WAR 09-18-2021-to-09-24-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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

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

(490) 09-11-2021-to-09-17-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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China-Pakistan new nuclear deal may push world towards renewed arms race, conflict

Tel Aviv [Israel], September 18 (ANI): All-weather allies Pakistan and China signed a new nuclear agreement that will push the world towards a renewed nuclear race and conflict.

sg.news.yahoo.com

China-Pakistan new nuclear deal may push world towards renewed arms race, conflict

ANI
Fri, 17 September 2021, 5:55 pm · 3-min read

Tel Aviv [Israel], September 18 (ANI): All-weather allies Pakistan and China signed a new nuclear agreement that will push the world towards a renewed nuclear race and conflict.

Fabien Baussart, in a blog post in The Times of Israel, said that it is a dangerous new nuclear pact.

The Framework Agreement on Deepening Nuclear Energy Cooperation was signed by Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and China Zhongyuan Engineering Cooperation on September 8, 2021.


The agreement, finalised at a high-level meeting on August 20, 2021, was signed through virtual mode and would remain valid for ten years, reported The Times of Israel.

The agreement envisages the transfer of nuclear technology, uranium mining and processing, nuclear fuel supply and setting up research reactors, which will help Pakistan increase its nuclear weapons stockpile.

For China, an enhanced Pak nuclear arsenal adds teeth to its grand strategy of countering India's military strength, said Baussart.

Although the 2021 agreement envisages cooperation in construction, maintenance and waste management of nuclear power reactors, the likelihood of diversion of technology and material for reprocessing facilities meant for producing nuclear warhead material remains dangerously high, if past experience of Pakistan's illegal nuclear trade and diversion is to be taken into account, reported The Times of Israel.

These suspicions are strengthened by the agreement's sweeping scope and content.

The main thrust of the agreement is comprehensive cooperation on the construction and maintenance of all future nuclear power projects in Pakistan.

Four new plants are on the anvil-two to be located at Karachi (K-4/K-5) and two at Muzaffargarh (M-1/M-2). These plants will be constructed under the Engineering Procurement and Construction Mode by adopting Chinese Hualong One Pressurize Water Reaction (HPR)-100 technology.

The site for M-1 and M-2 plants has already been finalised on the banks of Taunsa-Panjnad link canal in Tehsil Kot Addu, about 32 km from Muzaffargarh in Punjab, reported The Times of Israel.

As per the agreement, besides the construction of these four plants, China will strengthen its involvement in operating and maintaining all nuclear power plants in Pakistan, including refuelling outages, technical up-gradation and spare parts. Supplementary agreements to augment the main agreement are to be signed in the near future.

Five significant components of the agreement which offers Pakistan unprecedented access to China's nuclear capability in terms of technology, material and training are - a) Exploration and mining of uranium and training of personnel; b) Lifetime nuclear fuel supply and supply of initial refuelling fuel assemblies and associated core components; c) setting up of miniature neutron source reactor ; d) Radioactive management resources and assistance, including decommissioning of nuclear facilities, radioactive waste transport and disposal and radiation protection measures and; e) Nuclear technology application, including nuclear medicine, irradiation processing, radiopharmaceuticals, radioactive sources supply and manpower training, reported The Times of Israel.

The China-Pakistan nuclear cooperation dates back to 1986. China over the years has utilised official agreements to supply Pakistan with technology and material for nuclear warheads.

The September 2021 agreement substantially expands this cooperation with China helping strengthen Pakistan's nuclear industry chain by setting up additional plants, aiding uranium exploration, supply of nuclear fuel, nuclear waste management and nuclear technology applications, said Baussart. (ANI)

 

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Developments on Korean Peninsula risk accelerating regional arms race

A week full of missile tests; this is the current environment on the Korean Peninsula. On Wednesday, North Korea fired two rounds of ballistic missiles

moderndiplomacy.eu

DEFENSE
Developments on Korean Peninsula risk accelerating regional arms race

Published
3 hours ago
on September 18, 2021
By Gabriela Bernal

A week full of missile tests; this is the current environment on the Korean Peninsula. On Wednesday, North Korea fired two rounds of ballistic missiles into the East Sea while South Korea tested its first submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) just a few hours later. Wednesday’s tests follow a week of rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the consequences of which can be felt beyond the two Koreas.

North Korea ramps up tensions

According to North Korean state-run media reports, the reclusive state carried out a series of successful tests of a new long-range cruise missile over the weekend while referring to the missiles as a “strategic weapon of great significance”. Calling the weapon ‘strategic’ may imply a nuclear-capable system. Although North Korea is banned from using ballistic technologies due to U.N. Security Council resolutions, these same rules do not apply to cruise missiles.

Despite the tests, Washington maintained its position to resume dialogue with the North and “to work cooperatively with the DPRK to address areas of humanitarian concerns regardless of progress on denuclearization,” US Special Representative for North Korea Sung Kim said on Tuesday. Still, the US Indo-Pacific Command did acknowledge the cruise missile launches and said the tests highlight the “DPRK’s continuing focus on developing its military program and the threats that poses to its neighbors and the international community.”

China reacted to the test by calling for restraint by all relevant parties and for a ‘dual track’ approach to be followed involving “phased and synchronized actions to continuously advance the political settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue.”

North Korea then upped tensions further by conducting yet another missile launch on Wednesday. This test marked the first time the DPRK launched a missile off a train-mounted ballistic missile delivery system, which they referred to as the “Railway Mobile Missile Regiment”. According to Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, the missiles were believed to have landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone. The location of the landings don’t seem to be a coincidence as earlier that day North Korean state media had criticized Japan’s newly unveiled defense budget, referring to the country as a “war criminal state”.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga strongly condemned the latest tests, calling North Korea’s behavior “outrageous” and a “threat” to “the peace and security of our country and the region”. The US State Department also called the tests “a violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions” while emphasizing the Biden administration’s commitment to trilateral diplomacy and cooperation with Japan and South Korea.

What’s more, North Korea appears to have resumed activities at its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, according to a report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency last month. The report stated that “The DPRK’s nuclear activities continue to be a cause for serious concern” while adding that “The continuation of the DPRK’s nuclear programme is a clear violation of relevant UN Security Council resolutions and is deeply regrettable.”

In July, North Korea warned of a “major security crisis” in protest against the combined summertime military exercise between South Korea and the United States. This increase in rapid missile testing seems to be the result of North Korea’s dissatisfaction with both Seoul and Washington’s actions over the last few months.

South Korea joins in on the missile testing

Although the international community is used to hearing about North Korean missile tests over the years, what is much less common is to hear about a missile test conducted by the South. Hours after the North fired its missiles, South Korea tested its first submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).

North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong—the sister of leader Kim Jong Un— was quick to respond to the tests the same day, warning of the “complete destruction of inter-Korean ties” and criticized Seoul’s “illogical, antiquated and foolish attitude”, according to North Korean state media.

Through the test, South Korea became the first country without nuclear weapons to launch an SLBM. Besides the SLBM, South Korea’s presidential office said in a statement that the ROK military had also developed other new missiles, including a supersonic cruise missile to be deployed in the near future, and a new ballistic missile that has “overwhelming counterattack capability” by firing a larger warhead. Indeed, South Korea’s arms industry has grown exponentially over the last two deacades and continuous to expand rapidly. According to he SIPRI arms transfer database, South Korea rose from the 31st ranked arms exporting country in 2000 to number six in 2020.

Besides South Korea, Japan is also beefing up its military capabilities. Last month, Japan’s Defense Ministry sought a record $50 billion annual budget that would entail the largest percentage jump in spending in eight years. China was quick to criticize the move, accusing Japan of “trying to find excuses to justify their decision to increase military spending,” On the other hand, Japan blames China for “unilaterally changing the regional status quo,” affecting “the security of the Taiwan Straits, but also Japan’s security.”

The missile tests conducted by both Koreas this week further exacerbates the security situation in the region, negatively impacting far beyond the peninsula alone. The recent developments also don’t bode well for improving inter-Korean relations or US-DPRK ties. Diplomatic negotiations between the US and North Korea have been stalemated ever since the 2019 Hanoi Summit fell apart. So far, Biden has only verbally expressed interest in resuming talks, but is unlikely to do so unless North Korea makes concrete commitments to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

Inter-Korean relations are also unlikely to improve in the near future, given the time constraints. South Korea’s President Moon has roughly six months left in office, and it is unlikely significant diplomatic progress can be made in this timeframe.


Gabriela Bernal

Gabriela Bernal is a North Korea analyst and freelance writer based in Seoul, South Korea. You can find her on Twitter @gabrielabbernal

 

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US Security Force Assistance is Much More than Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam | Small Wars Journal

In her recent articles in Foreign Affairs and the Irregular Warfare Initiative at Modern War Institute Rachel Tecott paints a quite bleak picture about US Security Force Assistance efforts. In both of these articles the author arrives to strong conclusions by suggesting that the US approach to...

smallwarsjournal.com

Tue, 09/14/2021 - 10:15pm
US SECURITY FORCE ASSISTANCE IS MUCH MORE THAN AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, AND VIETNAM
By Sandor Fabian

“The only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them!”​

Winston Churchill
​

In her recent articles in Foreign Affairs and the Irregular Warfare Initiative at Modern War Institute Rachel Tecott paints a quite bleak picture about US Security Force Assistance efforts. In both of these articles the author arrives to strong conclusions by suggesting that the US approach to building foreign militaries does not deliver the expected results and even argues that recent events “exposed the rot” within these efforts.

While there are several compelling and thought-provoking points in these articles their arguments and conclusions seem to be significantly weakened by the authors` narrow definition of US security force assistance efforts` scope and objectives, and the cherry-picking of scholarly literature and cases that scream obvious confirmation bias. A more comprehensive investigation of the issue at hand reveals that the topic is much more complex than presented in these two articles and while undeniably there are several bad cases in the history of US security force assistance efforts they also have yield some great results as well.

Better understanding the effects of these efforts is important not only because of the increasing number of negative commentaries and the recent experience in Afghanistan, but also because recent U.S. administrations have been giving a significant role in their national security strategies to activities through, by and with allied and partner militaries without a clearly established and effective feedback mechanism regarding the actual effects of the U.S. security force assistance programs. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act codifies the requirement for the US Department of Defense to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs, however no such evaluation mechanism seems to exist yet. Without such comprehensive evaluation mechanism policymakers and scholars all seem to judge US security force assistance efforts on the results of the most recent high visibility cases -like the ones the author cites - without understanding that these are rather outliers than the norm when one analyzes the US security force assistance efforts in their entirety.

While the term, Security force assistance is indeed quite recent since it was coined in 2006 building foreign military capacity is not new or unique to the United States. Different forms of military aid have been used by donors to support foreign militaries and through them influence recipients` behavior since the beginnings of human history. The Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, and different European empires all employed different forms of foreign military aid to achieve their political goals. The United States is not an exception since it has been using different military aid programs to augment its military strategy and achieve its foreign policy goals since World War II. Since the introduction of the first foreign military aid program with the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 the US has provided different forms of military aid to over 150 countries around the globe.

The scope and objectives of these foreign military aid efforts evolved over time. Until mid-1970s the term military assistance was officially used to describe the foreign military aid programs, which only referred to the transfer of US military weapons, equipment, and training to recipient governments. With the 1976 Congressional amendment of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 additional political and economic aspects were added to these programs and a new term, security assistance was introduced. While all these definitions already included activities aimed at building foreign military forces the term security force assistance was only coined in 2006. Its current definition is “the unified action to generate, employ, and sustain local, host-nation or regional security forces in support of a legitimate authority. Security force assistance (SFA) improves the capability and capacity of host-nation or regional security organization’s security forces. These forces are collectively referred to as foreign security forces. Foreign security forces are forces—including but not limited to military, paramilitary, police, and intelligence forces; border police, coast guard, and customs officials; and prison guards and correctional personnel—that provide security for a host nation and its relevant population or support a regional security organization’s mission.” This short and oversimplified review of the evolution of the US foreign military building efforts` evolution presents two immediate challenges for the above-mentioned articles. First, the scope and objectives of the US security force assistance efforts are much wider than presented in these arguments. Second, the US security force assistance efforts spam over 70 years and include more than 150 countries. This means that drawing conclusions from only three recent cases carries a lot of potential bias and excludes a lot of data that could either confirm or refute the conclusions of the author.

Another point of criticism is in order for the articles` biased literature selection. In both articles the author only uses scholarly literature that supports the overall argument and does not discuss studies yielding results potentially questioning the conclusions of these articles. International relations literature has been paying attention to the exploration of the effects of US security force assistance efforts since the mid-1970s. This literature divides US security force assistance efforts into two general categories: arms and equipment transfer, and foreign military education and training programs. Scholarly studies exploring the effects of US arms and equipment transfer can also be divided into two groups from a theoretical perspective: the encouragement and the discouragement literature. Those studies that belong to the former group (Sylvan, 1976; Schrodt, 1983; Brzoska and Pearson, 1984; Pearson, Brzoska, and Crantz, 1992; Craft and Smaldone, 2002) argue that US security force assistance efforts yield negative results because they make recipient countries aggressive and increase the probability interstate conflicts. Contradictory to these arguments the restraint literature (Huth and Russett, 1984; Huth, 1988; Kinsella and Tillema, 1995) proposes that US military arms and equipment transfer have positive effects on recipient states` conflict behavior and this form of US foreign military aid reduces the probability of recipient states becoming involved in interstate conflicts. Talmadge (2015) argues that the effectiveness of the US security assistance efforts depends on whether they are delivered to a weak (failed) or a strong state. At the same time Durch (2000) finds that there is no relationship between US arms and equipment transfer and recipient states` involvement in armed conflicts.

When it comes to scholarly studies investigating the effects of US foreign military aid in the form of foreign military education and training efforts their results are quite similar to the contradictory results of the above discussed literature. Lefever (1976) finds US efforts increase the professional performance and readiness level of the participant countries` militaries leading to more security and stability. Fitch (1979) finds somewhat contradictory results and argues that US foreign military education and training efforts increase the political involvement of the military and institutionalizes the coup d’état as a form of political progress. Savage and Caverley (2017) also suggest that US foreign military education and training efforts yield negative results. They argue that these programs improve the professionalism of foreign militaries which increases the recipient militaries` capabilities relative to the regime in a way that no other foreign aids do and this improved capability doubles the probability of military-backed coup attempts. Ruby and Gibler (2010) arrive to an opposite conclusion. According to these authors foreign military personnel trained and educated in the United States absorb the idea of civilian control over the military decreases the probability of coups.

Another set of studies investigating whether US foreign military education and training programs deliver the expected results focus on the exploration of the relationship between participation in these programs and democratic values and human rights both at the individual and state levels. Reynolds (2001) investigates whether US programs successfully improve individual participants` attitudes towards internationally recognized human rights. Through surveying actual program participants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua Reynolds (2001) finds promising but inconclusive results suggesting that participation facilitates improvement in individuals` respect for internationally recognized human rights. Additionally, in her two studies Atkinson (2010, 2015) argues that the US IMET programs are effective soft power tools in the hands of the United States since they effectively promote American values and help diffusing democratic norms to foreign militaries. Using Reynolds (2001) and Atkinson`s (2015) findings as their fundamental assumptions Omelicheva et al. (2017) investigate how US foreign military education and training program participation affects the probability of human rights violations in conflict at the state level. The authors find that more participation in these US programs is associated with less atrocities against civilians during conflict. Finally, in my own studies I find that participation in US foreign military education and training programs have positive effects both at the individual and country level. First, using semi-structured, in-depth interviews and an original survey conducted in Hungary I find that the professional norms and values of the US military are indeed transmitted to program participants and with that the military human capital of the recipient states improves. Additionally, the study provides initial evidence for further norm diffusion within the military as a whole. Second, analyzing a new dataset that includes detailed information on insurgencies and US foreign military education and training efforts between 1976 and 2003 I find that government militaries receiving more US support in the form of foreign military education and training have a significantly higher probability of winning against insurgents while also fighting longer civil conflicts. Finally, I also find support to my initial assertion that more US foreign military education and training leads to decreased probability of recipient countries instigating interstate conflicts while they are also less likely to escalate the level of violence in ongoing interstate conflicts.

