture: No one in Germany called for a military response in the Middle East after the 2016 terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market – in contrast to French reflexes after the 2015 attacks in Paris.

Still, the defense spending debate has been getting increasingly intense since 2014 and has begun to receive considerable importance in media reporting. Although the armed forces still hardly have any larger constituency in the political class, and defense experts are scarce among politicians, we are hearing more voices than just the usual suspects. Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier – originally SPD, but nonpartisan in his official capacity – recently declared that “Europe has to take on more responsibility in NATO.” In the expert community, the need for more spending is by and large the general consensus. The recent NATO Summit certainly led to an intensified debate. The rift within the ruling grand coalition nevertheless remains and will likely block progress in the foreseeable future.

Doing More…But to What End?
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a turning point for NATO, which soon after adopted the Wales guidelines and shifted its focus back toward territorial defense. However, much more happened that year within Germany’s defense debates. Just a couple of weeks before the Crimea crisis — and certainly without expecting that old-fashioned territorial war would soon be back in Europe — Berlin rolled out its new language on security policy. This was at least a partial response to strong criticism of German attitudes, perhaps most notably its 2011 abstention from the United Nations Security Council vote on authorizing military intervention in Libya. Then-Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski famously declared that he feared German power less than German inactivity – a point to be understood against the backdrop of Poland’s painful history with its neighbor to the west. Calls for more German engagement were (and are) also a recurrent theme in France, Germany’s key partner in Europe. Following many debates among analysts, the incoming Grand coalition government launched its new discourse in early 2014 at the Munich Security Conference. At its heart is the idea that Berlin wants to assume more responsibility, which has since become a sort of mantra for German politicians and officials.

The problem, of course, is that “doing more” or “assuming responsibility” does not a strategy make. Herein lies the real problem with German security and defense policy. Things have certainly evolved since 2014, notably with the 2016 White Paper, but defining a German approach to strategy remains a work in progress.

Today, there is a sense of stagnation in the German debate and, to some extent, a sense of complacency with what has been achieved since 2014. Outside Germany, and notably in France, there is in turn growing frustration. Four years on, it is increasingly clear that hopes for the “normalization” of German strategic culture (and perhaps automatic convergence with French approaches) were exaggerated.

It is in this larger context that the debate surrounding German defense spending should be seen. Accusing Berlin of not contributing to international security would be utterly unfair – as Supreme Allied Commander Europe Curtis Scaparotti recently noted, (while simultaneously calling for more engagement). For example, as of July 2018 1,136 German soldiers serve in Afghanistan and more than 1,000 in Mali).

Moreover, more engagement need not necessarily translate into military operations. As Niklas Helwig argued in War on the Rocks last year, Berlin is undertaking a number of efforts to push Europe toward deeper defense integration. Within the Atlantic Alliance, Berlin is pursuing its Framework Nations Concept. Beyond defense, there’s also Germany’s role in attempting to solve the Ukraine conflict and its 2016 OSCE chairmanship.

Holistic German Leadership is Needed
Yet with European defense at the crossroads and Europeans in need of updated approaches to their security, the debate is still focused on only parts of the problem. The big picture is missing: How will Europe’s security be ensured in the decades to come? How can Europeans tackle threats to the east and to the south (as well as to the north in the Arctic), and how can they engage in both collective defense and crisis management with single sets of forces in times of scarce resources? Finally, how can Europe’s security be ensured if the transatlantic relationship deteriorates further? The dots between these various debates are never connected, and there is no political leadership prepared to connect them. Since both NATO and the EU Common Security and Defense Policy (the new European Defense Fund being the only exception) are intergovernmental, updating the old European approach to defense is first and foremost a task for the capitals. It is for them to do the thinking and to provide ideas and leadership. As of today, however, there are merely islands of leadership, such as Paris pushing forward its European Intervention Initiative or the European Commission with its European Defense Fund.

Germany could – and should – be much more present in this context. So far, it is mainly reacting to others. Holistic German political leadership based on thought-out and well-balanced concepts would be helpful. Due to its size as well as its middle-ground positions on many issues (in particular, defense priorities to the east and to the south, collective defense, and crisis management), Germany could play an important role in connecting the dots of Europe’s defense debate. Indeed, among the larger European states, Germany has the most potential to unite Europeans behind a common strategy. This strategy must take all threats and challenges seriously and incorporate close cooperation between the European Union and NATO. Moreover, as Ronja Kempin and I have argued in these pages, making the link between European strategic autonomy and transatlantic burden-sharing is crucial. But, in light of an evolving transatlantic relationship, ideas for future European defense must also acknowledge the possibility that the United States will no longer be there to guarantee the continent’s security.

Against that backdrop, the exclusive focus on Germany reaching the 2 percent target is not only annoying; it is counterproductive: It suggests that the German – and thus, by extension, European – defense problem can be solved through money alone. The current problem is not only about capabilities. It is a political leadership problem, a reflection of a lack of willingness to accept realities, and a lack of ideas. Such leadership is currently absent, but Americans and other Europeans should request it from Berlin. To provide it, Germany will have to do its homework: It will need to work on its approach to defense and strategy and explain to its citizens and large portions of its political class that defense is not just a nice-to-have for security wonks but a real must-have in today’s world. Of course, Germany will still have to invest in its armed forces so the Bundeswehr can take on required tasks. But defense spending is only a means to an end, not the end in itself.

Barbara Kunz is a research fellow at IFRI’s study committee on French-German Relations. She works on European defense and security, particularly in France, Germany and the Nordic countries. She teaches at Paris’ Sorbonne University and was a visiting scholar at SAIS’ Center for Transatlantic Relations.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.wtnh.com/news/internati...wn-jet-as-gov-t-forces-reach-golan/1319766804

International

Syria: Israel shoots down jet as gov't forces reach Golan

By: The Associated Press
Posted: Jul 24, 2018 08:57 AM EDT
Updated: Jul 24, 2018 08:58 AM EDT

BEIRUT (AP) - Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet it said had breached its airspace on Tuesday, as Syrian forces reached the Golan Heights frontier for the first time in seven years.

