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

[Housecarl]

(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.....

Living with a nuclear North Korea

If North Korea doesn’t return to negotiations, it’s fair to assume that the North will lock in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile arsenals, making denuclearization unachievable.

m.washingtontimes.com

Living with a nuclear North Korea
The U.S. needs to resume bilateral or multilateral denuclearization talks

By Joseph R. DeTrani -
Friday, September 24, 2021
ANALYSIS/OPINION:

If North Korea doesn’t return to negotiations, it’s fair to assume that the North will lock in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile arsenals, making denuclearization unachievable and eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula even more problematic.
Since the failed February 2019 Hanoi Summit of former President Donald Trump and North Korea Chairman Kim Jong-un, negotiations with North Korea have summarily ceased. During this 30-month period, North Korea reportedly has continued to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons, while enhancing its missile capabilities. The recent launches of two cruise missiles, capable – according to the North —of delivering a nuclear warhead, that successfully hit targets 1500 kilometers away, while flying for over two hours, was impressive. It represented an existential nuclear threat to the whole of Japan, and South Korea, and a challenge for existing missile defense systems. And the September 15 successful launches of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM), from rail car launchers, was noteworthy. This, in addition to its road-mobile launches, will provide the North with an additional option to make detection of an imminent missile launch that much more challenging for any adversary.
Moreover, the North demonstrated movement toward a capability to eventually also launch Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), like the gigantic Hwasong 15 capable of targeting the whole of the U.S., from rail car launches, in addition to its more vulnerable fixed launch pads. And the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) recent discovery that the Yongbyon Plutonium nuclear reactor was reactivated is further proof that North Korea is producing more fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Getting North Korea back to the negotiation table should be a prime objective for the U.S and its allies and partners. A nuclear North Korea will encourage other countries in the region, like South Korea and Japan, to pursue its own nuclear weapons programs, despite extended nuclear deterrence commitments from the U.S. A nuclear North Korea also creates significant nuclear proliferation concerns, with the possibility that a nuclear weapon or fissile material for a dirty bomb will be sold or acquired by a rogue state or terrorist organization. We should never forget that North Korea sold nuclear technology and expertise to Syria, with Israel bombing the nuclear facility at Al Kibar in September 2007, just before it went operational.

It will take more than a stated willingness to meet with North Korea any time and any place to discuss denuclearization to get North Korea back to the negotiation table. A message to Kim Jong-un, delivered through the New York channel, or South Korea or China stating clearly, and with specifics, that the U.S. is prepared to discuss all issues with the North when they return to negotiations. The North knows we want to talk about complete and verifiable denuclearization, but they will need to hear that we’re prepared to discuss a road map that, in an action-for-action process, would include, as the North dismantles all nuclear weapons and facilities, the lifting of sanctions, a declaration to end the Korean War, a path to normal relations with the initial establishment of liaison offices in our respective capitals, the acknowledgment of their right to have nuclear technology for civilian energy purposes, when North Korea returns to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapons state; and a recognition of North Korea’s sovereign right to put a satellite in orbit.

To expect North Korea to walk away from its nuclear and missile arsenals and programs, which they view as a deterrent to ensure the survival of the Kim regime after the time and resources spent to establish these programs, will require a bold package of deliverables to convince Kim Jong-un that denuclearization will make North Korea more secure, and as a member of the international community, they will have access to international financial institutions for economic development purposes.

Not getting North Korea back to negotiations and accepting the status quo, while thinking sanctions and additional pressure will convince Kim to return to negotiations is wishful thinking. Sanctions and additional pressure will only encourage Kim to build more nuclear weapons and missiles. It will also encourage Kim to work more closely with China and Russia, who may be willing to defy United Nations (U.N.) sanctions and provide the North with the aid and trade needed for its survival.

It’s likely that without the resumption of negotiations, North Korea eventually will launch additional ballistic missiles, possibly to include an ICBM, with a likely seventh nuclear test. But even if North Korea refrains from such provocative acts, they will continue to build more Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium-based nuclear weapons, while continuing to test cruise missiles and other nuclear and missile enhancements, not prohibited by U.N. resolutions. And as North Korea continues down this escalatory path, inter-Korean relations will further deteriorate, with eventual reunification even more problematic.

Resuming bilateral or multilateral denuclearization talks with North Korea should be a priority objective for the U.S. and its allies.

• Joseph R. DeTrani was the former Special Envoy for Negotiations with North Korea (2003-2006) and the former Director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views expressed in this publication are the author’s and do not imply endorsement of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or any other U.S. government agency.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Washington Daily News » Brinkwire

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

en.brinkwire.com

North Korea’s nuclear threat: Kim Jong-un plans to equip cruise missiles with a lethal weapon.
0
BY HELENA SUTAN ON SEPTEMBER 25, 2021NEWS

North Korea’s nuclear threat: Kim Jong-un plans to equip cruise missiles with a lethal weapon.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un launched two ballistic missiles into the sea off the country’s east coast on Wednesday, reigniting fears about Pyongyang’s military capabilities.

Despite an impasse over discussions aimed at eliminating its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenals in exchange for US sanctions relief, North Korea has been rapidly expanding its weapons programs. The talks between former US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which began in 2018, have been stuck since 2019. Professor Robert Kelly, a political scientist at Pusan National University, has warned Kim Jong-un that he could equip cruise missiles with nuclear bombs to “significantly increase” the missiles’ hitting potential.

Professor Kelly told Sky News, “I think the cruise missile testing are more significant than the ballistic missile launches.”

“We’ve known for a long time that North Korea has ballistic missiles.

“We already knew they had the really huge ones, the intercontinental ones, so that comes as no surprise.”
“The Americans have claimed they could place a nuclear weapon on the cruise missile, which would obviously greatly boost its striking power,” he continued.

The missiles were launched just after 12:30 p.m. (0330 GMT), travelling 800 kilometers (497 miles) and reaching a maximum height of 60 kilometers (37 miles), according to the JCS.

North Korea’s missile launches, according to the US military’s Indo-Pacific Command, do not constitute an immediate threat to US personnel, territory, or allies, but they do underline the destabilizing consequences of the country’s illicit weapons development.

The missile launch was described as “outrageous” by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who criticized it as a threat to regional peace and security.

Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, told a regular briefing that the country hoped “relevant parties” would “exercise prudence.”

South Korea has been investing heavily in new military systems, such as ballistic missiles, submarines, and its first aircraft carrier.

It has a declared policy of nuclear non-proliferation and a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

According to Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London, the arms race has accelerated under Moon for a variety of reasons, including his push for more foreign policy autonomy, wariness of relying on the US after Trump’s presidency, and military developments in both North Korea and China.

“South Korea would confront numerous political and legal barriers, both domestic and external, in developing nuclear weapons,” he stated.

“Indeed.” Brinkwire Summary News.”

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

Posted for fair use.....

Clear Away The Hype: The US And Australia Signed A Nuclear Arms Deal, Simple As That – OpEd

On September 15, 2021, the heads of government of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced the formation of AUKUS, “a new enhanced trilateral security partnership” between these three countries. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris...

www.eurasiareview.com

Clear Away The Hype: The US And Australia Signed A Nuclear Arms Deal, Simple As That – OpEd
September 25, 2021 Vijay Prashad 0 Comments
By Vijay Prashad


On September 15, 2021, the heads of government of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced the formation of AUKUS, “a new enhanced trilateral security partnership” between these three countries. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined U.S. President Joe Biden to “preserve security and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” as Johnson put it.

While China was not explicitly mentioned by these leaders at the AUKUS announcement, it is generally assumed that countering China is the unstated motivation for the new partnership. “The future of the Indo-Pacific,” said Morrison at the press conference, “will impact all our futures.” That was as far as they would go to address the elephant in the room.

Zhao Lijian of the Chinese Foreign Ministry associated the creation of AUKUS with “the outdated Cold War zero-sum mentality and narrow-minded geopolitical perception.” Beijing has made it clear that all talk of security in the Indo-Pacific region by the U.S. and its NATO allies is part of an attempt to build up military pressure against China. The BBC story on the pact made this clear in its headline: “Aukus: UK, US and Australia launch pact to counter China.”

What was the need for a new partnership when there are already several such security platforms in place? Prime Minister Morrison acknowledgedthis in his remarks at the press conference, mentioning the “growing network of partnerships” that include the Quad security pact (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States).

A closer look at AUKUS suggests that this deal has less to do with military security and more to do with arms deals.

Nuclear Submarines
Prime Minister Morrison announced that “[t]he first major initiative of AUKUS will be to deliver a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia.” Two red flags were immediately raised: first, what will happen to Australia’s preexisting order of diesel-powered submarines from France, and second, will this sale of nuclear-powered submarines violatethe Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)?

In 2016, the Australian government made a deal with France’s Naval Group (formerly known as Direction des Constructions Navales, or DCNS) to supply the country with 12 diesel-electric submarines. A press release from then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his minister of defense (who is the current minister of foreign affairs) Marise Payne saidat the time that the future submarine project “is the largest and most complex defence acquisition Australia has ever undertaken. It will be a vital part of our Defence capability well into the middle of this century.”

Australia’s six Collins-class submarines are expected to be decommissioned in the 2030s, and the submarines that were supposed to be supplied by France were meant to replace them. The arms deal was slated to cost “about $90 billion to build and $145 billion to maintain over their life cycle,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Australia has now canceled its deal with the French to obtain the nuclear-powered submarines. These new submarines will likely be built either in the U.S. by Electric Boat, a subdivision of General Dynamics, and Newport News Shipbuilding, a subdivision of Huntington Ingalls Industries, or in the UK by BAE Systems; BAE Systems has already benefited from several major submarine deals. The AUKUS deal to provide submarines to Australia will be far more expensive, given that these are nuclear submarines, and it will draw Australia to rely more deeply upon the UK and U.S. arms manufacturers. France was furious about the submarine deal, with its Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian calling it a “regrettable decision” that should advance the cause of “European strategic autonomy” from the United States. Words like “betrayal” have flooded the French conversation about the deal.

Australia ratified the NPT in 1973, and it is also a signatory to the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985), or the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty. It does not have nuclear weapons and has pledged not to have nuclear material in the South Pacific. Australia is the second-largest producer of uranium after Kazakhstan, and most of this nuclear material is sold to the UK and the U.S. For the past several decades, Australia has been considered a “nuclear threshold” state, but it has opted not to escalate its nuclear weapons program. The three heads of government of Australia, the U.S. and the UK made it clear that the transfer of the nuclear-powered submarines is not the same as the transfer of nuclear weapons, although these new submarines will be capable of launching a nuclear strike. For that reason, not only China but also North Korea has warned about a new arms race in the region after the AUKUS submarine deal.

