WAR 09-11-2021-to-09-17-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(487) 08-21-2021-to-08-27-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(488) 08-28-2021-to-09-03-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(489) 09-04-2021-to-09-10-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

____________________________________________________


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Pakistan expanding its nuclear arsenal: Report

Pakistan continues to expand its nuclear arsenal with more warheads, more delivery systems, and a growing fissile material production industry.

www.indiatoday.in

Pakistan expanding its nuclear arsenal: Report
Pakistan continues to expand its nuclear arsenal with more warheads, more delivery systems, and a growing fissile material production industry.

Ankit Kumar New DelhiSeptember 11, 2021
UPDATED: September 11, 2021 09:32 IST

In 1999, a publication by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) titled 'A Primer on the Future Threat: the Decades Ahead 1999-2020' predicted that Pakistan’s estimated nuclear warheads would reach somewhere from 60 to 80. Fast forward to September 2021, a nuclear notebook published in the journal Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that Pakistan has expanded its nuclear stockpile to approximately 165 warheads.

According to the Chicago-based independent nonprofit publication, “Pakistan continues to expand its nuclear arsenal with more warheads, more delivery systems, and a growing fissile material production industry.” Prepared by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project (NIP) at the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, research associate for the NIP, the publication argues that Pakistan is likely to continue expanding its nuclear capabilities over the next few years. “We estimate that the country’s stockpile could more realistically grow to around 200 warheads by 2025 if the current trend continues.” The government of Pakistan has never publicly disclosed the size of its nuclear arsenal.



PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES
Pakistan has been trying to develop new short-range tactical weapons, sea-based cruise missiles, air-launched cruise missiles, and longer-range ballistic missiles for some time now. Pakistan has at least six operational nuclear-capable land-based ballistic missiles, including the short-range (60-70 km) NASR (Hatf-9) solid-fuel missile.

“With a range too short to attack strategic targets inside India, NASR appears intended solely for battlefield use against invading Indian troops,” Kristensen and Korda write in their paper.

The medium-range missiles include Shaheen-II and newer Shaheen-III missiles. Once fully operational, researchers point out that the Shaheen-III missiles, with a projected range of 2,750 km, would bring Israel within range of Pakistani nuclear missiles for the first time. For this, these missiles will have to be deployed in the western parts of Balochistan province.

Pakistan is also developing a multiple independent reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology-enabled nuclear-capable ballistic missile Ababeel. Pakistan is also reportedly upgrading its original Babur1 missiles into Babur-1A, and Babur-2/Babur-1B versions to improve their capabilities. An under-development sea version named Babur-3 is likely to be used with the diesel-electric Agosta class submarines, once ready. “It is possible that these new submarines, which will be called the Hangor-class, could eventually be assigned a nuclear role with the Babur-3 submarine-launched cruise missile,” the paper points out.

In terms of Pakistan’s aircraft capabilities, the nuclear notebook doesn’t feature the nuclear capabilities of Pakistan’s F-16s and JF-17s aircraft citing the “uncertainties”. Pakistan has two versions of US-made F-16s as well as the China-assisted JF-17 fighter jets; however, the nature of their nuclear capabilities remains unclear. Pakistan was obligated by contract with the US to not modify its earlier versions of older F-16(A/B), but various reports suggested that Pakistan might have modified those aircraft long back.

Pakistan Air Force’s (PAF) Mirage III and Mirage V fighter squadrons are likely to have nuclear delivery capabilities as well. Masroor Air Base near Karachi housing three Mirage squadrons has a “possible nuclear weapons storage site” nearby that, according to the authors, has been witnessing continuous underground constructions and expansions. “This includes a possible alert hangar with underground weapons-handling capability,” the publication points out.

Another PAF base near Shorkot in Punjab houses two Mirage squadrons as well. Pakistani policymakers have expressed their views on replacing the aging Mirage aircraft with the JF-17s.
At the heart of Pakistan’s nuclear production is the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant that has been expanding its enrichment capabilities recently.

Also read: Revealed: Pakistan's dark, dangerous nuke secret

According to the report, the National Defence Complex in the Kala Chitta Dahr mountain range is ground zero to produce nuclear-capable missiles and launchers. Researchers suspect that the Pakistan Ordnance factories near Wah could be linked to nuclear warhead production.

According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, Pakistan had approximately 3,900 kg of weapon-grade highly enriched uranium and about 410 kg of weapon-grade plutonium in early 2020. But the authors of the nuclear notebook argue that calculating stockpile size solely based on fissile material inventory could be a wrong approach.

“Analysing Pakistan’s nuclear forces is fraught with uncertainty, given that the Pakistan government has never publicly disclosed the size of its arsenal, and media sources frequently embellish news stories about nuclear weapons,” they added.

Also read: Our casualties not a matter of figure: Pak Army after India Today Expose

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....For biotoxins, radiologicals and chemical weapons yes, active biological agents, hummm.......

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Battle-hardened terrorists closing in on deadly biological weapons

Chemical, radiological or biological attacks likely within the next decade

www.thenationalnews.com

Battle-hardened terrorists closing in on deadly biological weapons
Chemical, radiological or biological attacks likely within the next decade

Thomas Harding
Sep 10, 2021

A deadly chemical or biological attack on a major city is extremely likely, perhaps inevitable, in the next decade, according to leading international terrorism experts.

The effect on society and the economy of terrorists perfecting the weapons could potentially be more devastating than the Al Qaeda attacks 20 years ago that led to $45 billion in insurance pay-outs, an event hosted by the International Forum of Terrorism Risk (Re)Insurance heard.

Given the devastation caused by Covid-19, a biological or chemical device was now the “perfect weapon of choice for the terrorists”, said Douglas Wise, former deputy director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency.

“We know that terrorists are seeking access to that kind of material,” he told the documentary film, 9/11 Two Decades of Disruption. “It's simple to use, doesn't require extraordinary technology and it's very easy to deploy. And the terrorists know that the impact to societies, to nations, to economies is existential.”

Lady Suzanne Raine, the former director of counter terrorism at the UK Foreign Office, said Al Qaeda now had a “scientific understanding” about chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons through “battlefield” development.

“The question has to be, when and if that battlefield experimentation moves out of a battlefield,” she said. “You would expect it more likely would happen through a returning fighter because they’ve got the experience of using them and sooner or later you would expect it to happen.”

Mr Wise agreed: “We've seen again and again that terrorist organisations aspire to carry out these kinds of mass casualty, high impact events and it's not for lack of effort that they have not succeeded, thus far.”

A successful attack, potentially causing more fatalities than the 3,000 from 9/11, would have a major psychological effect on society, said former FBI agent Ali Soufan, chairman of the Soufan Group, a global intelligence consultant.

“The possibility of a CBRN attack, rightfully gets a great deal of attention because we can imagine that with biological or chemical weapons it could be a tremendous shock to society and to the perception of safety that we aim to protect,” he said.

READ MORE
Al Qaeda resurgence under Taliban a real fear for the West

Over the past 30 years terrorists regularly used deadly substances although as yet not a weapon of mass destruction, said Prof Andrew Silke of Cranfield University.

“To say that you expect another one before 2030 is fairly unremarkable, we absolutely are going to have chemical and biological attacks, probably on an annual basis and maybe considerably more often.”

Brig Ed Butler, who led British special forces during the post-9/11 period, raised serious concerns of a terrorist dirty-bomb, using radiation to kill and contaminate.

“If we did have a radiological device go off in the middle of London or a major conurbation we wouldn't be coming back into the city. Our whole country would change much more than from Covid, which has been dreadful. If you can imagine having parts of central London being denied for years and years that's something which would be catastrophic.”

While the insurance industry worked effectively post 9/11 preventing insolvencies and an economic downturn, the attacks did present a major challenge, said Britt Newhouse, former chairman of Guy Carpenter, the American reinsurance firm. “As a student of history my biggest fear is something like this is going to happen again, bigger and worse and motivated by real true evil intentions,” he said.

Updated: September 10th 2021, 8:51 AM

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Washington Daily News » Brinkwire

Brinkwire is a news hub for blogs, online communities, content affiliates, publishers and members of the connected internet who are interested in commercial news.

en.brinkwire.com

North Korea is ‘spreading harmful technology,’ according to NATO, which has issued a nuclear alert, citing ‘serious concern.’
0
BY HELENA SUTAN ON SEPTEMBER 10, 2021
SCIENCE

North Korea is ‘spreading harmful technology,’ according to NATO, which has issued a nuclear alert, citing ‘serious concern.’
North Korea, according to Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO) Jens Stoltenberg, is “spreading harmful technology.”

To commemorate the communist state’s 73rd establishment anniversary, Kim Jong-rogue un’s nation performed a weird military parade today. Soldiers in hazmat suits marched in front of Kim, who appeared to have lost weight. There were also fire trucks, tractors, and pyrotechnics on display, but no large ballistic missiles – a noticeable departure from Pyongyang’s military displays.

It comes after Mr Stoltenberg chastised North Korea for allegedly breaking arms control regulations and developing nuclear weapons.

On Monday, Mr Stoltenberg spoke out against “ignoring or breaching global rules” and “promoting deadly technology” during the 17th NATO conference on arms control and weapons of mass destruction.

“NATO’s goal is a world free of nuclear weapons,” he continued. We are also prepared to take more efforts to help create the circumstances for nuclear disarmament talks.

“Any effective disarmament, on the other hand, must be balanced and verifiable.”

He also targeted Russia and China, urging a strengthened Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to help enforce global nuclear weapons standards.

“A future in which NATO partners have given up their nuclear deterrent while Russia, China, or nations like North Korea maintain nuclear weapons is just not a safer world,” Mr Stoltenberg warned.

It occurred after a UN nuclear agency study found evidence that North Korea had restarted a nuclear reactor thought to have manufactured plutonium for atomic bombs.

The announcement came after satellite photographs of the Yongbyon Nuclear Science and Weapons Research Centre were taken.

“[North Korea’s] nuclear activities continue to be a source for great concern,” the study stated.

“Since early July 2021, there have been indications consistent with the operation, including the outflow of cooling water.
“The operation’s latest signals… are highly troubling.”

For decades, the facility, which North Korea refers to as “the heart” of its nuclear program, has been a source of international anxiety.

It’s unclear how much weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium was created at Yongbyon and where it’s stored.
Since Pyongyang withdrew its investigators in 2009, the IAEA has had no access to North Korea.

Following that, the government went ahead with its nuclear weapons development, and nuclear testing was soon resumed. Its most recent nuclear test took place in 2017.

“Brinkwire Summary News” is located 60 miles north of Pyongyang in Yongbyon.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

The Forensic Crisis in Mexico | Small Wars Journal

smallwarsjournal.com

Thu, 09/09/2021 - 4:37pm

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The Forensic Crisis in Mexico: More than 52 thousand unidentified dead people in Mexico according to official figures: MNDM Report

Mexico is experiencing a profound forensic crisis in terms of human identification: there are 52,000 unidentified deceased persons, according to official figures obtained by the Movement for Our Disappeared in Mexico (Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México).

The Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México (Movement for our Disappeared in Mexico – MNDM) has issued a report “La Crisis Forense en México: más de 52 mil personas fallecidas sin identificar”("The Forensic Crisis in Mexico: more than 52,000 unidentified deceased persons"). The report in Spanish notes that the situation regarding unidentified deceased persons has reached crisis proportions.
A press release in Spanish about the report is available here. A synopsis of the report in English follows.

MNDM comprises 74 local collectives of families with disappeared family members (desaparecidos) located across 22 states in Mexico and three in Central America. The movement is also composed of several human rights organizations that have compiled a report exposing the forensic crisis that has resulted in the lack of identification of over 52,000 deceased Mexicans. The movement argues that the leading cause of the current forensic problem is the rise in violence and human rights violations caused by the war on drugs and the militarized approach taken by the Mexican government to combat it. They expose several problems with the current forensic system, including the lack of experts specialized in forensic identification and the lack of adequate training of many scientists assigned to forensic identification. Another issue is the low budgets allocated to forensic institutions and problems with the coordination of databases.

The report was created by using data provided under transparency laws in Mexico and the firsthand experience of families that have tried to find their missing family members. The report shows that of the 52,000 deceased, 60 percent are in mass graves in public cemeteries, while a shocking 22 percent of the deceased have an unknown or undetermined location.

The Mexican government and the UN have taken an essential step in addressing this forensic crisis by creating the Extraordinary Mechanism of Forensic Identification (Mecanismo Extraordinario de Identificación Forense – MEIF).
The MEIF is tasked with helping identify the 52,000 deceased and was formed on 4 December 2019. Its operations were delayed by the lack of a coordinating group. Fortunately, the government recently announced the coordinating group on 30 August 2021. The MEIF is important as it reflects the government's acknowledgment that the ordinary mechanisms to deal with the identification of deceased persons in Mexico are not currently sufficient.

“La Crisis Forense en México: más de 52 mil personas fallecidas sin identificar” also provides several other recommendations to help transform the ordinary forensic services in Mexico. Among these recommendations are the expansion, improvement, and autonomy of forensic services in Mexico and updating protocols for forensic identification. They also suggest the need for the approval of technical protocols in archeology, anthropology, necropsy, and odontology and the creation of national data banks to help with forensic identification, such as a national bank for forensic data. Most importantly, they seek to end the illegal practice of burying people who have not been identified into collective mass graves and continue international cooperation to help resolve this forensic crisis.

Source: “La Crisis Forense en México: más de 52 mil personas fallecidas sin identificar.” Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México (MNDM). August 2021.

 

[Jaybird]

Posted for fair use.....

The Forensic Crisis in Mexico | Small Wars Journal

smallwarsjournal.com

Thu, 09/09/2021 - 4:37pm

• Log in or register to post comments

The Forensic Crisis in Mexico: More than 52 thousand unidentified dead people in Mexico according to official figures: MNDM Report

Mexico is experiencing a profound forensic crisis in terms of human identification: there are 52,000 unidentified deceased persons, according to official figures obtained by the Movement for Our Disappeared in Mexico (Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México).

The Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México (Movement for our Disappeared in Mexico – MNDM) has issued a report “La Crisis Forense en México: más de 52 mil personas fallecidas sin identificar”("The Forensic Crisis in Mexico: more than 52,000 unidentified deceased persons"). The report in Spanish notes that the situation regarding unidentified deceased persons has reached crisis proportions.
A press release in Spanish about the report is available here. A synopsis of the report in English follows.

MNDM comprises 74 local collectives of families with disappeared family members (desaparecidos) located across 22 states in Mexico and three in Central America. The movement is also composed of several human rights organizations that have compiled a report exposing the forensic crisis that has resulted in the lack of identification of over 52,000 deceased Mexicans. The movement argues that the leading cause of the current forensic problem is the rise in violence and human rights violations caused by the war on drugs and the militarized approach taken by the Mexican government to combat it. They expose several problems with the current forensic system, including the lack of experts specialized in forensic identification and the lack of adequate training of many scientists assigned to forensic identification. Another issue is the low budgets allocated to forensic institutions and problems with the coordination of databases.

The report was created by using data provided under transparency laws in Mexico and the firsthand experience of families that have tried to find their missing family members. The report shows that of the 52,000 deceased, 60 percent are in mass graves in public cemeteries, while a shocking 22 percent of the deceased have an unknown or undetermined location.

The Mexican government and the UN have taken an essential step in addressing this forensic crisis by creating the Extraordinary Mechanism of Forensic Identification (Mecanismo Extraordinario de Identificación Forense – MEIF).
The MEIF is tasked with helping identify the 52,000 deceased and was formed on 4 December 2019. Its operations were delayed by the lack of a coordinating group. Fortunately, the government recently announced the coordinating group on 30 August 2021. The MEIF is important as it reflects the government's acknowledgment that the ordinary mechanisms to deal with the identification of deceased persons in Mexico are not currently sufficient.