The Israeli military said it monitored the advance of the Syrian Sukhoi fighter jet and shot it down with a pair of Patriot missiles after it penetrated Israeli airspace by about two kilometers (1.2 miles).

Syrian forces have been battling rebels and Islamic State militants at the frontier with Israel in recent weeks.

Tuesday marked the first time government forces reached the border fence with the U.N.'s Disengagement Observer Force at the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

It was the first time Israel shot down a Syrian jet in four years.

Israel's military said there had been an increase in internal fighting in Syria since the morning hours, including intensified activity by the Syrian Air Force.

Minutes before the reported shootdown, Syria's state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV was broadcasting footage from the fence demarcating the U.N. buffer zone between Syrian and Israeli forces inside the Golan Heights. A U.N. observer post could be seen just on the other side of the fence.

The camera showed an Israeli post 400 meters (440 yards) away.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967. The U.N. deployed a peacekeeping force between the two sides in 1974.

It is the first time government forces have taken up positions along the frontier since an uprising against President Bashar Assad swept through the country in 2011. Islamic State militants later seized territory from rebels along the frontier region.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.rferl.org/a/three-injured-in-rocket-attacks-on-kabul/29387712.html

Afghanistan

Three Injured In Rocket Attacks On Kabul

July 24, 2018 10:34 GMT
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan

At least three people have been injured after several rockets hit the Afghan capital.

Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that three rockets were fired into Kabul’s fifth district on July 24, injuring three people.

He said the rockets were fired from an unknown location.

He added that the police have launched an investigation into the explosions.

The rocket attacks come two days after a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of Kabul international airport, killing at least 14 people.

The Islamic State (IS) extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack , saying a suicide bomber targeted a crowd celebrating the return of Afghanistan’s controversial Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Dostum, a powerful former warlord accused of human rights abuses, had left the airport minutes before the blast.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...er-strike-group-deployment-strategy-has-begun

Mattis's New Unpredictable Carrier Strike Group Deployment Strategy Has Begun

The new carrier strike group employment concept aims to keep adversaries guessing by making deployments far less predictable and shorter in length.


By Tyler Rogoway
July 23, 2018

Early last May we received clear indications that Secretary of Defense James Mattis was looking to radically overhaul the way the Navy deploys its forces, and most importantly, their carrier strike groups—the most powerful flotillas on the sea. Now, the first example of this new strategy has come to pass, and it is likely just a preview of what's to come.

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CVN-81, The Fourth Ford Class Supercarrier, Is Slated To Cost A Whopping $15B
By Tyler Rogoway
Posted in The War Zone

Navy Could Extend The Life Of USS Nimitz Past 50 Years To Maintain 12 Carrier Fleet
By Tyler Rogoway
Posted in The War Zone

These Are The Images Of Three U.S. Supercarriers In Formation You've Been Waiting For
By Tyler Rogoway
Posted in The War Zone

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America's nuclear supercarriers have historically deployed in a highly predictable and cyclical fashion, with cruises lasting six to nine months that follow predictable routes. In recent years, there has been a bit more flexibility built into the system for surge operations, but a wily and cunning modus operandi it is not. Mattis described the new plan as “dynamic force employment" and claims it is necessary in a new age of great power competition, stating the following to House lawmakers:

“The way you do this is ensure that preparation for great power competition drives not simply a rotational schedule that allows me to tell you, three years from now, which aircraft carrier will be where in the world... When we send them out, it may be for a shorter deployment. There will be three carriers in the South China Sea today, and then, two weeks from now, there’s only one there, and two of them are in the Indian Ocean.

They’ll be home at the end of a 90-day deployment. They will not have spent eight months at sea, and we are going to have a force more ready to surge and deal with the high-end warfare as a result, without breaking the families, the maintenance cycles — we’ll actually enhance the training time.”

This is precisely what the Truman Carrier Strike Group just did. USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), USS Normandy (CG-60), USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) and USS Forrest Sherman (DDG-98) just spent three months in the 5th and 6th Fleets' areas of responsibility, returning to Norfolk on July 21st, 2018. A number of other surface combatants assigned to their strike group have remained deployed on unique tasking.

Truman's homecoming was a far more subdued event than the usual homecoming spectacle. The Navy specifically downplayed the ship's return to port after its truncated cruise. Rear Admiral Gene Black, commander of the Truman Carrier Strike Group, described the change in deployment structure and the lack of a major homecoming as such to local reporters:

"You’ll notice, I’m in a working uniform and captain is in his flight suit. We don’t have any balloon makers. We don’t have a band and all that. This is a working port...

What you’re seeing is the Navy’s execution of dynamic force employment in support of the national defense strategy,” Black said. “We’re strategically predictable and operationally unpredictable...

We’re in until we’re told to sail,” Black said. “We could deploy next week and go right back over to sixth fleet or fifth fleet. We’re 100 percent ready to go, we’re fully mission capable. Based on the performance I’ve seen to date, there’s no challenge you can throw at my sailors that they won’t crush.”

Black also described the Truman's most recent deployment and the new cruise format as such in a Navy release:

"I couldn't be more proud of this strike group team's performance over more than three months of operating in a highly-dynamic environment across two theaters... We carried out the full spectrum of missions from sustained combat flight operations to training and integration with NATO allies and regional partners.

Our strike group's missions have demonstrated we are inherently maneuverable and flexible while remaining operational unpredictable to any potential adversary... This epitomizes the Navy's dynamic force employment concept and shows this strike group is ready and capable of accomplishing any mission, at any time, as our nation directs."

Truman and her escorts will continue to train and be at the ready to deploy at any given time in the coming months, and they could feasibly redeploy tomorrow as an unannounced planned operation or due to a crisis.

Overall, the strategy is meant to inject unpredictability into America's sea-going force. In the process, it could make life at home for sailors and their families more bearable. Additional training and maintenance opportunities may also prove valuable under this new plan.