Costs
Morrison admitted during a September 16 press conference that his country has already spent $2.4 billion on the French submarine deal. He did not, however, answer a journalist’s question as to what the ultimate price tag would be for the UK-U.S. nuclear-powered submarines. He asked his Secretary of Defense Greg Moriarty to answer it, to which Moriarty spoke about task forces “that will set up a number of working groups” with the U.S. and UK to look into several issues relating to the deal; but Moriarty also did not touch on the topic about the price tag. One of the questions asked at the press conference with regard to the cost to Australian taxpayers was whether Australia would buy the Astute (UK) class submarines or the Virginia (U.S.) class, since this decision has a bearing on the cost. The Virginia class submarine, according to a recent U.S. Congressional Research Service study, costs $3.45 billion per vessel. To this must be added the cost of upgrading the naval bases in Australia and the cost of running and maintaining the submarines. The U.S. and the UK firms will make considerable profits from this deal.

Ever since the Australians signed the deal with the French, media houses associated with the U.S.-based Rupert Murdoch have attacked it. Any small delay was picked up to be clobbered, and any adjustment to the contract—including a change in contract proposed on March 23, 2021—became front-page news. Aware of the problems, France’s Foreign Minister Le Drian spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Paris on June 25 about the deal. He told the French-speaking Blinken that the submarine contract is not only a French one but also a French-U.S. partnership since Lockheed Martin is party to the deal. French attempts to get U.S. buy-in to the deal came to nothing as the Biden administration was already in talks with the UK and Australia on their own regarding the AUKUS deal. That is why the language of “betrayal” is so pronounced in Paris.

Belligerence
On September 16, the Australian and U.S. governments released a joint statement that included a direct attack on China, with reference to the South China Sea, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Two days later, an article in Australia’s leading newspaper, the Australian, by Paul Monk, who is the head of the China Desk at Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organization, stated that his government should “facilitate a coup within China’s Communist Party.” This is a direct call for regime change in China by Australia.

The belligerent language from Australia should not be taken lightly. Even though China is Australia’s largest trading partner (both in terms of exports and imports), the creation of these new military pacts—with a nuclear edge to them—threatens security in the region. If this is merely an arms deal hidden behind a military pact, then it is a cynical use of war-making rhetoric for business purposes. This cynicism could eventually lead to a great deal of suffering.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Click here to have Eurasia Review's newsletter delivered via RSS, as an email newsletter, via mobile or on your personal news page.

Vijay Prashad
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. Prashad is the author of seventeen books. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

Posted for fair ushttps://www.eurasiareview.com/24092021-the-indo-pacific-the-quad-and-the-reality-of-chinese-power-analysis/#comment-871194e.....

The Indo-Pacific, The Quad And The Reality Of Chinese Power – Analysis
September 24, 2021 East Asia Forum 1 Comment
By East Asia Forum
By Kerry Brown*

The idea of a coherent territory called the Indo-Pacific has been appealing to strategists for some years, but it is no coincidence that the tighter and more urgent formation of this idea has happened at the same time as China’s rising prominence. The desire to counterbalance China has driven much of the intellectual and diplomatic investment in the idea of the Indo-Pacific.

The United States, Europe and countries in the region have invested publicly in the idea, in terms of diplomatic commitment and actual resources.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) — consisting of Australia, the United States, Japan and India — was resuscitated in 2017 with a focus on making the idea of the Indo-Pacific real. In March 2021, for the first time, its meeting was held at the head of government level, forming part of the new Biden administration’s move to restore and recommit the United States to multilateralism after the chaotic Trump years. The United Kingdom sent its newly deployed Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier to the South China Sea region in July, drawing the ire of China. In March, France sent its warships to the region before undertaking exercises with the United States.

The face-to-face summit in Washington this week ramps Quad diplomacy up another notch, yet despite the Quad and other efforts, the BRI is still a more compelling international vision than the Indo-Pacific. It has captured the imagination of those who were already willing to work more closely with China. The biannual summits on the BRI held in China may not have attracted many key European or North American leaders, but Central Asian, African and Latin American leaders have all taken part. The amorphousness of the BRI idea is its great strength.

As a testament to its success, the United States, Europe and others (including, it is clear, Australia) would dearly love something else than the BRI. Can there be such viable alternatives? Attempts so far have proved tepid and unpromising.

Most importantly, there is the issue of cohesion. The BRI is united by at least one solid commonality — Chinese interests. The Indo-Pacific is a far messier idea and doesn’t originate from one source. Asian multilateralism has a scratchy track record. Sovereignty was hard-won in this region after varying experiences of colonisation and nation building in the early 20th century. The Westphalian notion of statehood is perhaps one of the most successful Western exports to the region. In this context, everyone jealously preserves their own interests. There is little commonality — fear of China is hardly a positive idea on which to build solid multilateral co-operation.

India is one of the key fault lines in the Indo-Pacific concept. India is a tricky player to fit into any neat multilateral framework. Australia’s hopes that it might — as a market, source of overseas students and security partner — be a counterbalance to China have proved salutary over the past decade. The assumption that India would be a more compliant partner because it is a democracy has proved misplaced. Its economy is attractive, but it remains only a third of the size of China’s. Before COVID-19, growth was 7 per cent or more, higher than in China. Post-pandemic, things look far less optimistic.

Geopolitics make this problem even more severe. India is a highly autonomous actor. Former US president George W Bush’s attempts in the 2000s to draw closer to India proved frustrating. India might not have an optimal relationship with China — with constant clashes over the contested border between the two from 2015 — but Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s desire to be closer to President Xi Jinping creates an unsettling ambiguity.

Nor is it in India’s interests, occupying the front line, to antagonise its powerful neighbour. It does not want to be used as a proxy diplomatic weapon because it, rather than others, would take the brunt of any tension with China. India enjoys amicable relations with Russia and from which it has procured military kit, despite US anger. It has its own strategic interests which do not align with those in the United States, Europe or Australia.

Other countries in the region are driven by pragmatism and self-interest. Within ASEAN, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam all face very different issues and approach China in different ways. What unites them is a clear desire to avoid needless turbulence provoked by those distant from the region.

An Indo-Pacific with any real chance of enduring will need to focus on generating a viable and pragmatic framework for cooperation, something that can work within the very different political and security worries that exist across the region. It would also have to be a framework that would at least persuade everyone it could protect them and serve their interests. That includes China. It is hard to see India, let alone the other players, working with an idea that antagonises China. Even the security agreement between Australia, the US and UK last week remains aspirational. It is hard to see what it will actually achieve beyond sidelining Australia strategically ‘forever’.

The idea of a ‘softer’ Indo-Pacific, which is a space for better communication and clears away some of the existing blockages, is more viable. For this to happen, it would make sense for partners in the region to take the lead, rather than allowing the United States or others to shape the priorities.

But as a more solid security alliance, with the kind of appeal to the imagination that the BRI has, the Indo-Pacific is fatally flawed. At most, it risks non-Asian powers trying to impose themselves among a set of relationships and a reality where they simply no longer have the economic, diplomatic and security resources to have the impact they might wish.

*About the author: Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute, King’s College London, and Associate Fellow with the Asia Pacific Programme at Chatham House.
Source: This article was published by East Asia Forum

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Jalisco Cartel Sets Off Alarm Bells Along Mexico-Guatemala Border

The Jalisco Cartel New Generation, which has rapidly expanded to become Mexico's greatest criminal threat, may now be spreading its influence

insightcrime.org

NEWS
Jalisco Cartel Sets Off Alarm Bells Along Mexico-Guatemala Border
GUATEMALA/23 SEP 2021 BY JULIE LÓPEZ*EN

The Jalisco Cartel New Generation, which has rapidly expanded to become Mexico's greatest criminal threat, may now be spreading its influence in a new area: the border with Guatemala.

Much of the border area is a no-man's-land, where traffickers can easily avoid the police. A recent wave of violence began as a response by Mexican drug gangs after some of their product was allegedly stolen in Guatemala. Guatemalan authorities have displayed caution, but the situation is reminiscent of the days when Los Zetas entered Guatemala.

"This message goes out to [a] crooked and thieving policeman," was the introduction at the start of an edited video circulating on social media on September 7.

The video message was recorded by a subject with their face covered by a ski mask. The man introduced himself as a member of a Mexican cartel and accused, by name, a Guatemalan police inspector and three officers of stealing a drug shipment between the municipalities of Raxruhá and Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, near the country's border with Mexico.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1435271089349922822

View: https://twitter.com/Sin_censuragt/status/1435271089349922822?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1435271089349922822%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finsightcrime.org%2Fnews%2Fjalisco-cartel-alarm-bells-mexico-guatemala-border%2F


"On May 12, they stole from the boss," continued the subject, speaking with a notable Mexican accent and surrounded by three men wielding assault rifles, their faces also covered.

"We are already going after you [...]; you have 24 hours to return everything. If not, we are going to kill you, we will even kill your children […] This is the last chance we will give you ... we are not playing, we have already cleaned the town of La Mesilla. ... Listen closely, no one messes with Señor Nemesio's people. These items belong to someone and the owner is the Jalisco Cartel New Generation [Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación - CJNG].”

“Señor Nemesio,” or Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho,” is the leader of the CJNG. While the group began life in the northwest of the country, it is now engaged in a fight with the Sinaloa Cartel for control of the state of Chiapas along the Guatemalan border. This fight echoes other clashes between the two Mexican groups across the country.

*This investigation was carried out by El Faro. It has been edited for clarity and reprinted with permission. It does not necessarily reflect the views of InSight Crime. Read the original in Spanish here.

These threats are similar to the last time drug traffickers got even with Guatemalan police over stolen money or drugs in June 2013, when eight agents and an inspector from the substation in Salcajá, Quetzaltenango (western Guatemala), were murdered. Eduardo Villatoro Cano, alias "Guayo Cano," of the Zetas, was found to be the intellectual author of the murders.

Now, all signs indicate that a similar vendetta is underway.

A Looming Threat
In the video, the masked man claimed to have already established order in La Mesilla, a Guatemalan town right on the Mexican border, seemingly claiming responsibility for a series of armed attacks there in July and August.
Signs of a new organized crime vendetta began on June 12, when media reported a checkpoint on the road between Nentón in Guatemala and Comitán in Mexico.

Press reports indicated that residents of Nentón, another border town, saw men with ski masks and assault rifles inspecting vehicles for migrants, firearms or drugs on the Guatemalan side of the border.

El Faro contacted the Guatemalan Defense Ministry, but its spokesman, Colonel Rubén Téllez, claimed that the checkpoint was on the Mexico side of the border.

"There was no confirmation. [No one] came forward and said, 'yes, they stopped me and asked me for this,'" said Téllez, who added that military and police patrols were sent to reinforce the border.

However, Téllez stated that while it's typical to see organized crime groups moving along the border, a new armed group had recently started entering and leaving Guatemala regularly.

Since June, the violent acts occurring near the border suggest that this armed group is, or could be related to, the CJNG, as the man in the video claims.

This has caused alarm among local towns because, while the area is home to frequent drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, contraband and more, there has not been any large-scale violence in this part of Guatemala in 2020. Huehuetenango, the department along the border where these attacks were reported, has one of the lowest homicide rates in Guatemala.

On July 28, a shootout took place along a highway in Chiapas, mere kilometers from the border. Mexican authorities found at least 300 shell casings of various calibers and six abandoned vehicles. One was on fire, the rest had bullet holes and Guatemalan license plates.