“La Crisis Forense en México: más de 52 mil personas fallecidas sin identificar” also provides several other recommendations to help transform the ordinary forensic services in Mexico. Among these recommendations are the expansion, improvement, and autonomy of forensic services in Mexico and updating protocols for forensic identification. They also suggest the need for the approval of technical protocols in archeology, anthropology, necropsy, and odontology and the creation of national data banks to help with forensic identification, such as a national bank for forensic data. Most importantly, they seek to end the illegal practice of burying people who have not been identified into collective mass graves and continue international cooperation to help resolve this forensic crisis.

Source: “La Crisis Forense en México: más de 52 mil personas fallecidas sin identificar.” Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos en México (MNDM). August 2021.

Shocker. Mexico has been a failed state for a long time. We aren't going to change that with our help.

 

[Housecarl]

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Pakistan still relying on ageing Mirage jets to carry nuclear weapons?

The report predicts Islamabad's stockpile could grow to 200 warheads by 2025

www.theweek.in

Pakistan still relying on ageing Mirage jets to carry nuclear weapons?
The report predicts Islamabad's stockpile could grow to 200 warheads by 2025
Web Desk September 12, 2021 11:17 IST

A Pakistan Air Force Mirage III (foreground) at an international exercise in Jordan in 2010 | US Air Force via Wikimedia Commons

Last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists released its periodic report on the state of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a US non-profit that does research on the threats to humanity from nuclear 'risks', climate change and disruptive technologies.

The report—Pakistani Nuclear Weapons, 2021—has already made headlines given its predictions that Islamabad's stockpile could grow to 200 warheads by 2025.

The report profiles the types of platforms meant to carry nuclear weapons, including ballistic and cruise missiles and aircraft.

The US-built F-16 is the Pakistan Air Force's most advanced fighter aircraft, and Islamabad continues to buy the JF-17 light fighter that was co-developed with China. But for nuclear strike missions, the Pakistan Air Force still relies on an aircraft it first inducted in 1967: The French-built Mirage III.

Love affair with French jets
The Mirage III first flew in 1956. The Mirage III was the first operational fighter jet made in a European country that could fly at twice the speed of sound. The Mirage III was the main fighter used by the Israeli Air Force in its decimation of Arab air forces in the Six-Day War of 1967, giving the aircraft iconic status.

Since the late 1960s, the Pakistan Air Force started buying the Mirage III and its ground-attack derivative, the Mirage V. Given restrictions on buying F-16s from the US due to sanctions in the 1990s, Pakistan purchased used Mirage III and Mirage V jets from a number of countries including Lebanon, Australia and France. In the late 1990s, the Pakistan Air Force initiated a programme to upgrade the Mirage fleet, called the Retrofit of Strike Element (ROSE), to give it enhanced ground-attack capabilities.

Pakistani analysts claim the Pakistan Air Force used Mirage jets to attack an Indian base in Kashmir in response to the Balakot air strike in February 2019.

The Mirage III and Mirage V are inferior to the Mirage 2000 aircraft operated by the Indian Air Force as the latter is a heavier aircraft that has more advanced fly-by-wire flight controls.

According to the World Air Forces database for 2021 of Flight International, the Pakistan Air Force operates 69 Mirage III jets and 90 Mirage V aircraft. This makes the type numerically the most important aircraft in the Pakistan Air Force.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists report states, "The Mirage V is believed to have been given a strike role with Pakistan’ small arsenal of nuclear gravity bombs, while the Mirage III has been used for test launches of Pakistan’s Ra’ad (Hatf-8) air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), as well as the follow-on Ra’ad II ALCM. The Pakistani Air Force has added an aerial refueling capability to the Mirage, a capability that would greatly enhance the nuclear strike mission."

The report estimates Pakistan has earmarked 36 nuclear warheads for delivery by the Mirage III and Mirage V fighters. The report notes the aircraft have a range of 2,100km with external fuel tanks. The report notes the aircraft are capable of carrying one nuclear warhead with a yield of up to 12 kilotons. This is roughly equivalent to the destructive power of the US atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The report notes the Pakistan Air Force is developing the Ra'ad air-launched cruise missiles for carrying nuclear warheads. The Ra'ad has a range of 350km while the newer Ra'ad II can hit a target 600km away. The report notes, " All test launches involving either Ra’ad system have been conducted from Mirage III aircraft, indicating its likely delivery system upon deployment. There is no available evidence to suggest that either Ra’ad system had been deployed as of July 2021."

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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists report notes the Pakistan Air Force is moving to replace the Mirage fleet with the JF-17. The report states Pakistan will acquire a total of 186 JF-17 fighters and notes the Pakistan Air Force may modify the Chinese-designed aircraft to carry the Ra'ad II missile.

While noting that Pakistan has enhanced security for bases housing the F-16, the report concedes there is little evidence of the type being modified to carry nuclear weapons.

Submarines
Referring to other platforms, the report notes that eight diesel-electric submarines Pakistan is buying from China would be equipped to fire the Babur 3 cruise missile, which could carry nuclear warheads. "Once it becomes operational, the Babur-3 will provide Pakistan with a triad of nuclear strike platforms

from ground, air, and sea," the report states. The Babur 3 is estimated to have a range of 450km.

The report also refers to the Shaheen 3 ground-launched ballistic missile, which has a range of 2,750km and could in theory target the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Interestingly, it adds, "If deployed in the Western parts of Balochistan province, however, the range of the Shaheen-III would for the first time bring Israel within range of Pakistani nuclear missiles.”

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https://previews.123rf.com/images/lesniewski/lesniewski1411/lesniewski141100109/33620380-pakistan-administrative-map.jpg

https://uploads.fas.org/2016/11/map_nuclear2016.jpg

https://nuke.fas.org/guide/pakistan/facility/pakistan-fac3.gif

 

[Housecarl]

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Al-Hawl: Creating the Next Generation of Terrorists

It has been more than two years since ISIS was ousted from the last of its territorial strongholds in northeast Syria, but the group and its affiliates remain a&nbsp

www.realcleardefense.com

Al-Hawl: Creating the Next Generation of Terrorists
.

By Dominique L. Plewes
September 11, 2021


AP Photo/ Raad Adayleh, File

It has been more than two years since ISIS was ousted from the last of its territorial strongholds in northeast Syria, but the group and its affiliates remain a persistent threat to the U.S. and our allies. The most recent ISIS-K terrorist attacks at Kabul’s airport, resulting in the senseless and tragic deaths of 13 U.S. service members, are a somber reminder of this fact. Two decades after 9/11, we’re still losing American lives to violent Islamic terrorist organizations—and that will continue if we don't learn from past mistakes and implement practical solutions to prevent the next generation of radicals.

The al-Hawl refugee camp currently houses approximately 60,000 ISIS family members, many of whom are women and children. Due to the limited resources of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which controls the perimeter of al-Hawl, the camp has become notorious as a place where ISIS supporters can brutally impose their ideology on camp residents—often killing non-supporters to create a climate of fear.

Al-Hawl is a modern-day Camp Bucca, where Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, unknown at the time, first arrived in 2004. By 2014, he would head ISIS as the most infamous terrorist leader alive. Firsthand accounts recall that the environment of Camp Bucca as a U.S. military-run prison gave its inmates opportunities to plan, coordinate, and build bonds they would not otherwise have. Today, lone actors inspired by ISIS propaganda remain the “most serious threat” to U.S. and European security, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency. There will be a steep price to pay in the next few years if the international community does not take steps to defuse the ticking time bomb that is al-Hawl.

In April, I met with the al-Hawl camp director, Rojhat Ali, just one day after raids rooted out ISIS leadership and affiliates. Ali expressed his frustration with the lack of action taken by the international community—there are no real processes in place to protect children from violent Islamic ideological influence. Currently, his only weapon to battle ISIS is a handful of brochures aimed at reducing radicalization. As the population in al-Hawl matures, those children are growing up in an atmosphere guaranteed to enlist them as the next generation of terrorists.

The international community has largely created this problem and is reluctant to be part of the solution. The UN, NGOs, USAID, and countries of the European Union have created a catch-22 for the AANES governing body. They ridicule AANES for al-Hawl while making it politically impossible for them to facilitate any changes to the organization or operations of the camp.

The commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), General Kenneth McKenzie, has undertaken small amounts of repatriation as a solution to the growing terrorist threat but has noted that the process is moving too slowly. While the repatriation of camp refugees is by no means easy, immediate steps can be taken to avert this disaster in the making.

Al-Hawl contains around 22,000 Syrian nationals who could be integrated back into society far more quickly and safely than other foreign refugees. AANES has already developed an internally displaced persons (IDPs) registry, including 42,000 IDPs from all parts of Syria with confirmed identities.

A sponsorship system – wherein Syrians are paired with IDPs from the same communities or with existing local connections – would provide accountability and help facilitate an effective reintegration back into Syrian society. This program would need incentives for participation, such as economic or educational benefits for sponsors to be effective. It must also include multi-step security and deradicalization processes.

Such a program would safely remove about one-third of al-Hawl residents from the sprawling camp, freeing up resources and clearing the way for a greater focus on the remaining refugees. However, it would need focused international funding to be enacted.

When 9/11 occurred, there were no wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, or Yemen. Now, there are conflicts and hotspots on almost every continent. This instability has given rise to growing stretches of ungoverned territories, which afford terrorists the safe havens they need to grow and plan attacks. Today, terrorist leaders like Osama Bin Laden and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi may be dead, but their ideas still live. Inside al-Hawl lives a young man—whose name you haven’t yet heard—who is their successor. He is being fed, protected, and brainwashed by an inept system, that while full of good intentions, is nonetheless fostering the next generation of terrorists.

Dominique L. Plewes is special advisor to Freedom Research Foundation and founder of 501(c)3 Special Operations Forces (SOF) Support Foundation, dedicated to educating Americans on the purposes and uses of our special operations forces.

 

[Housecarl]

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North Korea says it has test-fired long-range cruise missile

US says weapon, claimed to have flown 1,500km, poses ‘threats’ to country’s neighbours and beyond

www.theguardian.com

North Korea

North Korea says it has test fired long-range cruise missile
The US said the missiles, which North Korea say flew 1,500km, present ‘threats’ to the country’s neighbours and beyond

North Korea test-fires long-range cruise missile, in this picture supplied by state media outlet KCNA. Photograph: KCNA/Reuters

Staff and agencies
Sun 12 Sep 2021 23.03 EDT

North Korea carried out successful tests of a new long-range cruise missile over the weekend, its state media outlet KCNA said, sparking criticism from the US amid a protracted standoff over denuclearisation.

The missiles are “a strategic weapon of great significance” and flew 1,500km (930 miles) before hitting their targets and falling into the country’s territorial waters during the tests on Saturday and Sunday, KCNA said. The missiles travelled for 126 minutes along “oval and pattern-8 flight orbits”, it reported.

The United States military said the missile tests posed “threats” to the country’s neighbours and beyond.

“This activity highlights [North Korea’s] continuing focus on developing its military program and the threats that poses to its neighbours and the international community,” the US Indo-Pacific command said in a statement.

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Katsunobu Kato said the government was “concerned” by the reports and would continue to work closely with the US and South Korea to monitor the situation.

Pictures in North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed a missile exiting one of five tubes on a launch vehicle in a ball of flame, and a missile in horizontal flight.

Such a weapon would represent a marked advance in North Korea’s weapons technology, analysts said, better able to avoid defence systems to deliver a warhead across the South or Japan – both of them US allies.



North Korea celebrates 73rd anniversary – in pictures
Read more

“This would be the first cruise missile in North Korea to be explicitly designated a ‘strategic’ role,” Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Reuters. “This is a common euphemism for nuclear-capable system.”

It is unclear whether North Korea has mastered the technology needed to build warheads small enough to be carried on a cruise missile, but leader Kim Jong-un said earlier this year that developing smaller bombs was a top goal.

Kim did not appear to have attended the test. KCNA said Pak Jong Chon, a member of the Workers’ party’s powerful politburo and a secretary of its central committee, oversaw it.



North Korea military threats ‘intended to deflect from economic crisis’
Read more

The reported launches are the first since March by the North. The regime also conducted a cruise missile test just hours after US president Joe Biden took office in January.

North Korea’s cruise missiles usually generate less interest than ballistic missiles because they are not explicitly banned under UN security council resolutions.

The unveiling of the test came just a day before chief nuclear negotiators from the United States, South Korea and Japan meet in Tokyo to explore ways to break the standoff with North Korea.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, is also scheduled to visit Seoul on Tuesday for talks with his counterpart, Chung Eui-yong.



Kim Jong-un’s sister dismisses hopes of US-North Korea nuclear talks
Read more

Talks aimed at dismantling the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes in return for US sanctions relief have stalled since 2019.

Last month, the UN atomic watchdog said North Korea appeared to have restarted a nuclear reactor that is widely believed to have produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Biden’s administration has said it is open to diplomacy to achieve North Korea’s denuclearisation, but has shown no willingness to ease sanctions.

Sung Kim, the US envoy for North Korea, said in August in Seoul that he was ready to meet North Korean officials “anywhere, at any time”.

A reactivation of inter-Korean hotlines in July raised hopes for a restart of the negotiations, but the North stopped answering calls as annual South Korea-US military exercises began last month, which Pyongyang had warned could trigger a security crisis.

With Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

 

[Housecarl]

From a Greek publication.....HC

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Turkey's Nuclear Dreams Are A Nightmare For The International Community

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Turkey’s Nuclear Dreams are a Nightmare for the International Community
by GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Turkey’s role in the Greater Middle East is under international scrutiny after asserting its intention to become a regional middle power in the emerging multipolar international system. To achieve this it gradually moves away from the West (and the North Atlantic Alliance) in an attempt to pivot east (Eurasia). Purchasing the Russian made S-400 missile system was the onset of this risky foreign policy shift that is becoming progressively a headache for its Western allies. Turkey’s ambitions however are restrained by the lack of a nuclear arsenal which would serve as a vehicle to its independence from the NATO shield.



Nuclear Proliferation

The significance that Ankara attributes to nuclear weapons is evident from the relevant statement of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in September 2019 at the Economic Forum of Central Anatolia. “Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads, not one or two. But (they tell us) we can’t have them. This, I cannot accept” he stated and added “we have Israel nearby, as almost neighbors. They scare (other nations) by possessing these. No one can touch them.” The Turkish President concluded saying “we are working on this”, thus implying that they their efforts to acquire a nuclear arsenal is already in progress. The Turkish President also clarified his intentions to the UN General Assembly in 2019, when he criticized the “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” (which Turkey signed in 1980), since it prohibits countries such as Turkey to develop nuclear weapons. It should be stated that Turkey has signed the “Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty” back in 1996. However, the revisionist goals of the Turkish leadership, yield little hope on Turkey keeping its obligations on both treaties.

Will Turkey soon become a nuclear-weapon state?

“I hope it will not happen, but Turkey seems to be in quest of it” said Dr. Moritz Kütt, a nuclear weapons expert and researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy of Hamburg University. He also added that “nuclear weapons will not calm the security situation; instead they will bolster up Turkey’s ‘ego’. Nuclear bombs guarantee a place in the forefront of geopolitics. An idea that Erdoğan likes a lot.” More concerned appeared the Israeli political scientist Yakov Kedmi who clarified that, it is only a matter of time before Ankara acquires a nuclear arsenal and it is impossible to prevent this. It is also reminded that on February 15, 2010, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou that, Turkey already had the capability to become a nuclear-weapons state.