While this literature review is not all encompassing it once again highlights the complexity of US security force assistance efforts and demonstrates that there is no agreement among scholars regarding the effects of these US efforts. While it is indeed extremely important to study and scrutinize the US security force assistance efforts to understand why they deliver suboptimal effects in some cases, it is equally important that such investigation is done through the most rigorous process using a combination of advanced research methods, reliable and up-to-date data, analyzing all available cases and considering the widest range of necessary and sufficient conditions as well as exploring potential alternative explanations. Studies falling short of these requirements might present premature results, mislead policymakers, and can have unintended detrimental effects on the future of US security force assistance efforts.

About the Author(s)

Sandor Fabian
Dr. Sandor Fabian is a former Hungarian Special Forces lieutenant colonel with more than twenty years of military experience. He is a graduate of the Miklos Zrinyi Hungarian National Defense University, holds a master’s degree in Defense Analysis (Irregular Warfare) from the US Naval Postgraduate School, has a graduate certificate in National Security and Intelligence Studies and a PhD in Security Studies from the University of Central Florida. Dr. Fabian is currently a research associate at the University of Central Florida and a curriculum developer and team leader at LEIDOS. Dr. Fabian is the author of the book titled “Irregular Warfare, The Future Military Strategy For Small States.” His research has appeared in Defence Studies, Defense & Security Analysis, the Special Operations Journal, the Combating Terrorism Exchange Journal, the Florida Political Chronicle, and the Hungarian Seregszemle Journal.

 

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Reassessing Counter Terrorism Financing in a Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan

Former U.S. Treasury Dept official stationed in Kabul describes the challenges posed by the hawala system in Afghanistan and countering financing of terrorism.

www.justsecurity.org

Reassessing Counter Terrorism Financing in a Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan

by Alex Zerden
September 17, 2021

The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan set back decades-long efforts to integrate Afghanistan into the international community. Nowhere is this more apparent than on anti-money laundering and countering-the-financing-of-terrorism (AML/CFT) reforms, a policy area in which Afghanistan made substantial progress over the past several years to raise compliance standards and crack down on major vulnerabilities in its economy, particularly the under-regulated hawala money transfer system.

Now, the Taliban, a group sanctioned by the United Nations, the United States, and other international partners, oversees Afghanistan’s enforcement of AML/CFT and economic sanctions. The Taliban is unlikely to meaningfully enforce United Nations sanctions against itself or crackdown against the hawala industry in the same way as the previous government. As a former senior Treasury Department official recently noted, “I can’t think of any case in which a terrorist group that’s already designated became the power in charge of a full country.”

Particularly after the Islamic State-Khorasan’s (ISIS-K) tragic and brazen attack at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. military personnel along with over 160 Afghan civilians, the Taliban must be held responsible for allowing terrorist groups to operate in Afghanistan. Addressing AML/CFT risks presents one concrete way for the international community to measure the Taliban’s actions rather than its rhetoric in addressing terrorism and terrorism financing.

Challenges With the Formal Banking System

Understanding Afghanistan’s post-9/11 economic history allows policymakers to better address the current crisis.

After decades of conflict and the Taliban’s prior five-year rule (1996-2001), Afghanistan’s formal financial system was “virtually non-existent,” according to a 2003 World Bank study. Instead, it relied (and still relies) heavily on hawala, a centuries-old informal money exchange system that provides for both domestic and international transfers. According to The Economist, “regulators around the world hate the system, because of its opacity and its role in helping to fund terrorism.”

The United States made AML/CFT a priority when supporting the nascent Afghan government in the wake of the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001. For instance, senior Treasury Department officials, including former Secretary Paul O’Neill and Deputy Assistant Secretary Juan Zarate, visited Afghanistan in 2002 “to facilitate the development of effective counter-terrorist financing policies…and, as appropriate, to offer Treasury technical assistance to strengthen these policies.” Unfortunately, the realities of the Afghan economy made this work daunting. The country’s illegal heroin and methamphetamine trades also required financial services. This led the U.S. Department of State to designate Afghanistan as a “major money laundering country” through 2020, when it last published a finding; such a designation is triggered when a country’s “financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking.”

Today, the informal, lightly-regulated hawala financial system predominates in Afghanistan as most Afghans remain excluded from the formal banking system. The catastrophic 2010 Kabul Bank collapse, caused by high-level corruption and dubbed “The Afghan Bank Heist” by the New Yorker, shattered confidence in the Afghan banking system and cast a decade-long shadow. Poverty and a lack of available financial services also contribute to the under-use of banks. Less than one in six Afghans hold bank accounts, and that number plummets to one in 25 (3.8 percent) for women, according to the World Bank. There are only two bank branches for every 100,000 people. Many areas across the country lack branches; indeed, three of the largest cities—Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Herat—house about two-thirds of the branches in a country the size of Texas.

The Hawala Informal Money Transfer System Remains Popular

Even after 20 years of international technical assistance to strengthen its banking sector, Afghanistan still primarily uses hawala to receive remittances from overseas, send money around the country, and import goods from neighbors like Iran and Pakistan. More money circulates through the hawala system than the formal banking system. According to a 2019 academic analysis by Dr. Nafay Choudhury of Cambridge University, the loan volume at Kabul’s main hawala market, Sarai Shahzada, is roughly double the loan value originating through the commercial banking sector. Additional hawala lending takes place at other markets inside and outside of Kabul. Such evidence indicates that the hawala sector largely overshadows the commercial banks.

Western Union and MoneyGram provide some remittance services for low-dollar transfers from abroad to help Afghans in need. These remittances accounted for $789 million, about 4% of Afghanistan’s GDP in 2020. The two companies suspended their operations at the outset of the Taliban’s takeover last month, but resumed services on September 2, after engagement with the U.S. government, according to Reuters. These remittances serve to keep many Afghans out of poverty or from needing humanitarian assistance, thereby freeing up available aid to those most at risk of starvation.

Given the small size of the banking and formal remittance sectors, the hawala system fills the gap in everyday financial services for millions of Afghans. An undated Treasury Department and Interpol report on hawala identified six reasons for using the informal system over traditional financial services: cost effectiveness, efficiency (speed of transfer), reliability, lack of customer due diligence and identification checks, lack of transaction records, and tax evasion.

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Despite improvements over the past several years, the hawala system lacks the same level of supervision as commercial banks in Afghanistan. Bankers complain regularly about the lax compliance obligations that create an unfair business advantage for the hawala industry. At a practical level, according to one expert in 2021, “Deals are executed by word of mouth, phone chats and WhatsApp messages, with minimal formal documentation.” Such informality makes the hawala system an ideal mechanism for terrorism financing in Afghanistan.

Taliban Use of the Hawala System

Due to economic sanctions against the Taliban and the limited financial connectivity in Afghanistan, the hawala system served as the primary financial lifeline for the Taliban.

In response, the Treasury Department took a series of actions against Taliban financial facilitators, including sanctioning hawaladar (i.e., hawala operator) Haji Khairullah Haji Sattar Money Exchange, Roshan Money Exchange, and Rahat Ltd. in 2012, as well as Etehad Brothers in 2014. Many of the Treasury Department sanctions designations recognized the malign role played by financial facilitators in Pakistan, but the start of U.S.-Taliban negotiations in 2018 appeared to change the sanctions posture and was marked by an absence of sanctions targeting Taliban officials and financial facilitators in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Rather, the Taliban negotiated with the Trump Administration for sanctions relief in their February 2020 agreement.

As revelations emerged in 2020 of Russia allegedly funding bounties to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, one part of that reporting described the use of hawala to move money for Taliban-linked militants. Afghan authorities described a series of arrests in northern Afghanistan and Kabul over a six-month period that targeted Taliban financial facilitators, including the seizure of $500,000 in one raid alone—a substantial sum of money in a country where the GDP per capita is only $509.

Put succinctly by the New York Times on September 2, 2021, “The Taliban used hawala to help fund their ultimately successful insurgency.”

Systemic Hawala Reforms Are in Jeopardy

Since around 2018, Afghanistan’s Central Bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), took bold and politically unpopular steps to improve oversight of the hawala industry. These efforts improved Afghanistan’s standing, and with substantial international assistance, the country was removed in 2017 from the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey-list of deficient jurisdictions. Reforms included requiring hawaladars (in particular, foreign exchange dealers, called sarafis) to convert their legal status from sole proprietorships to companies and apply for new licenses as corporations; banning hawaladars from making loans or holding deposits; requiring the collection of information (such as documents from their customers) to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) obligations; and mandating the filing of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on customers allegedly involved in wrongdoing like money laundering, terrorism financing, tax evasion, fraud, or narcotics trafficking.

Still, problems have persisted. In April 2020, DAB reported the results of onsite AML/CFT examinations of 57 hawaladars, and identified significant deficiencies and “weak” compliance with applicable laws and regulations. In March 2021, the U.S. government found that hawaladars have “an unwillingness to implement [customer due diligence] requirements” and “generally fail to file” SARs. While such assessments underscore lingering systemic problems, they also demonstrate the progress made by DAB to confront shortcomings and take action in response.

As a result, the hawala industry went on several strikes to protest reforms, including a 16-day strike in May 2021 as DAB worked to transition the hawaladars into companies. A 2018 strike protested against collecting customer information, a basic and uncontroversial standard for banks around the world to address financial crime risks and a provision codified in Afghanistan’s AML/CFT regulations.

DAB leadership met with the hawala industry as late as August 14, 2021, one day before the collapse of Kabul, as part of its ongoing engagement and to discuss the security situation to ensure the continuity of operations of the hawala system despite the violence and territorial gains made by the Taliban.

While incremental and plagued by setbacks, these reforms over the past three years have demonstrated a maturation of the hawala industry and DAB’s ability to supervise this substantial portion of the Afghan economy.

Taliban AML/CFT Capabilities and International Responsibilities

Now, the Taliban controls the levers of the Afghan government—and with that, the responsibilities and commitments made by the previous government to enforce AML/CFT rules, including oversight of the hawala industry. Unfortunately, the Taliban is unlikely to uphold those responsibilities and commitments. In its first major economic move, the Taliban appointed Haji Mohammad Idris, a relatively “obscure” figure, according to Bloomberg, with no known economic or financial education or training, as the central bank governor. Such a decision indicates that the Taliban prioritizes loyalty to the organization over technical competency.

Additionally, one-quarter of Afghanistan’s commercial banks are state-owned, which places even more of the country’s financial infrastructure under Taliban control. This may also create sanctions exposure for U.S. persons and other counterparties, depending on how the U.S. government defines “the Taliban” and activities under sanctioned individuals’ control for the purpose of economic sanctions implementation.

DAB, now part of a Taliban-controlled government, is itself subject to U.S. economic sanctions while being responsible for AML/CFT supervision and overseeing Afghanistan’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), FinTRACA. The FIU, in particular, was previously responsible for investigating Taliban finances and coordinating responses through law enforcement and other channels. These organizations (DAB and FinTRACA) are likely to see major changes and revised roles under the Taliban. What’s more, as previously noted in response to the August 26, 2021 ISIS-K terrorist attack at the Kabul airport, and even more broadly, the Taliban’s capabilities and willingness to govern remain unknown.

Then there is the question of whether and how the new Taliban government will address other terrorist groups in Afghanistan: at least 16 terrorist groups currently operate in Afghanistan, in addition to the Taliban. The Congressional Research Service identified seven terrorist groups: Al Qaeda (Core), Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, ISIS-K, the Haqqani Network, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (also known as the Pakistan Taliban), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (also known as the Turkistan Islamic Party). The recently deposed Afghan government claimed that anti-Indian Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed trained and recruited in Afghanistan. Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) maintains a presence across the country. The CIA also listed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps/Qods Force, Jaysh al Adl (Jundallah), Lashkar i Jhangvi, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami, and the Islamic Jihad Union.

The Taliban now has the obligation to address the terrorist financing risks posed by these organizations. Serious questions exist about their willingness and capacity to responsibly administer DAB and FinTRACA in general and specifically with respect to that counterterrorism goal.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The international community and the U.S. government must rapidly change their approach to engaging with the Afghan government and those in charge of its AML/CFT authorities. They must work to improve AML/CFT monitoring in and around Afghanistan, and strengthen international AML/CFT cooperation in order to manage the grave risks posed by terrorism financing, given the Taliban’s status as a terrorist group and its close relationship with other terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani Network (whose leader now holds a senior role in the Taliban-led government as the acting interior minister).

The Taliban’s takeover of the Afghan government raises novel and vexing questions for international partners with respect to recognition of, and engagement with, the Taliban-controlled central bank and FIU.

Policymakers should consider the following recommendations:

First, the United States and the international community must hold the Taliban responsible for fulfilling the previous Afghan government’s commitments to providing appropriate supervision of both the banking and hawala sectors and implementing key reforms of the hawala sector. Steps could include appointing independent, internationally recognized technocrats to lead and operate DAB and FinTRACA, as opposed to Taliban loyalists who lack requisite education or experience. An unsupervised hawala industry creates substantial vulnerabilities that could facilitate billions of dollars in terrorism financing, narcotrafficking, and tax evasion, and turn Afghanistan into an even larger money laundering hub with disastrous consequences for both crime and terrorism.

Second, the United States and the international community must hold the Taliban responsible for any misuse of financial intelligence information held by DAB, FinTRACA, or Afghan financial institutions. The Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units took swift action on August 15, 2021 to sever FinTRACA’s access to Egmont Secure Web (ESW), the secure FIU-to-FIU messaging platform. Additional steps can be taken to limit the Taliban’s access to sensitive financial intelligence information within Afghanistan and also among the 21 countries that have an existing information-sharing arrangement with Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s participation in the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and its FATF-style regional body, the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), should also be reviewed, and countermeasures should be considered for Afghanistan’s failure to adhere to international AML/CFT standards.

Third, building off of specific recommendations against ISIS-K, the U.S. State and Treasury Departments should identify and articulate concrete, measurable steps that the Taliban can take on counterterrorism financing against the sixteen known terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, prioritizing ISIS-K, the Haqqani Network, and Al-Qaeda.

Fourth, the State Department, in consultation with the Treasury Department, should modify the definition of “the Taliban” as permitted under Executive Order 13268 for the dual purpose of increasing diplomatic leverage against the Taliban and its enablers as well as providing necessary regulatory clarity to financial institutions, aid organizations, and other stakeholders who must navigate economic sanctions, especially as a way to deter third parties from working with the Taliban. In the absence of clear guidance about the scope of the Taliban sanctions, prudent actors will likely treat the counterterrorism sanctions against the Taliban as a de facto jurisdictional sanctions program against the country of Afghanistan, which will have substantial economic impacts, especially for humanitarian assistance. Such an outcome may not be intended by the U.S. government at this stage of the crisis.

Fifth, the U.S. Treasury Department’s FIU, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), should consider using its new information-sharing authorities under Section 6103 of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (through the Anti-Money Laundering Act provision) to convene the FinCEN Exchange public-private partnership as a platform for supporting humanitarian assistance and other forms of aid in Afghanistan. Policymakers and regulators should also identify a suitable platform for a similar international convening capability to support efforts by allies to establish a humanitarian financial corridor to support the Afghan people.

Lastly, the United States and its allies should return to a regional rather than jurisdictional approach to AML/CFT and pursue economic sanctions that fully assess Pakistan’s malign influence in Afghanistan, as well as the role of Iran and other regional actors. The September 4, 2021 visit to Kabul by the head of Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to discuss “security and trade” demonstrates the continued close relationship between the Taliban and the Pakistani government, which should elicit far greater scrutiny by policymakers. As part of this realignment, the Treasury Department must establish an offshore counterterrorism financing capability for Afghanistan; this can be achieved in part by relocating the Afghanistan Financial Attaché position to the new Afghanistan operations center in Doha, Qatar, or in another major financial hub with exposure to Afghanistan, such as Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The policy challenges are vast when a terrorist organization takes over the levers of a friendly government, but some of the most productive actions that can be taken now are fairly straightforward.