On July 31, a voice message from an unidentified source circulated in Mexico and Guatemala on social media. Despite claiming no criminal affiliation, it warned to "please step aside ... because we are entering Guatemala, and there will be bloodshed. You messed with our people, now deal with it. Whoever is on the street, we will obliterate them. ... We won't say what day, but it is approaching. We are already there. Chamic, Comalapa, La Mesilla, Cuauhtémoc, all those places we are going to come by shooting.”

A former investigator for Guatemala's Attorney General's Office, who knows about the situation on the border but asked to remain anonymous, told El Faro that drug and contraband trafficking at the border happen with help from authorities.

"There are always at least two Guatemalan police officers collecting tax on those who bring merchandise across," said a merchant in the area that had witnessed these transactions. "The Army is there. If you go, you see them. It is uncommon for Mexicans to enter Guatemala, and if they enter, they are known to be narcos [who come] to buy and transport [drugs]."

On August 12, there was another shootout in Mexico on the highway between Ciudad Cuauhtémoc and Potrerillo in Chiapas, 10 minutes from Guatemala. The outcome: a minibus and a pickup truck were left in flames on the side of the highway. The pickup had Guatemalan license plates. Press reports cited Mexican authorities as saying that the shootout took place between Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers and that it extended inside Guatemala in the town of Vueltamina. Again, the Army denied any violence inside Guatemala and that soldiers had verified the claim.

The list grows longer. On August 16, Mexican authorities claimed to have arrested 48 CJNG members in Chiapas. On August 24, two people were shot dead on board a minibus in La Democracia, a town in Huehuetenango just 15 kilometers from the border with Mexico. Then just two weeks later, on September 7, came the video with the CJNG claiming to have already cleaned up La Mesilla.

Reactions and Background
The government spokesman, Castillo, told El Faro that authorities have not ruled out that the purpose of the video may have been to destabilize "the [government's] good results in the fight against drug trafficking."

By early September, Guatemala had arrested 36 people wanted for extradition to the United States, seized almost six tons of cocaine and stopped dozens of drug planes in 2021, Castillo stated.

But the CJNG video harks back to the very real Mexican cartel incursions into Guatemala. The municipality of Raxruhá, where police were accused of stealing a CJNG drug shipment, was an important cocaine transit point for the Zetas, which maintained a strong presence in Guatemala between 2008 and 2013.

They lost ground in the country as they splintered, and in recent years the CJNG has begun to take over drug trafficking spots once controlled by the Zetas.

SEE ALSO: The Zetas in Guatemala

The history of police corruption in the region is also a real problem. Carlos Menocal, a former interior minister, revealed that the police officers who made the seizure in Raxruhá had their phone numbers leaked and began to receive death threats.

In 2017, an anti-drug trafficking investigator stated that drug traffickers had contacts in all police stations. Stopping short of saying that all police officers were corrupt, he revealed that these contacts were substantial enough to prevent key seizures and arrests. Despite this, the number of police prosecutions for drug-related offenses remains very low.

What the Facts Tell Us
Gerson Alegría, the current head of Guatemala's anti-drug prosecutor's office, told El Faro that the outbreaks of violence along the border shared by Huehuetenango and Chiapas may be due to poor negotiations between drug trafficking groups.

"When the straw breaks the camel's back, violence is unleashed," said the prosecutor.

That said, spikes in violence on the Guatemalan side are unusual.

The situation at the Mexico-Guatemala border is highly different from the country's borders with Honduras and El Salvador, where the prevalence of smaller drug gangs has made that area the most murderous in Guatemala.

Over the last 15 years, shootings and multiple homicides have been rare in Huehuetenango. The most famous outbreak of violence was the Agua Zarca massacre in November 2008, when a firefight between the Zetas and the Huistas, a local group associated with the Sinaloa Cartel, left 19 dead.

The Huistas remain the dominant criminal structure in Huehuetenango. Authorities had not arrested any Huista since 2012 until two arrests in 2021 showed that they remain active.

Beyond Drug Trafficking
Another investigator for the Attorney General's office also stated that collusion at the Mexico-Guatemala border between authorities and criminal groups extends beyond drug trafficking.

For instance, he claimed that police are warned when buses loaded with migrants are headed to Huehuetenango to stop them and demand money to let them travel to the border. This is a common practice.

In 2019, a journalist for El Faro traveled pretending to be a migrant and was assaulted by police twice before reaching the border.

Disputes over the spoil also provoke violence against police officers. In July, two agents investigating the disappearance of a minor in the remote area of Huehuetenango were beaten by five alleged coyotes (human smugglers).

Another link is that drug trafficking groups are allegedly also taking in human smuggling. On August 27, Guatemalan police in the border department of Petén warned that they were on alert for "possible members of Mexican cartels" that intended to attack migrants, headquarters and immigration checkpoints in Guatemala.

The investigator claimed the attacks across the border, especially those where minibuses were torched on August 12 and 24, could be linked to human smuggling. Government sources stated that two bodies of Salvadoran nationals were found next to the minibus in the August 24 attack.

An investigation is underway to establish if the attackers of the minibus were Mexican and if they crossed the border.

"There are many news reports about the arrival of the Jalisco Cartel in Chiapas. Some say they are being hit hard in Jalisco and are dabbling in businesses outside drug trafficking to avoid attracting the attention of the DEA [US Drug Enforcement Administration]," Raúl Benítez Manaut, an investigator with Mexico's National Autonomous University, told El Faro.

"The Zetas tried to do this years ago. It is now suspected the CJNG intends to do the same," he added.

In the meantime, the Guatemalan government continues to downplay the importance of events at the border. But the violence has not gone down, and the indicators suggest the CJNG may well be responsible.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

China's Big New Twin-Jet Long-Endurance Armed Combat Drone Emerges

An intriguing new high and far-flying Chinese drone design has been seen in full scale on the grounds of the upcoming Zhuhai Airshow.

www.thedrive.com

China’s Big New Twin-Jet Long-Endurance Armed Combat Drone Emerges
An intriguing new high- and far-flying Chinese drone design has been seen in full scale on the grounds of the upcoming Zhuhai Airshow.
BY TYLER ROGOWAY SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

• THE WAR ZONE

CHINESE INTERNET
SHARE

TYLER ROGOWAY View Tyler Rogoway's Articles
Aviation_Intel

China's big international airshow in Zhuhai hasn’t even officially kicked off yet, but we are already getting a peek at what is going to be displayed there. One new development is China's J-16D electronic attack jet being seen with jamming pods for the first time. Now we are getting our first lifesize view of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation's Cai Hong (Rainbow) 6, better known by its designation CH-6. It is a long-endurance, twin-jet engine, multirole drone. In the past, we have only seen models and low-fidelity renderings of the design.

The CH-6 is considered to be a high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned system designed for intelligence gathering, support, and strike roles. It looks almost something like a drastically enlarged CH-5, but its rear configuration is very different from that earlier design. It has a high T-tail setup, with two jet engines installed atop the tail section side-by-side. The drone's mid-set long wings are also a bit swept and the entire package sits atop tall landing gear. The aircraft also has a notable chine-line-like edge that wraps around its ellipse-shaped fuselage.

#Zhuhai2021 A part le #drone CH-6, les missiles mis en container qui se trouvent à l'arrière plan sont tout aussi intéressants.

Possible que ce soit le missile Sol-Sol WS-600L, déjà présent au dernier salon en 2018. pic.twitter.com/FJsLeHggXJ
— East Pendulum (@HenriKenhmann) September 24, 2021​

Another set of photos of the reconnaissance & strike CASC Rainbow CH-6 (Cai Hong) UAV in Zhuhai 2021 with different ammunitions pic.twitter.com/EokHXg04vQ
— Jesus Roman (@jesusfroman) September 24, 2021​

According to China-Arms.com, which claims to have the basic information that will be displayed about the CH-6 at the airshow, its stats include:

The CH-6 UAV’s parameters include maximum takeoff weight of 7.8 tons, maximum load capacity of 300 kg (reconnaissance type) or 2 tons (reconnaissance-attack type), fuel capacity of 3.42 tons (reconnaissance type) or 1.72 tons (reconnaissance-attack type), overall length of 15 meters, wingspan of 20.5 meters, height of 5 meters, maximum level flight speed of 800 km/h, cruise speed of 500 km/h to 700 km/h, cruise altitude of 10 km, ceiling of 12 km, a maximum endurance of 20 hours (reconnaissance type) or 8 hours (reconnaissance-attack type), a maximum range of 12,000 km (reconnaissance type) or 4,500 km (reconnaissance-attack type), a maximum climb rate of 20 m/s, and an operating radius (apparent) of 300 km.

VIA CHINA-ARMS.COM
The CH-6 seems to be situated in a capability space between its medium-altitude, medium-endurance, unstealthy unmanned combat aircraft brethren — as well as China's long-endurance, medium-altitude, propeller-powered surveillance types — and more advanced high-altitude, long-endurance intelligence-gathering and sensor craft jet-powered drones. The fact that it will be capable of being armed from the outset is a clear indication that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force is looking to push its unmanned kinetic capabilities farther afield than what is possible now.



CHINA'S BIGGEST AIRSHOW OFFERS MORE EVIDENCE OF BEIJING'S STEALTH DRONE FOCUSBy Joseph Trevithick and Tyler RogowayPosted in THE WAR ZONE
CHINA SHOWCASES STEALTHIER SHARP SWORD UNMANNED COMBAT AIR VEHICLE CONFIGURATIONBy Joseph TrevithickPosted in THE WAR ZONE
JAPANESE FIGHTERS INTERCEPT THREE CHINESE DRONES IN AS MANY DAYSBy Joseph Trevithick and Tyler RogowayPosted in THE WAR ZONE
CHINA'S REPORTED PLAN TO DEPLOY WEAPONLESS STEALTH DRONES ON ITS CARRIERS MAKE PERFECT SENSEBy Tyler RogowayPosted in THE WAR ZONE
CHINA IS SURGING FORWARD WITH ITS DEVELOPMENT OF ADVANCED STEALTH COMBAT DRONESBy Tyler RogowayPosted in THE WAR ZONE

The aircraft’s jet speed will favorably impact transit times to patrol or target areas and maximize its endurance once there. Two engines would increase reliability, as well, which could be key considering the distances involved with operating an aircraft like this and the less-developed state of Chinese jet engine technology. In fact, the most similar of China’s unmanned aircraft we know of to the CH-6 is probably the Cloud Shadow. It is a single jet engine design that also has a lot in common with previous Chinese propeller-driven combat drone designs, but is smaller and lighter than the CH-6. Both aircraft can accomplish surveillance and kinetic missions, but the CH-6 would likely be even better suited for the former due to its size and weight, allowing multiple sensor systems — and large ones at that — to be carried over long distances and at higher altitudes.

MZTOURIST/WIKICOMMONS
Chengdu Cloud Shadow.

As far as the United States goes, the closest thing to the CH-6 is probably General Atomics' Avenger, although the CH-6 puts less emphasis on low-observability in its design and appears capable of higher altitude operations for some mission types. The Avenger could probably be better classed as somewhere between the CH-6 and Cloud Shadow, in limited respects. Also, the CH-6 is a simpler overall design.