This concern intensified after aljazeera.com brought to light information which suggested that Islamabad intends to covertly support Turkey’s nuclear-weapons program.

Such alarm bells have been ringing since 2015, when German secret services discovered that Turkey appeared to be following Iran’s footsteps. It was revealed that President Erdoğan demanded back in 2010 to secretly start the construction of uranium enrichment facilities. In addition, there are suspicions that Turkey has already attained enriched uranium originating from a former Soviet republic.

Notably, Turkey was also involved in the activities of Pakistani nuclear smuggler Abdul Qadeer Khan, who sold thousands of centrifuges (their electronic systems came from Turkey) between 1987 and 2002 in Iran, North Korea and Libya.

The ballistic missiles and space program objective

The prerequisite of a nuclear weapons program is the ballistic missile program which aims to develop missiles that will carry nuclear warheads. The Turkish-made Short Range Ballistic Missiles (range >1000km) are already in production while there are reports of producing missiles with a range of over 1000km. In addition, emphasis should be given to the announced Turkish space program.

-Firstly, because it will support the volume of data related to the satellite navigation of the Turkish UAVs, at the same time with the ballistic missiles.

-Secondly, because it will facilitate the development of missiles with a range of 3500km or greater (Medium Range Ballistic Missiles or larger).

The threat imposed on the states that lay within this range is obvious without considering the possibility of launching the ballistic missiles from surface ships or submarines. Thus the Turkish space program should be closely monitored to clarify whether it is covertly used to support its nuclear weapons program.

Equal distances from Russia-USA, Closer to Pakistan

The construction of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant (as well as those planned to be built in Sinope and in Eastern Thrace) is certainly not coincidental either. This aims to reduce Turkey’s energy dependence on one hand (in 2020, approximately 72% of its energy demand was met through imports) and on the other hand, it serves as an induction in the nuclear expertise. Dozens of Turks are already studying Nuclear Engineering at Russian universities since 2015.

Russia has every reason to provide the know-how for the construction of Turkey’s Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in an attempt to hinder NATO’s unity. However, the Russian-Turkish opportunistic cooperation will not feed the latter’s ambition in attaining nuclear weapons. Their competing interests collide in many cases. Russia wouldn’t want to see a nuclear arsenal in such close proximity to its borders. The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky is convinced: if Iran and especially Turkey have nuclear weapons, they will turn against Russia. This does not suggest that Turkey will not achieve its aim. On the contrary it means that Turkey will have to overcome many obstacles set by important states with interests in the wider region, such as Israel, France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Above all, Turkey will have to face the growing conflict of interest with the US. There are many reasons upon which Turkey will not be tolerated as nuclear-weapon state. As abovementioned, this will instigate its geostrategic autonomy, causing the existing Euro-Atlantic security architecture to disintegrate. In addition, it will trigger a nuclear arms race in the wider region. All of these destabilization fears have long been addressed by the US.

Consequently Turkey’s alleged choice to approach the co-religionist (and less pro-Western under the leadership of Imran Khan) and willing Pakistanis for supporting its nuclear-weapons program (1 , 2 , 3 and 4), does not come as a surprise, since it has little or no other option in this venture. The two Sunni forces share the same strategic goals in the Mediterranean and India which derive from their close historic and economic ties. Their defense cooperation agreements (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 and 7) are already expanding as a result of the events in Afghanistan which contributed to further strengthen their relations (1 , 2 and 3). The director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis, Jonathan Speyer, stresses that “Ankara’s strong and burgeoning strategic ties to Pakistan are causing international concern regarding the possibility of a transfer of nuclear weapons knowledge between the two countries. Turkey already has the will and the raw materials. This knowledge is the factor it currently lacks.”

Drifting apart from the West

Nonetheless, Turkey’s eagerness to embark on a nuclear-weapons program should be seen in the bigger context. There are clear indications that the Eurasianist ideology creeps in Turkey’s top-ranking policymakers. Analysts identify this ideology as a Turkish version of the Ba’athism in the Arab world. The Eurasianists argue that Turkey’s interests lie outside the Western world and therefore should join the “anti-imperialist” camp led by Russia and China.

When speaking about Afghanistan, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: “Imperial powers entered Afghanistan; they have been there for over 20 years. We also stood by our Afghan brothers against all imperial powers.” A similar statement made by the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, revealed the common grounds of the two Sunni forces in their ideological (and religious) beliefs. He said that the Taliban are “breaking the chains of slavery.” Some would argue that both statesmen are influenced by the jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb (author of the influential book “Milestones”) and his idea of victimization of Muslims by foreigners or “imperialists”. He believed that western nations are attempting to undermine Islamic empowerment thus jihad is the tool to liberate the “suppressed” Muslims from the “imperial powers” (see also 1 , 2 , 3).

Conclusions

It is evident that the alleged new venture of Turkey in the nuclear weapons field is in all cases a cause of serious concern for its Western allies. Its decision to drift away (1 and 2) from the North Atlantic alliance and become a strategically autonomous Eurasianist power, presupposes the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. This will lead to a reflexive nuclear arms race of key states in the wider sensitive region, hindering the already fragile balances and undermining the existing Euro-Atlantic security architecture. Such prospect cannot be reversed by false hopes on a softer policy after a leadership change in the Turkish elections of 2023, or worst by transactionalism that will boost Turkey’s confidence. It is arguable that Turkey’s overambitious geopolitical balancing act is pushing the limits of its diplomatic, economic and military capabilities. Therefore restraining its activities in these fields (especially its military hardware / technology as well as the space, missile and nuclear programs) by the states affected most and the US, is most likely to weaken its eagerness and tame its revisionist goals.

– by Konstantinos Apostolou-Katsaros

Konstantinos Apostolou-Katsaros is a special analyst- consultant. His area of interest is in Foreign Affairs and Greek-Turkish relations. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. from the School of Environment and Technology of Brighton University (UK) where he worked as a Lecturer and Research Associate.

 

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Ayman al Zawahiri promotes ‘Jerusalem Will Not Be Judaized’ campaign in new video | FDD's Long War Journal

After a lengthy absence from the screen, Zawahiri returns to promote his vision for global jihad in a new video titled, "Jerusalem Will Not Be Judaized."

www.longwarjournal.org

Ayman al Zawahiri promotes ‘Jerusalem Will Not Be Judaized’ campaign in new video

BY THOMAS JOSCELYN | September 11, 2021 | tjoscelyn@gmail.com | @thomasjoscelyn

As Sahab, al Qaeda’s main propaganda arm, released a video featuring Ayman al Zawahiri earlier today. Although the hour-long production was disseminated on the 9/11 anniversary, it does not appear to have been recorded for the occasion.

As Sahab’s production has slowed to a trickle and Zawahiri hasn’t appeared on screen in months. But the new video confirms that the elderly al Qaeda leader did not die last year, as some claimed. Zawahiri specifically praises an attack in Syria that occurred on Jan. 1 of this year. Other parts of the video may have also been recorded after that time.

In addition to the video, As Sahab released a massive, 852-page tract authored by Zawahiri. That book deals with political corruption and related themes. The introduction authored by Zawahiri is dated April 2021 – another indication that he is alive. And all of the promotional materials published by As Sahab read “May Allah Protect Him” after the al Qaeda leader’s name, meaning he is still with the living.

The video is titled “Jerusalem Will Not Be Judaized,” the same title given to a campaign of terror conducted by al Qaeda’s branches in Africa. This installment is the first part in what is intended to be a multi-part series. It is subtitled “Arab Zionists from Faysal to Bin Zaid.”

Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders criticize some Muslim-majority states for normalizing relations with Israel. They give a lengthy presentation, repeating many of the same conspiratorial themes employed by al Qaeda since the 1990s. But there are a few other noteworthy parts of the production.

Honors al Qaeda “martyrs” from Dec. 2019 through Oct. 2020

Multiple senior al Qaeda figures died during Zawahiri’s lengthy media absence. And he takes the time to praise some, but not all, of them.

Zawahiri begins by praising a series of “martyrs” who died from Dec. 2019 onward. The first is Mohammed Saeed al Shamrani, the Saudi air force officer who carried out the Dec. 6, 2019 mass shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola. Al Shamrani was killed after he began opening fire. The FBI found that al Shamrani had “significant ties” to AQAP, including “specific conversations with overseas AQAP associates about plans and tactics.”

The second jihadist honored by Zawahiri is Qasim al Raymi, the AQAP emir who was killed in a Jan. 2020 airstrike in Yemen. Al Raymi, (also known as Abu Hurayah al San’ani) claimed “full responsibility” for the Pensacola shootings shortly before his demise.

Zawahiri then remembers Hisham al Ashmawy, a former Egyptian officer who became a top al-Qaeda operative in Libya and Egypt. Al Ashmawy was detained in Libya in 2018 and later executed in Egypt in Mar. 2020. Zawahiri mentions in passing two of al Ashmawy’s companions as well, the jihadists Emad Abdul Hameed and Umar Rifa’i Suroor.

Next is Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud (a.k.a. Abdulmalek Droukdel), the emir of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who was killed in a June 2020 counterterrorism raid by French forces in Mali. Zawahiri also mentions two of his colleagues, Abdul Hameed and Abu Abdul Kareem.

Zawahiri honors two other veteran al Qaeda members who were killed in Idlib province, Syria in 2020: Abu al Qassam al Urduni and Abu Muhammad al Sudani. Al Urduni was the brother-in-law of the founder of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi. He remained loyal to al-Qaeda throughout the tumultous jihad in Syria. Al Urduni was killed in a drone strike in June 2020. Al Sudani, another al Qaeda loyalist, perished in a missile strike carried out in mid-October.

All of those remembered by Zawahiri are well-known al Qaeda figures – including the deceased emirs of two al Qaeda branches. But other figures are conspicuously absent from Zawahiri’s roll call of the martyred.

Two senior Egyptians who were killed in 2020 – Abu Muhammad al Masri and Husam Abd al Ra’uf – go unmentioned. Al Masri, who served as Zawahiri’s deputy emir, was gunned down in a secretive Israeli operation in Tehran in Aug. 2020. Al-Ra’uf was killed in a Taliban-controlled village in Ghazni province, Afghanistan in Oct. 2020.

Both men had served alongside Zawahiri since the 1980s. Zawahiri may not want to admit that al-Masri was operating inside Iran.

Al Qaeda branches represented

Zawahiri’s discussion is spliced together with talks given by the current leaders of AQAP and AQIM, both of whom assumed their roles after their predecessors were killed last year. AQAP is represented by its emir, Khalid Batarfi, as well as the ex-Guantanamo detainee Ibrahim al Qosi, who served Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. AQIM’s emir, Abu Ubaidah Yusef al Annabi, speaks at length.

As Sahab’s editors include text at the bottom of the screen crediting the media houses for AQAP (Al Malahem Media) and AQIM (Al Andalus Media) for their assistance in producing the clips. An introductory screen at the beginning of the production also includes the watermarks for all of the al Qaeda media houses as an indication of their unity.

Praise for the Taliban

Zawahiri mentions the 9/11 hijackings only briefly, as a way to introduce America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. “And let us not forget that nineteen Mujahideen, the warriors of Islam, stabbed America in its heart…an injury the like of which America had ever tasted before and today it is making its exit from Afghanistan, broken, defeated, after twenty years of war,” Zawahiri says.

AQIM’s Annabi then heaps praise on the Taliban, as images of the group’s political delegation are flashed across the screen. Footage of Taliban fighters inside the presidential palace in Kabul are also spliced into the video. However, the testimony given alongside those images was recorded much earlier. The scenes in Kabul come from mid-August, but Annabi discusses President Trump’s time in office, saying he was humiliated by the Taliban.

“To conclude, you have a great example in the form of the Afghan,” Annabi says. “Follow their way. When they abandoned disputes and disagreements and united under a single flag and a single leadership – in whose faith, knowledge and sincerity they had trust – then severed their ties with client regimes and treacherous governments and adopted the path of jihad and martyrdom, their guns resting on their shoulders, their souls in their palms, Allah gave them victory and defeated their enemy.”

Their “enemy” is America.

“It was the enemy that submitted to their conditions in humiliation,” Annabi says of America. “Today, Trump, who has proposed the ‘deal of the century,’ lowers his head in humiliation as he receives the ‘slap of the century’ from the Afghans who understand the Americans and the language they understand.” The “deal of the century” is a reference to the Abraham Accords the Trump administration helped broker between Israel and various Muslim-majority states.

Zawahiri builds on Annabi’s testimony to urge patience in jihad. “So beware of those who let down, fear, and call for surrender, humiliation, and submission,” Zawahiri says.

As Sahab’s editors include archival footage of Abdullah Azzam, the godfather of modern jihadism, lecturing on the supposed connection between jihad in Afghanistan and Palestine. “People come to us and say that we have abandoned Palestine and engaged ourselves with Afghanistan,” Azzam says in the old recording. “Yes, we are busy in Afghanistan, it is our duty to help the Muslim mujahid people of Afghanistan. We must purify the land of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is Palestine; Palestine is Afghanistan.”

Azzam taught that “Jihad is a lifelong duty in Afghanistan, in Palestine, in the Philippines, and wherever despots, tyrants and oppressors exist.”

Zawahiri uses Azzam’s testimony to argue that the situation is the same today. “We must fight the battle on different fronts, united though as a single Ummah. Palestine is thus Kashmir, Kashmir is Grozni, Grozni is Idlib, Idlib is Kashgar, and Kashgar is Waziristan,” Zawahiri says. (Zawahiri’s mention of Kashgar, which is in Xinjiang region of China, may be provocative at the moment. The Taliban has been assuring the Chinese that it will not export jihadism into Xinjiang and Beijing has offered to support the Islamic Emirate.)

Annabi returns to discuss how Muslims must liberate themselves from the ideas of the Zionist-Crusader alliance. To this, Zawahiri adds: “We must therefore fight this battle against the Crusader alliance and its Zionist allies at all levels, beliefs, thought, education, politics and war.”

Zawahiri also uses the opportunity to criticize Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State (ISIS), who broke his oath of allegiance to the al-Qaeda emir.

“We must unite and close ranks,” Zawahiri says. “Every effort aimed at dispersing our ranks, creating fissures and violating oaths is a crime, and the one who engages in such acts is a criminal whether it is Baghdadi or his followers, who believe that he was the Caliph, or anyone else for that matter.”

Holds up Hurras al-Din’s attack on Russians in Raqqa, Syria as an example

Zawahiri wants his audience to prepare for a long jihad.“We must get used to exercising patience,” he says. “We must understand that repelling this Crusader campaign entails the efforts of successive generations.”

“It demands wearing down the enemy everywhere,” Zawahiri says. He argues that the jihadists should pursue a strategy of “exhausting” their well-equipped enemies, who “can be bled to death using inventive ideas, simple tools, and waging a war in which the entire world is the battlefield.”

“The current stage demands that we exhaust the enemy until it whines and moans due to economic and military bleeding,” Zawahiri argues. “It is in this context that the importance of operations outside the theater in which the enemy expects us to strike, operations on enemy soil and beyond enemy lines becomes evident.”

“One of the most prominent operations in this regard” was Hurras al-Din’s bombing at a Russian base in Raqqa, Syria on Jan. 1 of this year, Zawahiri says. Hurras al-Din is an al-Qaeda loyalist group fighting in Syria. “This operation was a practical example of breaking the enemy’s military siege,” Zawahiri says.