About the Author(s)
Alex Zerden
Alex Zerden (@AlexZerden) is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and founder of Capitol Peak Strategies. He served as the Treasury Department’s Financial Attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan from 2018 to 2019.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

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Working with the Devil? The Potential for U.S.-Taliban Cooperation Against the Islamic State in Afghanistan - War on the Rocks

During World War II, when defending collaboration with reprehensible regimes, President Franklin Roosevelt liked to quote an old proverb: “My children, it

warontherocks.com

WORKING WITH THE DEVIL? THE POTENTIAL FOR U.S.-TALIBAN COOPERATION AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE IN AFGHANISTAN

JONATHAN SCHRODEN AND ALEXANDER POWELL
SEPTEMBER 16, 2021
COMMENTARY

During World War II, when defending collaboration with reprehensible regimes, President Franklin Roosevelt liked to quote an old proverb: “My children, it is permitted you in time of grave danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge.” In 2015, the year after the Islamic State declared the creation of a “caliphate” in parts of Syria and Iraq, Patrick Porter pointedly used the proverb in War on the Rocks to encourage reflection about how to respond to this group: Did policymakers deem the Islamic State sufficiently dangerous and evil to justify working with unsavory partners to combat it?

Today, the U.S. government confronts a different version of the same dilemma: Should the United States cooperate with the Taliban in order to counter the Islamic State in Afghanistan? When asked about prospects for that during a Sept. 1 press conference, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded, “It’s possible.” Given the 20-year U.S. war against the Taliban, Milley’s remarks made news and came as a shock to some observers.

In fact, the United States has already worked with the Taliban on several occasions in pursuit of common interests, and Milley’s comment makes clear U.S. officials are seriously thinking through the possibility of doing so again. A review of the pros and cons of future U.S.-Taliban cooperation against the Islamic State in Afghanistan shows that while there may be operational advantages for both sides, those benefits could come at significant political costs.

Previous Efforts Against A Common Enemy

The Islamic State in Afghanistan is a declared enemy of both the United States and the Taliban. In 2016, the U.S. government designated the group a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Earlier this year, American intelligence estimates suggested the group maintained the desire to attack the United States and could develop the capability to do so within 18 to 36 months after a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

As scholars Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines described, the Islamic State in Afghanistan, which was founded in 2015, “sees the Afghan Taliban as its strategic rival.” Among the points of contention, the Islamic State in Afghanistan is highly critical of the Taliban’s limited focus on that country, which “contradicts the Islamic State movement’s goal of establishing a global caliphate.” This rivalry has played out in both a war of words and through significant fighting between the two groups.

The Taliban and the United States thus share an interest in eradicating the Islamic State from Afghanistan, and each has conducted sustained operations focused on degrading the group’s capabilities in recent years. While its military was still deployed in Afghanistan, the United States conducted unilateral and partnered counter-terrorism operations with Afghanistan’s special security forces under the auspices of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. The Taliban have also conducted unilateral operations against the Islamic State, such as when they eliminated the group’s position in Jawzjan province in 2018.

Additionally, U.S. and Taliban forces have acted in mutually beneficial ways in support of their shared interest. In March 2020, the commander of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, acknowledged that the United States had provided “very limited” support to Taliban efforts against the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.

The extent of this support is not entirely clear, but available reports indicate it took at least two forms. First, U.S. forces exercised strategic restraint whereby they refrained from attacking certain Taliban units who were preparing to launch operations against the Islamic State. Second, the U.S. military conducted airstrikes against Islamic State forces who were directly battling Taliban units. According to U.S. officials, there was no direct communication between U.S. and Taliban forces during these operations. Nonetheless, both sides clearly recognized that tacit cooperation was occurring — the Taliban knew that the U.S. military was listening to their communications and American personnel overseeing the airstrikes went so far as to jokingly call themselves the “Taliban Air Force.”

A more recent example of the United States and the Taliban working together occurred during the evacuation of U.S. personnel and eligible Afghans from Kabul. To create as secure an environment as possible under chaotic conditions, the United States first agreed to an arrangement under which the Taliban took control of the city of Kabul, while the militaries of the United States and its international partners secured the inner perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport. The Taliban further promised not to interfere with the U.S.-led evacuation. To try to facilitate the safe passage of individuals from behind Taliban lines into the airport, the two sides established direct channels of communication and de-confliction mechanisms. Controversially, these included the U.S. government giving the Taliban the names of people who were to be allowed through the latter’s checkpoints. For its part, the Taliban escorted Americans directly to the gates of the airport several times per day.

In the wake of the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s suicide attack at the airport that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and hundreds of Afghans, McKenzie revealed that the United States had been sharing sanitized intelligence on Islamic State threats with the Taliban for nearly two weeks. He stated that the communication channels and information sharing had resulted in the Taliban preventing several additional Islamic State attacks against the airport, including when the Taliban cleared a bus that was reportedly rigged with explosives and may have carried two suicide bombers. According to McKenzie, the Taliban were “very pragmatic and very business-like” during the final days of the withdrawal, and they were “very helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations.” The last U.S. servicemember to leave Afghanistan — Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue — talked to the local Taliban commander, with whom he had been coordinating, shortly before boarding the final C-17 out of Kabul.

Even more recently, after the Taliban allowed a chartered Qatar Airways flight to depart Kabul full of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, the White House issued a statement saying that the group was “cooperative” and “professional.” The White House also indicated that the results of this effort were a “positive first step” for relations between the United States and the interim Taliban government.

Given the history of both tacit and direct coordination and cooperation between the U.S. military and the Taliban, as well as previous U.S.-Taliban diplomacy, it is not altogether surprising that Milley left open the door to an interest-based security relationship.

The Pros and Cons of Cooperation Between the United States and the Taliban

With the Taliban’s recent gains against the National Resistance Front, the Islamic State in Afghanistan represents the last major challenge to the Taliban’s consolidation of control in the country. The Taliban are, therefore, eager to destroy the group and, based on previous encounters, should be able to accomplish this. Nevertheless, with the addition of thousands of escaped prisoners to its ranks, the Islamic State in Afghanistan may prove to be a more formidable foe than it has been during the past few years. Thus, the Taliban might benefit from U.S. cooperation against the group — perhaps in the form of sanitized intelligence or even drone strikes — so long as any American support was provided discreetly.

For its part, the United States would benefit from the destruction of the most significant terrorist threat it faces in South Asia, without having to put any of its military forces in harm’s way. Relying on the Taliban to do the bulk of the fighting against the Islamic State in Afghanistan would be a far less costly approach than some of the “over the horizon” options reportedly under consideration. By offering contributions to the Taliban’s goal of defeating the Islamic State, the United States might also incentivize positive actions by Afghanistan’s new regime on other American priorities, such as allowing remaining U.S. citizens and Special Immigrant Visa applicants to depart the country.

As for potential drawbacks, the Biden administration is already paying political costs for the manner in which it exited Afghanistan. President Joe Biden’s approval ratings dropped sharply in August and, in a recent poll by the Economist, just 33 percent of Americans expressed support for his handling of the withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan. Overt cooperation with the Taliban regime — even if focused on a recognizable enemy such as the Islamic State — may not resonate with the American public or across the political aisle, especially if the Taliban engage in widespread oppressive actions toward women and minorities, of which there are already some indications. Additionally, even if the administration could secure the Taliban’s cooperation against the Islamic State in Afghanistan, it is highly unlikely that the Taliban would take further action against al-Qaeda, a group with which the Taliban maintain strong ties.

For the Taliban, overt cooperation with the United States could also bring political risks. For years, the Taliban have been concerned about — and heavily focused on — maintaining the internal cohesion of their militant coalition. The Taliban’s interim government, while mostly excluding minorities and entirely excluding women, is generally inclusive of the group’s internal factions and appears to have been designed with that as a central consideration. Some of these factions — most notably, the Haqqanis — might balk at cooperation with the United States. Or, as a member of the group’s cultural commission recently stated, they may just think that the Taliban don’t need any help from the United States to secure the country.

Working with the Enemy of My Enemy?

Given several decades of past animosity toward each other, the United States and the Taliban are unlikely to become friends, despite their common enemy. Yet, their recent history of coordination and cooperation might serve as a foundation for a limited, mutually beneficial partnership against the Islamic State in Afghanistan going forward. While coordination until now has mostly entailed communication through military channels, future efforts could be handled via other means. This might even be preferable if such actions were taken covertly. It is possible the Biden administration is already thinking along these lines, as suggested by the recent visit of CIA Director William Burns to Kabul.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned on Sept. 1 against making “any leaps of logic” to predict future collaboration with the Taliban just because of past cooperation with them. Immediately after, Milley emphasized that the Taliban are a “ruthless group,” but as he also acknowledged, “In war, you do what you must in order to reduce risk to mission and force, not necessarily what you want to do.” While the U.S. war against the Taliban is over, its conflict against the Islamic State continues. In that effort, the United States may not want to work with the devil — as many Americans consider the Taliban to be — but it may yet find it beneficial to do so.



BECOME A MEMBER


Jonathan Schroden, Ph.D., directs the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at CNA, a non-profit, non-partisan research and analysis organization based in Arlington, Virginia. His work at CNA has focused on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency activities across much of the Middle East and South Asia, including numerous deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also an adjunct scholar at the U.S. Military Academy’s Modern War Institute. You can find him on Twitter: @jjschroden.

Alexander Powell is a research analyst in the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at CNA. He has worked extensively on security issues in Afghanistan, traveling there frequently to conduct assessments of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. He holds an M.A. in security studies from Georgetown University, where his thesis focused on foreign armed interventions in Afghanistan since the Anglo-Afghan wars.

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of CNA, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense.

 

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New Australia Nuclear Sub Deal Brings Big Questions, Hard Road Ahead - Breaking Defense

Analysts say the trilateral defense pact could set precedents and become a 20-year endeavor for the countries involved.

breakingdefense.com

New Australia Nuclear Sub Deal Brings Big Questions, Hard Road Ahead
Analysts say the trilateral defense pact could set precedents and become a 20-year endeavor for the countries involved.

By JUSTIN KATZ
on September 17, 2021 at 8:49 AM

WASHINGTON: The trilateral defense pact laid out by President Joe Biden and counterparts Wednesday will present serious workforce challenges for Australia, a precedent-setting discussion of non-proliferation policy and could take two decades before coming to fruition, defense experts told Breaking Defense.

Dubbed AUKUS, the surprise agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, as described by Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, includes an agreement to share highly sensitive nuclear propulsion technology with the end goal of Australia establishing a conventionally armed but nuclear-powered submarine program.

How long that will take, what submarine the Australians will build and what assistance the US and UK will provide are all questions to be worked out over the next 18 months as the three countries determine the path forward.

Senior American administration officials speaking to reporters prior to the heads of state’s official announcement admitted the timeline for Australia to put a submarine in the water is not clear, and what makes it even more complicated is the fact the country currently lacks any real nuclear domestic infrastructure.

Most analysts who spoke to Breaking Defense said the lack of specific details makes the timeline difficult to predict, but those who did offer guesses placed it between 10 and 20 years. While Biden and his counterparts were careful to not say it, the driving force behind the deal and at least some sense of urgency is obvious to observers.

“This is all to counter China. That’s unspoken, but that’s what it’s for,” said Tom Stefanick, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “If you want this new alliance, AU-UK-US, to have an impact on China’s calculations, it’s got to happen pretty fast. So, China sets part of that deadline.”

Which Sub Will the Aussie’s Build, and How Will They Build It?

American shipbuilding executives and Navy acquisition officials often talk about industry’s problems maintaining an educated and skilled workforce whenever workloads fluctuate. The challenge Australia will face in establishing a nuclear workforce mostly from scratch will be tremendous.

“They are going to have train up a whole new cadre of nuclear engineers,” said Brent Sadler, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former submariner. He said to train a qualified enlisted sailor or officer to work on nuclear technology takes at least two years.

And that only covers the military’s operational side. American shipbuilding companies responsible for building the US fleet train their own personnel to work on nuclear technology, a major investment of time and money. In addition to the operators and maintenance crews, there’s also auxiliary staff such as doctors who need to be on hand for medical support. And then there are the subsequent inspections necessary to ensure the technology is being operated safely.

“There’s various levels that have to be built up and it doesn’t occur overnight. This is a long-haul process to get there,” one shipbuilding executive said of the infrastructure needed for industry to work on nuclear technology.

Which submarine the Australians end up building could also present specific workforce challenges. Most analysts noted the amount of time and money required for designing and developing a new boat from scratch makes it an unlikely option.

Instead, Bryan Clark, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, predicted the US Navy’s Virginia-class submarine would be a logical choice.

Clark said the Australians’ original deal with the French — which has now been scrapped — called for $66 billion to buy 12 boats. If research and development costs can be minimized due to the work already done in the US, Clark theorized the deal could include 12 Virginia-class submarines costing roughly $3 billion each, with the rest of the funds going towards building domestic infrastructure, construction and maintenance.

“Because submarines are the one part of the US Navy shipbuilding infrastructure that is maxed out right now, building 12 VA-class for the [Royal Australian Navy] will mean 12 US VA-class will not get built,” Clark said. “That could be part of the administrations’ plan, since arguably those are still 12 SSNs for the alliance, but they would be paid for by Australia. However, those boats cannot help with US missions elsewhere.”

The announcement Wednesday evening made clear the Australian government is keen to tout job creation as a benefit of this deal. But it is not clear whether those manufacturing jobs in Australia would be for building components from scratch or whether they would complete the assembly process. Either way, US industry would be taxed either in raw manufacturing capacity or having to send experts currently working on American Virginia-class submarines to Australia.

Clark and other experts also mentioned the British Astute-class submarine as an alternative to the Virginia class.

Sharing Propulsion Tech Prompts Fear of Nuclear Proliferation ‘Loophole’

During the Wednesday night announcement, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a point of saying his country is not seeking nuclear weapons. Regardless, proliferation experts said they worry about the precedents that could be set in the coming years.

One concern stems from the international laws surrounding nuclear materials. Normally, the organization responsible for enforcing those laws — the International Atomic Energy Agency — requires non-nuclear weapon states to declare their materials for inspection. However, that law has a loophole: nuclear materials for use in a submarine.

No country yet has ever tried to use that loophole, according to James Acton, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“I’m not worried about Australia using nuclear material that’s been removed from safeguards to build a nuclear weapon,” he said. “I am worried that other non-nuclear weapon states will follow Australia’s lead. This loophole has never been invoked in 50 years. It seems to me quite unlikely that that degree of restraint will continue if Australia invokes that loophole.”

The concern is that if an American ally exploited the loophole, an adversary like Iran might be much more willing to do so as well. It could also make countries such as China less willing to pressure other nations not to do the same.

“If Iran announced it was removing highly enriched uranium from safeguards for the purpose of naval propulsion, we would go apeshit over that,” Acton said. “And we should. It would be outrageous for Iran to go ahead and do that. But I think we [would have] set a very dangerous precedent.”

Alan Kuperman, a professor at University of Texas at Austin who studies nuclear proliferation policy, also expressed concerns about the US providing a submarine using highly enriched uranium to Australia. Just hours before Wednesday’s announcement, he argued in a Breaking Defense Op-Ed that the US Navy should shift to using low enriched uranium on its own submarines in the interest of preventing a hostile actor from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“The most likely path to such a bomb would be for an adversary to divert or steal one of the two required nuclear explosives, plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU), from a non-weapons purpose like reactor fuel,” he wrote. “That is why the US, for nearly 50 years, has worked to phase out global commerce in these two dangerous materials.”

Officials said it is not yet clear what kind of uranium Australia’s submarine will use, but the US and UK both rely on HEU. The French, who were left out of the new security arrangement much to their chagrin, already use low enriched uranium.

Kuperman said if the Australian sub uses HEU, other navies seeking nuclear propulsion would demand the same. However, if the US and UK were to develop an LEU-fueled ship, that may influence US shipbuilding.

“If LEU is good enough for the Australian navy, why not also the US Navy?” he said. “I think this could have long-term positive effects for phasing out HEU in naval propulsion, including in the US Navy.”