But how exactly this dynamic force employment strategy will actually coexist with the Navy's traditional 36-month supercarrier operations cycle is yet to be seen. Under this traditional operational structure, carrier strike groups usually deploy for roughly eight months, execute lower intensity training and receive heavy maintenance for 16 months, and sit ready for a relatively short-notice deployment for another year. Predictability is the cornerstone of this scheduling plan, with air wing workups, major ship maintenance, manning levels, and pretty much everything else planned in parallel to it.

As Defense News's David Larder article on the subject explains, the strategy may provide more reactionary capacity and it may also ease the mechanical pressure being applied to an aging fleet, but it also sacrifices upfront presence and deterrence. Also, there is no getting around it, that if the strike groups do surge it could result in cascading disruptions down the line in terms of everything from operational budgets to the time ships will need to spend in port or drydock for maintenance.

90-day deployments also may be unrealistic in the long-run because of just how long it takes a carrier to transit vast stretches of ocean. More than half that time can be eaten up just reaching a flotilla's intended station. Whether the return on investment makes sense, under those circumstances, is up for debate.

Really, the size, cost, complexity, and rigid maintenance requirements of the nuclear supercarrier make such a strategy hard to realize over the long term. This is just another reason why the Navy needs to field smaller aircraft carriers, potentially with conventional power plants, instead of an all-nuclear-powered supercarrier force that is already becoming dangerously unaffordable.

We'll have to see just how sustainable all this is with the current hardware in the Navy's inventory and a very strong habit of highly predictable carrier operations. But if the Navy ends up liking what it sees operationally speaking, it may realize that more deployable and smaller carriers may be necessary to maintain Mattis's dynamic force employment strategy in the decades to come.

In the meantime, welcome home to the Truman Carrier Strike Group! It may have been a shorter deployment, but a deployment all the same.
Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm…..

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44924389

Pakistan election raises fears of 'creeping coup'

By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, Islamabad
23 July 2018

A day before Pakistan's 11th national election, the country's dream of undiluted democracy appears to be receding - again.

In its 70-year history, Pakistan has alternated between quasi-democracy and pure military rule. In the process it has become embroiled in international conflicts and morphed into a home base for Islamist militancy.

Over the past decade, Pakistanis have witnessed democracy at its most undiluted thus far, but it's now under threat from what some say appears to be a "democratic coup" of sorts.

And just as in the past, the country's powerful military establishment remains the chief suspect behind the fresh round of political manipulation.

In the past, the military used to either stage a direct coup or use special powers to sack an elected government and then manipulate elections to ensure it wasn't re-elected.

In 2008, those special powers were done away with, leading to a first in 2013: an elected government completing its five-year term.

But since then the tide appears to have reversed, and critics say the establishment is resorting to more primitive tactics to recover its edge.

Media caption
Pakistan's election: Five things to know

A three-pronged approach is in evidence.

First, as some legal experts have observed, the courts have selectively applied the law to clip the wings of the outgoing government, thereby creating an advantage for its rivals.

On Sunday, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court said that the ISI intelligence service was interfering in the judiciary, and had pressured judges not to release convicted ex-PM Nawaz Sharif ahead of the vote.

Mr Sharif was disqualified from office by the Supreme Court on questionable grounds last year, and has since been sentenced to 10 years in jail by a trial court, in a ruling which one legal expert described as an embarrassment to his community.

According to the Dawn newspaper, Justice Siddiqui told the Rawalpindi Bar Association he was not afraid of speaking out against the powerful ISI, saying: "I am not afraid even if I am assassinated."

Second, authorities have either looked the other way as banned militant groups have joined the election process, or have actively helped them to do so.

And third, the military has been given what many call an obscenely large role in administering the voting process on election day.

More on Pakistan's election
Why the election matters
Viewpoint: Pakistan's dirtiest election in years
The acid attack survivor running for parliament
The assault on Pakistan's media

The first two stages have already unfolded enough for one to see their preliminary results.

Many candidates from Mr Sharif's PML-N have been lured to leave the party and either join the PTI party of rival and former cricketer Imran Khan, or stand as independents.

There is evidence that those who have resisted such demands have faced physical violence, had their businesses attacked or have been disqualified from office.

Other parties with a stake in undiluted democracy, such as the PPP party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, are also under threat. The party is now led by her widower, former President Asif Zardari, and fronted by their son, Bilawal Zardari Bhutto.

Some PPP leaders have been named in renewed money-laundering allegations, while authorities in the field have been accused of disrupting its election campaign. The party, as well as other secular groups, also faces the prospect of militant attacks.

One such party, the leftist Awami National Party, lost a prime candidate in a suicide attack in Peshawar last week. Two more candidates, including one from the PTI, have since been killed in similar attacks.

In Balochistan, a secular candidate, Gizen Marri, has been battling travel restrictions and house arrest, while a man linked by many to sectarian militancy, Shafiq Mengal, is free to stand for election in a neighbouring constituency.

Mr Marri is being stopped probably because of his strong views on provincial rights, an idea which runs contrary to the military's strictly centrist approach.

But Mr Mengal's reported links to the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militant group and his alleged involvement in several attacks in Balochistan are being ignored, secular parties say, apparently because he has been acting as the military's proxy against Baloch nationalists.


The JuD group of Hafiz Saeed, a militant with a US bounty on his head, is running candidates under a different party banner


In June, Pakistan removed another leader with LeJ links, Maulana Mohammad Ahmad Ludhianvi, from its terror watch list, apparently to free him up to lead his group in the election campaign, which it is contesting under a different name.

The Jamatud Dawa (JuD) group, whose leader Hafiz Saeed is on a UN terror blacklist, has also been allowed to field candidates under the banner of a different party.

Mr Saeed is accused of being behind co-ordinated attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people in November 2008.

More recently, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the founder of the Harkatul Mujahideen (HuM) militant group, ended his long hibernation to announce his support for Imran Khan's PTI party. He is on a US terrorism black list.