The al-Qaeda emir implies that Hurras al-Din was able to cooperate with others in the fractious Syrian jihadi scene, perhaps the much larger Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), to execute the attack. “By ignoring minor issues and differences and focusing on the priorities, this operation turned the compass in the right direction,” Zawahiri argues. He asks Allah to “accept the martyrs of this operation and greatly reward all those who supported this operation.”

“May Allah guide our Muslim brothers and Mujahideen in Syria and elsewhere to unite with their Ummah to their common war against an enemy united against them,” Zawahiri says.

Much of the production is organized around a similar theme. “We are a united Ummah, waging one war on different fronts,” Zawahiri claims. The jihadists’ experience has been rather different over the past decade, but the aging al-Qaeda leader hopes the coming years witness a more unified effort against the so-called “Zionist-Crusader” conspiracy.

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

 

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The PLA Air Force’s Efforts Toward Agile Combat Employment

Introduction From late June to early July 2021, it was reported that the Western Theater Air Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force (PLAAF) had “recently” conducted a combat support exercise in northwestern China.[1] Although much of the exercise resembled other combat...

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The PLA Air Force’s Efforts Toward Agile Combat Employment
Publication: China Brief Volume: 21 Issue: 17

By: Derek Solen
September 10, 2021 12:31 PM Age: 3 days

Introduction
From late June to early July 2021, it was reported that the Western Theater Air Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force (PLAAF) had “recently” conducted a combat support exercise in northwestern China.[1] Although much of the exercise resembled other combat support exercises, it is notable because of its unusual stated purposes. Those purposes indicate that the PLAAF lacks the capability to operate outside its network of airbases, but they may also indicate that the PLAAF has set about emulating the U.S. Air Force’s newest operational concept.

The Exercise
As usual, details about the exercise are sparse, but it seems to have been relatively small, involving an air defense element as well as some aircraft (at least one Y-20 transport and at least two J-16 fighters) and their crews in addition to a great variety of combat support elements, from engineering to medical and even food service elements (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22; Chinese Military Online, July 14). The exercise began with the participating combat support elements deploying to an unspecified place in northwestern China by road, rail, and air (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22). After assembling at their destination, the participants unloaded materiel from a train and established a bivouac and a motor pool (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22).

“Several” aircraft then landed at an “unfamiliar” (陌生, mosheng) airfield that was presumably nearby (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22; Military Report, July 8). The PLA refers to an airfield from which a unit does not ordinarily operate as an “unfamiliar” airfield. The term encompasses civilian as well as military airfields. Immediately after the aircraft landed, the airfield was “attacked” from the air (Military Report, July 8). Elements of an engineering and logistics group removed unexploded ordnance and then worked with a local civilian construction company to repair the runway (Xinhua, July 7). The airfield’s fuel tank farm was also “destroyed” in the attack, so a fuel support element established a new “field fuel farm” (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22).

This much of the exercise resembles other combat support exercises that the PLAAF has conducted before and after (Chinese Military Television Online, August 15, 2019; Chinese Military Television Online, August 27). However, two new subjects were added to this exercise. The exercise marked the first time that maintainers worked in the field with employees of aircraft manufacturers to repair aircraft (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22). More important, “hot support” (热保障 re baozhang) was conducted for the aircraft that landed at the airfield, which were apparently unscathed by the “attack” (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22). “Hot support” refers to the refueling and rearming of a just-landed aircraft whose engines are still running (National Defense Stories, June 8).[2] This is a key capability for keeping aircraft aloft longer, thereby sustaining continual air operations and reducing the risk to aircraft from strikes on their airbases.

More anomalous were the stated purposes of the exercise. The first was to explore how combat units could “survive” while conducting operations from “unfamiliar” airfields lacking the materiel and combat support personnel to sustain combat operations (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22; Xinhua, July 7; Military Report, July 8). A second purpose was to study how to organize, deploy, and exercise command and control over various combat support elements sustaining operations from such airfields (Chinese Military Television Online, June 22). The third purpose was to gauge units’ minimum combat support needs in wartime (Xinhua, July 7). Other combat support exercises have focused on deploying units over long distances and practicing various support functions in the field, but they have typically not involved aircraft. This exercise focused on organizing the minimal combat support force to sustain air operations from airfields whose runways may be their only adequacy.

Implications of the Exercise
The exercise is significant for two reasons. First, it suggests that the PLAAF’s capability to employ its combat support units, and to sustain combat operations, outside its current organization and network of airbases is low. The PLAAF does regularly deploy aviation units to participate in large-force employment exercises, but such exercises are conducted at well-appointed airfields like Dingxin (鼎新) Airbase. Throughout the last decade, the PLAAF has worked to reduce the amount of materiel and the number of combat support personnel accompanying aviation units on these deployments (Liberation Army News, November 6, 2019). This recent exercise indicates that the PLAAF is aware of this deficiency and is addressing it. Second, and more important, the exercise indicates that the PLAAF is grappling with the same threat that has prompted the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to devise the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept, which is the potential incapacitation of the PLAAF’s air operations through concentrated strikes on its airbases.

There are likely two reasons as to why the PLAAF is grappling with this threat now, which are not mutually exclusive. First, the PLAAF certainly recognizes how absolutely dependent air power is on airfields, and that it cannot afford to gamble on the efficacy of its air defenses, particularly when it is commonly predicted that current missile defense systems will be ineffective against hypersonic missiles, which are being developed by the PLA’s adversaries.[3] In the future, the PLAAF may be forced to operate from “unfamiliar” airfields that lack the necessary materiel and facilities, so it is prudent to prepare for that contingency.

In fact, in January the PLA reported that the PLAAF had designated at least one “field station” (场站, chang zhan) to develop the techniques and procedures to enable an entire such unit to provide emergency, mobile combat support (Liberation Army News, January 18).[4] A “field station,” also known as an “air station,” is not a station in the common sense of the term; rather, it is the highest-level combat support unit in the PLAAF. It is roughly equivalent to a group in the USAF and likely consists of several hundred personnel.

The other possible reason is that the PLAAF views the increasing dispersal of forces as an ineluctable trend in military tactics, so it has decided that it, too, must become more agile. It is a basic principle of warfare that dispersal increases survivability, but dispersal also complicates command and control. Advances in information technology, however, should enable commanders to coordinate the actions of widely scattered units, thereby enabling those units to fight together even while they are separated. ACE will take advantage of those advances to employ forces across a distributed network of airfields in order to increase units’ survivability. ACE will also increase units’ agility and decrease their discoverability by minimizing combat support at each point of dispersal.

It is notable that in its publicly available assessment of ACE, the PLA never criticized the principle of distributed employment (China Brief, July 16). In fact, just before the exercise, the PLA’s mouthpiece, Liberation Army News, published an article stating that the convergence of strength across dispersed formations is a “basic requirement” for employing forces in future wars in which, due to the application of information technology and artificial intelligence, “exposure means discovery” and “discovery means destruction” (Liberation Army News, May 18). The article and the exercise are probably unconnected; the exercise is likely to have been planned well before the article was published. However, the separate appearance of both suggests the existence in the PLAAF—and in the PLA as a whole—of a prior consensus about how they must adapt to current trends in warfare.[5] The fact that the PLAAF is trying to determine the minimal combat support needs for sustaining combat operations from austere airfields may indicate that the PLAAF has decided to follow the same path as that of the USAF.

Conclusion
If the PLAAF is considering implementing its own version of ACE, then it will face some of the same challenges as the USAF: primarily the challenge of coordinating the actions of dispersed combat units and of sustaining those units with smaller, nimbler combat support elements operating in austere conditions. Having started earlier, the USAF has made more progress toward meeting those challenges.

However, the PLAAF also has advantages. In a regional war, the PLAAF can operate entirely from China’s vast territory. It need not rely on allies for access to the theater of operations. In addition, it can legally commandeer any airstrip and press civilian entities into service (Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress, February 26, 2010). Greater reliance on civilian entities for combat support may be a key difference in how the PLA implements its own version of ACE. The participation in the aforementioned exercise of a local construction company as well as employees of aircraft manufacturers highlights this possibility.

Finally, the PLAAF’s logistics are less vulnerable, not only because the PLA can freely utilize civilian transportation assets, but also because it can convey men and materiel over land by road and rail, so it has more options for transport as well as transshipment and storage. Those road and rail networks are particularly well-developed in China’s coastal provinces. These advantages will not compensate for a lack of agility, but they will significantly augment the PLAAF’s capabilities if it can implement its own version of ACE. The PLAAF’s becoming more agile will not counteract ACE, but it will make the PLAAF a much more resilient force. By adopting the USAF’s own, still developing operational concepts, the PLAAF will force the USAF into a race to implement them so as not to be surpassed. The USAF’s lead over the PLAAF may not last, so the USAF should not become complacent about its progress. Nor should it become sanguine about the advantages that implementation will provide.

Derek Solen is a senior researcher at the U.S. Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute. He was a civilian intelligence specialist in the U.S. Army. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Notes
[1] The exercise was characterized as a “support” (保障, baozhang) exercise. This term for “support” is typically used throughout the PLA as “combat service support” is defined in U.S. joint doctrine. The exercise is here described as a “combat support” exercise in accordance with U.S. Air Force doctrine.
[2] The U.S. armed forces refer to the same as “hot-pit” refueling and rearming.
[3] It was predicted that hypersonic weapons would have just this effect in an article about the future of air strikes that was published in the PLA’s official newspaper (Liberation Army News, September 3, 2020).
[4] It is possible that the field station belongs to the Northern Theater Air Force (Xinhua, April 15, 2020).
[5] The PLA similarly negatively assessed the U.S. military’s ability to implement the Joint All-Domain Operations concept, but it never criticized the logic behind it, and it seems to have even judged that “multi-domain integrated joint operations” (多域一体化联合作战, duoyu yitihua lianhe zuozhan) will be the basic form of warfare in the future (China Aerospace Studies Institute, August 31, 2020; China Brief, May 25). When the PLA does emulate the U.S. military, it does so not out of a copycat impulse, but because it understands and accepts the validity and the effectiveness of the U.S. military’s ideas and methods.
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A Bipartisan Call To Stay The Course On US Homeland Missile Defense - Breaking Defense

The Missile Defense Review sets "the stage for a high-stakes policy debate between those who value missile defense as an enabler of US grand strategy, and those who fear enhanced missile defense may start an arms race with Russia and China," write Walter Slocombe and Robert Soofer.

breakingdefense.com

• PENTAGON

A Bipartisan Call To Stay The Course On US Homeland Missile Defense
The Missile Defense Review sets "the stage for a high-stakes policy debate between those who value missile defense as an enabler of US grand strategy, and those who fear enhanced missile defense may start an arms race with Russia and China," write Walter Slocombe and Robert Soofer.

By WALTER SLOCOMBE and ROBERT SOOFER
on September 10, 2021 at 8:15 AM

The Biden administration’s strategic review, including its work on the Missile Defense Review, is expected to be completed by the end of the year. One major decision facing Pentagon leadership is whether to alter the current homeland defense posture. In this op-ed, Walter Slocombe and Robert Soofer — who served in the Clinton and Trump administrations, respectively — argue the bipartisan case for keeping the current strategy.

At the recent Space and Missile Defense conference in Huntsville, Ala., senior defense officials confirmed that the Biden administration’s missile defense policy review is well underway. And one of the most consequential questions for that review concerns whether to stay the course on improving US homeland missile defenses.

Early indications are promising. In March, the Department of Defense approved the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) to proceed, and it has received strong support from Congress. It has also received support from both STRATCOM head Adm. Charles Richard and NORTHCOM leader Gen. Glen VanHerck, who would operate the system in a time of crisis.

But NGI has its critics within the administration, in Congress, and in certain think tanks, setting the stage for a high-stakes policy debate between those who value missile defense as an enabler of US grand strategy, and those who doubt any missile defense system can perform well or fear that enhanced missile defense may start an arms race with Russia and China.

The issue is staying ahead of limited long-range missile threats from rogue regional actors, not defense against Russian or Chinese attacks, which instead relies on nuclear deterrence. This has been the guiding principle of US missile defense policy since the end of the Cold War. That’s why it is essential to sustain the strategic modernization program approved under Obama, continued with marginal adjustments under Trump, endorsed under Biden and backed, in a largely bipartisan manner, by Congress.

To maintain a defensive posture towards North Korea, the Obama administration added 14 Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs) to the 30 fielded by the Bush administration and sought to enhance the reliability of Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) by developing a Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) for the GBI. The Trump administration altered the acquisition approach to include a fully modernized interceptor, with a new booster, avionics, and kill vehicles — the NGI program. Once developed, 20 NGI/GBIs would be added to the 44 currently deployed in Alaska and California.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has testified to Congress that missile defense against rogue state threats is a “central component” to keeping the homeland safe. In support of this priority, the Biden administration has, so far, kept the ball rolling by approving NGI development to proceed with two competitive contractor teams. Meanwhile, with the support of Congress, the Pentagon is executing a Service Life Extension Program for GMD to upgrade and replace ground system infrastructure, fire control, and kill vehicle software. These efforts will improve GMD reliability and effectiveness and help secure the system against cyber threats until NGI fielding in 2028.

But that progress could be stymied, or thrown off course altogether, depending on the decisions made in the next few months by the Biden administration and Congress.

Outside voices — and some individuals who are now part of the MDR process or whom have a role in Congressional action — have criticized the cost, efficacy, and necessity of NGI or, in some cases, for any homeland missile defense. They argue that North Korea could easily overwhelm planned upgrades and future deployments, while the expansion of US missile defense capabilities, meant to pace the North Korean threat, could eventually upset strategic stability with Russia and China. Several points deserve to be made in response.

First, while North Korea intends to grow its ICBM force in the coming years, it has long been a premise of our BMD policy that our systems will adapt to outpace the threat. It is reasonable to assume that an additional 20 Ground Based Interceptors, combined with newly designed kill vehicles and the improved reliability of the GMD system, will be sufficient to stay ahead of the threat.

Second, the costs, while significant, must be understood in context. The reported overall cost of about $18 billion dollars develop ($13B), field ($2.3B), and operate ($2.2B) the NGI system will be spread over ten-plus years. The funding for NGI will, according to numbers laid out in the FY21 budget request, be approximately one-quarter of one percent of DoD’s budget over FY21-FY26. Combined NGI and GMD funding will account for about one-half of one percent of the DoD budget across that same period. These are not unreasonable investments to protect the nation against rogue state ICBMs.

Third, with respect to efficacy, the senior military leaders charged with defending the nation against North Korean ICBM threats have repeatedly expressed confidence in the system, while the DoD Director for Operational Test and Evaluation has reported that the current GMD system has demonstrated capability to defend the homeland from a small number of ICBMs. Going forward, the GMD system will be able to handle a greater number of North Korean ICBM threats through reliability improvements and the development of NGI, which will be tied to a conservative acquisition strategy, carrying two prototypes through critical design review, consistent with rigorous testing and the principle of “fly before you buy.”

Fourth, proceeding with NGI is important for a US strategy that, according to the White House, seeks to “promote a favorable distribution of power to deter and prevent adversaries from directly threatening the United States and its allies, inhibiting access to the global commons or dominating key regions.”

Adversary offensive missile capabilities are meant to coerce the United States, to limit our freedom of action, to discourage us from supporting our allies or countering regional challengers, and, ultimately, to weaken our alliances. Far from replacing deterrence for North Korea – and other potential proliferators — a significant US defense, adapted to changing developments, complements the threat of overwhelming retaliation. A North Korean regime, considering use of nuclear weapons to coerce the US and our allies, would have to be concerned that such action would not only be fatal because of inevitable US response, but also quite likely to be futile because their missiles would be intercepted.