This is a big deal, as it could provide China with an 'everyday' high-altitude, long-endurance platform that is not very sensitive in nature or expensive to procure and operate. It can be a platform that potentially provides a kinetic punch but can also haul around larger sensors and other payloads when required, all with twin jet engine reliability. Once again, this would fill the unmanned flying ‘sensor truck’ gap that exists between aircraft like the more advanced jet-powered Soar Dragon and the lower-performance propeller-powered TB-001. Being far from exquisite, especially compared to some of the stealthy unmanned aircraft China is currently pursuing, means that the CH-6 can also probably be bought, and even lost, in significant numbers.

With that in mind, the CH-6 may not be sexy or cutting-edge, but it could prove to be extremely important to the PLA's long-range ambitions.

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Mapping the contours of Jihadist groups in the Sahel - ToysMatrix

The Sahel region, an area covering 3 million sq km, has been a hotbed of Islamic Jihadi groups in recent years. Today, the region has no fewer than seven insurgent groups scattered in six countries. The area stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean and encompasses a...

toysmatrix.com

Mapping the contours of Jihadist groups in the Sahel
AFRICA

By Dustin Moskovitz On Sep 24, 2021

The Sahel region, an area covering 3 million sq km, has been a hotbed of Islamic Jihadi groups in recent years.
Today, the region has no fewer than seven insurgent groups scattered in six countries. The area stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean and encompasses a dozen countries. These include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.

Jihadi groups have taken advantage of a number of underlying conditions, which fuel local grievances across the Sahel. These include endemic poverty, inequality, high unemployment levels, illiteracy, ethnic divisions and poor governance.

The groups have made inroads by stepping the vast ungoverned spaces where governments have been largely absent. Here they have helped resolve land tenancy issues, protected cattle from theft and prosecuted thieves. They have also provided social welfare, distributing food and medicine, offering cash incentives, and delivering some forms of government services.

But they are also responsible for atrocities in which thousands have died. Such as mass kidnappings, attacks on civilians in villages, schools, as well as attacks on military bases.

Since 2015, the entry into the Sahel of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, also known as Daesh, have led to the loss of thousands of lives. This followed the creation of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara by al-Sahrawi which pledged allegiance to ISIS. In the same year, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. This led to the creation of its breakaway faction -Islamic State West Africa Province.

Islamic State in West Africa Province and Islamic State in Greater Sahara, are known to have attacked military bases in Nigeria, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. The two groups are also known for kidnapping civilians for ransom. This is in spite of the killing of some key commanders within the groups. Many of these deaths have been attributed to France following military intervention in Mali in 2013.

Recent reports point to the fate of two key leaders. Reports that the leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, has been killed have been confirmed. However reports of the death of the leader of the Islamic State West Africa Province, Abu Musab Al-Barnawi, have not been.

Jihadist groups have soldiered on despite repeated losses before. In the light of recent developments it’s worth assessing how big the presence is of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq the Sahel region.

Origins of entry into the Sahel region
Prior to creating the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, al-Sahrawi had been a member of Polisario Front in Western Sahara, which was fighting for independence from Morocco. In 2012, he joined al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib and would later co-lead a Malian Islamist group, Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa.

He later rose to become a senior commander in al-Mourabitoun, another group affiliated to al-Qaeda, and which is currently part of Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims).

His pledge to the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq was rejected by the leader of al-Mourabitoun, Mokthar Belmokthar, as a way of maintaining the group’s allegiance to al-Qaeda. This led to al-Sahrawi’s defection and the formal establishment of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara in October 2016.

The leadership of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq Core formally accept Islamic State in the Greater Sahara in April 2019.

In 2018 it was estimated that the al-Barnawi-led Islamic State West Africa Province had 3,500 fighters. It operates mostly in parts of north-eastern Nigeria such as Borno state, which is the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency, and the Lake Chad Basin area, which includes Cameroun, Chad and Niger.

In the same year it was estimated that the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara had 300 fighters. It operates mostly along the Liptako-Gourma region and in other parts of Mali and Niger. The group’s relationship with Ansaroul Islam, a Burkina Faso based Jihadi group has increased the number of its fighters, as well as defections by former Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin fighters.

In more recent times, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara has expanded its operations to include areas in Mali such as the Mopti, Gao, and Ménaka regions, the East regions of Burkina Faso and the Tillabery and Tahoua regions of Niger. The goal of both groups remains the establishment of a Salafi-jihadist caliphate in the Sahel, under Sharia law.

Despite the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS Core, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and Islamic State West Africa Province have continued to perpetuate attacks. The death of al-Shawari and the unconfirmed death of al-Barnawi, is unlikely to make much of a difference in the operations of these groups across the Sahel.

Defeating ISIS in the Sahel
Jihadist groups have over the years demonstrated their ability to put in place internal governance structures that allow for continuity in the event of unforeseen contingencies such as the death of a leader or commander. The recent takeover of the Taliban in Afghanistan serves to further embolden these groups.

While domestic and international security forces continually attempt to degrade, dismantle, and defeat these groups through the capture or killing of high value targets, a more result-oriented approach would be to address the underlying political and socio-economic factors that fuel their activities in the region. In addition, more efforts aimed at discrediting the influence of these groups must be prioritised.
Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! Toysmatrix is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – info@toysmatrix.com. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

Posted for fair use.....

Did Joe Biden Just Give a Green Light To An EU Army?

By giving any hope of U.S. support for an EU Army, the Biden administration is playing with fire.

www.19fortyfive.com

THE EMBASSY
Did Joe Biden Just Give A Green Light To An EU Army?

By Daniel Kochis
Published 1 day ago

President Joe Biden’s ill-conceived and terribly executed Afghanistan withdrawal has already cast a shadow on transatlantic security, reenergizing the dreams of some in Europe for an independent European Union (EU) defense capability. The renewed focus on strategic autonomy and increased efforts to foster European defense integration erodes the transatlantic link and undermines NATO.

Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg sounded the alarm. “We’ve been pushing for more European allies to do more on defense, but not as an alternative but as part of NATO,” he noted, adding “any attempt to establish parallel structures, to duplicate the command structure, will weaken our joint capability to work together because with scarce resources we need to prevent duplication,”

That, however, hasn’t stopped Josep Borrell, who has taken the role of chief proselytizer for an EU Army now that Jean-Claude Juncker is retired. The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Borrell recently lamented, “Afghanistan has shown that the deficiency in our strategic autonomy comes with a price,” therefore “the only way forward is to combine our forces and to strengthen not only our capacity, but also our will to act.”

France which has long called for an independent EU defense force, has also renewed its push to attract new adherents and make this dangerous idea a reality. The recently announced security pact between Australia, the UK, and U.S. hasn’t gone down well in Paris, leading Elysée to double down on calls for EU Strategic Autonomy.

The Biden administration for its part is now in full “DO SOMETHING” mode. (It needs to find a quick distraction from Afghanistan is likely part of the reason the AUKUS was so diplomatically mishandled in the first place.) It now seems likely the Administration will throw the French a bone, at least rhetorically, by politely pretending Macron’s dreams on an EU defense force are anything but ludicrous.

The polite intonations have already begun. A joint statement on the call between President Biden and President Macron issued Wednesday noted, “The United States also recognizes the importance of a stronger and more capable European defense, that contributes positively to transatlantic and global security and is complementary to NATO.”

Seeking to smooth the choppy waters of Franco-American relations, the Biden administration may wittingly or unwittingly stumble into another crisis, one with very dangerous implications.

Make no mistake, throwing U.S. support behind EU defense initiatives would undermine NATO collective defense, speed up a process of transatlantic decoupling, and alienate many of our allies in eastern and central Europe, most of whom are dubious of EU defense.

Countries facing an existential threat on their eastern border are naturally wary of any moves that would sever ties with the U.S. and weaken NATO, leaving them beholden to a phantom EU Army when Putin comes knocking.

Under both Democrat and Republican presidents, the U.S. has made the argument that Europe needs to do more in terms of defense capabilities. This, however, must be done via the NATO umbrella rather than under the supranational purview of the EU bureaucracy in Brussels.

An independent EU military is, by its nature, incapable of complementarity with NATO. The reality— which Western adversaries clearly know, and most European nations admit in private—is that EU defense is a paper tiger that will not be rectified through defense integration. Rather, a robust U.S.-led NATO alliance is the only true guarantor of transatlantic security.

Need further proof? Consider that in November 2018, Vladimir Putin called the potential of an EU Army “a positive process,” saying that it would “strengthen the multipolar world.” Putin knows EU defense is a sideshow, a pet initiative of a few committed EU integrationists and American leftists that will weaken NATO and eventually push the U.S. back across the Atlantic.

The Afghanistan debacle and Australian submarine row has indeed sparked a new round of calls in some corners of Europe for capabilities to act independent of the U.S.

The EU, however, will never be able to provide the peace and stability that NATO—with feet firmly planted in both North America and Europe for the past 70 years—has delivered and will continue to deliver. While EU-led defense initiatives may be able to provide some defense improvements at the margins, the outsized costs include decisions that enervate NATO, exacerbate existing fractures within Europe, and severely stress the transatlantic link.

By giving any hope of U.S. support for an EU Army, the Biden administration is playing with fire. Congress and the administration would do well to pour cold water on the idea before it spreads.

Daniel Kochis is the senior policy analyst for European affairs in The Heritage Foundation’s Thatcher Center for Freedom.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Three PM hopefuls call for Japan to continue with nuclear fuel recycle program

Taro Kono, the only contender who has pushed for phasing out nuclear power, went against his leadership rivals and said Japan should pivot away from fuel recycling 'as soon as possible.'

www.japantimes.co.jp

Three PM hopefuls call for Japan to continue with nuclear fuel recycling program

• From left: Taro Kono, Fumio Kishida, Sanae Takaichi and Seiko Noda hold an online discussion meeting with citizens at the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo on Saturday. | KYODO

• KYODO

• Sep 26, 2021

Three of the four candidates vying to lead the Liberal Democratic Party called Sunday for Japan to maintain its nuclear fuel recycling program as they geared up for the last few days of campaigning prior to Wednesday’s vote.

During a Fuji TV program, vaccination minister Taro Kono, the only contender who has pushed for phasing out nuclear power generation, went against his leadership rivals and said Japan should pivot away from fuel recycling “as soon as possible.”

On the other hand, Seiko Noda, executive acting secretary-general of the LDP, said the process is necessary to ensure a stable power supply.

The process involves recovering plutonium from spent nuclear fuel in order to recycle it.

Former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and former internal affairs minister Sanae Takaichi said power companies cannot run nuclear power plants if Japan stops the fuel recycling program.

Kono wasn’t keen for the government to introduce small modular reactors, as called for by Kishida and Takaichi, saying they are not economically viable and that he does not know of any sites in Japan where they can be built.