Taken together, all of these moves point to a scenario where left-wing or pro-democracy parties are being squeezed by legal or physical threats.

This has left the field open for Imran Khan's PTI party and the religious extremists.

Women in Pakistan seize right to vote
Imran Khan scents victory in Pakistan vote

If this is any guide to the probable outcome, the aim appears to be to ensure no clear mandate for any one party, a result which the establishment can then manipulate to determine who the next prime minister will be.

And since all of this is being done in plain sight, the media has been put under pressure - by unidentified authorities - to offer only selective coverage of events.

So while on the surface the country still seems to be going through the motions of democracy, many say that what is actually happening is far from democratic.

A former senator and columnist, Afrasiab Khattak, has called it a "creeping coup."

This alleged effort has been "conceived by the deep state [meaning the military] and midwifed by the judiciary", he wrote in a recent newspaper column.

And this has led, he said, to a "fascist-like strangulation of democratic freedoms and the media".

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm…..

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-korean-defense-ministry-reduce-guard-posts-along-022508026.html

South Korean defense ministry to reduce guard posts along North Korean border: Yonhap

Reuters • July 23, 2018

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's defense ministry said on Tuesday it plans to reduce guard posts and equipment along the demilitarized zone on its border with North Korea, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The ministry said in a report to a parliamentary committee it plans to reduce some guard post troops and equipment as a preliminary test, and would then consider expanding the reduction, in order to realize an agreement to "transform the demilitarized zone into a peace zone" made at an inter-Korean summit in April, Yonhap said.

The defense ministry did not have any immediate comment about the report.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Paul Tait)

 

[Housecarl]

I just came across this one....Can you say "clean nuke"?....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.defensenews.com/industr...bs-when-conventional-explosives-just-wont-do/

TechWatch

X-ray bombs: When conventional explosives just won’t do

By: Ken Chamberlain  
July 2

WASHINGTON ¯ We’ve all been there ... well, some, at least: You have a pile of chemical or biological weapons you want to destroy, but you don’t want to risk spreading the toxic mess over a wide area.

What do you do?

You could be extremely careful, making sure no stray missiles hit something other than their target. Or you could use X-rays.

The U.S. Defense Department is researching how to use an X-ray bomb to neutralize chemical and biological weapons without damaging the structures that hold the weapons, New Scientist reports.

Although the technology behind such a bomb isn’t publicly available, the article notes that researchers have looked at using conventional explosives to compress aluminum or helium to the point that the compressed material emits bursts of X-rays.

However, to be effective in destroying either chemical or biological materials, an X-ray bomb would have to produce radiation tens of thousands of times stronger than the typical chest X-ray. This would not just destroy the weapons, but would also kill anyone unlucky enough to be standing near the X-ray burst.

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ETA: How it's supposed to work....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/tabletop-device-would-destroy-chemical-weapons-x-rays

Tabletop Device Would Destroy Chemical Weapons With X-Rays

With support from the Pentagon, one scientist is developing a compact x-ray device to break up chemical and biological agents.

By David Hambling
October 15, 2013

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical arsenal, won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Destroying chemical weapons in a hurry is a difficult and dangerous task, and the need for fast results has to be balanced against the ever-present risk of lethal accidents.

New technology might help. The Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency is interested in a new desktop apparatus that could pave the way to neutralizing chemical and biological weapons while they are still in their containers.

X-rays can break down chemicals like sarin, but producing a powerful enough x-ray beam from a compact, portable source has previously been impossible. That’s changing thanks to a technique developed by Young Bae, formerly with Brookhaven National Laboratories and founder of Y K Bae Corp. Bae’s method uses “warm dense matter” or WDM, which exists under the sort of extreme temperature and pressure conditions found inside stars and gas giants like Jupiter. In this context, ‘warm’ starts at about 11,000 degrees Celsius.

Producing a powerful x-ray beam from a compact source has been impossible
In the warm dense matter state, atoms are crushed together so that the electron shells from adjacent atoms fuse together into a Metastable Inner-shell Molecular State (MIMS). When the pressure is relaxed, the atoms spring back, releasing energy in the form of x-rays.

Bae stumbled on the effect at the Brookhaven National Lab in the early 1990s, when particles accelerated to high speed produced anomalous radiation. The significance of these results was not apparent at the time, but Bae did not forget them.

“In 2008, some new theoretical work inspired me to look at the Brookhaven results again,” Bae tells Popular Science. “I concluded that the anomalous signals were produced by x-rays from the decay of Metastable Innershell Molecular State generated by the nanoparticle impacts."

The numbers also revealed that a remarkable proportion of the energy was being turned into x-rays. “One surprising aspect of the discovery was that the conversion efficiency of the nanoparticle kinetic energy to photon energy was as high as 38 percent,” Bae says. Many x-ray generators convert less than 1 percent of the input power into x-rays.

Since then Bae has refined the method of generating x-rays using a tabletop apparatus to create so-called nanostars. He shoots buckyballs – tiny spheres, each made of 60 carbon atoms in a shape like a geodesic sphere – into an aluminum target at more than 60 miles a second. The impacts cause the buckyballs to crumple momentarily into a state of warm dense matter, and a large proportion of the impact energy is released as a pulse of x-rays.

An x-ray device might be able to do the job without spreading contamination
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency is interested in this because the wavelength of the x-rays can be tuned to break up specific molecules such as sarin into (relatively) harmless substances. This might take the form of a compact, single-use device with power supplied by an explosive charge. As well as being a tool for engineers to deal with stockpiles in an agreed destruction process, it might also work in less co-operative situations. The DTRA already has "agent defeat" weapons with warheads to destroy weapons of mass destruction with high-temperature incendiaries, but such weapons might end up scattering the toxic remnants over a wide area. An x-ray device might be able to do the same job without any risk of spreading contamination because it would not break open chemical warheads or containers.