Moreover, modernizing and expanding our homeland defense underpins President’s Biden’s push to “revitalize our ties with friends and partners.” An important element of renewing alliances is convincing allies that the United States is prepared to run risks on their behalf — especially as some countries seek to use the Afghanistan situation to cast doubt on American resolve. Strengthening US homeland defense helps provide that confidence by reducing our own vulnerability to North Korean coercion.

Finally, while Russia and China are certain to complain about any improvements to US homeland defenses, there is simply no way that a few dozen interceptors poses any serious challenge to China, with its hundred-plus intercontinental missiles and counting, much less Russia’s several thousand warheads that can range the United States.

As Putin himself has noted, most of Russia’s nuclear forces will be modernized by the end of 2021 and “capable of confidently overcoming existing and even projected missile defense systems.” Moreover, both nations continue to modernize their own suite of missile defense systems. In contradiction to Russia’s claimed principle-based objection to missile defense, it deploys 68 nuclear tipped ground-based interceptors for the protection of greater Moscow and hundreds of regional air and missile defense systems. China possesses regional air and missile defense systems and has tested a mid-course defense system against intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Homeland and regional missile defenses provide protection for the nation, its deployed forces, and allies, and are critical enablers of a US grand strategy that relies on strong conventional forces, nuclear deterrence, alliances, and, yes, limited missile defenses to maintain a favorable balance of power and a peaceful world order.

For less than two percent of annual defense appropriations, the missile defense enhancement represented by NGI would provide the United States greater freedom of action to respond to crises, to shore-up allies, to deter adversaries like North Korea and, if necessary, to defeat them and limit damage should deterrence fail. No American leader should have to tell the American people that they will not be protected against North Korean nuclear missile threats.

Walter Slocombe is a Senior Counsel at Caplin & Drysdale. He was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 1994 to 2001. Robert Soofer is a nonresident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy from 2017 to 2021.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm........

Posted for fair use.....

Avoiding a Collision Course With India - War on the Rocks

After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, some of the harshest criticism of America’s credibility has come — surprisingly — from India. One prominent

warontherocks.com

AVOIDING A COLLISION COURSE WITH INDIA

SAMEER LALWANI AND TYLER SAGERSTROM
SEPTEMBER 12, 2021
COMMENTARY

After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, some of the harshest criticism of America’s credibility has come — surprisingly — from India. One prominent commentator projects the end of “Pax Americana” and another argues that the Taliban’s victory constitutes the “first significant setback” of America’s “Indo-Pacific project.” These Indian strategists see the end of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan as a sign of unreliability. Without U.S. troops on the ground, New Delhi will be challenged to contend with a Taliban government that tilts toward Pakistan and China. Afghanistan historically provided safe haven to terrorist organizations that targeted India, and New Delhi considers the Taliban’s ascendance as a direct threat to its security interests. Other prominent Indian voices, however, take a different view on the meaning of the U.S. withdrawal. C. Raja Mohan, an influential Indian scholar, believes that the U.S. withdrawal can “accelerate current trends in India’s relations with the United States,” while even the Indian foreign minister insists that the United States is still “the premier power” that retains a “very unique sort of standing.

Debates over the reliability of the United States are commonplace in New Delhi. Earlier this year, for instance, Indian commentators argued over the significance of unilateral U.S. freedom of navigation operations in India’s exclusive economic zone and the slow pace of U.S. pandemic relief. Suspicion of U.S. intentions has a long history in India, dating back to the Cold War and America’s longstanding ties with Islamabad. In recent decades, however, New Delhi has been able to count on Washington when in crisis. Last year, the United States rapidly provided supplies, expedited equipment, and enhanced intelligence during India’s 2020 border crisis with China.

Where India remains uncertain is whether Washington will steadfastly support India’s long-term defense and deterrence needs. These lingering doubts have intensified with the looming threat of U.S. sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which India could be subject to when it takes delivery of the Russian S-400 air defense system at the end of 2021. These doubts could abate if the Biden administration is able to work with Congress to issue India a sanctions waiver, and allow strategic and market incentives, rather than punishments, to shape India’s defense partnership choices.

Far more than the last American soldier departing Afghanistan, sanctions on a burgeoning strategic partner could set back U.S.-Indian cooperation a decade or more, constrain Indian capabilities to generate a balance of power and influence in Asia, and raise doubts over U.S. reliability amongst many Southeast Asian swing states. Bolstering India to balance China’s rising power in the Indian Ocean region — even with advanced Russian weapon systems — advances U.S. national security interests far more than denying a few billion dollars to the Russian defense industrial complex.

Background to Sanctions

Originally, Congress enacted CAATSA to more effectively punish Russia for its actions in Ukraine and its engagement in cyber attacks, particularly its interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The United States has sought to limit the sale of Russian arms to foreign states by threatening to apply secondary sanctions to any entity that does business with sanctioned Russian contractors. Such broad powers, though, which were written in haste, are liable to create tensions with U.S. partners if overused.

CAATSA’s ultimate objective, therefore, is to allow the United States to pressure and penalize countries for funding the Russian defense industrial base, which is why it has enacted sanctions against China and Turkey over their Russian arms procurements. Congress also designed CAATSA Section 231 sanctions around the risk that U.S. partners and allies, like Turkey, would introduce Russian platforms, like the S-400, into their militaries that could collect intelligence on sensitive U.S. platforms, like the F-35, that those militaries also operate. With India, U.S. defense officials have expressed concerns that Indian integration of advanced Russian systems like the S-400 that operate alongside, or networked to, advanced U.S. fighters, bombers, or surveillance aircraft risks “exploitation, theft, or actually risk of non-operability.” These risks could constrain combined operations with U.S. forces and the prospects for joint defense production and technology development.

The Looming Crisis

Although even U.S. officials acknowledge that India signed an agreement to purchase the S-400 one year before CAATSA legislation was even written, India’s receipt of the S-400 will trigger sanctions unless a waiver is signed. Some have speculated that it may be possible to apply “very mild” sanctions that are more symbolic than substantive, thus avoiding a waiver precedent while also preserving the U.S.-Indian partnership. Even symbolic sanctions, however, can prove corrosive to the partnership, as some former U.S. officials argue. Debates over U.S. credibility tend to fixate on its resolve, but recent scholarship shows that states don’t simply seek allies or partners that cultivate a reputation for loyalty, especially loyalty to a fault, that drains and diverts capabilities. Instead, states seek evidence of reliability demonstrated through behaviors that reveal an alignment of interests.

U.S. sanctions that take aim at India’s “strategic autonomy” would constitute a profound public signal of divergent interests, unreliability, and even potential future abandonment. Unlike U.S. treaty allies in NATO or East Asia, India does not depend on the United States as a permanent security guarantor. Instead, New Delhi most values U.S. support for its political, material, and technological heft to become an independent and capable strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific, so policies that affect this ledger matter far more than the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. At times, this has led to unrealistic expectations about the degree of the America’s “strategic altruism” (i.e., generous U.S. support without demands for Indian reciprocity) on concessionary technology transfers and preferential bilateral trade agreements. Nevertheless, the United States has generally bolstered India’s position and, in return, India has gradually leveraged its material heft to aid a balance of power in Asia and to defend shared principles of rule of law, freedom of navigation and overflight, peaceful resolution of disputes, and territorial integrity.

In the past year, both sides have worked together to produce global public goods (e.g., COVID-19 vaccine distribution), participate in advanced joint naval exercises, finalize agreements to facilitate greater military interoperability and intelligence sharing, and co-develop defense technologies (like a recent agreement on air-launched drones). Sanctions would reverse this momentum. Indeed, Indian officials and insiders have hinted that sanctions imposition risks jeopardizing the strategic partnership and could set back the relationship “a decade” or more.

Even while India aligns more closely with the United States, though, it retains a strategy of multi-alignment, which entails foregoing alliances to maintain partnerships with a diverse set of states — something that CAATSA effectively targets. Sanctions are an attempt to force India to choose between arms ties with the United States or with Russia. While the United States might expect this to be an easy choice, it runs counter to India’s grand strategy and decades-long partnership with Moscow. Historically, India’s relations with Russia have been built on arms transactions, which has led some to mistakenly view this partnership as transactional. However, there is also a geopolitical logic, which the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan only clarifies. India now sees an even greater need for an autonomous strategy that allows for strong relations with regional players that command influence in Central Asia, like Russia and Iran, both of which the United States sees as adversaries. India also perceives particular value in Russia’s willingness to co-produce defense technology, their mutual support of a multipolar order and spheres of influence, and even the hope that India’s partnership might slow down Sino-Russian relations, even if scholars cast doubt on whether a strategy to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow is feasible. CAATSA sanctions on India intend to drive New Delhi away from Moscow, and effectively from its multi-alignment strategy.

While, in recent decades, Washington has invested in India as a democratic partner that can serve as a bulwark against China’s growing regional influence, the threat of CAATSA sanctions suggests that U.S. support is conditional on India’s relations with other countries. The absence of an alliance treaty commitment, which most analysts agree will never happen, of course places understandable limits on the relationship. However, CAATSA sanctions don’t simply establish a ceiling to relations — they pull out the rug from underneath them. Punitive measures won’t successfully coerce India into reformulating its grand strategy, but they will lead India to question the United States’ reliability as a strategic partner, might counter-productively slow collective balancing actions against China, and could push India to strengthen its ties to Russia to meet its future defense needs.

U.S. Concerns and Workarounds

Proponents of CAATSA sanctions on India argue that India’s multi-alignment relations with Russia create two risks: a strategic risk to the global order, and a technical risk to greater U.S.-Indian military interoperability. However, sanctions would worsen the first concern, and the second is surmountable.

Continued.....

 

[vestige]

#12:

How many $$$ were pissed away in Afghanistan again?

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

India’s Russian arms procurements are frustrating because they flow billions of dollars into the Russian defense industry, effectively abetting its “brigandry” that subverts the international order. While understandable, sanctions that limit India’s confidence in access to the U.S. defense industry inevitably force them closer to their trusted Russian partner. It may also be plausible to leverage India’s relationship constructively. In a deal where the United States waives sanctions, it might also raise expectations of India to more publicly condemn Russian behaviors that subvert the international order, like civilian infrastructure cyber attacks, militarized territorial grabs, disinformation campaigns, and election interference.

On the other hand, sanctions that harm U.S.-Indian relations, and mechanisms like the Quad, will also set back the defense of the “open rules-based order.” If the administration and Congress believe that the Indo-Pacific is the “priority” theater for defending this order, that China is the only “systemic” or “pacing” challenge to the United States, and that the partnership with India is “vital” to greater regional burden-sharing and balancing, sabotaging relations with India would be, on net, counterproductive.

The second U.S. concern is that India’s continual procurement of Russian military equipment will place technical limits on defense cooperation between New Delhi and Washington. Advanced Russian equipment — accompanied by officers, scientists, and technicians — generates U.S. concerns about the security of any U.S.-Indian defense industrial technology collaboration. As well, the United States would be wary of sharing real-time information, and operating in theater, with Russian-origin Indian military platforms. The risks that there could be backdoors and other ways for Russia to acquire insights into American systems and operations, especially through the S-400’s radar, is cause for U.S. defense officials to curtail the space for cooperation. The United States sanctioned Turkey in December for just such concerns, though the circumstances are different in this case as India would not be jeopardizing any existing allied treaty commitments or F-35 supply chains.

No matter what penalties the United States might seek to apply, though, India is in too deep with its strategic systems — including nuclear submarines, cruise missiles, and fighter aircraft — to divest from its Russian partnership. India’s military is overwhelmingly reliant on Russian equipment and it has decades of acquired tacit knowledge on operating, maintaining, and strategizing with Russian platforms. However, the United States can develop tactical, geographic, and technical workarounds to these hurdles (as we detail in a longer paper). Washington can concentrate its defense cooperation with New Delhi on essential areas, like maritime reconnaissance, that are geographically separated from S-400 batteries and other problematic Russian systems, while it tailors technical solutions to overcome exploitation and cyber security threats. Creative workarounds to technical obstacles are available — workarounds to political fallout and unreliability concerns from sanctions are extremely difficult.

Re-Thinking How India Benefits the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy

Assuming it is willing to work with the United States and can rise to its potential as a military and geopolitical power, India can advance the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy materially, technologically, and politically — ironically because it is not a U.S. ally. First, India offers one of the best chances of checking China’s assertiveness in the Indian Ocean, simply given its military size and strength, unique geography, and economic heft. Some argue India’s importance to American interests has even increased since U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The United States will maintain an interest in coordinating with India to affect the Asian balance of power, even in spite of some decay in India’s democratic institutions, so long as India maintains support for the most essential strategic elements of the rules-based order — rule of law, freedom of navigation and overflight, peaceful resolution of disputes, and territorial integrity. An independently capable India will naturally be inclined to counter any attempted militarized aggression, including from Beijing. For that matter, Russian arms — like the S-400, but also the soon to be acquired stealth frigates, nuclear submarines, and the jointly developed anti-ship cruise missiles — all bolster India’s deterrent and defense capability. An urgent China challenge mandates Indian capability, regardless of those capabilities’ origins.

The United States might also re-conceptualize the benefit of India’s non-allied status, which is a unique geopolitical asset. U.S. partners often voice concern about being “forced to choose” between Washington and Beijing, so a powerful, non-allied third party, like India, affirming status quo principles releases fence-sitters from that binary choice.

Over decades of close relations with the littoral nations of the Indian Ocean, India has accrued trust and influence the United States cannot match. India’s clear statements that it is a multi-aligned state, and not part of a Western bloc, also strike a chord among some swing states in Southeast Asia that seek a similar balance. By defending the maritime commons and a rules-based order, India offers these states a permission structure to align their stances on the core concerns of international order, not because they are promoted by the U.S. allies, but precisely because they are promoted by influential like-minded states outside that Western alliance structure. Former U.S. officials acknowledge many Southeast Asian states are uncomfortable expressing their concerns with China out loud but, if India affirms a set of international rules alongside the United States and its allies, these states could be emboldened to become similarly forthright. India’s early success selling jointly made Indo-Russian anti-ship cruise missiles to Southeast Asian states (something that CAATSA sanctions could also constrain) further emboldens Southeast Asian states to defend their territorial waters, contributing to a more stable Asian balance of power.

Tools like CAATSA sanctions that seek to force India into the mold of a U.S. treaty ally either compromises India’s perception of U.S. reliability as an Indo-Pacific partner or compromises the valuable currency of legitimacy India’s multi-aligned status confers. Most likely, though, it undermines both Indian trust and the perception that it is truly an independent and sovereign actor, a two-fold loss for U.S. regional interests. Such reliability questions will only be compounded as other states with defense industrial ties to Russia, like Vietnam and Indonesia, would then fear that U.S. support is conditional on their subordination to every U.S. foreign policy.

Looking Ahead

Washington may underestimate how much of a collision course it is on with India. The threat of CAATSA sanctions has already cast a cloud over U.S.-Indian relations and imposes a drag on many aspects of the defense partnership. Far more than the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, sanctions will cause India to raise fundamental questions about America’s reliability for years to come. The Biden administration can avert this by taking Congress into consultation to grant India a sanctions waiver.

Rather than diminishing Indo-Russian relations, CAATSA sanctions ultimately threaten U.S. interests by undermining India’s capabilities to defend the rules-based order and willingness to deeply coordinate with the United States in the Indo-Pacific. India’s capacity to support that strategy means the United States should prioritize allowing India to strengthen its capabilities, regardless of origin, rather than seeking to force India into the framework of an American ally that operates U.S. military equipment. While India’s multi-alignment policy can be frustrating to deal with, and trades off with some depth of U.S.-Indian defense cooperation, it remains one of Washington’s best bets for burden-sharing, balancing, and unique political currency among numerous Indo-Pacific littoral states.