Besides calling for the introduction of the reactors, Kishida and Takaichi have advocated for restarts of idled nuclear reactors and the introduction of nuclear fusion reactors as part of efforts to achieve the nation’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Most of the country’s nuclear reactors have been offline since the 2011 Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster. Small modular reactors are said to be cheaper to produce and safer to run than conventional reactors, while nuclear fusion reactors do not emit high-level radioactive waste.

On the Fuji program, Kono and Takaichi said the government should consider acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
But Kishida and Noda were more cautious on that idea, with Noda citing Japan’s three non-nuclear principles of not producing, possessing or allowing the introduction of nuclear weapons.

The LDP vote effectively decides the successor to outgoing Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga as the party currently controls the House of Representatives.

The four hopefuls were also divided over whether, as prime minister, they would visit the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine. Such visits draw the ire of China and South Korea, which each see the facility as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.

Takaichi said she would, citing freedom of religion, while Kono and Noda said they would not. Kishida said he would decide after studying the situation.

Noda said the public has yet to form a consensus on Yasukini, which honors millions of war dead including Class-A war criminals. Kono, for his part, said it will be important to first create an environment where the emperor and heads of state of other countries can visit the shrine.

 

[Housecarl]

Well this should be interesting......

Posted for fair use.....

Washington Daily News » Brinkwire

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

en.brinkwire.com

Following the Aukus deal, Scotland could lose its nuclear weapons site, according to plans proposed by Boris.
0
BY HELENA SUTAN ON SEPTEMBER 26, 2021
NEWS

Following the Aukus deal, Scotland could lose its nuclear weapons site, according to plans proposed by Boris.
BORIS JOHNSON is proposing relocating Britain’s nuclear-powered submarines to Australia in order to increase the country’s regional dominance.

Ministers are reportedly planning to leverage the Aukus defence treaty with Australia and the United States to establish a new base in the Indo-Pacific. The Navy’s £1.4 billion Astute-class attack submarines would be maintained in Australia rather than at the Faslane naval facility in Scotland, according to the plans.

It would enable the nuclear deterrent to be stationed in the region for longer periods of time, enhancing Britain’s presence in the region.

Should the SNP’s bid for independence succeed in the future, the proposals would also help to diminish the UK’s reliance on Scotland.

The Prime Minister has often stated that the UK must turn its focus to the Indo-Pacific, warning that it will become the world’s “geopolitical center” in the next decades.

Solidifying alliances with countries in the region, he believes, is critical to Britain’s foreign policy objectives.

Ministers regard the Aukus accord, which was unveiled last week, as a huge step forward in consolidating the UK’s influence.
As part of the agreement, the United Kingdom and the United States will assist Australia in the development of nuclear submarines.

Once Canberra has begun to build its own deterrent, plans to do comprehensive maintenance on Britain’s own fleet will be realized.

The Aukus transaction, according to The Times, “opens up opportunities” for the UK.

“You have another base,” they added.

“You need access to maintenance if you want to have a more consistent presence.”

The majority of submarines are currently deployed for four to five months before returning to Scotland.

Submarines would be able to perform maintenance without having to travel “all the way around the world” if they collaborated with Australia, according to a defense source.

“Having another spot where you can not only berth but also undertake maintenance is a nice thing,” they remarked.
“They’re like lily pads in that there aren’t a lot of them.”

“If there was ever any doubt about what global Britain’s tilt toward the Indo-Pacific would entail in reality or what capabilities we would give, our relationship with Australia and the United States provides the answer,” Mr Johnson said last week.

“It amounts to a new pillar of a policy underlining Britain’s generational commitment to the Indo-security Pacific’s and indicating precisely how we.”Brinkwire Summary News”.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

DNyuz - Latest Breaking U.S. News

Latest Breaking News, U.S. and World Politics, Crime, Business, Science, Technology, Autos, Entertainment, Culture, Movie, Music, Sports.

dnyuz.com

It’s Okay to Play Defense Against Terrorism
September 26, 2021
in News

If you’ve turned on any cable–news channel or opened any newspaper or magazine since most of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last month, you can see a clear narrative emerging: The terrorists are returning, and they will attack us. This chorus is coming not just from media commentators or the partisan critics of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the country; Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley are now sounding the alarm, as are two top intelligence officials in the Biden administration. Depending on whom you listen to, the U.S. military’s departure will offer morale boosts or new havens to al-Qaeda and ISIS. By some accounts, al-Qaeda may end up even more powerful than it was on 9/11. Strikes from “over the horizon”—if we can gather sufficient intelligence—and a renewed strong CIA presence in the region are the only things that supposedly may save the United States from an attack. Not even the horror of the military’s disastrous final strike in Kabul, which raised grave questions about the drone program’s tactics and effectiveness, could dampen the drumbeat for constant military pressure to keep the threat at bay.

I have not seen the latest classified threat reporting, so I can’t comment on the current threat or how it compares with other terrorist threats I have tracked in my career. Perhaps al-Qaeda is regenerating rapidly after years of devastating losses—though I’m skeptical. What I do know is that in the current debate, the dangers of global offensive operations are underappreciated, and America’s defenses are underestimated.

It’s okay to play defense against terrorism. That’s because we have gotten really good at defense. As the U.S. military has fought seemingly endless overseas wars, other parts of the government have simultaneously built a layered defense that has arguably been far more effective than military operations at keeping the country safe.

Consider just a few of the biggest post-9/11 reforms. The U.S. government established the Department of Homeland Security, federalized aviation security, and nearly quintupled homeland-security spending. For all the jokes that travelers make about the TSA, the agency has quietly developed procedures and technologies to detect explosives anywhere a terrorist could hide them—in luggage, liquids, electronic devices, shoes, even underwear—and made it far harder for terrorists to board an airplane with a false identity.

The FBI has completely reinvented itself as a national-security agency and dedicated thousands of agents and analysts to the mission. It has worked closely with state and local law enforcement, which have made their own investments in counterterrorism. As a result of such efforts, the federal government has successfully prosecuted nearly 700 international terrorism cases. Countless more terrorist suspects have been deported or extradited to other countries for prosecution. The FBI assesses that America’s greatest terrorist threat today comes from lone actors—both those inspired by al-Qaeda and ISIS as well as those motivated by white nationalism or other racial or ethnic animus. The agency has thousands of open investigations into a threat that by definition cannot be disrupted with overseas military operations.

The U.S. government now includes a cabinet-level Director of National Intelligence. It also has a National Counterterrorism Center dedicated to tracking terrorist threats and preventing the kinds of lapses in intelligence sharing that contributed to 9/11. The U.S. intelligence community works closely with its counterparts around the world, and has stopped several major plots by doing so. The 2006 al-Qaeda plan to bomb several airliners using liquid explosives was thwarted when British authorities, which had been monitoring the plotting with U.S. intelligence for months, arrested 24 suspects before they could strike. Two plots by an al-Qaeda offshoot to target passenger and cargo aircraft were reportedly disrupted via U.S. cooperation with Saudi intelligence.

The international community has also united to prevent perhaps our most worrisome threat, nuclear terrorism. Beginning in the 1990s, governments have secured large quantities of loose nuclear materials and intercepted two dozen questionable shipments of nuclear material. Tens of thousands of radiation detectors have been distributed across the United States, including fixed sensors at ports of entry and mobile sensors that can be deployed to special events or in response to specific intelligence.

International law-enforcement cooperation through Interpol and other mechanisms has been strengthened, allowing for the sharing of information on terrorist suspects and improved tracking of terrorist travel. After tens of thousands of terrorist fighters surged to Iraq and Syria in 2014 and 2015, a United Nations–backed multinational effort reduced this flow to a trickle by emphasizing information sharing, law enforcement, and passenger tracking. Turkey’s efforts to prevent terrorist transit, including by securing its border-crossing points with Syria, allowed it to deport or deny entry to nearly 6,000 fighters in 2015 and 2016.

The private sector has invested in security to protect crucial infrastructure. Social-media companies have worked with the government to shut down terrorist propaganda by removing millions of pieces of content and purging millions of accounts in recent years. The financial sector has adopted reforms, bolstered by government enforcement mechanisms, that tightly limit the ability of terrorist groups and their backers to finance a global set of operations like they did before 9/11. All U.S. airlines have installed armored cockpit doors to thwart hijackers. Metal detectors screen us all before sporting events and concerts.

These are only a few examples of how our government and our society reoriented themselves after 9/11. These defenses are demonstrably imperfect. But a complex terrorist attack presents various points at which it might be disrupted, and this interconnected net of defenses is designed to do just that. Further, even if the benefits of each individual bit of security are incremental, they add up to substantial layered defenses. There are areas for reform, to be sure, but we have to acknowledge that the system the U.S. has painstakingly built has kept us safe.

None of this is to dismiss the international terrorist threats we face. I have worked on counterterrorism issues at the Pentagon, the White House, and a think tank for more than a decade. I have sat in meetings about a terrifying stream of terrorist plots against the United States. And I have provided advice about drone strikes and military operations targeting the very terrorists who would do us harm.

But many people in these forums—both inside government and out—seem to believe that relying on our defenses is insufficiently tough, that we must not be complacent when faced with a threat that we’re told is always metastasizing and always potent, no matter what we have done to defeat it. The world’s indispensable power is supposed to shape global events, the argument goes, not react to them.

This is a dangerous mindset, a kind of macho approach to foreign-policy making that helped unleash and sustain a 20-year war in the first place. The notion that the U.S. should tolerate no risk, and that military operations overseas will help eliminate risk, has led us to fumble our way through one conflict after another, messing with local dynamics that we don’t understand and perpetuating the chaos on which terrorists thrive.

Far from showing weakness, relying on our defenses as the option of first resort could actually strengthen us as a nation—by allowing us to invest in other national-security challenges and freeing us from the strategic and moral compromises we have made over the past two decades to implement our counterterrorism operations.

Extremists will always be drawn to al-Qaeda and ISIS, and those groups will probably never give up trying to attack us. And yes, there will be times when all else fails and we must use military force to stop the most dangerous plots. But we can be both safe and strong without constantly bombing suspected terrorists thousands of miles from America’s shores, if only we trust our defenses to do what we designed them to do.

The post It’s Okay to Play Defense Against Terrorism appeared first on The Atlantic.

 

[jward]

Chinese scientists eye hypersonic weapon able to ‘fry’ telecoms systems in 10 seconds ​

• Travelling at six times the speed of sound, evading radars along the way, the proposed weapon would be able to strike targets 3,000km away
• Intense electromagnetic pulse or microwaves produced upon explosion would be able to ‘burn out’ key electronic devices within a 2km range

A new type of long-distance hypersonic weapon proposed by rocket scientists in Beijing aims to wipe out communication and power supply lines over a 2km area. Photo: Shutterstock

Defeat an army without a fight and without casualties? Quite possible, if a new type of hypersonic weapon proposed by a team of rocket scientists in China becomes reality.
Designed to generate intense electromagnetic pulse capable of wiping out communication and power supply lines, the weapon would have a range of 3,000km – about the distance from China’s east coast to Guam. Cruising at six times the speed of sound, it would cover this distance in 25 minutes.
Unlike ballistic missiles, it would stay within the earth’s atmosphere to dodge space-based early warning systems, while using active stealth technology to avoid detection by radars on the ground, according to the team of researchers at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology in Beijing.