The technology for producing powerful x-rays from a small source is likely to have commercial uses too. A tunable, warm dense matter-driven x-ray generator could enable lithography to make a new generation of computer chips on a smaller scale than ever; it could also have medical applications such as precise radiotherapy.

“It might also be used in nuclear fusion research,” Bae says. Those short-lived nanostars might help harness the power of the sun on Earth.

Research is still in its early stages. The DTRA’s current contract with Y K Bae only covers the design of a suitable accelerator. The existing apparatus will be scaled up with help from Los Alamos National Lab. If successful, this will then be developed over the next two years and will demonstrate x-ray production using several different materials to produce different x-ray wavelengths, and researchers will investigate ways of channelling the x-rays into a narrow beam.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/articl...ranian-weapons-regime-figure-wanted-terrorism

World

50,000 US Troops in Range of Iranian Weapons, Regime Figure Wanted For Terrorism Warns Trump

By Patrick Goodenough | July 24, 2018 | 1:12 AM EDT

(CNSNews.com) – As the Iranian regime responded to President Trump’s fiery warning tweet, one official issued a veiled threat against 50,000 U.S. troops within range of Iranian weapons, another reminded him of the rise and fall of empires, and a media mouthpiece envisaged the president facing divine retribution for threatening a country whose laws are based on Allah’s commandments.

The regime also complained about a speech Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on Sunday night, accusing him of interfering in Iran’s internal affairs. There was no official reaction to Pompeo’s allegations of financial corruption against named senior officials and ayatollahs, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Trump’s tweet late Sunday night warned President Hassan Rouhani never again to threaten the United States, “or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.”

“We are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence & death,” he said in the all-upper case tweet. “Be cautious!”

Trump was responding to a speech in Tehran earlier in the day, in which Rouhani advised Trump not to “play with the lion’s tail” and said that a war with Iran would be “the mother of all wars.”

There was no public reaction from Khamenei or Rouhani, but one prominent regime figure who did respond was Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who for the past two decades has been secretary of the Expediency Council, a body that advises Khamenei.

“Iran’s sword is hanging over the heads of more than 50,000 of your troops, and you are threatening this madly,” he said in a Farsi-language tweet directed at Trump. “You be cautious.”

U.S. military personnel are deployed in a number of countries in the region, with the largest contingents stationed in Afghanistan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq.

Rezai was IRGC commander from 1981 until 1997, one of the regime’s most powerful men. He is one of several senior Iranians wanted by Argentinian authorities – and the subject of an Interpol red notice – on suspicion of involvement in the worst terror attack in that country’s history: the 1994 suicide truck bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which cost 85 lives.

Reaction also came from Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, also on Twitter, and pointedly also using upper case for some of the tweet.

“COLOR US UNIMPRESSED: The world heard even harsher bluster a few months ago. And Iranians have heard them – albeit more civilized ones – for 40 yrs,” Zarif tweeted. “We’ve been around for millennia & seen fall of empires, incl our own, which lasted more than the life of some countries.”

He ended by mimicking Trump: “BE CAUTIOUS!”

(Persia was ruled by a succession of monarchies and dynasties for more than 2,500 years, from Cyrus the Great until the Islamic revolution deposed the last Shah in 1979.)

‘Divine wrath’
In an unsigned commentary Monday Kayhan, a hardline paper whose editor is appointed by the supreme leader, described Trump as “a maniac aspiring to be a modern Pharaoh, little knowing that his wealth and his weapons are useless the moment Divine Wrath strikes him for threatening a country whose laws are based on the commandments of God Almighty.”

Broadening its attack, the Kayhan writer took aim at “the team of thugs he has assembled in the White House,” labeling Pompeo a “gangster,” National Security Advisor John Bolton a “mustachioed bozo” and Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley a “hag.”

Commenting on Pompeo’s speech in California, the writer claimed the secretary of state had elicited “vociferous boos” from the audience when he criticized the regime. (In fact the audience gave Pompeo’s address an enthusiastic reception, and the only evident booing was directed at a lone heckler who sought to draw attention to an issue unrelated to the speech.)

In other regime reaction, Iran Daily quoted Qolam-Hossein Qeibparvar, head of the notorious Basij volunteer militia, as saying Trump “wouldn’t dare make the mistake of taking any action against Iran.”

Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Amir Hatami said Iran’s “enemies” only understand the language of force, the Fars news agency reported. Speaking at the launch of a new missile production line, he said the Islamic republic “has proved that it will give a firm response to any arrogant power with excessive demands.”

Fars quoted senior Iranian Navy commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari as warning the Americans that “we can jump down on their throat in some places in a way that they, themselves, do not believe.”

In recent weeks the regime has repeatedly made reference to its ability to block oil shipments in the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz if looming U.S. sanctions target Iranian oil exports.

“The Strait of Hormuz region should be either safe for everybody or unsafe for everybody,” Iranian Army ground force commander Brig. Gen. Kiomars Heidari said on Sunday.

Meanwhile Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi called Pompeo’s speech “disgraceful and hypocritical.”

“The Iranians have never given in to the foreigners’ bullying policies and do not care about the policies of the U.S. president and the minority in the country who seek to wage war and are not committed to moral and human principles.”

Qassemi did not say anything about Pompeo’s accusations that some regime officials and religious leaders were enriching themselves as the expense of the Iranian people. He likened them to “the mafia.”

In a separate article Keyhan alluded briefly to that portion of Pompeo’s speech, accusing him of repeating “rumors and falsehoods” spread by fugitives who had fled the country.

 

[Lilbitsnana]

Jeff Seldin
‏Verified account @jseldin
58m58 minutes ago

NEW: Two American #ISIS members detained by US-backed #Syria|n forces now back in the #UnitedStates, senior administration official confirms

 

[Lilbitsnana]

Instant News Alerts
‏ @InstaNewsAlerts
9m9 minutes ago

#Breaking: Press Secretary: Not only is #Trump looking to take away Brennan's security clearance, he’s looking into clearances of Comey, Clapper, Rice, McCabe.