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Sameer Lalwani (@splalwani) is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and a non-resident fellow with George Washington University’s Sigur Center for Asian Studies. Tyler Sagerstrom (@tsagerstrom) is a research assistant at the Stimson Center.

 

[Housecarl]

Missed this one.......

Posted for fair use.....

Proposals for an EU army re-emerge after Afghan pullout – but many remain ‘hard to convince’

European dismay over President Joe Biden’s precipitous withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan has renewed calls for an EU military force. But while proponents of “strategic autonomy” say the fall of…

www.france24.com

Proposals for an EU army re-emerge after Afghan pullout – but many remain ‘hard to convince’

Issued on: 02/09/2021 - 22:28
Text by: Tom WHEELDON

European dismay over President Joe Biden’s precipitous withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan has renewed calls for an EU military force. But while proponents of “strategic autonomy” say the fall of Kabul should serve as a wake-up call, others do not see an existential threat and are content to remain as junior partners to US military might.

European countries had no option but to pull out of Afghanistan along with the US – despite their desire for Western troops to stay and stop the country falling into the Taliban’s hands. Washington’s NATO allies depended on US logistics and aerial support for their military engagement in Afghanistan – and then for the safe evacuation of their citizens.

For some, this state of affairs revived the old idea of a European military – with the EU’s chief diplomat himself urging the bloc to create a collective armed force.

“The need for more European defence has never been as much evident as today after the events in Afghanistan,” EU foreign affairs representative Josep Borrell told journalists as the bloc’s foreign and defence ministers gathered for a meeting in Slovenia on Thursday, where discussion of the Afghanistan debacle featured prominently. The EU needs to create a “rapid response force” of 5,000 soldiers, Borrell said.

EU military committee chairman Claudio Graziano agreed, telling reporters that “now is the time to act” by creating “a rapid reaction force” with a genuine “will to act”.

‘Strategic autonomy’
A more surprising declaration came from German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who proposed in a tweet later on Thursday that “coalitions of the willing could act after a joint decision of all” EU members.

AKK, as she is known, had written an opinion piece for Politico in November arguing that “illusions of European strategic autonomy must come to an end”, observing that “Europeans will not be able to replace America’s crucial role as a security provider”.

This provoked a furious response from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said he disagreed “profoundly” with AKK’s comments.

>> ‘Less unpleasant but not fundamentally different’: Transatlantic divides after Biden win
“Strategic autonomy” is the quintessence of Macron’s vision for Europe – military, economic and technological independence from a mercurial US.

This phrase appeared once again on Tuesday, when Macron talked about Afghanistan with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Élysée Palace. The two leaders gave a joint statement urging the EU to develop “strategic autonomy” so it can take “more responsibility for its security and defence”.

‘Lacking in key capabilities’
But beneath all this rhetoric, the question remains whether the Afghanistan debacle will shift the dial enough to take the EU from ideas to implementation.

Stillborn proposals for an EU “rapid response force” stretch back nearly a quarter of a century. Senior European politicians were saying in the late 1990s that the old continent’s failure to prevent years of bloodletting on its doorstep in the Yugoslav Wars (until the US got involved) highlighted the need for an armed EU force.

A joint 1998 statement by France’s then president Jacques Chirac and British prime minister Tony Blair declared that the EU “must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces”, an assertion that sounds like it could have been made by Emmanuel Macron today.

>> ‘Geostrategic consensus’ on China keeps US-UK relationship special
The EU agreed in 1999 to develop a contingent of 50,000-60,000 soldiers that could be deployed within 60 days. In 2007, the bloc created a network of two “battlegroups” of 1,500 troops from each country. They have since languished.

“There wasn’t the political will to use these battlegroups,” said Shashank Joshi, The Economist’s defence editor. “At the same time, those units were lacking in key capabilities.”

“Europeans need to improve the readiness of their armed forces pretty much across the board,” said Rafael Loss, a defence expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Berlin office. “Particularly for crisis management, Europeans are lacking key enablers like strategic airlift to move large forces and their equipment quickly, and satellite capabilities to ensure persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance prior to and during deployments.”

‘They don’t feel existentially threatened’
Low defence spending among European countries is another major obstacle to the continent’s “strategic autonomy”.

All NATO countries except the US have increased defence spending as a share of GDP since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea had a galvanising effect – nevertheless, the organisation estimates that this year only nine of its 28 European members met the organisation’s spending target of 2 percent of GDP.

This year’s figure for Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, is 1.53 percent – an addition of less than 0.5 percent of GDP since 2015, when its military was so under-funded it used broomsticks in place of guns during a NATO training exercise.

“Germany has increased its defence spending since the Russian annexation of Crimea – but it’s not enough,” noted Claudia Major, a defence specialist at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “Germany is unlikely to reach the NATO objective to spend 2 percent of GDP on defence by 2024.”

Ultimately, it all comes down to threat perception, Major said: “Countries like Germany don’t spend as much because they don’t feel existentially threatened.”

Afghanistan unlikely to ‘move the needle’
The three Baltic states and Poland are among the nine European NATO members to meet the target – with proximity to and a historical awareness of the Russian threat informing their defence and security policies.

Experts say it makes all the difference that the fall of Kabul does not represent that kind of existential threat for European countries.

“I’m not sure if Afghanistan is a wake-up call for many in Europe,” Major said. “It reveals to us in Europe how limited our capacity to act independently is – but that’s a lesson we could have learned for years.”

“Afghanistan will probably not move the needle much in terms of public support for raising defence spending; most Europeans haven’t cared much about Afghanistan for the past decade or so,” as Loss put it.

“European policymakers will have to win over their electorates with other arguments.”

‘Hard to convince’
Proponents of an EU armed force that operates independently of Washington will also have to win over sceptics within the bloc; the Baltic states and Poland are notably wary of any European defence apparatus that would exclude the US.

“It will be hard to convince some member states that collective EU defence would bring the same security as NATO’s US-backed defence arrangement,” noted Richard Whitman, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Kent.

There is much disagreement within the EU about which states around its periphery constitute a menace. Russia – for example – is an existential threat in the eyes of the Baltic states, a geopolitical nuisance but a key energy partner for Germany, and an ally for Hungary.

“Nobody in the EU has ever been able to come up with a decision-making arrangement that takes national divides into account while facilitating expeditious decision-making; it’s either the lowest common denominator or grand rhetorical comments tied to absurd propositions,” Whitman said. “Military action is politically defensible only when taken by national leaders and parliaments – and it’s difficult to see that being worked around.”

Ad hoc coalitions?
Divides between member states mean that any joint EU action could well rely on mission-specific “coalitions of the willing” outside of the bloc’s organisation structure.

“The jury is out over whether any European military intervention would take place under an EU flag or through an ad hoc coalition, like the one France assembled when it intervened in Mali in 2013,” Joshi said.

As well as circumventing the need for unanimity or even majority support for military action, operating outside EU structures would allow a role for ex-member Britain, the continent’s biggest defence spender and a global leader in intelligence capabilities.

The UK’s involvement would be essential to any plans for European strategic autonomy, Joshi suggested. “NATO-like missions and the collective defence of the European continent would probably be impossible without the UK if the US is absent.”

Despite difficult diplomatic relations between London and Brussels at present, many influential voices in Westminster share the sense that Europe should not rely on the United States militarily. Consequently, Joshi argued, the UK will “want to co-operate with the EU on defence and security over the long run”.

RELATED CONTENT
‘Less unpleasant but not fundamentally different’: Transatlantic divides after Biden win
ANALYSIS
‘Geostrategic consensus’ on China keeps US-UK relationship special
Wake-up call? Afghanistan highlights need for 'autonomous' EU military force

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Losing Small Wars: Why US Military Culture Leads to Defeat | Small Wars Journal

Mission Command is a philosophy of decentralized decision making. Plans and orders are simply starting points, likely to soon become irrelevant amidst the fog and friction of war – what really matters is the intent of the higher commander which is linked to the overarching purpose of the...

smallwarsjournal.com

Sun, 09/12/2021 - 11:10pm

Losing Small Wars: Why US Military Culture Leads to Defeat​

Andrew Milburn


“Sir – it’s the TEA”
The Target Engagement Authority was a US one star who sat in the joint operations center in Erbil, with the task of approving and controlling all Coalition fires in Northern Iraq. I took the headset, preparing myself for the argument that I knew was coming.
“Andy, are you firing mortars”,
“Yes sir”,
“What the hell is going on?”
“Sir, the Pesh are getting mortared in the breach. I’ve got an OP less than 500 meters away.”
“Are US personnel taking fire?”
“Not yet, sir”
“Then you’re not authorized to make that decision”
“Sir – it’s a matter of one correction before our guys get hit too -- I’m not going to wait for that to happen”,
“That’s not up to you Colonel, that’s my decision -- cease fire now!”

The incident caused me to fume, ponder, and ultimately to write this article. I argue here that the General’s reaction was no anomaly, but rather a symptom of a culture within the US military at conflict with our professed doctrine of mission command; and that unless determined effort is made to change that culture, mission command will never be anything more than an aspirational concept -- officially embraced but shunned in practice. The ramifications go beyond leadership and doctrine to the very ability of the Joint Force to defeat adversaries – both conventional and irregular -- in a multi-domain environment.

Mission Command is a philosophy of decentralized decision making. Plans and orders are simply starting points, likely to soon become irrelevant amidst the fog and friction of war – what really matters is the intent of the higher commander which is linked to the overarching purpose of the operation. A subordinate is expected to be able to think on his feet, work out the best way to follow that intent, and adapt his actions to changing circumstances. As a method, mission command has ample precedence as a highly evolved philosophy of command and control that can produce disproportionate combat results. But while we understand the buzz words, we fail to understand the changes required in personnel management, education, and training in order to make it a cultural reality.

Lest the reader think that I am simply presenting a problem without a solution – I conclude this article with recommendations as to how to foster a culture that encourages decentralized decision making, subordinate initiative and a bias for action – the central tenets of Mission Command. My recommendations, although practical, entail some fundamental changes in how the US military does business, so I should begin by explaining why they are necessary.

A Cultural Problem

My introduction seems a lot to surmise from an isolated case of poor leadership, a single data point carrying by itself insufficient weight to yield such generalizations about the US military. Except, that this exchange was one of many similar incidents over my career, and the TEA, a General Officer with impressive background and unsullied reputation, was not someone I could simply dismiss as being a poor leader. Instead, he was the product of an institution imbued with a cultural preference for centralized control and procedure. It’s a culture that has evolved – as cultures often do – because of a view of the world, that appears rational to members of the organization. But that view no longer matches reality – if indeed it ever did – and the culture it has produced is proving harmful to the institution, its members – and the nation itself.

The US defeat in Afghanistan should be a wake-up call that it’s time to change that culture. It’s all too easy for those in uniform to blame the politicians for that defeat – but it would also be disingenuous and counter-productive. The US military’s leadership should certainly be held accountable for what was at best, blind obedience to policy makers and at worst, hiding the truth about a military effort that was neither achieving its goals nor nested with any coherent policy. But the problem doesn’t begin and end there. It involves scores of General Officers, all of whom have served the same institution their entire adult lives and who have shown sufficient talent and character to rise to the top of that institution. Given that context, it seems unlikely that all these senior leaders are guilty of deliberate malfeasance, or even of moral cowardness. A more credible explanation is that these officers are the product of an institution that does not encourage critical thinking, or, to use General Milley’s own words “disciplined disobedience,”
-- and that any sense of intellectual or moral autonomy – pillars of mission command – have simply been bludgeoned out of them by a lifetime of following procedures, of clinging to the letter of the law.

As is often the case with cultural norms, the institutional preference for centralization and procedure is based on some ostensibly sound assumptions, about the important role that experience plays in sound decision making, about the threat that tactical actions can pose to strategic success, and about the need to maintain an overall perspective rather than succumb to short-term expediency.

Why Change?

The problem with these assumptions is that they are based on a world view that is orderly and predictable. It’s a perspective that tends to founder when confronted with a non-linear, emergent, and complex set of circumstances -- such as war.

The special operations task force that I commanded was presented with just such a set of circumstances. It happened three months prior to my run-in with the TEA, at a place called Tal Aswad north-east of Mosul. The story is worth re-telling here because it offers an illustration of the value of mission command – and, sadly, a glimpse of why the US military fails to embrace it.

For several weeks, Islamic State commanders had been planning an attack intended to punch a hole in the Forward Line of Troops or FLOT, the line of Kurdish positions that had since 2014 prevented them from pushing further East. The plan was to exploit this breach and seize the entire swath of territory that was the Kurdish autonomous region in Northern Iraq. From there, the Islamic State would be well positioned to push South down the Tigris valley to envelop Baghdad.

At 1600hrs on 17 December, a chorus of whistle blasts signaled the attack.

‘They came from five directions,’ one Peshmerga commander commented later

. The vehicle-bombs led the way, detonating in earth-shaking explosions that sliced the air with shards of jagged metal. And right behind them came the Islamic State assault troops: wide-eyed berserkers yelling jihadi war-cries.

In this fight, the Peshmerga Brigade was partnered with a contingent of Canadian special operations forces. It was dark by the time the Canadians heard about the attack. They dispatched a team to link up with the Peshmerga whose commander requested their help. And so it was that the plan for a sector counterattack was put together and executed in short order by a Canadian sergeant. By late morning, the Peshmerga had recovered their positions, driving the Islamic State back over the FLOT.

The Canadian response to the attack was a perfect illustration of how Special Operations Forces can deliver operational effect out of proportion to their strength in numbers -- if allowed to do so. Given the circumstances, it is inconceivable that a more centralized approach would have achieved the same results. I was proud of the Canadians but dismayed by an episode that followed.

The Canadian detachment commander received a stern warning from the TEA, with the admonition that had he had been an American, he would be facing disciplinary action.

Ironic, I thought at the time, because the actions of the Canadian sergeant that day exemplified Mission Command, the official doctrine of the US Army since 2003.

How Others See Us

In 2015, while recruiting British personnel for the special operations task force that I commanded in Iraq, I was warned more than once that the Brits’ perception of their American counterparts, even in the world of special operations, was that we had a penchant for centralized decision making, an aversion to risk, and an obsession with working hard regardless of output.

Some ten years earlier, Brigadier Nigel Alywin-Foster, a British Army officer (in case the name didn’t give this fact away) wrote in the Military Review – a US Army publication: “Whilst the US army may espouse mission command, in Iraq it did not practice it…… Commanders…rarely if ever questioned authority and were reluctant to deviate from precise instructions….Each commander had his own style, but if there was a common trend it was micromanagement….. Planning tended to be staff driven and focused on process rather than end effect. The net effect was highly centralized decision making… (which) tended to discourage lower-level initiative and adaptability”.

This article stirred significant reaction among US military readers

. Alwyin Foster was “an insufferable British snob,” said the colonel commanding the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies. But many in the US military community – practitioners and analysts – voiced similar concerns to those raised in the article. One long time Red-team analyst called Foster’s article an “enlightening, if somewhat painful, critique of the U.S Army in Iraq,” commenting that “it is much easier to dismiss (his) assessment as limited or altogether wrong that it is to make changes in response to it.”

My interest in Alywin Foster’s article was more than academic. I had served as an advisor to the Iraqi Army during the second battle for Fallujah, during which time I worked under the same command as Foster. Insufferable snob he may have been, but his arguments were right on target. And years later, my own experience as a task force commander suggested that little had changed during the intervening period.