And when the weapon explodes over the target area, no lives would be at risk. Rather, the strong electromagnetic waves produced would “cause the effective burnout of key electronic devices in the target information network within a range of 2km,” engineering scientist Sun Zheng and his co-researchers at the China Academy said in a paper published this month, in a domestic journal titled Tactical Missile Technology.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/sci...nmanned-plane?module=hard_link&pgtype=article
Early EMP weapons required a nuclear warhead to generate the pulse energy, and this restricted their applications, whereas the hypersonic EMP weapon would use chemical explosives instead, Sun’s team said.

The chemical explosion would compress an electrically charged magnet known as a “flux compression generator”, which would convert the shock energy to short but extremely powerful bursts of microwaves.
A non-nuclear EMP bomb is known to be heavy and bulky because it needs to carry a large quantity of batteries to store enough electricity to trigger the explosion. This kind of bomb is usually airdropped from a plane.

In 2017, the United States had considered using a large cruise missile with an EMP warhead to paralyse North Korea’s nuclear facilities, according to US Air Force researchers.

However, that plan was not implemented, in part due to fears that North Korea would be able to detect the incoming missile and launch a retaliatory strike, possibly nuclear.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/mil...netic-warfare?module=hard_link&pgtype=article
Sun and his co-researchers say a major advantage of their new weapon is that the enemy would not know it was on the way.

When an object travels through the air at hypervelocity, air molecules are ionised by the heat and form a thin layer of plasma over the object’s surface. The plasma cloak can absorb radar signals, but not all.

To achieve all-around stealthiness, the weapon designed by Sun’s team would convert the environmental heat (usually at temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius) to electricity, and use that electricity to power numerous plasma generators located in different areas of the body of the missile.
A Nanjing-based hypersonic researcher not involved in the project said the idea was feasible, because heat conversion and plasma generation technology is already in use in drag reduction or flight control for hypersonic flights, according to openly available information.


China’s PLA conducts air force drills after US warships sail in contested South China Sea
To achieve the light weight necessary for hypersonic speed, the weapon would not carry any battery, according to the team of researchers.

Instead, it would use super-capacitors with a power density 20 times that of batteries. These capacitors would be charged on the fly, using energy from the heat-to-electricity generator.
“It can release 95 per cent of the energy in just 10 seconds, suitable for instantaneous discharge to cause electromagnetic pulse damage,” the team wrote.

“The active stealth electromagnetic pulse weapon based on energy regeneration conforms to the current development trend of rapid warfare, strong confrontation, and full-dimensional information damage,” they said.
The weapon is still at the conceptual stage. However, the researchers are confident that, “with the continuous emergence of test equipment and technology, it will play a fundamental role” in China’s next-generation weapon systems.

Can this hypersonic weapon help China defeat armies without casualty? Possibly

Intense electromagnetic waves produced upon explosion of the proposed weapon would ‘burn out’ key electronic devices within a 2km target range.

www.scmp.com

 

[danielboon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1442189723477364736

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1442189723477364736

 

[danielboon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1442188355563839492

View: https://mobile.twitter.com/theragex/status/1442188355563839492

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......The term "free rider" comes to mind.....

Posted for fair use.....

Outlook India Magazine Online- Read News India, Latest News Analysis, World, Sports, Entertainment | Best Online Magazine India

Outlook covers the latest India news, analysis, business news and long-form stories on culture, money market and personal finance. Read India's best online magazine.

www.outlookindia.com

With the AUKUS alliance confronting China, New Zealand should ramp up its anti-nuclear diplomacy

27 September 2021 Last Updated at 9:29 am | Source: PTI

By Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato

Hamilton, Sep 27 (The Conversation) New Zealand might not be part of the recently revealed security agreement between the US, Britain and Australia (AUKUS), but it certainly can’t avoid the diplomatic and strategic fallout.

Under the pact, Australia stands to gain nuclear-powered submarine capability, with the US seeking greater military basing rights in the region. ASEAN allies have had to be reassured over fears the region is being nuclearised.

Unsurprisingly, China and Russia both reacted negatively to the AUKUS arrangement. France, which lost out on a lucrative submarine contract with Australia, felt betrayed and offended.

But behind the shifting strategic priorities the new agreement represents – specifically, the rise of an “Indo-Pacific” security focus aimed at containing China – lies a nuclear threat that is growing.

Already there have been warnings from China that AUKUS could put Australia in the atomic cross-hairs. Of course, it probably already was, with the Pine Gap intelligence facility a likely target.

While New Zealand’s nuclear-free status makes it a less obvious target, it is an integral part of the Five Eyes intelligence network. Whether that would make the Waihopai spy base an attractive target in a nuclear conflict is known only to the country’s potential enemies.


100 seconds to midnight


What we do know, however, is that nuclear catastrophe remains a very real possibility. According to the so-called Doomsday Clock, it is currently 100 seconds to midnight — humanity’s extinction point should some or all of the planet’s 13,100 nuclear warheads be launched.

The US and Russia account for most of these, with 1,550 many of these deployed on high alert (meaning they can be fired within 15 minutes of an order) and thousands more stockpiled.

The other members of the “nuclear club” – France, Britain, Israel, India, North Korea, Pakistan and China – are estimated to possess over 1,000 more.

Most of these warheads are much larger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. US, Russian and Chinese investment in the development of a new generation of hypersonic missiles has raised fears of a new arms race.


The Trump legacy


From New Zealand’s point of view, this is more than disappointing. Having gone nuclear free in the 1980s, it worked hard to export the policy and promote disarmament. The high-tide was in 2017 when 122 countries signed the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

But the nine nuclear-capable countries simply shrugged. The Trump administration even wrote to the signatories to say they had made “a strategic error” that “turns back the clock on verification and disarmament” and urged them to rescind their ratification.

President Donald Trump then began popping rivets out of the international frameworks keeping the threat of nuclear war in check. He quit the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which prohibited short- to medium-range nukes in Europe, and the Open Skies agreement, which allowed flights through national air space to monitor compliance.

He also quit the multi-national agreement restricting Iran’s nuclear programme (despite Iran’s compliance) and failed to denuclearise North Korea, despite much fanfare. The bilateral START agreement limiting US and Russian nukes survived, but China rebuffed Trump’s idea of a trilateral nuclear pact.

Nor is the clock ticking backwards with Joe Biden in the White House. Although he extended START, the Iran deal hasn’t been resurrected and there’s been no breakthrough with a still provocative North Korea.

Both the INF and the Open Skies agreements lie dormant, and the AUKUS pact has probably seen US-Chinese relations hit a new low.



Time for renewed action


While it makes sense for New Zealand to maintain and promote its nuclear-free policy, it must also be pragmatic about reducing tension and risk, particularly in its own region. Being outside the AUKUS agreement and being on good terms with China is a good start.

Not being a nuclear state might mean New Zealand lacks clout or credibility in such a process. But the other jilted ally outside the AUKUS relationship, France, is both a nuclear power and has strong interests in the region.

Like China, France sits outside the main framework of US-Russia nuclear regulation. Now may well be the time for France to turn its anger over the AUKUS deal into genuine leadership and encourage China into a rules-based system. This is where New Zealand could help.

The Christchurch Call initiative, led by Jacinda Ardern and French president Emmanuel Macron after the 2019 terrorist attack, shows New Zealand and France can cooperate well. Now may be the chance to go one step further, where the country that went nuclear free works with the country that bombed the Rainbow Warrior, and together start to talk to China.

This would involve discussions about weapons verification and safety measures in the Indo-Pacific region, including what kinds of thresholds might apply and on what terms nuclear parity might be established and reduced.

Such an initiative might be difficult and slow — and for many hard to swallow. But New Zealand has the potential to be an honest broker, and has a voice that just might be heard above the ticking of that clock.

As UN Secretary General António Guterres warned only last week: “We are on the edge of an abyss and moving in the wrong direction. Our world has never been more threatened or more divided.” (The Conversation)
AMS
AMS
TAGS

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: PTI

 

[Housecarl]

Tick, tick, tick......

Posted for fair use.....

Why Tehran must never have a nuclear weapon

Saudi Arabia has condemned Iran’s behavior in general, and the regime’s efforts to obtain a nuclear bomb in particular, following Tehran’s failure to cooperate with the UN agency that monitors its nuclear program. This condemnation is shared by the wider region, which is watching as the Islamic...

www.arabnews.com

Why Tehran must never have a nuclear weapon

DR. HAMDAN AL-SHEHRI
September 26, 202122:13

Saudi Arabia has condemned Iran’s behavior in general, and the regime’s efforts to obtain a nuclear bomb in particular, following Tehran’s failure to cooperate with the UN agency that monitors its nuclear program. This condemnation is shared by the wider region, which is watching as the Islamic Republic’s criminal activities provoke crises and threaten stability in the Gulf.

Tehran’s threat leaves the entire world at risk because of the Gulf’s vital importance to security and the global economy. After more than a decade, it is no longer acceptable for the world to stand by and watch Iran’s nuclear efforts without tightening its grip on the project, which poses a great danger in view of Iranian behavior, which has been anything but peaceful since the country’s revolution.

Saudi Arabian concerns over Iran’s dealings with International Atomic Energy Agency came after the Tehran regime initially refused to allow new memory cards to be installed in surveillance cameras monitoring its nuclear sites, prompting accusations that Iran had been stonewalling the agency’s investigations and impeding its activities.

Effective monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program is essential if there is to be any possible agreement between Iran and world powers. However, as any experienced Iran observer will know, the latest issue is simply part of a game to gain time, a card that Tehran is playing with the international community as part of its quest to build a nuclear weapon.

Tehran’s destabilizing efforts are numerous, ranging from its support for terrorist militias and harboring members of terror groups to the supplying of ballistic missiles and drones to militants in the region. Alongside this runs the regime’s ugly human rights record. The failure to hold Iran responsible for these flagrant violations of international norms and laws means Tehran now believes it is beyond accountability, which encourages the regime to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

That is why the Kingdom voiced concerns about Iran’s non-compliance with the nuclear safeguards agreement and its lack of transparency with the IAEA, since this constitutes a threat to the agency and affects the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Tehran’s destabilizing efforts are numerous, ranging from its support for terrorist militias and harboring members of terror groups to the supplying of ballistic missiles and drones to militants in the region.
Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri

Saudi Arabia supports all international efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, as well as the development of a nuclear non-proliferation regime in the region and the world. The Kingdom has repeatedly called for action on the nuclear threat and for the Middle East to be free of nuclear weapons.

In this regard, Saudi Arabia highlighted the importance of fully implementing the 1995 resolution on the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East.

Riyadh also adheres to a national policy that guarantees the highest standards of transparency, credibility and security. It is also working on developing peaceful uses of nuclear technology in various fields, including a national nuclear energy project.

Saudi Arabia held talks with several other countries at the IAEA general conference in Vienna last week, including the US delegation led by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

There is no doubt that benefiting from nuclear energy is of great importance, but ignoring regimes that refuse to observe international laws and spread devastation is as dangerous as the nuclear bomb itself. The international community must fulfil its responsibilities and not allow Tehran to possess nuclear weapons — or else it will be lost.