Steve Herman
‏Verified account @W7VOA
19m19 minutes ago

Also on the plane, @hogangidley45 says officials have "begun the mechanism" to pull the security clearances of former national security officials named yesterday by @PressSec.

 

[Lilbitsnana]

The Washington Times
‏Verified account @WashTimes
17m17 minutes ago

BREAKING: Maxine Waters' office reportedly evacuated over 'anthrax’ package http://bit.ly/2JRTSEQ

 

[Lilbitsnana]

posted for fair use and discussion
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/24/politics/foreign-leaders-call-white-house/index.html


Exclusive: White House stops announcing calls with foreign leaders
CNN EXPANSION DC 2017 Kaitlan Collins

By Kaitlan Collins, CNN

Updated 2305 GMT (0705 HKT) July 24, 2018

Washington (CNN)The White House has suspended the practice of publishing public summaries of President Donald Trump's phone calls with world leaders, two sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN, bringing an end to a common exercise from Republican and Democratic administrations.

It's unclear if the suspension is temporary or permanent. A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Official descriptions of the President's calls with foreign leaders -- termed "readouts" in Washington parlance -- offer administrations the chance to characterize in their own terms the diplomacy conducted at the highest levels between countries. While news is rarely contained in the rote, often dry descriptions, they do offer the only official account that a phone call took place. Readouts are still released internally.

Trump has had at least two calls with other leaders in the last two weeks, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The White House confirmed that the calls took place after they were reported by foreign media, but declined to elaborate on what was said.

The White House has not published a readout of a call between Trump and a world leader since mid-June when he called to congratulate the Hungarian prime minister on his re-election victory.

"The two leaders further pledged to keep United States-Hungary relations strong," the readout at the time noted.

Michael Allen, who was a member of the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, said that by halting the practice of issuing readouts, the White House loses "the action forcing event of an announced phone call."

"I think they lose the public diplomacy aspect of a presidential phone call," Allen added.

'Highly coordinated events'
History according to Trump, War of 1812 edition
History according to Trump, War of 1812 edition

Calls with world leaders are highly coordinated events that in the past have required careful planning by the President's national security team. Leaders are typically patched through the Situation Room, and sometimes aides listen in. Once the call is over, both sides typically publish a readout of what was discussed. However, readouts have been known to differ between governments.

After Trump spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in April 2017, the two sides offered vastly different accounts of what was discussed.

"President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke today. The two leaders discussed the dairy trade in Wisconsin, New York State, and various other places. It was a very amicable call," the White House's version read.

Canada's readout was more descriptive.

"The prime minister and the President reaffirmed the importance of the mutually beneficial Canada-US trade relationship," Canada's readout said. "On the issue of softwood lumber, the prime minister refuted the baseless allegations by the US Department of Commerce and the decision to impose unfair duties."

Tony Blinken, who served as the deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration from 2015 to 2017, said there are two main reasons why issuing the readouts are important.

"One is transparency," Blinken told CNN. "There is a public interest in knowing who he talked to and what they talked about. Secondly, these readouts help shape the narrative. If we aren't doing a readout, but the other country is, their narrative is going to prevail. "

Records

Trump has been known to make calls to foreign leaders from the residence of the White House during what has been dubbed by aides as "executive time." Before he was fired this spring, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster often joined Trump in residence for his calls. His successor John Bolton is regularly present during his calls with leaders, a White House official tells CNN.

The decision to halt the readouts come amid questions about what was said during Trump's one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

Trump was incensed last August when The Washington Post published transcripts of his tense phone calls with the leaders of Australia and Mexico. He railed about the leak to aides for weeks, insisting that fewer people be in the room during the calls going forward.

He was similarly infuriated after it quickly leaked this spring that he had been directly instructed by his national security advisers in briefing materials not to congratulate Putin on his recent election victory during their call. As reported by the Post, he did.

The leak reinforced Trump's long-held belief there are individuals inside his administration -- especially in the national security realm -- who are working to undermine him, sources close to the President told CNN at the time.

In May, as French President Emmanuel Macron was trying to convince Trump to remain in the Iran nuclear deal, he and Trump held a phone call. The White House issued a terse, two-sentence readout after the call highlighting Trump and Macron's "shared commitment to peace and stability in the Middle East," while declining to offer any details.

CNN's Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

 

[Shacknasty Shagrat]

Steve Herman
‏Verified account @W7VOA
19m19 minutes ago

Also on the plane, @hogangidley45 says officials have "begun the mechanism" to pull the security clearances of former national security officials named yesterday by @PressSec.

Good news, but should have been done in Week 1 of the Trump Era.
Now have a real Attorney General get them indicted.
SS

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/declarations-war-and-whac-mole-terror

Declarations of War and the ‘Whac-a-Mole’ on Terror

Jeff Groom | Tue, 07/24/2018 - 12:15am

“We are technically not at war.”

The above statement was made by the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, during testimony in 2015 before the House Armed Services Committee concerning the fight against the Islamic State. General Dunford, in tandem with then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, was responding to a line of questioning (begins 1:07:00) initiated by Randy Forbes (R-VA).

Driving a wedge between the two in the hot seat, Representative Forbes cleverly extracted this embarrassing admission from General Dunford after Secretary Carter had mentioned earlier in the testimony that the United States was at war with ISIS. Dunford clarified that a technical declaration of war would come from the Congress. With this glaring omission, Representative Forbes pressed further, highlighting that ISIS had expanded strategically since 2010 despite a continuous military effort to contain and defeat the new caliphate.

In over two hours of testimony, Forbes’ questioning stood out as the simplest yet most thought provoking. After all, how can one win what won’t be declared? The military’s strength is in creative mission accomplishment, not in creating the mission itself.

As the ‘Whac-a-Mole’ war on terrorism continues for its 17th year, debates over conflict authorization and war declarations commonly assume a tenuous starting point: state control of violence. Investigating this assumption provides a framework for how future conflicts should be declared. And won.