With the announcement of the deal made public, the three countries can get to work in answering all of these questions and more. But in the meantime, they will have to contend with the French, who are very publicly voicing their displeasure.

“The [US] choice to exclude [a European Union] ally and partner such as [France] from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region […] shows a lack of coherence that [France] can only note and regret,” the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. tweeted following the White House’s announcement.

Colin Clark contributed to this report.

 

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U.S.-Australia Submarine Pact Targets China’s Undersea Weakness

By sharing its technology with Australia and deepening defense ties, the U.S. will effectively augment its own Asian fleet as both countries focus on deterring China.

www.wsj.com

• WORLD

U.S.-Australia Submarine Pact Targets China’s Undersea Weakness
By sharing technology, Washington will effectively augment its own Asian fleet to help deter Beijing from expansionism

By
Alastair Gale and Nancy A. Youssef
Updated Sept. 17, 2021 3:01 pm ET

Australia’s decision to build eight nuclear-powered submarines with U.S. technology will buttress America’s undersea edge over China and could help create a network of submarine defenses from the Indian to Pacific oceans to help deter Beijing from expansionism.

China has rapidly built up its military in recent years, including over $200 billion in spending planned for this year, and now has a larger navy than the U.S. However, the U.S. maintains an advantage below the surface of the sea with more powerful submarines that are harder to detect.

By sharing its technology with Australia and deepening defense ties, the U.S. will effectively augment its own Asian fleet as both countries focus on deterring China.

“It’s a resetting of the long-term military balance in the Indo-Pacific because these are extremely powerful strike weapons,” said Michael Shoebridge, director of the defense, strategy and national security program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a government-backed think tank.

‘It’s a resetting of the long-term military balance in the Indo-Pacific because these are extremely powerful strike weapons.’
— Michael Shoebridge of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

The first of Australia’s new attack submarines, which are designed to destroy other submarines and surface vessels, won’t be ready for over a decade. But they threaten one of China’s relative military weaknesses: the ability to locate and defeat submarines, particularly nuclear-powered vessels.

The Pentagon said in its annual report on China’s military last year that while Beijing was advancing in its undersea warfare abilities, “it continues to lack a robust deep-water anti-submarine warfare capability.”

By agreeing to a deal with Australia on nuclear-powered submarines, the U.S. departed from decades of strict policies against sharing the technology. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 precluded sharing U.S. nuclear technology with others, although the U.S. and U.K. later that decade signed a treaty calling for nuclear weapons cooperation.

“As our closest ally, there is a benefit to the U.K. having a nuclear deterrent of its own as well as nuclear reactor designs,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who specializes on naval issues.

Other countries have asked the U.S. to share its technology but have been rebuffed, Mr. Clark said. The U.S. permitted exports of diesel-powered submarines to other countries between 1945 and 1980, according to the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. Exports all but stopped in 1980, and no U.S.-made submarines have been exported since 1992.

The technology sharing will “contribute to what I call integrated deterrence in the region, the ability for the United States military to work more effectively with our allies and partners in defense of our shared security interests,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday.

Underscoring the military tension in the region, a U.S. guided-missile destroyer transited through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, remaining in international waters, but demonstrating what officials said was a continuing U.S. commitment to free and open seafaring in the Pacific region.

China has shown its intention to improve its ability to counter submarines, including through the rare publicizing of an anti-submarine drill last year.

The U.S. and China have roughly the same number of submarines, but while all of the 52 U.S. attack submarines are nuclear powered, seven of China’s 62 attack submarines are nuclear propelled, according to the Pentagon. The rest are diesel powered and have to surface frequently to clear exhaust and charge batteries that provide additional power. Nuclear-powered submarines are also faster than diesel-powered vessels.

Security analysts say that growing defense cooperation among the U.S., Australia, Japan and India, an informal alliance known as the Quad that was formed around concerns about China’s rising power, could eventually lead to some coordination of their submarine fleets across the Indo-Pacific region.

India inaugurated its first nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine in 2018 and has around 15 diesel-electric attack submarines, while Japan operates around 24 diesel-electric attack submarines.

Euan Graham, an Asia-Pacific security analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said Australia’s southern location means its submarines could play a role alongside India in security in the Indian Ocean.

“That would become a kind of network-enhancing multiplier, which would make life very difficult to operate on the surface and below it,” he said.

Broader networks of coordination among submarine fleets could also help ensure that important trade routes in the Indo-Pacific region are kept open and protect important waterways such as the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia. Mr. Graham said such arrangements would require major steps forward in military information and intelligence sharing.


The leaders of the Quad are set to meet in Washington on Sept. 24 and will discuss ways to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific, according to the White House.

Security analysts warn that China’s military capabilities will advance in the years it takes Australia’s new submarines to arrive and say that while eight submarines are expected, only two or three are likely to be at sea at any one time. Nonetheless, they are seen as significant for the military balance in the region.

“This will be a major force that will have significant strategic weight against any adversary,” said Sam Roggeveen, the director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based foreign-policy think tank.

THE U.S.-AUSTRALIA PACT
Read more WSJ articles on the technology sharing, as selected by editors.

• U.S. to Share Nuclear Submarine Technology With Australia in New Pact (Sept. 15)
• U.S., China Jockey for Position in Pacific With Moves on Security, Trade (Sept. 16)
• France Calls U.S.-Australia Submarine Deal a Betrayal (Sept. 16)
• Australia Rethinks China Policy With Pivot to U.S. Submarines (Sept. 17)

—Rhiannon Hoyle contributed to this article.

 

[Dozdoats]

Disguised NO NUKES kerfluffle, apparently.
=============

RAN getting into the SSN Game, apparently

The Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service has been around since 1964 but the Ozzies have been running subs going back to the Great War-era British E class submarines AE1 and AE2, which we have co…

laststandonzombieisland.com

RAN GETTING INTO THE SSN GAME, APPARENTLY
Posted on September 16, 2021 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

The Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service has been around since 1964 but the Ozzies have been running subs going back to the Great War-era British E class submarines AE1 and AE2, which we have covered here on a Warship Wednesday.

Besides the Es, the Australians operated a half-dozen J-class boats in WWI, two O-class boats in the 1920s, and eight British Oberon-class submarines through the Cold War.


Barbecue on top of HMAS Onslow, a diesel submarine operated by Australia’s Navy from 1968 to 1999.

Today, they have the half dozen controversial (but Australian-built!) Collins-class submarines in service that are aging out.


Collins-class submarines conducting exercises northwest of Rottnest Island 2019

Driven by political pressure against nuclear-powered subs– both Australia and New Zealand have had issues with American “N” prefixes visiting in past years– Canberra signed a contract for a dozen planned Attack-class SSKs from France in a competition that saw both German and Japanese designs come up in a close tie for second place.

However, with the French boats not being able to get operational into some time in the mid-2030s, the Australians are scrapping the stalled French contract and going with a program with the U.S. and Royal Navy to field SSNs.

The AUKUS program is ambitious to say the least.

RAN’s official statement, with a lot more detail than you get elsewhere:


The submarines will be built at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, where French company Naval Group was to construct the soon-to-be canceled submarines, which is a heavy lift for sure, but not insurmountable.

As SUBSCOL in New London is very good at what they do at training Nuclear Program submariners, and the production line for the Virginia-class boats is white-hot, it is likely something that could be done inside the decade with some sort of technology sharing program similar to how Australian acquired their FFG-7 frigates in the 1980s, provided the RAN can cough up enough submariners (they have a problem staffing their boats now as it is) as well as the cash and political will.

If a Virginia-class variant is chosen, perhaps one could be hot-loaned from COMSUBPAC, with a cadre of specialists aboard, to the Australians for a couple years as a training boat while theirs are being constructed.

Can Canberra buy and man 12 boats? Doubtful, but a 4+1 hull program with one boat in a maintenance period and the four active subs, perhaps with rotating blue/red crews, could provide a lot of snorkel.

Plus, it could see American SSNs based in Western Australia on a running basis, which is something that has never happened. Of course, the precedent is there, as 122 American, 31 British, and 11 Dutch subs conducted patrols from Fremantle and Brisbane between 1942 and 1945 while the Royal Navy’s 4th Submarine Flotilla was based in Sydney from 1949 until 1969.

Of course, the French, who have been chasing this hole in the ocean for five years, are going to raise hell over this.


The “breakup statement” of French Naval Group with Australia Attack class submarine deal…no mention of them being overpriced, overdue and under delivery.

Meanwhile, off Korea
In related Pacific submarine news, the South Koreans successfully fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday, just hours after North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea.


The ROKN boat, likely the new ROKS Dosan Ahn Changho (SS-083), which just commissioned in August, fired the indigenous Hyunmoo conventional warhead SLBM, of which not much is known. The 3,700-ton Changho-class, of which nine are planned, have six VLS silos for such missiles in addition to their torpedo tubes.

 

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How China Exports Authoritarianism

Beijing’s money and technology is fueling repression worldwide.

www.foreignaffairs.com

How China Exports Authoritarianism
Beijing’s Money and Technology Is Fueling Repression Worldwide

By Charles Edel and David O. Shullman
September 16, 2021

In a speech to senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials in July, Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared that China must do more to share the “story” of the party’s success with the rest of the world. In order to enhance the international influence of both the country and the party, Xi effectively asserted, Chinese officials should extol the virtues of China’s model of authoritarian governance abroad.

Although some analysts continue to argue that China does not pose an ideological threat to prevailing democratic norms and that the CCP does not export its ideology, it is clear that the CCP has embarked on a drive to promote its style of authoritarianism to illiberal actors around the world. Its goal is not to spread Marxism or to undermine individual democracies but rather to achieve political and economic preeminence, and its efforts to that effect—spreading propaganda, expanding information operations, consolidating economic influence, and meddling in foreign political systems—are hollowing out democratic institutions and norms within and between countries.

To respond to Beijing’s ideological challenge, advocates of democracy must have a better understanding of what China aims to achieve by exporting its political model and how its actions are........(rest behind registration wall. HC)


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[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

Biological Deterrence for the Shadow War - War on the Rocks

The inadequate initial U.S. response to COVID-19, coupled with new advances in biotechnology, could make biological weapons more appealing for U.S.

warontherocks.com

BIOLOGICAL DETERRENCE FOR THE SHADOW WAR
JOSEPH BUCCINA, DYLAN GEORGE, AND ANDY WEBER

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021
COMMENTARY

The inadequate initial U.S. response to COVID-19, coupled with new advances in biotechnology, could make biological weapons more appealing for U.S. adversaries. The biological weapons capability achieved by the United States in the 1960s and by the Soviet Union in the 1980s suggests that it is very likely that near-peer adversaries have the capabilities to launch a biological attack with the same destructive capacity as a nuclear strike. However, in future decades, less lethal biological attacks may become more appealing. The risk is a new biological component to the low-boil actions by China and Russia that have been dubbed the “Shadow War.”

To respond to the threat of another pandemic or a bioweapons attack, the United States first needs to improve its woefully underfunded public health infrastructure. Then, with the specific risk of low-level attacks in mind, the government should enhance its capacity to defend against and deter biological attacks. This means giving the Department of Defense a bigger and better-funded role in public health preparedness, publicizing a credible strategy for attributing and responding to biological attacks, and devoting more resources to biotechnology research and development.

Improve the Public Health Infrastructure
Many analysts have cited the government’s poor initial performance as a primary cause of America’s failed response to the pandemic. Indeed, the list of errors in the early response was long and consequential. However, there are long-term structural issues, which predate the current pandemic, that impeded U.S. response efforts.

U.S. public health infrastructure and its workforce have been slowly deteriorating for decades, throughout Democratic and Republican administrations. This hindered the initial U.S. response to COVID-19. Much of America’s public health capacity lies in state and local public health departments. Long before COVID-19, organizations like the Institute of Medicine highlighted the impact of state and local budget cuts on U.S. public health preparedness. The state and local funding landscape is characterized by boom-and-bust cycles. In Fiscal Year 2001, state public health laboratory funding was at roughly $20 million. After the 2001 Amerithrax letter attacks, there was a boom: funding ramped up to $200 million in FY2003. Then came the bust: from FY2004 to FY2008, funding declined to approximately $70 million. Since then, the Center for Disease Control’s funding was basically flat from FY2009 to FY2017 and state public health funding largely declined during the same period.

Obviously, the bust years are difficult ones for public health capacity. More subtly, and perhaps more perniciously, the uneven funding means that money from the boom years cannot always be effectively used — maintaining human capital and physical infrastructure is difficult when annual funding varies widely.

An effective U.S. response to a major biological event, whether a coronavirus pandemic or a large-scale biological attack, requires a robust public health system. And this requires sustained attention and adequate resourcing. Human capital may be the most critical. This includes, among other professions, disease outbreak modelers, experts to guide policy decisions, and laboratorians for genomic sequencing and testing. Also important are physical assets such as data infrastructure, testing capacity, and a resilient supply chain for vaccines, drugs, and tests.

As we have seen with the joint Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense Operation Warp Speed, public-private partnerships will be an integral component for many aspects of public health response. Americans have explicitly accepted the need for private sector capabilities in manufacturing vaccines and drugs at-scale for a pandemic. Similarly, COVID-19 has demonstrated that data and data infrastructure should be similarly transformed for at-scale use during a pandemic. The private sector has taken a much larger role in designing, developing, and executing data systems for COVID-19. This will need to be sustained long-term for future outbreaks. The United States needs to rethink how to effectively maintain the current coalition of civil society, philanthropists, academics, volunteers, and the private sector for future pandemic response.

The overlap is not perfect, but much of the U.S. public health infrastructure will be needed for both naturally occurring and man-made biological threats. To be truly prepared for a major biological event, we need a long-term strategy and a sustained, consistent funding model to provide these capabilities. Translational research capacity, vaccine administration, personal protective equipment, testing, outbreak modeling, and many other components are vital for both a coronavirus outbreak and a biological attack from an agent like anthrax. This is why U.S. adversaries may be giving biological weapons a closer look in light of its failed response to COVID-19.

Biodefense for the Shadow War
In revising the U.S. public health infrastructure in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. policymakers should pay particular attention to the possibility of more subtle biological weapons threats. In the future, less lethal biological attacks may be used by adversaries as a new biological component to the “Shadow War.” As described by Jim Sciutto, Shadow War features tactics that weaken the United States without kinetic force, such as cyberattacks, election interference, and industrial espionage. China and Russia have used such actions to weaken the U.S. strategic position relative to their own, without provoking America into an undesired military conflict.

Advances in biotechnology, most notably in synthetic biology, might give attackers a range of more targeted and less lethal bioweapons that they could more easily deploy. For example, consider anthrax (Bacillus anthracis), which has long been seen as an ideal bioweapon. Anthrax can be released surreptitiously in its hardy spore form, which can cause a deadly infection once inhaled. Unlike many biological agents, anthrax is not highly contagious and person-to-person transmission is rare. Anthrax is deadly because of the anthrax toxin produced by the bacteria. But what if anthrax were engineered to produce something less deadly? Perhaps anthrax could be genetically edited to produce a protein that incapacitates, rather than kills, the person it infects. A savvy adversary could transform the bacteria from a weapon of mass destruction to a weapon of mass distraction. Creative uses of bioengineered anthrax (or other spore-forming bacteria) could provide a geo-targeted attack that is difficult to attribute. The use of such subtle biological agents could have meaningful consequences and perhaps stay under the radar for some time: Consider a biological agent that makes a person slightly more susceptible to a chronic disease or minorly impedes cognitive abilities.

As with election interference and industrial espionage, the United States may struggle to come up with an appropriate response to such attacks. Thus, with this threat in mind, a number of specific actions are needed.

The first is an expanded role for the Department of Defense in deterring biological weapons. A near-peer adversary could launch biological attacks, whether large-scale or more subtle, against either America’s deployed forces or its population. The Department of Defense cannot only focus on deterring biological weapons use against U.S. forces. In partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services, it should be actively engaged in deterring biological weapons use against the homeland as an equally important mission, and its biodefense efforts should be structured and funded accordingly. Public health infrastructure and capabilities to respond to pandemics for warfighters and civilians should be considered as a top national security priority.