Yes – Even the Marine Corps Fails

But are these criticisms too broad? Could it be that this reluctance to embrace mission command is confined to the conventional US Army? As a Marine and special operations officer, I would happily accept such an argument if there was good evidence to support it. Sadly, there is not.

In the late 1980s, General Al Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, introduced a doctrine known as “Maneuver Warfare”, Marine terminology for Mission Command, which was disseminated in a series of well written publications.
However, the Corps made no comprehensive effort to adapt the organization to this written doctrine, by implementing policies that reinforced the right behavior. Indeed, time and again over the course of my career I have been surprised by how relatively few officers appear to understand what Maneuver Warfare is about.

30 years after the initial publication of “Warfighting” I found myself attending a conference in Quantico, hosted by the Commanding General of Training and Education Command with the theme “Why does the Marine Corps not Practice Maneuver Warfare”. After two days of discussion, the assembled group of officers arrived at the answer: Implementing Mission Command as a habit of thought and action involves more than distributing doctrinal publications. As for a solution – well, the Corps is still struggling to find one.

Since 2017, the Marine Corps has been running a series of realistic force on force exercises which replicate the conditions of multi-domain warfare against a peer adversary. Called the MAGTF (Marine Air Ground Task Force) Warfighting exercise or MWX, these events involve competition across all domains – to include cyber and the Electro-Magnetic spectrum. As a civilian supporting these exercises, I have been offered extraordinary insights into which methods succeed, and which are doomed to fail. Time and again, units that practice mission command in planning and execution dominate those that don’t. Despite the high-tech nature of the exercise, it is old fashioned principles such as mission orders, commanders’ intent and implicit communication that carry the day. After-action reports, compiled by multiple expert observers, all return to these same themes. “An identified trend across all five MWXs are commander intent statements that are not concise, not enduring, and not understood two-levels down,” one AAR states, concluding the Marine Corps’ Maneuver Warfare doctrine “is more important today than it ever was in OIF and OEF.”

But while the MWX has validated the continued value of Maneuver Warfare, it has also highlighted a wide gap between doctrine and practice, even in the service that claims to have adopted Mission Command first.

Why Are We Like This?

Mission command requires people who have a bias for action, tempered by intellect and emotional intelligence. Only such people can, in the words of IDF General Shamon Naveh, “thrive in chaos” without simply adding to that chaos. Until the US Military deliberately selects officers based on these qualities, and thereafter promotes them accordingly, mission command will continue to wither on the vine. Yet, recent research indicates that US military leaders are less open to new ideas than the general population. Why should this be? It is because Mission Command is inimical to "The American way of war," a phrase popularized by military historian Russell Weigley in his 1973 book of the same name to describe a cultural reliance on methodical process and sheer resource domination to subdue adversaries.

A study of US military practice over the last century supports this view. After the First World War, the US Army modeled its leadership training and officer education on Frederick Taylor’s principles of scientific management, which led to an analytical, methodical and process driven approach to command and control.

During the Second World War, in contrast to German practices, US doctrine emphasized loyalty as opposed to independent action. There were, of course, exceptions – the small unit tactics developed to overcome German defenses in the bocage of Normandy, and – of course – the rapid advance made by Patton’s Third Army across Northern France; but these examples are noteworthy only because they departed from the norm.

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In Vietnam, centralization and managerial command went hand in hand with an increasing dependence on firepower, a hunger for information from the top, and an obsession with statistics, notably the infamous body count. Units conducted clumsy hammer and anvil operations in thick jungle, during which all movement would cease upon enemy contact, while commanders focused on coordinating fire support and reporting to superiors.

The first Gulf War is often used as an example of the US military at its best. However, conduct of the war still fit the traditional, cautious, firepower-intensive mold. Almost six weeks of bombing was followed by a massive-armored onslaught. Even the “Hail Mary” flanking maneuver that swept around Iraqi forces entrenched in Kuwait was hardly an example of operational panache in the style of Guderian or Kahalani. The eight-division Coalition force simply crushed those Iraqi units brave enough to stand it its way. And ultimately this move failed in its intent – the majority of the Republican Guard, Saddam’s center of gravity, escaped across the Kuwaiti border.

Technology is Not the Solution

So firmly entrenched are such habits in US military culture that a change in doctrine alone is unlikely to bring about any fundamental change. Nor will advances in technology -- optimistic proclamations to the contrary notwithstanding. If anything, these advances have reinforced the tendency for increased centralization, offering the commander -- in theory at least -- greater situational awareness than his subordinates without the frontal-lobe numbing sense of imminent danger. The practice in Vietnam of commanders literally hovering by helicopter over subordinate units, has now transformed to doing the same by means of drones. “He’s just a One-Star JTAC,” observed one US staff officer to me in Iraq, watching his boss standing transfixed in front of a full-motion video display.

Technology has exponentially improved our ability to collect information, and thus gilds the chimera of centralized decision making. The problem is that decisions in war are still made by human beings whose information-processing capabilities are as limited as they were in the time of Clausewitz. Technology cannot reduce our adversaries from being complex, adaptive systems or remove uncertainty from our competition with them. An uncritical reliance on technology causes us to bypass the valuable human aspects of military decision making which are based on an understanding of context derived from problem framing and experience.

But what of the argument that a coherent campaign requires coherence of action at every level – especially in this era of Great Power Competition? Having a legion of subordinates who think that they are free to exercise their own initiative will surely impede the overall commander’s ability to coordinate complex actions across the force. So claims Dr. Conrad Crane in a 2017 War on the Rocks Article, concluding that mission command “appears to be impractical for the synchronization required against a competent and capable near-peer.”

This contention sounds authoritative until we take a closer look at how military decisions are made. A military action is not the monolithic execution of a single decision by a single entity but involves many independent but interrelated decisions and actions being taken simultaneously throughout the organization. Whether viewed in the context of John Boyd’s OODA loop or in terms of the kill chain, decentralized decision making at the tactical edge is inherently faster and more agile than that of a remote centralized C-2 node. It is hard to imagine, for instance, how a Joint Force commander could possibly manage to choreograph the actions of small units spread across thousands of miles in the Pacific, especially when communications are threatened by interception and jamming.

Intent, Mission and Risk: A Discussion Not Power Point

The concept of Commander’s Intent is a mainstay of mission command, but – in my experience -- few commanders give clear intent. Intent includes the purpose of the mission, but in explaining this, the commander also needs to give his subordinates a sense of the importance of that mission: what it’s worth in terms of risk – and at what point that risk becomes unacceptable. This includes policy implications – especially in this era of instant news. Too often this conversation gets buried in power point briefs with color coded blocks in which more effort is involved in compiling slides, than in discussing the balance between mission and risk. A misunderstanding about this balance results in over-direction from higher, and a perception of micromanagement from below. It can lead to consequences that undermine the mission itself – and even to disaster. The death of four US soldiers in Niger in 2017, is just one example of what happens when this occurs.

Commander’s Intent is a two-way conversation, in which those tasked with the mission acknowledge their commander’s concerns and in turn share theirs along with their proposed plan for mitigation, and any attendant requests for support. If this sounds preposterous to those inured to the current process of CONOP presentation, think about the purpose of these briefs, and ask yourself how often the really important questions are discussed.

To be clear, this paper is not a treatise against rules or procedure. I teach the planning process to students of all services and several nationalities, and am a firm believer in its efficacy. However, when rules, and procedures start to supplant experience, ethics and judgment in a commander’s decision making – he will start to lose perspective of that balance between mission and risk.

As an illustration, I will return to the example at the beginning of this article. In a campaign that relied upon the success of our partners, in this case the Peshmerga, to achieve mutual objectives, our relationship with those partners was all important. It follows that any action that undermined that relationship should be avoided, unless the rationale for making such a decision outweighed the purpose of our mission. In this case, it was hard to divine any justification beyond simple adherence to the letter, rather than the purpose, of a tactical directive. By following it without discrimination, the TEA was subjecting all involved to greater risk, while jeopardizing the overall mission. The same devotion to rote procedure occurred during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which saw a torrent of tactical directives circumscribe how operations were to be conducted.

Learning from Others: The Brits and Israelis – A Mixed Record

The fight for Tal Aswad was just one instance where a junior officer or NCO, empowered by a supportive culture, has taken the initiative and saved the day. Such examples are more common in the recent history of the British and Israeli Armies than our own, perhaps because there is in the culture of both armies a tendency to applaud rather than control such behavior.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defines culture as being ‘the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.’ In the Israeli Army, perhaps more than any other, these stories are invariably about individuals and events that exemplify mission command: Ariel Sharon’s actions (against orders) as a Brigade Commander in seizing the Mitla Pass, key to the Sinai, during the 1956 war; and, some 17 years later, Colonel Haim Erez’s attack across the Suez Canal with just 20 tanks thus dislocating the Egyptian invasion of Israel, are two examples among many. Those were halcyon times, any Israeli officer will tell you with nostalgia, before risk aversion and centralized decision making stunted all such initiative and led to the IDF’s muddled performance during its 2006 incursion into Lebanon.

Several years before that war, renowned Israeli soldier-scholar BG Shimon Naveh made an interesting observation about his countryman’s cultural proclivity for mission command:

“In contrast to the Anglos, we thrive in chaos” And yet, in the aftermath of the IDF’s pyrrhic victory, an independent investigation concluded that the army’s poor performance was a reflection of a “flawed organizational culture” that evinced a lack of trust in subordinates and clung to centralized decision making. This culture had stunted subordinate initiative and enabled Hezbollah – by far the weaker force in every tangible respect -- to consistently out-cycle the IDF.

Despite a legacy infused with the tenets of mission command, the Israeli Army had succumbed to centrifugal forces within its own culture. Perhaps the lesson here is that as institutions grow, they tend to evolve towards centralized control, unless there is deliberate and sustained counter-effort.

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The British Army’s experience seems to support this proposition. Despite a tradition of decentralized decision making by junior officers on the edge of Empire, the post war years saw a sharp divergence in this regard between elite units, and their conventional counterparts. While units such as the Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines tended to be involved in the rear-guard skirmishes of the colonial era, the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR) prepared for a set-piece battle in the Fulda Gap.

The Falklands War, although a victory for the British, was also a wake-up call for their higher command. The campaign illustrated that even among elite units, battalion level commanders were a mixed bag. Some commanders attempted to control the chaos of war through detailed plans and centralized command while others displayed greater flexibility.

The British attack at Goose Green provides an illustration of the contrast between these two approaches, in a single unit: 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. The battle began badly. A combination of an overly detailed, complex plan involving thirteen stages and a Commanding Officer who brooked no interference from subordinates led the battalion into a bloody impasse, with all three companies bogged down on exposed ground, raked by fire from Argentine positions. “Don’t tell me how to run my battle,” the CO, Lieutenant Colonel “H” Jones snaps at one of his company commanders who reports that he has found a gap in the Argentine defenses. Ironically, it is only after Jones is killed in an assault on an Argentine machine gun, that his subordinates are able to maneuver their way around the Argentine flank and win the day.

The experience of the Falklands War gave rise to a series of reforms imposed by the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) Field Marshall Sir Neville Bagnall. The Bagnall reforms were a comprehensive effort to change the culture of the British Army – affecting not just education and training but also talent management, the means by which the institution encouraged desirable behavior.

The reforms created a network of influential officers within the British Army who saw it as their mission to ensure that those who espoused mission command were the ones that got ahead. How lasting this change has been, is a matter for debate. In at least two recent books, former British officers argue that a preference for centralized control was partly to blame for the British Army’s overall lackluster performance in Afghanistan and Iraq. If true, this highlights the same lesson learned by the Israelis – that it takes deliberate and persistent effort to ensure that institutional culture and doctrine remained aligned.

Horses for Courses: Applying these Lessons to the US Military

Culture change happens at service level, and there is a rationale here for variation. The Army may find it possible to focus on selectively applying mission command to those occupational specialties that will benefit most from its use: ground combat and combat support units for instance. The Marine Corps however, with its unique culture, homogenous approach to entry level training, and emergent tactical doctrine will probably want to take a more holistic approach.

For the Navy and Air Force, it’s not so much a question of whether or not to adopt mission command – but rather how to do so in a manner that aligns with requirements for technical skills and procedures. Surface Warfare Officers in the Navy might argue with some justification that there simply isn’t enough scope for the exercise of initiative on a vessel at sea. A similar argument could be made for the air force, where strict conformity to checklist procedures plays so important a role. Nevertheless, officers in both services will need to understand and employ mission command as they attain greater command responsibility or serve on joint staffs. Indeed, the principles of mission command can be adapted to enhance performance in most occupational specialties. John Boyd was a fighter pilot.

Some organizations -- Special Operations Forces (SOF) for instance-- will fail unless mission command is practiced down the lowest level. Hence the focus on many of these same traits during SOF assessment and selection.

Wars are Won and Lost by Personnel Management

All services need to place more emphasis on the aligning the selection and promotion of leaders – officers and NCOs -- with the qualities required for Mission Command. This will mean devising a more comprehensive and rigorous selection process for officers, similar to the three-day boards run by the British military with psychological profiling and practical tests of initiative and leadership under stress. Currently, across all services, there are no officer selection tests designed to assess emotional Intelligence –a term that has become vogue in the civilian world to describe exactly those qualities required for good leadership -- and for mission command. Many corporations do administer such tests – why should the military, which places such emphasis on developing these traits, not look for their presence in potential candidates?

The leader development process should offer opportunities to refine judgment in the face of risk, with wide potential for failure in training to identify and develop resilient leaders capable of coping with setbacks. The result will never be perfect, but the pursuit of this goal can only have a leavening effect on the quality of leadership and decision making in the institution overall.

Methods of performance evaluation which rely solely on top-down perspective must change to encompass the views of peers and subordinates. The current system by its nature tends to reward caution and loyalty rather than judicious risk taking. It is a time-honored truth that risk adverse leaders fear one risk above all others: that of appearing incompetent to their seniors – and thus become adept at presenting upwards. Conversely, it’s particularly difficult to misshape the perceptions of all those around you. Any concern that 360-degree evaluations will encourage pandering for popularity are misplaced – subordinates and peers tend to see through such acting.

We Need to Outthink the Enemy

Lastly, for the sake of mission command, a plea for intellect to claim its rightful place among leadership qualities. Beyond establishing a minimum GPA requirement, and testing candidates on to validate their education levels, services do little to select officers according to their intelligence. Officer selection boards should include tests of critical thinking – a quality every bit as essential for good leadership as emotional intelligence and integrity.

The research results cited earlier showing military officers to be resistant to change is just one indicator that we aren’t focused on the right kind of education. Our personnel management systems need to focus on ensuring that leaders continue to develop their capacity for both creative and critical thinking throughout their careers. Services need to offer more opportunities for non-technical advanced degrees from civilian colleges, fellowships, and exchanges. We have separate occupational specialties for Foreign Area Officers and for Strategists – and then make these officers ineligible for command. Instead, we should be encouraging potential commanders to take career tracks that encompass these areas rather than remain on the conveyor belt of traditional assignments.

Conclusion

There is no shortage of talent in the US military. However – even the majority of officers who exemplify the boldness and aggression expected of our profession, are subsumed by a culture that encourages them to follow procedures and the letter of the law rather than their own experiential judgment, professional ethics, and a sound understanding of the balance between mission and risk.

Until the institution rewards behavior that aligns with its own doctrine, and sanctions that which does not, mission command will never gain traction in the US military. And that should matter a great deal to all of us – not just the doctrinal purists. But it will require a complete overhaul of selection, training, and personnel management to close the current gap. It will take cultural transformation.