For America’s greatest generation, things were relatively straightforward. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the Congress declared war unanimously, the nation mobilized, the war was conducted and won. Japan and Germany surrendered, and the armed forces followed suit and laid down their weapons.

In Vietnam things weren’t as cut and dry. After years of sending advisors, the conflict gradually grew into a full-fledged war under the cover of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. As President Nixon gradually drew American forces down in the face of public pressure and military stagnation, the lessons learned came early with Congress’ passage of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 . This resolution sought to limit the unilateral power of the President to use military force. The President would be required to notify Congress within 48 hours of engaging in hostilities and subsequently obtain an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) or a war declaration. If not, the troops would not be allowed to engage in hostilities for more than 60 days followed by a 30 day withdrawal period.

A similar story is panning out today. Following 9/11, an AUMF was passed by the Congress that authorized the President to attack terrorist forces as well as the countries that harbored them. A similar AUMF was passed in October 2002 concerning force against Iraq. With the unconstitutional bombing of Libya under President Obama and the expansion of the war against the Islamic State, some members of Congress pursued change. Sponsored by Senators Kaine and McCain, the S1939 War Powers Consultation Act was introduced in 2014 and sought to repeal the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

Defining “significant armed conflict” as “any combat operation involving members of the Armed Forces lasting more than a week or expected by the President to last more than a week”, the bill excludes from this definition limited acts of reprisal against terrorist states, covert operations, or actions taken to repel imminent attacks. The bill stipulates that no later than 30 days after the deployment of members of the Armed Forces into “significant armed conflict” a joint congressional consultative committee shall debate and approve or disapprove continuation of hostilities.

Unfortunately, our Congress and most military leaders are locked into a worldview that is no longer valid. This worldview coalesced in 1648 at the end of the religious Thirty Years’ War with the advent of nation-based sovereignty. With the Treaty of Westphalia the modern state came into existence and assumed a monopoly on the use of force by use of the uniformed military personnel that fought under a flag and for their country. To win in war, simply be better on the battlefield and the state would yield.

Modern Western powers think of war as a light switch, either on or off, war or peace, and not much in between. But mankind has taken up arms not just for his flag and state but for his tribe, his religion, his honor, his lands, and even for his very existence. The line between war and peace, combatants and noncombatants, and mercy and slaughter has been very grey historically speaking.

The United States found this out the hard way in 2003. Defeating the Iraqi regime was relatively easy but American forces soon discovered our adversaries were willing to fight and die for more than a few arbitrary lines drawn in the sand by the British and represented by a flag. Defeating and disbanding Saddam’s army just took the lid off religious and tribal tensions that had existed for centuries and were only held in check by a dictatorship.

S1939 was introduced due to recent experiences in the Middle East and the mission creep that has been measured not in weeks or years but in decades. Our historical bias to conform to this notion of warfare is reflected in the idea of “significant armed conflict.”

But does “significant armed conflict” mean advising? Training and assisting? Building schools? Helping to train Afghans to fight for themselves doesn’t seem like significant conflict. And that is because it isn’t. It is low intensity conflict.

As frequent TAC contributor and military historian William Lind frequently columns, we have now entered what is known in military theory as fourth generation warfare. Low intensity conflict is back as the state loses control of its populations. In the state-based view which the famous von Clausewitz theorized within, war is politics through other means, but in the fourth generation, politics is now an extension of war, or put another way, all politics is local.

So how should the consultation bill be modified to account for this new reality of conflict?

As Lind and Marine Lt Colonel Gregory Thiele explain in their Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook , there are two modes of fighting in the 4th Generation. The first, called the Hama model, after the Syrian Army’s suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, is war in the traditional state-based view, gloves off, no mercy. Kill the enemy until he yields.

The consultation bill should allow for this option by granting the President unilateral use of strike capability in the form of aircraft and missiles for 7 days and unilateral use of ground forces for 60 days.

Given today’s military technology that will be likely more than is required to achieve a political end state. In order to cripple a German ball bearing plant in Schweinfurt in 1943 the United States sent 376 B-17 bombers. Today only a couple dozen Tomahawk missiles are required to do similar damage. The accuracy of every weapon system has jumped by many orders of magnitude, thus requiring fewer personnel and delivery systems to achieve the same result.

But just as a parent that spanks their rebellious child in public will likely get a few stares, there is an inflection point in the use of brute force. Beat the child for too long and the child gains the power of weakness and bystanders will begin to intervene. Just as police forces are trained to de-escalate tensions to keep the peace, so too will the military be required to tone down the violence. This is the second mode of 4th Generation Warfare.

US forces are operating in this manner in Afghanistan and Syria. Sometimes violence is required, other times it must be avoided. Whether we should or shouldn’t needs to be debated and voted on by the Congress. At the 60 day point the length of conflict or necessity to remain engaged becomes very complex and hard to predict. The costs, both in human lives and taxpayer dollars, will be orders of magnitude lower. This is when the Congress must vote on whether the troops shall remain. If the Congress says no, the troops come home within 90 total days. If they vote yes, the troops stay.

And most importantly, the moral decision to continue hostilities must be accompanied by a financial accounting for war. As a recent TAC article noted , there was a time when wars were paid for via taxation. According to the Watson Institute of Brown University the total cost of the war on terrorism if you include spending on Homeland Security and the VA as of September 2017 was 4.3 trillion dollars. Separating the conduct of war from the cost of war is without precedent in American history.

This part of the policy needs debated to incorporate a threshold for money and time. For example, once the troops remain for over a six months taxes will be raised to cover all costs associated with the campaign. Or once the costs reach one billion dollars the taxes will be initiated, or a combination of whichever comes first.

Not giving the military quantifiable objectives has been disastrous for the institution as well as the taxpayers. The Congress should immediately pass a modified version of the S1939 bill incorporating 4th Generation Warfare considerations followed by a vote on all current conflicts.