This requires more money. Building off the success of Operation Warp Speed, the Department of Defense should continue to partner with the Department of Health and Human Services on biological preparedness efforts. Although the United States woke up to the danger of biological threats last year, the Department of Defense’s program for chemical and biological defense was cut by 10 percent in 2020. Thirty percent of those cuts were applied to the medical biodefense component that encompasses vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. But given the severity of the threat, we believe that the United States should invest $10 billion each in the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services for biodefense over each of the next 10 years. Much like an improved public health system, better biodefense capabilities for the homeland will have dual benefits: potentially deterring the use of biological weapons and enhancing the U.S. response should such an attack occur.

Second, the United States should establish and publicize a credible retaliation strategy for the range of potential biological weapons that could be used by adversaries. America has sometimes relied on a policy of strategic ambiguity that hinted a biological attack against it could be answered by a nuclear strike. Nuclear retaliation would be a disproportionate response for the type of lower-consequence biological attacks that could be employed by a sophisticated adversary. A more effective response, even to most large-scale biological attacks, would be the use of overwhelming conventional force. Additionally, improvements in attribution are particularly important for a robust retaliation strategy — without accurate attribution, the United States does not have a return address for retaliatory actions. A well-established retaliation strategy, with a robust attribution capability as its foundation, may tilt the strategic calculus of adversaries away from using biological weapons of any sort against the United States.

Third, the United States should take actions at home to promote continued global leadership of biotechnology research and development. A comprehensive strategy would include a sustained increase in funding for life sciences research and development and more robust support for translational science. Ramping up funding in these areas would help for a range of needs, especially for the ability to rapidly design and manufacture vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Retaining leadership in this sector will help the United States to develop the medical countermeasures and related technologies that are constituent components of its public health system and biodefense capabilities.

America should begin taking these steps now. Policymakers should balance the near-term response to the delta variant surge with these longer-term actions that will help us prepare for the next major biological event. Before the memory of the pandemic fades, we should tap into the current reservoir of political will for these longer-term actions. The steps recommended here will help the United States to reestablish biological deterrence and prepare for another potential pandemic. When U.S. adversaries see the country making progress in this area, it should deter the use of biological weapons, whether they are large-scale or more subtle threats.


Joseph Buccina is managing director, federal services at Cogitativo, working at the intersection of machine learning and health data. He has held several roles supporting the public sector health security mission.

Dylan George, Ph.D., is a former vice president at Ginkgo Bioworks. He served as senior policy adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2014 to 2016, and various other positions within the U.S. federal government.

Andy Weber is a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks. He served from 2009 to 2014 as President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs. Follow him on Twitter @AndyWeberNCB.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

A Glimpse at China’s Nuclear Build-Up

The People’s Republic of China is now the second largest military spender after the United States, and the country has proven that

moderndiplomacy.eu

A Glimpse at China’s Nuclear Build-Up

Published 4 hours ago on September 19, 2021
By Michael Lambert

The People’s Republic of China is now the second largest military spender after the United States, and the country has proven that it has the technical capability to develop revolutionary outer space technology, which is often related to military purposes. Nevertheless, China’s armed forces continue to lag behind when it comes to nuclear military technology, as Beijing only has 270 to 350 nuclear warheads, slightly more than the French armed forces.

Thus, China is investing in innovative research on civilian thorium nuclear facilities to become a leader in civilian nuclear, while it is reportedly not investing as much in the military nuclear sector.

This article explores the latest developments concerning “Made in China” nuclear weapons to explain why China’s armed forces are rather sluggish to increase the number of warheads due to the parallel development of other components of the military (e.g. nuclear submarines).

A brief history of Chinese nuclear weapons
China’s first nuclear weapons experiment took place in 1964, followed by its first hydrogen bomb test in 1967. Further development continued well until 1996, when China signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

In order to do so, China started building uranium enrichment plants in Baotou and Lanzhou as early as 1958, followed by a plutonium facility in Jiuquan and the Lop Nur nuclear test site in 1960. It is no secret the Soviet Union assisted in the early stages of the Chinese programme by sending advisers to the fissile material production facilities, having even agreed to provide a prototype bomb, missiles and related technology in October 1957.

In 1958, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told Mao that he planned to discuss arms control with the United States and Great Britain, while Beijing was adamantly opposed to Khrushchev’s policy of “peaceful coexistence” after the fall of Stalin. Although Soviet officials assured the Chinese leadership that the country will remain under the Soviet nuclear umbrella, the disagreements widened the emerging Sino-Soviet rift. In June 1959, the two nations formally terminated their military and technological cooperation agreement, and all Soviet assistance to China’s nuclear programme was abruptly terminated by July 1960, with all Soviet technicians withdrawn from the programme.

This brief history of nuclear weapons in China tells us a lot about the current reason for Chinese weak nuclear capabilities, which had to be developed without the support of the USSR since the 1960s. Moreover, the desire for nuclear capabilities is closely related to the conflict with Taiwan and, as such, Beijing does not need to radically increase its capabilities since the island remains a non-nuclear territory to this day. Furthermore, increasing capabilities would worry the United States and Russia, the other two major nuclear powers—and Beijing had no interest in doing so, especially during the Cold War.

China’s nuclear posture and policy
The Chinese approach is focusing on quality over quantity, which explains the low number of warheads to this day. As of today, most nuclear warheads built during the Cold War can be intercepted by anti-missile systems in NATO and Russia as they are relying on outdated technology, which explains Russia’s desire to build the hypersonic glide vehicle such as the “Avangard”.

The same is true for China. As the U.S. strengthens its missile defenses capabilities, China is likely to further modify its nuclear posture to first ensure the credibility of its retaliatory strike force, including deploying hypersonic glide vehicles rather than increasing the number of warheads.

Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has maintained a “low alert level” for its nuclear forces and keeps most of its warheads in a central storage facility in the Qinling Mountain Range, although some are kept in smaller regional storage facilities around the country. Although there are rumors that China has coupled warheads to some of its missiles to increase their availability, we have not seen official sources confirming this. In fact, the latest Pentagon report explicitly states that “China almost certainly retains the majority of its peacetime nuclear force—with separate launchers, missiles, and warheads”.

Both the United States and Russia operate early warning systems to detect nuclear attacks and launch their missiles quickly, and a Chinese early warning system could also potentially be designed to enable a future missile defense system to intercept incoming missiles. The latest Pentagon report indicates that China is developing an HQ-19 mid-course missile defense system that could intercept Intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBMs) and possibly intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs), although this would take many more years to develop. In addition, the Chinese government has a long-standing policy of not using nuclear weapons first and not using nuclear capabilities against non-nuclear countries or nuclear-weapon-free zones.

Military nuclear capabilities on land, air and sea
China has continued to field the DF-26, a dual-capable mobile IRBM, and is replacing the older DF-31A road-mobile ICBM launchers with the more maneuverable DF-31AG launcher. It is also in the early stages of commissioning the new DF-41, a road-mobile ICBM that would be capable of carrying multiple independent target re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) like the old DF-5B based on a liquid fuel silo.

At sea, China is adding two more ballistic missile submarines and developing a new type. Additionally, China has recently reassigned a nuclear mission to its bombers and is developing an air-launched ballistic missile to have a nuclear capability.

It is estimated that China has produced a stockpile of about 350 nuclear warheads, of which about 272 are intended to be launched by more than 240 operational land-based ballistic missiles, 48 sea-based ballistic missiles and 20 nuclear gravity bombs assigned to bombers. The remaining 78 warheads are expected to arm additional land- and sea-based missiles that are being installed.

Land
The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, supervised by General Zhou Yaning (commander) and General Wang Jiasheng (political commissar), is in charge of the ground nuclear forces. Since the Cold War, China is continuing the gradual modernization of its nuclear-capable ground missile force, and it is estimated that the PLA rocket force has about 240 land-based missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Of these, about 150 can strike parts of the United States (Hawaii). The number of ICBMs that can strike the continental United States is smaller: about 90 missiles with some 130 warheads.

These capabilities are easily explained by the fact that land-based missiles have a greater range than sea- and air-based ones, at least until China upgrades its sea-based systems. Thus, land-based missiles increase range and allow targeting of distant nuclear counterparts—the United States, France and the United Kingdom—while ensuring capabilities against the other four nearby nuclear powers: Russia, North Korea, India and Pakistan. It is likely that land-based capabilities will remain a major component until submarine capabilities are expanded. Once submarines are as advanced as those of other nations, then—like the United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom—China is likely to focus more and more on submarines rather than land-based capabilities.

Sea
China has introduced six Jin-class (Type 094) nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), which are based at the Longposan naval base near Yulin on Hainan Island (only four of them are currently operational). The two newest SSBNs, which were handed over to the PLA Navy in April 2020, are said to be variants of the original Type 094 design, known as Type 094A. These boats have a more prominent hump, which has led to a speculation that they could carry up to 16 JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (CSS-N-14), instead of the usual 12. However, satellite images confirm that the new submarines are equipped with 12 launch tubes each.

Each JL-2 is equipped with a single warhead and, possibly, penetration assistance. The JL-2, which is a modified version of the DF-31, is supposed to have a range of about 7,200 km, although U.S. estimates of the range have varied over the years. Such a range would be sufficient to target Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, as well as Russia and India, from waters near China.

Unlike the land-based approach, the nuclear submarine can move around the world, have an unknown destination and a changing position, and it can retaliate up to several months after a nuclear conflict has ended. As such, submarines are now the main component of the French and British nuclear forces, and are vital to the U.S. and Russia. However, this requires advanced technology, which China does not yet have (nor do India and Pakistan). Therefore, the People’s Liberation Army is upgrading its submarine capabilities and technology, which should lead to increased relevance of submarines for nuclear operations in the long term. China’s new-generation Type 096 SSBNs will carry an extended-range SLBM, the JL-3, which, according to unofficial sources, could have a range of over 9,000 km. Chinese media describe the JL-3 as an SLBM “equivalent or similar to the French M51,” pointing out that its diameter has been increased compared to the JL-2 and that it incorporates a carbon-fiber casing, giving it an increased range.

Air
China developed several types of nuclear bombs and used aircraft to carry at least 12 of the nuclear weapons it detonated as part of its nuclear test programme between 1965 and 1979. However, the PLA Air Force’s nuclear mission remained dormant until the 2000s, presumably because its older bomb-equipped aircraft were unlikely to be relevant in a nuclear conflict.

Countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan and India, are not focusing on long-range bombers, as they are easier to track, they move slowly and they are no major asset compared to submarines and land-based missiles. In this respect, only two nuclear powers—the United States and Russia—are investing in bombers. China wishes to become the third nuclear power and has therefore developed the H-6 bomber, which is technologically advanced enough to compete with its American counterparts Northrop Grumman B-2 “Spirit”, Rockwell B-1 “Lancer” and Boeing B-52 as well as the Russian Tupolev Tu-22M, Tupolev Tu-95 and Tupolev Tu-160. The Chinese H-6 should be complementary to the Xian H-20, as the bomber world is rapidly evolving with the introduction of the new American Northrop Grumman B-21 “Raider” and the Russian Tupolev PAK DA.

In conclusion, China is most certainly on its way to becoming the third largest nuclear power with growing capabilities to rival Washington and Moscow. In order to do so, it will need to increase its nuclear submarine capabilities to catch up with France and the United Kingdom, as well as the continued development of the H-20 bomber project to compete with the United States and Russia. Beijing has surely decided to invest in quality rather than quantity, preferring to slowly and precisely increase the number of warheads when it will first have the ability to defeat anti-missile systems.

Interestingly, China’s military nuclear approach is more about catching up with the other nuclear powers, in contrast to the civilian nuclear sector where the country is more innovative, as evidenced by the two thorium nuclear reactors under construction in the Gobi Desert (China plans to bring thorium reactors into commercial operation by 2030). Thus, China could become the leader in civil thorium nuclear power before it closes the gap as a military nuclear power.

From our partner RIAC

 

[Housecarl]

Now Beijing is threatening Australia a lot more openly.....

Posted for fair use.....

China says Canberra 'potential target for nuclear strike'

After the launch of the trilateral security partnership of AUKUS China picked on Australia saying that Canberra is now a potential target for a nuclear strike

www.bignewsnetwork.com

China says Canberra 'potential target for nuclear strike'

ANI
19th September 2021, 09:18 GMT+10

Beijing [China], September 19 (ANI): After the launch of the trilateral security partnership of AUKUS, China picked on Australia saying that Canberra is now "a potential target for a nuclear strike".

A newspaper run by the Chinese Communist Party says that Australia is now "a potential target for a nuclear strike" after launching the AUKUS pact with the US and UK to build nuclear-powered submarines, reported New York Post.

On Wednesday, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced a defence partnership dubbed AUKUS, which allows Australia to acquire nuclear-propelled submarines from the two partners.

The propaganda outlet published an article titled, "Nuke sub deal could make Australia potential nuclear war target."The article said, "Chinese military experts warned that (AUKUS) will potentially make Australia a target of a nuclear strike if a nuclear war breaks out even when Washington said it won't arm Canberra with nuclear weapons because it's easy for the US to equip Australia with nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles when Australia has the submarines", reported New York Post.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that AUKUS "seriously damages regional peace and stability, intensifies the arms race, and undermines the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."Zhao said, "China will pay close attention to the development of the AUKUS deal. Relevant countries should abandon their Cold War and zero-sum game mentality; otherwise, they will lift a rock that drops on their own feet", reported New York Post.

The AUKUS initiative received an unexpectedly strong reaction this week from France, which owns island territories in the Pacific and Indian oceans. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Info radio, "It is really a stab in the back."France is a nuclear energy pioneer and a NATO ally alongside the US and UK. The new deal caused a French company to lose work with Australia to build conventional submarines, reported New York Post.

In protest, France cancelled a Friday night gala in DC that was set to celebrate the 240th anniversary of the French navy's victory in a battle that helped secure American independence. (ANI)

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm..........

Posted for fair use.....

Air Force Secretary Warns of China’s Burgeoning Nuclear Arsenal, Reveals B-21 Detail

Frank Kendall also criticized Congress for not allowing the Air Force to retire old, unneeded warplanes and questioned the need for hypersonic weapons.

www.defenseone.com

THREATS
Air Force Secretary Warns of China’s Burgeoning Nuclear Arsenal, Reveals B-21 Detail
Frank Kendall also criticized Congress for not allowing the Air Force to retire old, unneeded warplanes and questioned the need for hypersonic weapons.



BY MARCUS WEISGERBER
GLOBAL BUSINESS EDITOR
SEPTEMBER 20, 2021 09:20 PM ET

China could be heading for a first-strike nuclear capability, the U.S. Air Force secretary said Monday, urging the United States to accelerate its own weapons development to keep pace with Beijing.

“If they continue down the path that they seem to be on—to substantially increase their ICBM force—they will have a de facto first-strike capability,” Frank Kendall told reporters at the Air Force Association’s annual conference outside Washington, D.C.

But independent nuclear-policy experts noted that even China’s decades-old ICBMs could be “a first-strike weapon,” and challenged Air Force officials to produce evidence that Beijing actually intends to change its “no first use” policy.

In his second major speech since becoming Air Force secretary two months ago, Kendall called out various Chinese weapons developments as reason for concern.

“You're gonna get tired of hearing me talk about China and the pacing threat that we face,” he said at a press conference a few hours after his speech.

He also criticized Congress for not allowing the Air Force to retire old, unneeded warplanes; disclosed that Northrop Grumman is secretly building five B-21 stealth bombers simultaneously; and questioned the need for hypersonic weapons, which is officially one of his service’s top modernization priorities.

Kendall warned that China's nuclear-weapons development, including building what is believed to be at least 100 intercontinental ballistic missile silos, could signal a shift in its “no first use” policy, meaning it would only use nuclear weapons if fired upon.

China has about 320 nuclear warheads, while the U.S. has about 5,500.

Kendall said the under-construction silos were “a destabilizing move on their part.”