Iran and the world powers have abandoned their greatest responsibilities in the region, a failure that may, in turn, lead to wars and conflicts whose consequences will be catastrophic and extend beyond the region itself.

• Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri is a political analyst and international relations scholar. Twitter: @DrHamsheri

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

 

[Housecarl]

Interesting that now this is getting spun by the "Establishment".....

Posted for fair use.....

John Bolton warns Taliban may get nuclear weapons amid Afghanistan withdrawal

Former national security adviser John Bolton blasted President Biden’s botched handling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

nypost.com

John Bolton warns Taliban may get nuclear weapons amid Afghanistan withdrawal
By Mark Moore
September 26, 2021 2:32pm Updated

Former national security adviser John Bolton blasted President Biden’s botched handling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan and said it could lead to the Taliban getting nuclear weapons.

“The Taliban in control of Afghanistan threatens the possibility of terrorists taking control of Pakistan … that means maybe 150 nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists,” Bolton told John Catsimatidis in an interview on his WABC 770 radio show on Sunday.

“China, which already has a lot of influence in Pakistan, is going to increase its influence and put more pressure on India. This is a big development in that part of the world,” he continued.
Bolton served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019 in former President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Taliban mounted a rapid military campaign as the Biden administration began removing US forces, seizing territory and capturing provincial capitals, including Kabul, in just nine days.

The White House scrambled to rescue American citizens and Afghan allies after the takeover, but the operation turned into chaos as thousands of Afghans streamed toward the airport in Kabul to flee Taliban rule and 13 US service members were killed in a suicide bombing by ISIS-K terrorists.

Bolton said Biden embarrassed the US on the world stage and now allies are “wondering if he has a grip on his own administration’s foreign policy.”

But Bolton praised Biden for his nuclear submarine deal with Australia that irked France so much it canceled a gala and recalled its envoys from the US and Australia.

“It’s a huge step forward for us in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. It’s a real signal to China that we are determined not to let them just run wild,” he said.

Bolton also said he doesn’t think the Biden administration is “focused” enough to deal with the threats posed by China.

“I think the United States must look at China and the threat it poses across the board. They’ve been stealing our intellectual property for decades … They discriminate against foreign companies and investors. They manipulate the World Trade Organization. They are building up their military… And they are very aggressive politically,” Bolton said.

“The United States needs to come to grips with this threat … and needs to be prepared for a long struggle across the full spectrum of potential power — economic, political and military … I don’t think the administration is focused,” he said.

 

[jward]

I think ya should lock this thread o'er night, it gave me nightmares
Tick, tick, tick......

 

[jward]

iiss.org


What does AUKUS mean for Europe’s Indo-Pacific strategies?

What does AUKUS mean for Europe’s Indo-Pacific strategies?​

Australia’s announcement that it would cancel its ‘deal of the century’ with France to build a flotilla of diesel-electric submarines for its navy in favour of acquiring nuclear-powered ‘boats’ (SSNs) with assistance from the United Kingdom and United States within the framework of a new regional security arrangement, AUKUS, sent seismic waves through the government and expert communities in the Indo-Pacific. Much attention has subsequently focused on the reasons for Australia’s drastic change of course, the implications for the regional balance of power, and the prospect of nuclear-powered submarine technology proliferating further. But the bombshell also has ramifications for the future engagement of European states and the European Union in Indo-Pacific security and defence.

The advent of AUKUS has highlighted different approaches and levels of commitment among Western states to Indo-Pacific security in the face of growing Chinese power and strategic extroversion. Australia’s shift in posture reflects a hard-headed assessment that, given the challenge it perceives from China, even closer strategic and operational alignment with its American ally is required. Simultaneously, the UK’s membership of the arrangement (which reportedly originated in a bilateral discussion between the Australian and British naval chiefs) signals its common purpose in the Indo-Pacific with Australia and the US in a long-term effort to push back against China.

Even before the announcement, this year London had signalled a major national commitment to Indo-Pacific security with the arrival of a British carrier strike group (including US and Dutch ships, and US aircraft) in the region, the assignment of two Royal Navy patrol vessels for permanent stationing in the Indo-Pacific, and the establishment of a Royal Navy/Royal Marines Littoral Response Group for the region. AUKUS locks the UK’s growing regional security role even more closely into long-term partnership with the US and Australia. Rumours already suggest that Australia’s new, nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) might be based on the UK’s Astute-class. It is also conceivable that a British Astute-class boat could be based at the Australian submarine base in Western Australia to help Australia’s navy to develop its SSN capability.

European strategic ambiguity
AUKUS thus confirms the UK as the European power with the most significant strategic and defence engagement in the Indo-Pacific. To be sure, France has also intensified its security and defence involvement in the region. In March 2018, President Emmanuel Macron launched France’s Indo-Pacific strategy – a response by Paris to the US Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy that the Trump administration unveiled in late 2017. The strategy outlined by Macron emphasised France’s status as an established power in the Indian and Pacific oceans, where it retained territories and naval facilities, as well as important strategic and economic interests. Subsequently, France stepped up its naval presence in the Indo-Pacific, sending a strike group based on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle there in 2019. In 2021, French forces also conducted joint exercises with the US and Japan for the first time and led the La Pérouse naval exercise which also involved Australia, India, Japan and the US.

France also enhanced its military cooperation with US Indo-Pacific Command. However, its approach to the region’s security remained wedded to the notion of ‘European strategic autonomy’. Paris emphasised that its defence engagement in the Indo-Pacific was not tied to US conceptions of ‘strategic competition’ with China and that it did not take sides between Washington and Beijing. Successive Indo-Pacific strategy statements from Germany, the Netherlands and the European Union reflected similar strategic ambiguity: a recognition of shifting power dynamics in the Indo-Pacific and the need for some security engagement on the one hand, but a desire to stay out of the big strategic game on the other.
Germany’s decision to send the frigate Bayern to the Indo-Pacific was a case in point: to the consternation of partners such as Australia and Japan, the ship’s original planned itinerary included a Chinese port visit. And the latest version of the EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy (released the day after AUKUS was announced) seeks ‘ways to ensure enhanced naval deployments’ by member states to the region, but is still a long way from embracing strategic competition with China. However, the signs are that this understandable continental European impulse to avoid making hard choices in this era of sustained and growing great-power competition will become increasingly difficult to sustain. Hard power increasingly matters in the Indo-Pacific strategic equation, and the sudden and unexpected announcement of AUKUS threw this challenge for France, other European states and the EU into even sharper relief.
France will continue to play an important role in Indo-Pacific security as the only European power other than the UK with significant military power-projection capabilities, and will seek to strengthen its defence and security links with India among other regional states. Moreover, Germany is already seeking incrementally to strengthen its defence activities with Australia, Japan and others – as was evident, for example, in the letter of intent on ‘military space partnership’ signed last week with Australia.

That said, AUKUS confronts European powers with uncomfortable questions about their willingness and capacity to contribute to a hard-power response to the Indo-Pacific’s increasingly tense strategic circumstances. The UK’s involvement in AUKUS will be consequential as British forces will now be integrated more closely and synergistically with those of Australia and the US. The UK is also likely to enhance further its defence cooperation with Japan. The new reality created by AUKUS will thus cast an unfavourable light on the lack of hard-power substance in the regional strategies of other European states and the EU.

Reality check in store
The broad remit of AUKUS beyond the development of Australia’s SSNs to include cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and undersea domains could act as a magnet for cooperation by European powers that wish to ensure that their contributions to Indo-Pacific security are part of a purposeful strategy, well-coordinated with that of the US. Yet, it remains to be seen whether European governments will be able to resolve a first-order strategic conundrum regarding their Indo-Pacific engagement: the need to reconcile their desire to avoid hard choices between the US and China with the realities of a deteriorating Indo-Pacific regional security environment.

Tellingly, France’s diplomatic activism in courting India as an enhanced security partner within days of the AUKUS announcement signalled an intention to engage with a notionally still ‘non-aligned’ major Indo-Pacific power. But, not least through the ‘Quad’, New Delhi has been moving closer in strategic terms to Australia, Japan and the US, driven by a far-reaching reassessment of China’s challenge. In this new strategic dynamic, Europe’s equidistant approach towards Indo-Pacific defence engagement will increasingly face a reality check.

Posted For Fair Use

What does AUKUS mean for Europe’s Indo-Pacific strategies?

For European powers, AUKUS raises uncomfortable questions about their willingness and capacity to contribute to a hard-power response in the Indo-Pacific. As Tim Huxley and Ben Schreer argue, their policies of strategic ambiguity will become increasingly difficult to sustain.

www.iiss.org

 

[danielboon]

India successfully flight-tests new version of Akash missile

Read more at:
akash: India successfully flight-tests new version of Akash missile | India News - Times of India

 

[Techwreck]

Quite a list of increasingly hot conflict zones.

I appreciate the folks keeping us abreast of the international scene, I think.
Maybe ignorance is bliss?

 

[jward]

Understanding Hypersonic Weapons: Managing the Allure and the Risks

Shannon Bugos and Kingston Reif
An Arms Control Association Report
September 2021

https://www.armscontrol.org/sites/default/files/files/Reports/ACA_Report_HypersonicWeapons_2021.pdf

report: https://armscontrol.org/reports/2021/u

 

[jward]

DARPA Reveals Successful Hypersonic Cruise Missile Flight Test Has Occurred
The announcement of the successful flight test follows months of delays for the highly classified program.
By Brian O'Rourke and Joseph Trevithick
September 27, 2021

Northrop Grumman/Raytheon




The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the successful free flight test of an air-breathing hypersonic cruise missile demonstrator developed by Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. This comes more than a year after the announcement of successful captive-carry tests of this weapon, as well as a competing design from Lockheed Martin, as part of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept program, or HAWC.
The announcement of this test of the Raytheon/Northrop Grumman missile came earlier today in a press release, but the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), working together with the U.S. Air Force, conducted it last week. The U.S. Navy was also involved in the test. DARPA's official statement does not provide any update on any similar progress on the Lockheed Martin design.

DARPA

An artist's conception of an air-breathing hypersonic missile that DARPA previously released in relation to the HAWC program.

"The HAWC free flight test was a successful demonstration of the capabilities that will make hypersonic cruise missiles a highly effective tool for our warfighters,” Andrew "Tippy" Knoedler, the HAWC Program Manager at DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, said in a statement. "This brings us one step closer to transitioning HAWC to a program of record that offers next generation capability to the U.S military."

"Goals of the mission were: vehicle integration and release sequence, safe separation from the launch aircraft, booster ignition and boost, booster separation and engine ignition, and cruise," DARPA's press release added. "All primary test objectives were met."


Details about the Raytheon/Northrop Grumman design are limited. Little information has been released as to this weapon's overall performance, as well. Hypersonic speed is simply defined as anything above Mach 5.
We do know that is the main source of power is a scramjet engine, a type of propulsion that only works effectively at very high speeds, to begin with. As such, as DARPA noted in its description of the test goals, the missile requires a rocket booster to provide an initial burst of acceleration before the scramjet kicks in.