While attending a conference in Quantico shortly before my retirement, I came across a rhetorical question scrawled on a white board. The author was anonymous, but his words continue to resonate: “Has there ever been a military leadership philosophy that has been so loudly lauded, so convincingly defined, so battle proven and so routinely unapplied as mission command?” Now is the time to reverse this trend.

About the Author(s)

Andrew Milburn
Andrew Milburn retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel in 2019 after a 31 year career. His last position in uniform was Deputy Commander of Special Operations Central (SOCCENT), and prior to that commanding officer of the Marine Raider Regiment and Combined Special Operations Task Force – Iraq.

Since retiring, he has written a critically acclaimed memoir: When the Tempest Gathers and has had articles published in The Atlantic , USA Today, JFQ, and War on the Rocks, in addition to the Military Times . He is on the Adjunct Faculty of the Joint Special Operations University and teaches classes on leadership, planning, ethics, command and control, mission command, risk, special operations and irregular warfare at US military schools. He is a co-host of the Modern War Institute’s Irregular War Podcast, and Irregular War Initiative.

 

[Housecarl]

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Forward to the Past? Weigh Covert Options in Afghanistan Carefully - War on the Rocks

Is “Charlie Wilson’s War” due a sequel? The movie, like the book that inspired it, recounted the flamboyant congressman’s role in escalating America’s war

warontherocks.com

FORWARD TO THE PAST? WEIGH COVERT OPTIONS IN AFGHANISTAN CAREFULLY
THOMAS WALDMAN AND RORY CORMAC
SEPTEMBER 14, 2021
COMMENTARY

Is “Charlie Wilson’s War” due a sequel? The movie, like the book that inspired it, recounted the flamboyant congressman’s role in escalating America’s war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Through one of the CIA’s largest covert action programs, the United States supplied huge amounts of arms and money to the mujahedeen, who bravely fought the Soviet army and ultimately drove it out of Afghanistan.

With that country now under the control of another brutal authoritarian regime, some in Washington argue it’s time to dust off the 1980s covert action playbook. Even though most of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August, a desperate resistance effort continues in the Panjshir Valley.

Ahmad Massoud, leader of the resistance and son of the famed guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, has very publicly requested U.S. support. In a Washington Post opinion article on Aug. 18 and a series of media interviews, he exhorted America to take up its role as the “arsenal of democracy” and provide his newly formed National Resistance Front with weapons and assistance. Plenty in Washington listened sympathetically, determined not to abandon the rebels to the Taliban. Predictably, the calls for action gathered steam, spearheaded by Republican Rep. Mike Waltz, who appears eager to play the role of a modern-day Charlie Wilson. Joined by influential Sen. Lindsey Graham and others, together they called on President Joe Biden to “stand with our friends in the Panjshir Valley” and to recognize them as the “legitimate government representatives” of Afghanistan.

As far as can be ascertained from fragmentary news reports, the resistance hangs on by a thread. The Taliban has declared victory in Panjshir after occupying the provincial capital of Bazarak and the international media, largely dependent on journalists embedded with the Taliban, have been quick to accept this line. But it is worth recalling that Soviet forces also occupied parts of the Panjshir multiple times during the 1980s yet could not maintain their presence. Bazarak is only a short way into the long valley and, while symbolic, hardly represents a militarily decisive objective. The resistance claims it continues to occupy “strategic positions” and has vowed to fight on: If it can hold out until the winter snows arrive this could give it time to regroup and resupply. Meanwhile, Massoud called for a national uprising, just as widespread protests rocked Kabul. Although the prospects for the resistance look grim, it might be premature to declare “game, set, match.”

Even if the National Resistance Front loses territorial control over much of Panjshir, active opposition to Afghanistan’s new regime will continue, especially if the Taliban maintain the hardline approach suggested by recent appointments. Calls for U.S. support will also continue. The Taliban are not a united group and have swept to power on the basis of a patchwork of deals with local leaders. The speed of their success has taken them by surprise, and early indicators suggest they will struggle to provide stable or effective governance. The Taliban have already made missteps, could overreach in their relations with China, and there are signs of tension with Pakistan and Iran. American covert action could — in theory — exploit all of these dynamics to divide and discredit the regime.

The Biden administration is not about to ride into the breach to rescue the resistance. But covert action in Afghanistan, especially aimed at something less than regime change, remains a distinct possibility. However, it comes with plenty of hazards and the Biden administration should proceed carefully.

The Lure of Covert Action
Biden has repeatedly stated his commitment to extricate America from so-called forever wars and, as the nature of the Afghan exit underscores, he tends to hold his ground once he has made a decision. Having achieved his central aim of withdrawal from Afghanistan, it would be nonsensical to immediately wade back in — especially given the lack of appetite for doing so among the American public and with midterm elections to be held next year.

Despite this, some form of covert action in Afghanistan is a real possibility for at least three reasons. First, there is clearly pressure from some American politicians to do something about the Taliban’s victory, even if there is little domestic enthusiasm for military intervention. In such circumstances, presidents typically turn toward the hidden hand to bypass domestic constraints. Covert action becomes a silver bullet to solve intractable problems, or an appealing halfway house between doing something and doing nothing.

Second, the record indicates that when considering covert operations the United States often acts because it can, rather than because it should. Whatever the policy reticence or bleak prospects for a successful insurgency, there is a tendency within intelligence and military circles to believe that positive action is possible. America’s spies have a habit of fighting the last war again. The United States has extensive experience in conducting covert actions and unconventional warfare, bolstered in recent years by the formulation of quasi-doctrine related to “light-footprint” and “by, with and through” indirect approaches. America has an array of dedicated units — boasting 20 years of experience overseeing paramilitary operations in theaters such as Somalia, Syria, Iraq and, not least, Afghanistan — capable of rapid deployment for just such missions. Apart from paramilitary action, the United States has even more experience in conducting political and influence operations, designed to divide and discredit targets, dating back to the CIA’s founding.

Third, reinforcing this “can-do” spirit will be the inexorable march of events. The United States will likely still have some contacts in place in Panjshir and perhaps beyond, and initial tentative interactions might generate a momentum of their own. There may even be discrete American activity already taking place on the ground, at least in terms of intelligence collection and liaison. When it comes to covert action, tactics have a habit of driving strategy. And the United States could always encourage private initiatives or facilitate the covert actions of other states, such as France — which has close ties to Massoud and a president who has expressed support for “those who cherish freedom” — or India, which has most to lose from the alliance between the Taliban and Pakistan. The CIA director has already held talks with the Indian national security adviser to discuss developments in Afghanistan.

Covert Options: Perils and Pitfalls
Although a large-scale paramilitary covert action to overthrow the Taliban is unlikely, the U.S. government has other covert options available. These include more limited programs designed to keep alive a spirit of resistance in Afghanistan, communicate determination to allies, or simply impose costs on the Taliban regime. American policymakers may see advantages in signaling resolve to the Taliban or disrupting their activities, and a small toehold within the country might allow the United States to launch counter-terrorism operations against the Islamic State in Afghanistan or al-Qaeda elements there. The composition of the Taliban’s interim regime offers little confidence that they can be relied upon to take counter-terrorism seriously themselves. The caretaker minister of the interior, for example, is none other than Sirajuddin Haqqani, who was featured in an FBI wanted poster with a $10 million bounty on his head.

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[Housecarl]

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Other potential options include covert action to identify and exploit divisions or contradictions within the Taliban and its new government, including those between moderates and hardliners, between the formerly exiled political leadership and its military wing, and between the different terrorist factions making up the regime. The U.S. government might also consider efforts designed to exploit frictions between the Taliban and states such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, or China. Political warfare or influence operations are a much more common form of covert action than grandiose attempts at regime change. All regional powers are concerned about Afghanistan once again serving as a base for cross-border terrorist attacks upon their territory. Iran is watching closely to see how the Taliban behave toward the large Shiite Hazara population, including those who have taken refuge in the Panjshir. China will likely be wary of expanding its geopolitical footprint and influence in the country if there is continuing armed opposition and instability.

Even covert options with limited goals, however, are fraught with hazards. If an operation involves the provision of weapons, they could get into the wrong hands, just as they reportedly did during the recent covert action supporting rebels in Syria. Any relationship between the United States and whatever is left of the resistance movement within Afghanistan would be complicated. Proxies are not puppets and they often manipulate their sponsors: Anyone the U.S. government supports on the ground would pursue their own interests, which may not align with America’s. Working through intermediaries, who will also have their own aims, would exacerbate these problems.

Massoud, or others like him, will probably hype their access to valuable intelligence on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Afghanistan and request covert support — in the form of money, communications equipment, or training — from the CIA in return for providing information. Any such arrangement, even if starting small as a counter-terrorism operation, could easily drift toward an open-ended U.S. commitment.

Political warfare and influence operations also come with risks. First, they can start small but incrementally grow into paramilitary action, developing a life of their own. The multi-billion-dollar covert action in 1980s Afghanistan began with propaganda. Second, in an interconnected world, political and influence operations are hard to contain and risk reaching unintended audiences, including back home. Even rumors of operations can undermine the legitimacy of those supported or can corrode trust more widely. Third, political and influence operations are very difficult to evaluate. All the while, secrecy creates a ceiling on all types of covert activities, as does the lack of substantial U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

The United States Should Proceed Cautiously
If the U.S. government seriously considers potential covert actions in Afghanistan, it should set clear and realistic goals, including benchmarks for success. Experts stress the importance of keeping open the option of walking away if the mission is no longer serving national interests: That’s an imperative that grows more problematic the more involved the United States becomes, as reputational concerns and vested interests expand. There is always the temptation to escalate and to pursue increasingly grand aims.

In any covert action, policymakers and officials should determine the appropriate allocation of resources and levels of secrecy based on the stated goal. The former is an obvious point (although often forgotten in practice if historical cases of tools driving strategy are anything to go by). The latter is less so, and too often gets overlooked. Determining appropriate levels of secrecy is more nuanced than commonly thought, and exposure — to certain audiences — does not necessarily mean failure. Those crafting a covert action program should ask: From whom is an operation intended to be secret, and to whom is it intended to communicate something? Perhaps the United States might want to signal resolve to the Taliban in order to gain leverage over their policies. Perhaps a covert action might be aimed at Chinese or Pakistani audiences, or even to give succor to policymakers in neighbors of Afghanistan, like Tajikistan, who are fearful of the Taliban’s takeover. Goals, resources, and secrecy are interrelated.

Meanwhile, even the limited — seemingly low-risk — option of disrupting or discrediting the Taliban could still end up inciting another full-blown civil war in Afghanistan. In that event, what comes next? Would U.S. policy then be to covertly intervene on behalf of an emboldened opposition? Or what about the laudable aim of covertly supporting the brave women out on the streets protesting the Taliban? Would such encouragement lead to material support if the Taliban continue to brutally crack down on opposition, or will anti-Taliban protestors get left high and dry? External political intervention, especially if exposed, risks changing the dynamics of genuine protests and undermining both the protestors’ and America’s goals.

Any covert action should be properly integrated into wider interagency decision-making to ensure proper scrutiny, and so that it does not compete with or undercut other U.S. government activity (such as humanitarian efforts or diplomatic initiatives). A covert move to disrupt the Taliban could adversely impact opportunities for U.S. engagement with, or influence on, the new regime. Such engagement might, for instance, be required to push Afghanistan’s new rulers to allow a more inclusive political settlement, to ensure the country is not used as a base by international terrorist groups, or to advocate for the protection of rights (to the limited degree possible). It would be damaging, perhaps dangerous, to engage in covert action against the Taliban without coordinating such efforts with other parts of the U.S. government, leaving them unprepared when the Taliban complains or retaliates.

Covert action is simply one part of a broader strategy. Those officials and policymakers weighing up options should ask: What would the United States want to get out of secret activities? How would the various possible goals of such operations play into the wider U.S. political strategy and into regional geopolitics?

In the unlikely event of a major U.S. covert action program that overthrew the Taliban, a host of new problems would emerge — problems that the United States has already demonstrated, through 20 years of failed efforts, to be beyond its means to adequately address. Even if the United States considers more limited forms of covert action to disrupt the Taliban, it should proceed extremely cautiously. There would be a need for clear goals, alignment with wider policy aims, bipartisan support, bureaucratic control, and exit options. Any action should be based on a comprehensive analysis of associated risks. This is a high bar even for seemingly low-risk operations like dividing and discrediting the Taliban. Such action could dramatically escalate levels of violence in Afghanistan or unwittingly draw the United States back into a country Biden is determined to leave.

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Thomas Waldman (@tom_waldman) is a senior lecturer in international security studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is author of Vicarious Warfare: American Strategy and the Illusion of War on the Cheap (Bristol University Press, 2021) and War, Clausewitz and the Trinity (Ashgate Publishing, 2013).

Rory Cormac (@rorycormac) is a professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. He has written widely on intelligence and covert action, most recently Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces, and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2018). His next book, Covert Actions: Subversion, Sabotage, and Secret Statecraft, is forthcoming with Atlantic (2022).

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

US Successfully Tests New Homeland Missile Defense Capability - Breaking Defense

The new capability should add flexibility to the Ground Based Interceptor.

breakingdefense.com

US Successfully Tests New Homeland Missile Defense Capability
The new capability should add flexibility to the Ground Based Interceptor.

By AARON MEHTA
on September 13, 2021 at 3:10 PM

WASHINGTON: The US successfully tested a new capability for its Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) missile defense system over the weekend, with a top US official declaring the system worked “exactly” as it was designed.

The test, which occurred around 10:30 AM PST on Sept. 12, involved the GBI flying with a mock-up of a three-stage booster for the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), the part of a missile interceptor that actually destroys the incoming ballistic missile. The test featured only two of the stages, as opposed to all three which can be used to launch the EKV into position, according to the Missile Defense Agency.

Using only two of the three stages represents a new capability, which MDA is calling the “2-/3-Stage selectable GBI,” that will allow earlier release of the EKV if needed to more accurately target an incoming weapon.

“This capability gives the warfighter greater flexibility in executing the defense of the homeland while significantly increasing the battlespace for successful threat engagement,” MDA stated. “Using a mock-up of an EKV provided a significant reduction in cost of the test and spared critical defense assets that were not required in this non-intercept test.”

Vice Adm. Jon Hill, the head of the MDA, said in the statement that “the system worked exactly as it was designed” to operate. He also noted that the improvement on GBI flexibility from this new capability should help fill the gap until its replacement, known as the Next-Generation Interceptor (NGI), comes online.

Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described the system this way: “Think of it as just telling the third stage not to fire, which allows the kill vehicle to open its eyes, unbuckle its seatbelt, and get to work that much sooner. It trades the speed that the third stage would add for time. And that translates to flexibility.”

The timing of test could raise eyebrows, as it occurred shortly after North Korea declared a successful test of a new long-range cruise missile. But Karako shot down any notion that the two launches were directly linked to each other. After all, a GBI test launch takes significant planning to arrange and organize.

“This long-planned and important milestone will go towards ensuring that GMD continues to improve and adapt to increasingly complex ICBM threats from the likes of North Korea,” he said.



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But, Karako noted, the fact Pyongyang launched a cruise missile as opposed to a ballistic missile should be good reason for “some in the missile defense community to wake up and smell the coffee” about the need to advance homeland defense capabilities.

“The old conversation organized around rogue state ballistic missiles is stuck in the 1990s. The neat little boxes are all blurring together,” Karako said. “We have to contend with the full air and missile threat spectrum from mud to space, across all aspects — from UASs to cruise missiles, from ballistics to gliders, and more. The specter of imaginative, complex, and integrated attack from across this spectrum is a central component of military challenges to US power projection and homeland defense alike.”


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