About the Author(s)
Jeff Groom
Jeff Groom is a former Marine officer. He is the author of American Cobra Pilot: A Marine Remembers a Dog and Pony Show (2018) . You can follow him at @BigsbyGroom.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1582868/coalition-strikes-kill-high-value-isis-members/

July 24, 2018
News
From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release
Contact Author

Coalition Strikes Kill High-Value ISIS Members

SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Coalition strikes have killed six Islamic State of Iraq and Syria leaders and planners since April 24, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials announced today.

The removal of these leaders has prevented ISIS external attack planning, facilitation and operations targeting Saudi Arabia, the United States and Sweden, officials said.

Munawwar al-Mutayari, a Syria-based ISIS member planning external attacks to be carried out in Saudi Arabia, was killed by a coalition kinetic strike April 24.

A Belgian, Soufiane Makouh, who came to Syria to plan attacks against the U.S and its interests, was killed by a kinetic strike June 2.

On June 12, coalition forces conducted a kinetic strike against Simak, an ISIS intelligence official linked to a terror cell plotting attacks in Sweden. Two additional individuals directly associated with the Sweden attack plot, Abu Awf and Abu-Quddamah, were killed on June 24. Additionally, Swedish attack cell member Sharif al-Ragab was killed June 26.

"With its conventional forces under heavy pressure in Syria, [ISIS] is desperately seeking to remain relevant through operations that threaten all the nations of the world," said Army Brig. Gen. Brian Eifler, CJTF-OIR director of operations. "The coalition and its partners will continue to deny [ISIS] safe havens in Syria and Iraq in order to disrupt the terrorist group's capabilities to plan, coordinate and carry out attacks on the nations of the world."

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.stripes.com/news/lawmakers-prod-pentagon-to-consider-more-europe-based-troops-1.539189

Lawmakers prod Pentagon to consider more Europe-based troops

By JOHN VANDIVER | STARS AND STRIPES
Published: July 24, 2018

The Pentagon would have to consider increasing combat power in Europe and look at the feasibility of permanently stationing an Army brigade in Poland under a deal reached by House and Senate lawmakers.

A House and Senate panel agreed on Monday to a reconciled version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which could come up for a vote in the House as early as this week. Overall, the bill calls for troop increases and acquisition of a wide range of new aircraft, ships, submarines and weapons. Lawmakers also want the Pentagon to review how it conducts advisory missions in places like Niger, where four U.S. soldiers were killed in October in an ambush.

For Europe, the NDAA spells out steps to counter and “if necessary, defeat Russian aggression.”

The bill would mandate that President Donald Trump designate an official in the National Security Council to develop and oversee a strategy for fighting Russian “malign influence.”

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis would be required to consider specific steps to “enhance U.S. forward presence, combat capability, and capacity in Europe.”

The bill would require Mattis to examine the merits of putting an Army brigade combat team and combat enablers in Poland on a permanent basis.

Within military circles, the idea of garrisoning U.S. troops in Poland is controversial. Warsaw is pushing hard for a larger and permanent U.S. presence and has offered up to $2 billion to help offset the costs.

Already, the U.S. has rotational forces operating daily in Poland, including a battle group not far from the country’s border with the Russian military enclave of Kaliningrad. In addition, an armored brigade and an Air Force detachment are all on year-round rotations in the country.

Still, supporters of a permanent presence argue that basing troops in Poland would send a stronger deterrent signal to Russia. Opponents, however, worry that such a presence would cause divisions within NATO at a time when the alliance is already under political strain.

Moscow has described the deployments and repeated military exercises near the enclave as provocative.

Trump rattled member states earlier this month during a contentious NATO summit in Brussels, where he warned allies that the U.S. would go it alone if they didn’t increase defense expenditures. Also causing concern was his subsequent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and public statements that called into question his commitment to defending smaller NATO member Montenegro.

However, the NDAA emphasizes U.S. commitment to NATO’s collective defense, which lawmakers call “ironclad.”

“The array of national security threats facing the United States is more complex and diverse than at any time since World War II,” the NDAA says. “The strategic environment has not been this competitive since the Cold War. Simply put, America no longer enjoys the competitive edge it once had over its competitors and adversaries.”

Other Europe-focused provisions in the NDAA call for adding $205 million to procure 61 Bradley Fighting Vehicles for the European Deterrence Initiative, which funds operations along NATO’s eastern flank.

The bill also authorizes $250 million to provide security assistance to Ukraine, $50 million of which would be set aside for defensive “lethal assistance.”

Meanwhile, the bill means military operations in parts of Africa as well as other places such as Yemen could get a closer look as the Pentagon is required to examine the underlying legal rationale behind “advise, assist, and accompany missions by U.S. military personnel outside of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.”

While U.S. troops have been operating in Niger and Somalia for years, the number of Americans in those countries has steadily increased without significant public debate over the scope and merits of the missions. But the attack on U.S. soldiers in the Nigerien village of Tongo Tongo, brought into focus the risk U.S. forces face in isolated parts of Africa.

vandiver.john@stripes.com
Twitter: @john_vandiver

 

[Lilbitsnana]

MJ Lee
‏Verified account @mj_lee
37m37 minutes ago

SIREN: CNN has the Trump-Cohen audio tape. About to air on @ChrisCuomo show

 

[Lilbitsnana]

Intel Doge
‏ @IntelDoge
7m7 minutes ago

The TSA is currently investigating a suspicious package at Tampa International Airport. A partial lockdown has been put into place.

 

[Lilbitsnana]

MJ Lee
‏Verified account @mj_lee
37m37 minutes ago

SIREN: CNN has the Trump-Cohen audio tape. About to air on @ChrisCuomo show

The Intel Crab
‏ @IntelCrab
13m13 minutes ago

*Sees #TrumpTapes trending*

*Turns out its a nothing burger.*

Are Tuesdays always this disappointing?



Based General
‏ @douevnlift
6m6 minutes ago
Replying to @IntelCrab

It's honestly really sad that they actually believed their own hype of the #TrumpTapes.

I don't even get angry at the media anymore, it's just depressing. They're stuck in a rut trying to desperately find something bad on the president that they lost all integrity.