“I'm not sure they fully appreciate the risks that they're adding to the entire global nuclear equation by doing,” he said.
Kendall’s comments appeared to echo recent statements by Adm. Charles Richard, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, the military headquarters that oversees the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“It really doesn’t matter why China is and continues to grow and modernize,” Richard said in August at a missile defense conference. “What matters is they are building the capability to execute any plausible nuclear employment strategy—the last brick in the wall of a military capable of coercion.”

On Monday, Kendall acknowledged he did not know China’s intentions, but “we need to have a dialogue with them to try to understand that.”

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said Kendall and Richard need to back up their statements with evidence of China’s intent.

“Anyone with nuclear weapons can potentially conduct a first strike and China has for decades had the capability to do so if it wanted to,” Kristensen said. “But the ‘capability’ doesn’t say much about strategy or intent and Richard and Kendall don’t provide any evidence that’s what China is aiming for.”

Kendall also warned that China could be developing weapons in space.

“They have gone from a few high-value assets near China’s shores to the second and third island chains, and most recently to intercontinental ranges and even to the potential for global strikes from space,” he said.

U.S. military officials have said China has developed a satellite with a robotic arm that could “grapple” other satellites.

“If you look at the capabilities that they're developing, it is clear that they are developing capabilities to deny us our access to space,” Gen. Jay Raymond, the chief of space operations, said Monday at the press conference. “We can't let that happen. If we let that happen we lose.”

While Kendall spent much of his speech and press conference warning about China’s weapons modernization, he disclosed the five B-21 stealth bomber test aircraft were being built at a Northrop Grumman factory in Palmdale, California. This marks the first time the Air Force has said how many bombers are under construction as part of the secret, but acknowledged programs.

“You will never hear me make optimistic predictions about programs—all programs have risk and the same is true of the B-21—but at this point at least, the program is making good progress to real fielded capability,” he said. “This investment in meaningful military capabilities that project power and hold targets at risk anywhere in the world addresses my number one priority.

Kendall also said the Air Force would continue to defy Congress by proposing retirements to existing warplanes.

“It was a frequent occurrence during my confirmation process to have a senator agree with me about the significance of the Chinese threat, and in the same breath to tell me that under no circumstances could the—take your pick—C-130s, A-10s, KC-10s, or MQ-9s in that senator’s state be retired, nor could any base in his or her state ever be closed or lose manpower that would impact the local economy,” he said.

Question the status quo
Kendall, who served as the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer during the Obama administration, also questioned why the U.S. military needs hypersonic weapons.

“It's pretty clear to me what the Chinese want to do with the hypersonics they're developing; it's even pretty clear to me what the Russians might want to do with hypersonics,” he said. “This target set that we would want to address, and why hypersonics are the most cost-effective weapon for the U.S.—I think it's still to me somewhat of a question mark. I haven't seen all the analysis that's been done to justify the current programs.”

Kendall said the Air Force needs to have a better focus before conducting weapons experiments.

“We should not be doing demonstrations and experiments unless we can link them to true operational improvements and unless they move us down the field to lower-risk acquisition programs,” he said. “I intend to strengthen these linkages and to use state-of-the-art analytical tools to do so.”

Kendall also criticized the Air Battle Management System, an Air Force component of the Pentagon’s connect-everything initiative called Joint Domain Command and Control.

“My early observation is that this program has not been adequately focused on achieving and fielding specific measurable improvements in operational outcomes,” he said during his speech. “To achieve effective change we must also keep our eye on the ball. For me that means focusing on the fielding of meaningful military capability into the hands of our operational users.”

Kendall also expressed support for the Next-Generation Air Dominance, a classified effort to build a new-generation fighter jet.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and What's Next

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist at The Cipher Brief. Pincus spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on [...] More

www.thecipherbrief.com

Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and What’s Next

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021 | WALTER PINCUS

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist at The Cipher Brief. Pincus spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders (releasing November 2021)

OPINION — “Right now, we can hold any target on the planet at risk today. We do. And we do that every day, and everybody knows it. That’s the nuclear weapons that are deployed every day. The adversaries that we face cannot do anything about those nuclear weapons and so that holds everything at risk.”

That’s Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten, speaking late, in an hour-long interview eight days ago, with the Brookings Institution’s specialist in defense strategy, Michael O’Hanlon. Hyten, a former head of Strategic Command (STRATCOM) who is set to retire soon, followed up with the downside of the U.S. position saying, “But if your only ability to hold a target at risk is a nuclear weapon, that is a bad place to be. That is a really bad place to be because that runs the risk of an escalation in a war that we don’t want to risk.”

Hyten then shared an anecdote, saying that as STRATCOM Commander, after he first briefed now-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley for an hour on the complexities of the U.S. strategic nuclear weapons program, Milley asked for an explanation “in simple English. ‘Why do we have nuclear weapons?’ My answer,” Hyten said, “was one sentence – to keep people from using nuclear weapons on us.”

Right there, he expressed what I believe is the nuclear weapons dilemma – they may be unusable – but nonetheless, the U.S. has programs underway to keep the current force for another 40 years. A reminder: The U.S. has some 1,400 or so nuclear warheads currently deployed. The U.S. Government has been spending hundreds of billions updating warheads, thinking of new ones, and is already on the way to replacing all three delivery systems of the nuclear Triad – new strategic submarines, strategic bombers and ground-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).

Hyten last week, also had this answer to the nuclear weapons dilemma. “You don’t want your only capability to be the capability that would cause an escalation into nuclear conflict,” he said, “that’s why we need hypersonic capabilities.”

Yes, the U.S. must continue to upgrade its nuclear weapons, the delivery systems and the nationwide weapons building complex that keeps it all going, but at the same time, Hyten said, “The real requirement is conventional prompt strike – that’s the real requirement [to] conventionally hold targets at risk anywhere. Hypersonics happen to be one of the solutions to do that. But cruise missiles can do that. Other capabilities can do that as well. We need a mix of capabilities to do that.”

So, the future, as Hyten sees it, is that the U.S. needs to be able to promptly strike targets worldwide, not just with nuclear weapons but with conventional weapons as well.

Here, I have to point out that earlier in the interview, O’Hanlon asked Hyten about the likelihood of war with China, which the Vice Chief said was now, “the pacing threat that we have to be concerned about, not only today but in the near-term and in the long-term.”
O’Hanlon cited “Thucydides Trap,” the notion he said that, “most times when you have a new superpower [China] arise to the level of an old one [the U.S.], war is the vehicle or method by which they adjudicate their relative standing.”

Hyten looked back at the Cold War and said, “We went through what was the most significant, you know, confrontation between two great powers that the world had seen at that time because it was the first two great powers that had massive nuclear weapons. And we never came to major war during that entire period. We didn’t because we always maintained a deterrent, they always maintained a strategic deterrent. And because of that we never crossed the line. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t conflicts… But fundamentally, we never went to war with the Soviet Union.”

Hyten then shared what he thought was the lesson from that Cold War experience.

“So, when you look at great powers,” he said, “our goal should be to never go to war with China, to never go to war with Russia, because that day is a horrible day for the planet, a horrible day for our countries. It wrecks the world; it wrecks the world’s economy. It’s bad for everybody. So, we have to make sure we don’t go down that path.”

However, eight minutes later, Hyten said, “The specific capabilities that worry me about China are not the capabilities about the future of Taiwan, it’s the almost unprecedented (Chinese) nuclear modernization that is now becoming public.”

Remember, for years, China has practiced what it calls “minimum deterrence,” with the Pentagon saying last year that as of the end of 2019, “The number of warheads on the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) land-based ICBMs capable of threatening the United States is expected to grow roughly 200 in the next five years.” Now, Hyten said, “It seems like every couple of weeks new pictures of more silos (in China) were coming in. And, oh, by the way, there’s no limits on what China can put in those silos. So, we’re limited [by treaty] with Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear weapons. So, we have to decide where we want to put those –– submarines, ICBMs. Bombers are counted a little bit differently under that treaty, but that puts a limit on what we have. China, there’s no limit. They could put, you know, 10 re-entry vehicles on every one of those ICBMs if they wanted to. There’s nothing to limit that ability.”

Hyten then continued, “So the speed and difference in that threat is what really concerns me most…You have to ask yourself, why are they building that enormous, enormous nuclear capability faster than anybody in the world. That’s what really concerns me.”

I question Hyten’s enormous concern about China’s nuclear program. True, China is engaged in a major nuclear buildup that includes moving toward a Triad of nuclear delivery systems – but that is something the U.S. has had for almost 50 years. And, as pointed out above, the U.S. is modernizing its nuclear force to last another 40 years.

Beijing’s construction of missile silos, which may top 400, doesn’t mean each will contain an ICBM. The U.S., by the way, has 450 ICBM silos, 400 of which hold ICBMs, while missiles for the empty ones are in storage. Didn’t Hyten just say that the fact that the U.S. and Russia had comparable numbers of nuclear weapons meant they have since “never crossed the line” and had avoided direct military confrontations?

I lived through the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, working at the time for Sen. J.W. Fulbright (D-Ark.), then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In October 1963, there was real fear of the possible use of Russian and American nuclear weapons. Years after that crisis was over, I talked to then-retired Defense Secretary Robert McNamara about it. McNamara said he had explained to then-President Kennedy during a meeting one night that no one knew what would happen if one nuclear weapon was used and an exchange of those weapons followed.

From that day on, the U.S. and Soviet Union (now Russia) have avoided any similar, direct military conflict and have also opened a hot line for presidents and military leaders to talk directly with each other at times of crisis. A lesson had been learned.

Hyten said at Brookings, “We’re having strategic stability talks with Russia to make sure we understand where they are, not just in the nuclear realm but in space as well. We need to have that conversation start as well with the Chinese. We really do…As different as we are, we do have a fundamental common goal and that is to never go to war with each other because war with a nuclear power is a bad thing.”

Having written about nuclear weapons for more than 50 years, I have come to believe there has never been any serious logic attached to using them in warfare since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those first atomic bombs were built in the 1940s to be terror weapons to end a war, and just two of them did that, with destructive power much less than the thousands of thermonuclear warheads we and our adversaries have today.

I believe, as Hyten implied, they have become unusable weapons, but they have since prevented nuclear powers that posses them from going to full-scale, open warfare against each other.

The new question may be, are we now in a new arms race with strategic conventional weapons like hypersonics? More to come on that.

THE AUTHOR IS WALTER PINCUS
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders (releasing in November 2021) He also won an Emmy in 1981 and the... Read More

 

[jward]

AUKUS Is the Death Knell of Australia's Strategic Ambiguity
At what cost is Australia attempting to strengthen its deterrence of China?




By James Curran
Professor of Modern History, Sydney University
September 20, 2021

• Commentary
• Asia-Pacific
• Foreign Policy Strategy

Following last week’s inauguration of the AUKUS defense partnership, which will see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines drawing on British and U.S. technology, few could disagree that Australia has made its definitive strategic choice.

No longer can anyone in Washington harbor doubts as to where Canberra stands in the evolving contest with China.
After all, as recently as March 2019, when Arthur Culvahouse Jr. arrived to take up his position as U.S. Ambassador to Australia, he shocked senior officials in Canberra by revealing that before his departure, whisperers in Congress were asking “who lost Australia?”

The very proposition was absurd, but it underlined a lingering view in some U.S. policymaking circles that successive Australian governments had for too long maintained that prosperous economic relations with China could co-exist with a strong military alliance with the United States.
And in 2017, this writer was told by one analyst in Washington—now a senior official in the Biden administration—that Australia was a “great ally of the United States everywhere in the world except in Asia.”
From that time, Australian governments have not only been willing to call out China’s assertive international behavior, they have also been at the vanguard of pushing back against Beijing. This was most evident in the government’s call for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, a stance that infuriated China and precipitated the beginning of a series of punitive economic tariffs against a wide range of Australian exports.

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Seen in that light, AUKUS represents something of a logical end point for Australia’s recent experience at the pointy end of Chinese coercion. It is a culmination, too, of an assiduous, relentless building of a ‘China threat’ narrative by elements of the Morrison government, some commentators, and think tanks, a narrative which has sunk deep roots in Australian public and elite opinion. The Lowy Institute’s Poll for 2021 found that 63 percent of Australians see China as a security threat, a 22 percent rise on the previous year. The rapid deterioration in relations with Beijing has only intensified calls for Canberra to do more to deepen even further its U.S. alliance. In that sense China is clearly the objective of AUKUS.

Moreover, Scott Morrison’s government will now claim that with AUKUS the full tapestry of Australian strategic policy is unfurled: a Reciprocal Access Agreement with Japan signed in November 2020; increased defense cooperation with India—symbolized by participation in the annual Malabar naval exercises; the Quad leaders meeting, which both the Trump and now Biden administrations have pushed to the forefront of U.S. Asia policy; and now this agreement for three of the oldest partners from the Second World War.
All of these measures push in the same direction: aligning Australia with the U.S. in what many analysts now accept is a “new Cold War” with China.

Canberra is emboldened. The prime minister, characteristically immodest in selling his diplomatic achievements, has already carved a niche for himself in the pantheon of Australian leaders: claiming to stand alongside John Curtin, who led the nation in World War II; and Robert Menzies, whose government negotiated the ANZUS treaty.
But this is also probably the biggest strategic gamble in Australian history. Other so-called ‘turns’ to America, such as those by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin in 1908 and John Curtin in 1941, have been expedient calls for assistance in a time of survivalist anxiety. AUKUS, according to a White House briefing, “binds decisively Australia to the United States and Great Britain for generations.”

Never mind that the first submarines will not arrive until the late 2030s, although there is now talk of leasing U.S. submarines in the interim. Or that Australia has no experience with nuclear technology. Or that cost blowouts will likely be massive. Never mind, too, that Australia will be captive to its technology partners.
The announcement’s biggest gamble, however, is its assumption that the United States will not return Trump or another similar politician to the Oval Office. Or that a future U.S. administration may take a different view of what the United States can and cannot do in terms of maintaining its regional primacy in Asia.

AUKUS represents the death knell for strategic ambiguity in Australian foreign policy. Although Canberra does have a record of shrewd alliance management in the past—of roaring loud in allied solidarity but committing the minimum muscle up front, as in the case of Iraq 2003 when Australian special forces were pulled back after the initial assault on Baghdad—it is fanciful to suggest that in any future military conflict with China, especially over Taiwan, the United States will not expect Australia to play a role in the battle.
Will a future Australian government of either political persuasion be able to resist U.S. pressure to be part of any such conflict? History suggests not. Australia, as we are constantly reminded in the speeches, has been by the U.S.’s side at every major conflict since the First World War.

Yet the irony of course is that by the time Australia’s submarines deploy, the region’s strategic contours may look very different indeed.
While the partnership is expected to see a series of further measures tightening the AUKUS embrace—more U.S. marines rotating through northern Australia, the pre-positioning of U.S. military equipment in Australia, and cooperation on missile technology—it involves no NATO-style collective defense mechanism. And great powers, as Australia knows only too well from experience, can turn on a dime.

Contrary to some of the excited claims to novelty in this announcement, AUKUS might more accurately be described as the latest example of that nervous, reflexive twitch in Australian strategic psychology.
Namely that when an Asian threat or menace appears on the horizon, Canberra’s impulse is to look to its Anglosphere cousins for protection. The history of Australian defense and foreign policy is replete with such moments. In that sense AUKUS is clearly freighted with powerful cultural assumptions and expectations.
That means regional perceptions of the announcement were always going to be crucial.

Yet Australia’s diplomacy on this front was again clumsy. Leaving aside the sidelining of Paris that led to Gallic fury, key regional partners, especially Indonesia, were given only the most cursory notice. While the deal could not have been done even with more warning given to Jakarta, the Indonesian response was the sharpest, expressing caution at the move and concern that it might feed a renewed regional arms race. For others, excluding fellow Quad members in Tokyo and New Delhi, it may only reinforce residual perceptions about which loyalties Australia cherishes most. At the very least, Morrison should have dispatched a diplomatic envoy to the region on the day of the announcement to fully brief regional capitals.
Twenty-five years ago, in thinking about the new strategic order arising from the ashes of the old, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis classified Australia as a “torn country”—trapped between its British and North American cultural moorings and its geopolitical reality on the edge of Asia.

Huntington, in an extraordinary flight of fancy, argued that the policies of the Keating Labor government in Canberra at the time, with its emphasis on Australia finding security in, not from, Asia, might prove to be a symbol of Western decline.
Such a conclusion was rightly ridiculed at the time as a mark of Huntington’s broad brush strokes hiding more than they revealed. But somewhere, Huntington might very well be smiling at the coming of AUKUS. He has his proof that Australia has opted to cleave to older outlooks rather than forge a new path to a more secure Asia.

James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University. A former intelligence analyst with the Australian Office of National Assessments, he is also a foreign affairs columnist for the Australian Financial Review and is writing a book on Australia-China relations, to be published in 2022.

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AUKUS Is the Death Knell of Australia's Strategic Ambiguity

At what cost is Australia attempting to strengthen its deterrence of China?

www.defenseone.com

 

[jward]

Has War Become Too Humane?

Stephen Pomper
September 21, 2021​

​

Anyone hoping that this month’s 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks might bring some closure after two decades of war is going to be disappointed. By withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the administration of President Joe Biden sought to create a sense that the United States’ string of exhausting and counterproductive interventions in the Middle East and South Asia was coming to an end. But the truth is more sobering. For all its commitments to end “forever wars,” the administration has given no sign that it is preparing to pivot away from the use of military force to manage perceived terrorist threats. Its ongoing counterterrorism policy review appears to be focused more on refining the bureaucratic architecture around drone strikes and other forms of what the military refers to as “direct action” than on a hard look at the costs and benefits of continuing to place military force at the center of U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Part of the reason may be that there is little meaningful pressure on the administration to revisit the scope of U.S. military action against jihadi groups around the world in what has become known as the “war on terror.” Executive branch lawyers have long read the broadly worded Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that President George W. Bush signed into law a week after the 9/11 attacks as allowing them to decide—often secretly—where and against whom the United States is fighting this war. Congress and the courts have largely acquiesced. Because military action against jihadi groups is often conducted by drones or through light-footprint operations in remote locations, it rarely attracts public attention. The exception is when something goes terribly and publicly wrong, as happened last month during a drone strike in Kabul that killed an Afghan aid worker and nine of his family members, including seven children, and when U.S. soldiers died during a 2017 operation that went wrong in Niger—a place few Americans even realized was a front in the war on terror. But even in those cases, the headlines rarely last; within days, the story usually fades away.

In his new book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, the Yale Law School professor Samuel Moyn acknowledges this pattern but also sees another factor that helps explain the war on terror’s persistence. The problem, according to his provocative argument, is not the war’s brutality but its relative humanity. Moyn does not at all advocate a return to brutal methods or so-called total war, but he does suggest that in vilifying torture, reducing casualty counts, and otherwise focusing on how the United States conducts hostilities, lawyers and advocates have stunted public criticism and diverted energy from the peace movements that might otherwise bring it to an end.

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Moyn’s craft, erudition, and insight make for a book that succeeds on many, but not all, levels. He does not quite make a persuasive case that humanitarian efforts were instrumental in girding domestic support for the war effort. Nor does the book fully explain what lawyers and advocates who sought to curb some of the war on terror’s ugliest features might have actually done to bring the war to an earlier end. Still, one can disagree with aspects of Humane and nevertheless appreciate the way it challenges acquiescence to the status quo. Beyond being a meditation on the meaning of war, it is a history of the tension between pacifism and humanitarianism. In a culture that has come to valorize the latter, Moyn gives the former its due and pushes readers to think about how law can aid the cause of peace. Reining in the executive branch’s unilateral war powers and requiring public deliberation over where and against whom the United States is waging war would be a good place to start.

Humanizing the War on Terror
If the book has a single protagonist, it is Leo Tolstoy, who features prominently in its lengthy exploration of nineteenth-century peace movements and whom Moyn admires both for his ferocious commitment to the pacifism and for advancing the idea that humanizing war may well entrench it.
Moyn sees precisely this dynamic at work in the war on terror, especially the years that immediately followed the 9/11 attacks. Humane’s account of this period is in many ways the emotional core of the book. There is some irony in this line of argument, in that Bush’s response to the attacks is remembered more for its brutality than for respecting humanitarian protections: the era’s totemic images remain those of shackled detainees in orange jumpsuits at the makeshift U.S.

detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and of prisoners suffering vicious torture at the hands of U.S. service members at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Nevertheless, Moyn argues, the administration’s abuses need to be viewed alongside the reaction they provoked. Scholars, lawyers, and advocates rallied in protest. They flooded the courts with filings, took their cases to international bodies, and worked passionately to close legal loopholes to make sure such things never happened again.

The problem is not war’s brutality but its relative humanity.

In so doing, Moyn intimates, they may have missed the forest for the trees. Yes, they secured a combination of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, executive orders, and new statutes that reined in torture. But they did little or nothing to address the underlying conflicts in which the torture took place. Why didn’t the same lawyers who shook with fury in the face of custodial abuse harness the same energy to oppose the wars that created a pretext for it?

To illustrate this tendency, Moyn profiles three lawyers who played prominent roles in shaping the contours of the war on terror. One is Jack Goldsmith, a legal scholar who as head of the U.S. Justice Department’s powerful Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2003–4 withdrew the infamous opinions effectively authorizing torture that had been written by his colleague John Yoo. Another is the late Michael Ratner, a longtime antiwar activist and celebrated civil liberties lawyer who in 2004 won a landmark Supreme Court case securing the right for Guantánamo detainees to challenge their detention under the federal habeas corpus statute. The last is Harold Koh, a political progressive and former Yale Law School dean who became the top lawyer at the U.S. State Department during the administration of President Barack Obama. (I worked for Koh at the time.)
Moyn perceives an element of tragedy in their work. Although he applauds Goldsmith and Ratner for their efforts on behalf of the rule of law, he strongly intimates that their energies were wrongly focused. “If there had been a chance to put limits on the war itself,” he writes, “after Goldsmith’s years in power and Ratner’s years of filing petitions, it had been missed.” He criticizes Koh yet more sharply for explaining and defending the international legal framework for Obama’s war on terror.

Three Critiques
Moyn’s book has been justly praised for drawing attention to the perils of allowing the perception of humanity to create a comfort zone around military action. As the Pentagon’s August drone strike in Kabul illustrated, once the United States crosses the war threshold, it creates vast potential for bad judgment and mistakes with horrific consequences. In focusing on how U.S. foreign policy became so war dependent, and challenging readers not to be satisfied with merely blunting its roughest edges, the book makes an essential contribution. It stumbles, however, in its efforts to draw lessons from the personal stories of the prominent lawyers it features.

For one thing, Humane’s speculation that their work meaningfully helped shore up domestic support for the war is less than fully convincing. Although procuring rights for detainees and withdrawing problematic legal opinions almost certainly made working on the conflict more comfortable for many executive branch officials, this does not mean that the same cadre of officials (to which I belonged) could otherwise have pushed back hard enough to shorten the war’s longevity, particularly amid a maelstrom of politicized fear-mongering and the constant thrum of threat reporting.

The American people should be able to debate and shape the wars that are being fought in their name.

As for the broader public, its tolerance for the war seems to owe mostly to zero-risk thinking, whipped-up Islamophobia, and the U.S. military’s pivot toward drones and light-footprint operations that minimized U.S. casualties. Yes, the U.S. government (or at least the Obama administration) said that reducing civilian casualties would help make the war more sustainable at home and abroad, but Moyn underplays the extent to which its focus was on the latter. Protecting civilians was important to maintaining host-country support for U.S. military operations in places such as Yemen, where leaders faced pressure from outraged civic leaders complaining that their communities lived under the constant whirr of drone surveillance and the fear of becoming collateral damage.

For another thing, the book offers little if any basis for its suggestion that Ratner, Goldsmith, or others of their ilk could have applied their talents more usefully during the early years of the war. Indeed, it is not entirely clear what instruments of law Moyn believes they might have deployed. The key legal fact with respect to both conflicts is that Congress authorized them in two sweeping statutes, putting both the Afghanistan and Iraq interventions on the firmest possible domestic legal footing and making them close to invulnerable to legal attack. Although it is not out of bounds to ask whether prominent lawyers could have done more to stop the war, it does not seem entirely fair to imply that the answer might be yes without offering viable suggestions for what that would have entailed.

Finally, even if one accepts Moyn’s premise that the fig leaf of humanitarian safeguards combined with the legitimizing gloss afforded by the U.S. government’s legal positions made the war more palatable to the American people, his discussion of the individual players would have benefited from greater consideration of the larger forces that were in some measure responsible for driving the outcomes he deplores. A deeper look at the realities of executive branch lawyering could, for example, have shed light on why even government lawyers skeptical of U.S. legal positions on the use of force are ill placed to be a reliable brake on the expansion of military action.

A View From the Inside
Although executive branch lawyers can and do say “no” to policymakers’ questions about whether and how the United States can use force, it is not an easy message to deliver, and it does not always stick. In many executive branch agencies, officials expect lawyers to tell them whether policy positions are “legally available” rather than whether they comport with the “best understanding” of the law—a higher standard. If a legal authority is broadly worded, such as the 2001 AUMF, or has been stretched over time, such as the UN Charter’s use of force provisions, both lawyers and policymakers tend to see room for maneuver. (This culture of flexible interpretation long predates the war on terror.) The fact that a U.S. position might buck the weight of scholarly or even global opinion is not always enough to deem it legally unavailable. Policymakers are sometimes willing to absorb the reputational hit in order to maintain operational flexibility. Because courts bend over backward to leave decisions in this area to the political branches, and Congress tends to shirk accountability and defer to the executive branch, there are few if any nonpolitical checks on this tendency.

Lawmakers should examine the rules and institutional habits that perpetuate imprudent war making.

Even so, as the Obama administration assumed the reins of the war on terror and began to formalize its legal positions—prompted in part by the march of Guantánamo habeas litigation—its lawyers had fierce debates. Particularly at the beginning of the Obama administration, lawyers from different agencies argued about where the United States was at war, against which groups, and who could be targeted and detained. Many of these questions were never completely resolved. Senior State Department lawyers never appeared to fully accept that the United States was in a globe-spanning conflict with al Qaeda. The State Department and the Pentagon did not see eye to eye on who could be deemed a member of an organized armed group. Nor did they agree on whether the United States had the right to detain, much less target, “substantial supporters” of an enemy group. But as Brian Finucane, who served as an attorney-adviser at the State Department, and I recently wrote, the U.S. government’s legal culture tends to drive its lawyers toward approving operations and enlarging executive power. Where disagreements persist, this culture favors a form of cosmetic consensus in which ambiguous public-facing language masks interagency differences, while giving operators much of the flexibility they seek.

Of course, lawyers who disagree with this consensus can quit. But when powerful lawyers willing to buck the internal tide leave the government, the result is not necessarily less war. For example, Koh’s departure at the beginning of Obama’s second term did not stop the U.S. government from developing controversial new legal theories to justify expanding lethal operations under the 2001 AUMF to counter the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). His leaving may, however, have paved the way for the government to argue that the war on terror allowed for operations against rank-and-file members of the al Shabab terrorist group in Somalia—a significant expansion that Koh had successfully resisted during his tenure.

Law, Not Lawyers
Humane succeeds as a bracing reminder not to grow comfortable with war as a status quo. But rather than focus on individual lawyers who had few if any effective tools to bring war to an end, it would be more productive to consider the rules and institutional habits that perpetuate imprudent war making.
As the International Crisis Group has recently argued, one important target for legal reform is the 2001 AUMF, which executive branch lawyers have treated as a deep well of authority to wage war not just against al Qaeda and its affiliates but also against so-called associated forces that have no connection to the 9/11 attacks, and even some groups (such as ISIS and its affiliates) that have broken with al Qaeda. The Biden administration should work with Congress to replace the 2001 AUMF with a new law that identifies where and with which groups the U.S. government is at war, removes the executive branch’s authority to expand the conflict without further legislative action, and requires reauthorization every two years so that the American people can debate and shape the wars that are being fought in their name.

But more is required. The War Powers Resolution that Congress enacted at the end of the Vietnam War to reinvigorate congressional checks and balances on war making has largely failed and needs a reboot. Bipartisan legislation recently introduced in the U.S. Senate would limit the president’s unilateral capacity to wage nondefensive war, cut off funds for unauthorized conflicts, and require Congress to revisit its war authorizations every two years. Most important, this legislation (which echoes several recommendations that Moyn and Goldsmith jointly made in a recent op-ed) would force greater public deliberation between the two branches about whether and where the country goes to war.

Reforming the president’s war powers promises to be a long slog and would by no means guarantee that the United States finds a greater measure of peace. Outside actors have a say, and so does the American public. Still, in a world where there are not enough safeguards to keep the United States from entering imprudent wars, such legal reforms could serve the twin goals of conflict prevention and democratic accountability. The twenty-first-century equivalents of the peace movements Moyn celebrates should throw their weight behind these efforts.

Has War Become Too Humane?

What really allows the war on terror to persist.

www.foreignaffairs.com

 

[jward]

The Air Force Is Testing Robotic Loaders To Mount Hypersonic Missiles On Its Bombers

Thomas Newdick​

9-12 minutes​

Picture the scene, a decade or so in the future. A close ally of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region has come under attack from a regional power, and the U.S. Air Force has deployed bombers to the area. These aircraft are stationed at established airfields but without the major infrastructure to support large-scale bomber operations, to reduce the chances of having these assets knocked out on the ground.

After their arrival in theater, the bombers need arming, but with reduced ground crew and equipment on hand, it’s not going to be easy to rapidly load the aircraft with the huge hypersonic weapons that might have to be employed in retaliation. Enter the MHU-TSX, a robotic loading system that does that job more quickly, and almost autonomously, hauling these big weapons around and loading them on aircraft even at the kinds of austere airfields from which the Air Force is likely to fight future campaigns against peer or near-peer adversaries.

Air Force/Giancarlo Casem

Airmen from the 912th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron secure an AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon test round under the wing of a B-52H Stratofortress at Edwards Air Force Base, California.


While hypersonic missiles are still some ways away from joining the Air Force’s arsenal, their development represents a major focus for the service—and one with potentially game-changing significance. For the most part, however, these weapons are seriously big, demanding different approaches to storing them, moving them, and ultimately loading (and unloading) them from aircraft.
The AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, for example, for which the B-52H Stratofortress is set to be the primary launch platform, is set to be carried on a new Boeing-developed underwing pylon, named Hercules, each of which will be able to hold three ARRWs or combinations of other ordnance totaling up to 20,000 pounds. The ARRW, and other weapons, will likely demand new loading systems.

Boeing is designing a new pylon for the B-52 that will carry 3 HGVs on each wing. Each pylon will be rated to carry 20,000lb, giving those two pylons alone nearly the same payload capacity as a C-130J.
Would you like to know Boeing's name for the new pylon?
Hercules. pic.twitter.com/GVAWKpeUKd
— Steve Trimble (@TheDEWLine) February 19, 2021

With this and other weapons in mind, the Air Force has been testing out a prototype of the MHU-TSX, a robotic loading system developed by Square One Systems Design. The Wyoming-based robotics development company describes itself as specializing “in the design and development of innovative automated systems, precision positioning devices, and robots for diverse industries.”

“You can attach a sensor package that allows the machine to operate with a high degree of autonomy,” said Viola. “Personnel would only need to supervise what it’s doing, which should make the loading process quicker.” Again, this plays squarely into the concept of austere operations, permitting bomber sorties to maintain their tempo even with a reduced ground crew complement on hand.

U.S. Air Force/Airman 1st Class William Pugh

Jace Walsh, Square One Systems Design senior controls engineer, demonstrates using the controller for the prototype MHU-TSX robotic loading system at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, September 14, 2021.


Compared to legacy systems, the prototype MHU-TSX is based around a non-hydraulic actuation process, which translates to more precise movements. While careful handling of munitions is fundamental wherever a bomber is operating, this factor can come into play above all when aircraft are operating from austere airfields, which are unlikely to be perfectly flat.
Even when operating bombers from established bases, the MHU-TSX could provide significant advantages. At Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, for instance, there are no facilities to pre-load the Common Rotary Launchers (CRL) that are used to provide Air Force bombers with their cruise missiles or to store these launchers pre-loaded for more rapid installation on an aircraft. It can take ground crews nearly half a day to load missiles, one at a time, onto launchers already installed in the bombers’ bomb bays. That also gives some indication of how laborious and time-consuming loading bombers' armaments can be, something that a mature version of MHU-TSX should address. In the meantime, Andersen is gaining a new Standoff Weapons Complex that will provide storage for pre-loaded CRLs, a project you can read all about here.

The prototype MHU-TSX was tested recently by the 2nd Maintenance Group at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, home of Air Force Global Strike Command’s 2nd Bomb Wing flying the B-52 and also responsible for training all crews for the veteran bomber.

U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Greg Steele

A 707th Maintenance Squadron weapons load crew undergoes evaluation during an Air-Launched Cruise Missile loading operation on a B-52 at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana.


The effort resulted from a collaboration between the AFWERX innovation initiative, a technology incubator the Air Force established in 2017, and Square One Systems Design. AFWERX is intended to develop partnerships between the service and tech specialists in the private business sphere, and this is not the first robotics-related project it has fostered.

“We were aware that weapons loading was an ongoing area that the Air Force would like to see modernized and we’d actually done some early concepts,” said Bob Viola, the director of engineering at Square One Systems Design. “AFWERX was our conduit in, then Global Strike Command and Material Command became responsive to our ideas, from there becoming our partners within the program.”
Work on the MHU-TSX was launched in spring 2019, the Air Force formally designating the project as the “Munitions Loading, Robotics, Supervised Autonomy, MHU-83, MJ-1, Tri-Sphere.” In Air Force parlance, MHU denotes a Munitions Handling Unit.


Meanwhile, the veteran status of the B-52 within the Air Force inventory is well known, but what’s perhaps less evident is that much of the support equipment needed for it to complete its mission is similarly dated.

U.S. Air Force/Airman 1st Class William Pugh

2nd Maintenance Group personnel operate the prototype MHU-TSX robotic loading system at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, on September 15, 2021.


“The design of our current equipment is between 50 to 60 years old,” explained Mike Black, an Air Force Global Strike Command munitions division modernization branch chief. Not only is equipment such as weapons loading systems old, but increasingly it will be redundant as new weapons come online, especially the new types of heavy hypersonic missiles that are expected to form a key part of the future arsenal of the B-52, in particular.
Indeed, as long ago as 2018, The War Zone examined why the B-52 lends itself so well to the role of hypersonic weapons ‘truck.’ Since then, the AGM-183A ARRW, has put itself on course to be the Air Force’s first operational air-launched hypersonic weapon, although early testing from the B-52 has not gone entirely smoothly.

U.S. Air Force/Christopher Okula

A B-52 from the 419th Flight Test Squadron out of Edwards Air Force Base, California, carries a prototype of the AGM-183A ARRW for its first captive-carry flight, in 2019.


At this stage, the MHU-TSX, as tested at Barksdale, is very much an early iteration, with the trial aimed primarily to get feedback from the munitions squadron and other personnel at the base, which will lead to improvements being made. According to an Air Force news release “revisions are expected,” for the design, but there is already confidence that MHU-TSX “is a step towards an automated machine that could revolutionize aircraft maintenance Air Force-wide.”

U.S. Air Force/Airman 1st Class William Pugh

Second Maintenance Group personnel prepare a pylon from the now-retired AGM-86 Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) for transport on the Square One Systems Design prototype at Barksdale Air Force Base, September 14, 2021.


The Air Force, meanwhile, is confident that AFWERX is the right framework within which to develop a product of this kind. Mike Black described the current relationship between the Air Force and Square One Systems Design as “about as close as you can get to the ideal scenario for AFWERX and their business model.”
How much longer it will take to field a fully proven and operational version of the MHU-TSX is not clear, but it’s evident that the twin demands of heavy hypersonic stores and out-of-area operations mean that equipment of this kind is likely to be afforded a high priority in the near future. It would not be the first Air Force program that stresses modular, deployable equipment of the kind needed for these kinds of missions.

All in all, the MHU-TSX could provide the Air Force bomber fleet with some huge advantages, helping reduce the total manpower, as well as the infrastructure, necessary to conduct bomber operations from austere sites on short notice, which could make it easier to conduct those kinds of deployments in general.

Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com

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The Air Force Is Testing Robotic Loaders To Mount Hypersonic Missiles On Its Bombers

The ability to rapidly load large hypersonic missiles onto Air Force bombers that are operating from remote airfields is of increasing importance.

www.thedrive.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

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Pentagon’s top nuclear policy official ousted in reorganization

Leonor Tomero, who has served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy since Jan. 20, is leaving as the Defense Department eliminates her job.

www.politico.com

DEFENSE
Pentagon’s top nuclear policy official ousted in reorganization
Leonor Tomero, who has served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy since Jan. 20, is leaving as the Defense Department eliminates her job.

By LARA SELIGMAN, ALEXANDER WARD and PAUL MCLEARY
09/21/2021 06:08 PM EDT

The Pentagon’s top official overseeing nuclear and missile defense policy, including a review of America’s atomic weapons posture set to be completed early next year, is leaving her post at the end of the month after only eight months on the job, according to two people familiar with the move.

Leonor Tomero, who has served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy since Jan. 20, is leaving as the Defense Department eliminates her job in a reorganization effort, according to the people and a private email viewed by POLITICO.

“The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy is working to align its organization structure with [Defense Secretary Lloyd] Austin’s priorities to be postured to address the threats of today and tomorrow,” wrote Kim Quarantello, the legislative affairs director for the Pentagon’s policy office, in a notification to Congress last week. “DASD Tomero’s departure is linked to those changes.”

The Pentagon’s new assistant secretary for space, a position Congress recently created, will absorb the responsibility for nuclear and missile defense, one of the people said. The deputy position was eliminated as part of the reorganization, the person said.

It was unclear to some congressional staffers why Tomero was on her way out of the administration after only eight months. Communications from the Pentagon about her departure were “very vague,” one aide told POLITICO.

Tomero didn’t return an immediate request for comment. Quarantello declined to comment once reached by phone, saying she doesn’t talk to reporters. When reached for comment, a defense official emailed, “as a matter of policy, we won’t comment on personnel matters.”

In the deputy position, Tomero led the Biden administration’s effort to review U.S. nuclear weapons policy in the wake of growing threats from China, dubbed the Nuclear Posture Review. Started in July, the review is slated to be completed early next year in conjunction with the department’s National Defense Strategy. Tomero also led a similar review of missile defense policy.

Melissa Dalton, who is performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, will lead the Nuclear Posture Review in Tomero’s place, the first person said.

Dalton has been involved in the nuclear review process for months, telling the House Armed Services Committee in June that the review “will consider and assess U.S. strategy, posture, and policy adjustments and consider program execution risk — all with a goal of maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.”
In August, Dalton was nominated to be the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for homeland defense and global security affairs.

President Joe Biden has a long history of pushing for less reliance on nuclear weapons. He ran in 2020 on a platform of opposing new nuclear weapons, on multiple occasions saying the current U.S. arsenal is “sufficient.” However, his first defense budget backs two controversial new projects put in motion by former President Donald Trump — a low-yield warhead outfitted on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and research into a new sea-launched cruise missile — as well as doubling down on upgrading all three legs of the nuclear arsenal.

In recent weeks, Pentagon officials have issued a series of warnings over China’s growing nuclear capability. At the annual Air Force Association conference held this week, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned that “whether intended or not, China is acquiring a first-strike capability.”

 

[Housecarl]

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Nuclear Arms Are Now Musts for Taiwan and Japan

www.theepochtimes.com

VIEWPOINTS
Nuclear Arms Are Now Musts for Taiwan and Japan
The best insurance policy against Beijing's aggression is a nuclear-armed military

Patricia Adams
Lawrence Solomon
September 21, 2021 Updated: September 21, 2021

Commentary
To counter Beijing’s growing belligerence in the South China Sea, Australia last week changed course: It canceled an order with France for conventional submarines that it.......

 

[jward]

As Air Force Signals Hypersonic Doubts, Key Senators Want To Go Faster

"I'm not satisfied with the pace," Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said. "We're making some progress on the technology; I would like to see it be better."
By Theresa Hitchens and Aaron Mehta on September 24, 2021 at 4:45 AM

Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), 2020 captive carry test. (Air Force photo by Kyle Brasier)
WASHINGTON: In public comments this week, senior Air Force leaders seem to have soured on the promise of hypersonic missiles, just as the Defense Department is being urged by key lawmakers in the Senate to put more focus on air-breathing hypersonic engine technology.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall kicked things off Monday, when he told reporters in the margins of the annual Air Force Association Air, Space & Cyber conference that he is reassessing the Air Force’s hypersonic plans.
“I’m not satisfied with the pace,” he said. “We’re making some progress on the technology; I would like to see it be better.”

Kendall added that he is also “not satisfied with the degree to which we have figured out what we need for hypersonics — of what type, for what missions.”
“The target set that we would want to address, and why hypersonics are the most cost effective weapons for the US, I think it’s still, to me, somewhat of a question mark,” the secretary said. “I haven’t seen all the analysis that’s been done to justify the current program.”

That set the tone for a series of questions to senior uniformed leaders about whether the service remains committed to the current hypersonic roadmap, with a clear theme emerging: Kendall is willing to come in and rip things up if he doesn’t see results.
Gen. Arnold Bunch, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, told reporters on Tuesday that “there are certain aspects, attributes that [have] not performed the way we need to,” while acknowledging that there were always going to be hurdles during development. “We are going to have to continue to put our focus there and we will continue to take what are called educated risks as we move forward so that we can get a capability out in the field as quickly as possible,” he said.

That same day, Lt. Gen. Duke Richardson, the top uniformed acquisition official, said that Kendall has not “spared any program” since he’s come in, taking a critical eye to everything.
“I think he’s seeing the fiscal environment. He wants to make sure that we’re focused on the warfighter — well, really China, right — from the perspective of the warfighter and the taxpayer. And so we’re trying to make sure that we really are laser focused on that. In the case of hypersonics, he wants to understand, again, the use case for that, and so we’re working through that,” Richardson said, adding that Kendall has not ordered any slow-down on either of the service’s main hypersonic test programs.

Finally, on Wednesday, Air Combat Command head Gen. Mark Kelley said he talked with Kendall about the secretary’s comments, and Kelley explained to reporters that Kendall believes “we need a ConOp to make sure we do an acquisition acquisition strategy” that works.
“I think he’s right. We do need to make sure we have an unambiguous, well understood ConOp as we go forward,” Kelly said. “But hypersonics and high end-game maneuvering capability is something we need to keep pursuing. We should make sure before we pull the trigger and commit resources to it everybody’s on the same sheet of music.”
The Air Force leaders’ comments notably come just as key leaders in the Senate are doubling down on their interest in hypersonic weaponry.

The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., in their markup of the 2022 defense policy bill, are pushing hypersonics hard, chiding DoD for going too slow and putting too little focus on air-launched missiles that use scramjets — engines that scoop in and combust oxygen for fuel to bring the missile up to hypersonic speeds of greater than Mach 5.

“The committee is concerned that there is a lack of focus on air-launched and air-breathing hypersonic capability, including the potential for rapid space launch capability facilitated by purpose-built hypersonic aircraft,” states their markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released Wednesday.
Citing hypersonics as an arena of “intense technological competition” with China and Russia, the SASC leaders expressed the need for development of the technology as a “key element of the National Defense Strategy.” The report language goes on, “The committee believes that the Department of Defense (DOD) needs to focus more attention on the expeditious development and maturation of key hypersonic flight technologies.”

The NDAA markup also “directs the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, in consultation with the Secretaries of the services, to provide an executable strategy and report to the congressional defense committees, not later than December 30, 2021, on the plan to field air-launched and air-breathing hypersonic weapons and the potential use for tactically responsive launch capabilities within 3 years.”
The markup adds $5 million to the Air Force’s budget request for improved testing facilities, and another $5 million “to support risk reduction and technology maturation through the demonstration of commercial hypersonic flight technologies to support the advancement of reusable hypersonic systems.”

The NDAA report also calls on DoD to beef up ground test facilities, such as wind tunnels, and to accelerate flight testing to mature hypersonic-related technologies in areas such as thermal protection, seekers and communications links.
DoD Investment By The Billions

Investments in hypersonics have soared and shifted from experimentation to prototyping. (GAO)

DoD’s myriad hypersonic projects account for about $15 billion in investment between 2015 and 2024, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Pentagon asked Congress for $2.865 billion for hypersonic weapons in 2021 alone, up not quite 14% from a 2020 total of $2.508 billion.
However, the bulk of current Army, Navy and Air Force research and development dollars — some 56% according to GAO — is primarily being spent on boost-glide technology, which uses a conventional rocket booster full of fuel to accelerate the weapon to hypersonic speed, after which the glide body containing the warhead detaches from the booster and coasts, skipping along the upper limits of the atmosphere.

Boost-glide hypersonic missiles are bigger and heavier than air-breathing ones, and have longer ranges. On the other hand, air-breathing engines are smaller and thus can be used to power cruise missiles that are light enough to be carried by fighter jets — although they also are more technically challenging.
The Air Force is working on development of a highly classified air-launched hypersonic cruise missile called the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM). The service asked for $190.1 million for the effort in its 2022 budget request.
HACM is based on another project the service has been pursuing with DARPA, called Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapons Concept (HAWC). DARPA requested $10 million for that project in 2022.

A third effort, called Project Mayhem, is also underway but very little is known about the program, which also is known as the Expendable Hypersonic Air-Breathing Multi-Mission Demonstrator Program. Mike White, principal director for hypersonics at DoD’s Research & Engineering office, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies on June 10 that “Project Mayhem is to look at the next step in what the opportunity space allows relative to hypersonic cruise missile systems” and is intended to be capable of flying “significantly longer ranges than what we’re doing today.”
However, those programs are significantly less mature than the Air Force’s major hypersonic R&D effort, the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), also being developed in tandem with DARPA.

Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapons (HAWK), DARPA concept art
ARRW (pronounced arrow) is a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to be carried by a B-52 bomber. The Air Force is seeking about $161 million in fiscal 2022 to produce the first 12 ARRW missiles, on top of some $238.3 million in R&D funds. Lockheed Martin Space is the prime contractor.

So far, that program has been a bit of a bust. ARRW’s failed its first flight test in April. The second booster flight test, on July 28, also failed because the engine failed to ignite, and the service still hasn’t released any information on what caused the problem. Of that failure review board, Richardson this week said the service is “almost close to wrapping it up.”
In an Aug. 4 briefing with reporters, Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, who heads the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) Armaments Directorate, said that the program office was still planning for ARRW production to start at the end of fiscal 2022.

Overall, however, Mark Lewis, who formerly spearheaded hypersonic research at DoD’s Office of Research & Engineering, told Breaking Defense that he agrees — vehemently — with SASC’s position, rather than the message coming from the Air Force.
“I’m puzzled that the Air Force might be pulling back, because we had done extensive studies and extensive analysis that demonstrated quite clearly the effectiveness of these systems,” said Lewis, who now heads the National Defense Industrial Association’s new Emerging Technologies Institute (ETI).
“It is obvious that the Chinese don’t have any such misgivings,” he pointedly added.

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As Air Force Signals Hypersonic Doubts, Key Senators Want To Go Faster - Breaking Defense

"I'm not satisfied with the pace," Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said. "We're making some progress on the technology; I would like to see it be better."

breakingdefense.com

 

[danielboon]

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[danielboon]

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[jward]

We've moved on, on time and on budget, as they say : )

WAR - 09-25-2021-to-10-01-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(489) 09-04-2021-to-09-10-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** (490) 09-11-2021-to-09-17-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** (491) 09-18-2021-to-09-24-2021__****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** ------------------------------------------------ Hummm......... Posted for fair use...

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