The scramjet engine takes advantage of high-speed airflow through a combustor to produce large amounts of thrust. The underlying ramjet engine lacks the spinning compressors typically found on jet engines and instead uses inlet and internal geometry to compress and accelerate the airflow through the engine. A scramjet ups the ante compared to a ramjet by forcing the airflow inside at supersonic speeds. Fuel is then injected into the supersonic air and ignited.
Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have said in the past that the overall design of the missile leverages past work the companies have done on hypersonic aerospace vehicles, including the X-43A hypersonic test vehicle project for NASA that ran from the 1990s to the early 2000s. DARPA also specifically highlighted its past work on the Rockwell X-30 National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) project in the 1980s and 1990s.


The scramjet engine inside the Raytheon/Northrop Grumman missile is also reportedly half the weight of the one found inside the X-51 Waverider, another hypersonic test vehicle that Boeing developed for DARPA 2000s and that was flight tested in the 2010s. The test last week marks the first successful flight, at least that has been made public, of a U.S. scramjet-powered air vehicle since 2013. The fourth and only fully successful test flight of the X-51A took on May 1 of that year.

It is worth pointing out that Lockheed Martin's design follows the same general concept, using a rocket booster to accelerate the main air vehicle, which is powered by a different scramjet developed by Aerojet Rocketdyne. What was then Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne had developed the SJY61 scramjet for the X-51A. Lockheed Martin is now in the process of trying to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne.

Joseph Trevithick

An artist's conception of a hypersonic missile that Lockheed Martin previously released that is related to its HAWC design.


DARPA's current plan is to wrap up the HAWC program in the 2022 Fiscal Year, which starts on Friday. At that point, the plan is, at least in part, for technologies developed under HAWC to feed into the Air Force's own Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) project.

Assuming no overlap, this suggests an early-mid 2022 completion of HAWC with the AF completing the Critical Design review on HACM by the summer of 2023. If these timelines hold, it would appear that HACM is running about 3 years behind the ARRW program. #Hypersonic pic.twitter.com/Y40Vavj2fJ
— Air Power (@MIL_STD) August 15, 2021​

HACM is just one of a number of air-launched, air-breathing hypersonic weapon programs, as well as hypersonic aircraft projects, known to be in development now within the Air Force, as well as the Navy. This includes another Air Force project known as Mayhem, which is focused more on hypersonic engine technology, and a Navy effort called Screaming Arrow. The Navy had curiously canceled Screaming Arrow, which was centered on the development of a hypersonic anti-ship missile, in March, before rebooting it last month.

It's also worth noting that DARPA had originally hoped to begin HAWC flight testing by the end of 2020 and it's not clear how mature either the Raytheon/Northrop Grumman or Lockheed Martin designs may be now. DARPA did not say whether the launch of the Raytheon/Northrop Grumman demonstrator last week was the first flight test of any HAWC air vehicle, successful or not.

This is a list of upcoming missile defense tests. You'll see that MDA will be participating in at four of at least nine planned flight tests of the scramjet-powered HAWC cruise missiles and three tests of the TBG hypersonic glide vehicles. #SMDSymposium pic.twitter.com/qdbfpgF6ul
— Steve Trimble (@TheDEWLine) August 4, 2020​

Just last week, the Air Force also said it is in the process of reassessing its own hypersonic weapons plans, overall. Challenges with the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), which is unrelated to HAWC, have been among the issues prompting this introspection. The first two flight tests of the AGM-183A, which the Air Force hopes will be the U.S. military's first operational air-launched hypersonic weapon, have failed, as you can read more about here.

“I’m not satisfied with the pace,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said at the annual Air Force Association (AFA) Air, Space, and Cyber Conference last week. “We’re making some progress on the technology. I would like to see it be better."
At the same time, some members of Congress are pushing the U.S. military, as a whole, to make more progress with regard to air-launched hypersonic capabilities of various kinds, and air-breathing platforms in particular. A report accompanying the Senate Armed Services Committee's markup of a draft of the annual U.S. defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was released last week, said, "The committee is concerned that there is a lack of focus on air-launched and airbreathing hypersonic capability."

The U.S. military, as well as many lawmakers, see hypersonic weapons as essential to preserving America's military edge in future conflicts, especially potential high-end fights against near-peer adversaries, such as Russia or China. The Russians and the Chinese are already in the process of developing and fielding their own hypersonic missiles of various types.
No matter what, work on HAWC has always been seen as just one stepping stone to the Air Force, as well as the Navy, fielding operational air-breathing cruise missiles. With this disclosure of this flight test last week, we may now begin to learn more about the exact extent of the progress that DARPA has already made in this regard.


Please see source for additional videos
Posted for fair use

DARPA Reveals Successful Hypersonic Cruise Missile Flight Test Has Occurred

The announcement of the successful flight test follows months of delays for the highly classified program.

www.thedrive.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

Posted for fair use.....

Ukraine is set to buy 24 Turkish drones. So why hasn’t Russia pushed back?

Ukraine hopes to quickly turn around a contract to buy 24 drones from Turkey, but the former’s adversary and the latter’s ally could upend the potential sale.

www.defensenews.com

Unmanned
Ukraine is set to buy 24 Turkish drones. So why hasn’t Russia pushed back?
By Burak Ege Bekdil

Sep 29, 06:59 AM

Ukraine's military took receipt of Bayraktar TB2 drones and more than 420 additional items of materiel in March 2019.

ANKARA, Turkey — Ukraine hopes to quickly turn around a contract to buy 24 drones from Turkey, but the former’s adversary and the latter’s ally could upend the potential sale.

Turkey is Russia’s closest ally in NATO — which Ukraine wants to join — but Ankara and Moscow have diverging interests over Kyiv.

The Ukrainian government announced Sept. 15 that it’s seeking 24 Bayraktar TB2 combat drones in the coming months. Two years ago, TB2 producer Baykar Makina won a contract to sell six TB2s to Ukraine. The $69 million contract also involved the sale of ammunition for the armed version. The private firm has also won contracts to sell the TB2 to Qatar, Azerbaijan and Poland.

The TB2 is a medium-altitude, long-range tactical UAV system. It was developed by Kale-Baykar, a joint venture of Baykar Makina and the Kale Group. The UAV operates as a platform for conducting reconnaissance and intelligence missions. The aircraft features a monocoque design and integrates an inverse V-tail structure. The fuselage is made of carbon fiber, Kevlar and hybrid composites, whereas the joint segments constitute precision “computer numerical control” machined aluminum parts. Its maximum payload exceeds 55 kilograms, and the standard payload configuration includes an electro-optical camera module, an infrared camera module, a laser designator, a laser range finder and a laser pointer.

Each TB2 system consists of six aerial vehicles, two ground control stations, three ground data terminals, two remote video terminals and ground-support equipment.

A senior Turkish procurement official said Ankara and Kyiv have an understanding to finalize the potential deal before year’s end. “There is strong political support for this contract from both governments,” he said.

Industry sources estimate the contract value at about $300 million.

Ukraine’s ally
Russia and Ukraine are tied up in conflict over the annexation of Crimea, which Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic described Sept. 20 as unlawful.

Turkey has been a beneficiary of Ukraine’s defense spending for years. For example, in 2019, state-controlled Ukrainian company Ukrspecexport and Baykar Makina signed a deal to co-develop and co-produce “sensitive technologies in defense and aerospace.” And in December 2020, a Turkish shipyard penned a $200 million deal to sell two Ada-class corvettes to Ukraine. The Ukrainian Navy will deploy the corvettes in both the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, both disputed waters between Russia and Ukraine.

The allies are also cooperating on engine technology to power Turkish-made drones.

But Turkey is also involved in the Russian arms trade. Turkey purchased the Russian-made S-400 air defense system in 2019, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is negotiating for a second batch. In a Sept. 26 interview with CBS News, Erdogan said he would consider buying a second Russian missile system in defiance of strong objections by the United States.

In response to the first S-400 acquisition, the U.S. removed Turkey from the American-led, multinational Joint Strike Fighter program that builds the F-35 fighter. And Washington also placed sanctions on Ankara under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.

Turkey has since said it’s considering Russian-made fighter jets as an alternative to the F-35s in can no longer access.

As for the outcome of the drone sale, a senior Turkish diplomat said there’s a limit to Russia’s silence when it comes to arms trade between Turkey and Ukraine.

But the procurement official is optimistic the deal will move forward without Russian concern. “First, the Turkish systems are no gamechanger in any Russian-Ukrainian conflict,” he said. “Then we have our own private agenda with Russia.

“The Russians will not want to ruin their strategic defense cooperation with us for the sake of a few weapons systems our companies sell to Ukraine.”

Why sell to a Russian adversary?
One obvious motivation for Turkey’s drone sales — and the other advanced defense equipment — to Ukraine is the government’s desire to increase defense exports. Turkey has invested billions of dollars in its defense industry over the last four decades, and expanding the country’s share in global defense trade is a publicly known government objective.

Another driver is the reciprocity in defense trade between the two countries, said Sitki Egeli, a defense analyst and assistant professor at Izmir University of Economy.

Ukraine needs the niche defense items that Turkey can provide — such as armed drones, electronic warfare technology and advanced communications gear — and likewise Turkey’s defense industry looks to Ukraine for specific items — such as engines, whose supply from Western manufacturers has proved lacking, Egeli explained.

“Providing Ukraine with advanced military equipment provides for a rare leverage for Ankara in its complicated and strained relationship with Moscow. In this relationship that was characterized by some observers as one of ‘asymmetric interdependence’ that heavily favors Russia, Ankara is hard-pressed to create and take advantage of any leverages and counterweights that could be employed against an increasingly assertive and at times even arrogant Russia,” “Egeli said.

Asked how long Russia might remain silent over the potential drone sale, Egli said it will come down to the future state of geopolitics.

“Moscow has so far been careful and successful in compartmentalizing its complex relationship with Turkey, whereby overlapping or else conflicting agendas — in Syria, Libya, Caucasus, Black Sea, or in the economic and energy trade realms — were handled independently of each other. Moscow has so far restrained its reaction over Ankara’s growing defense cooperation with Ukraine, probably because [the] Russian military still holds overwhelming superiority over its Ukrainian counterpart,” Egeli said.

“But if this gap were to narrow down with further transfers to Ukraine, or more importantly, if Russian military planners feel concerned about the successes of Turkish-style drone- and network-centric combat tactics in defeating Soviet-style military adversaries in Idlib and Nagorno-Karabakh, then this could constitute a tipping point for Moscow. When we look at the commentary coming from Russian officials over the last few weeks, we may in fact be seeing the first signs of such growing concern and unease. A second S-400 order is unlikely to be impacted by all this because the first S-400 order signified major political, economic and geopolitical benefits for Moscow, whereas with almost no benefits for Ankara. Therefore, Moscow would definitely not miss another opportunity to further deepen the wedge between Turkey and its Western allies, and further isolate Erdogan.”

 

[Housecarl]

And for the "WTF?!?!?!" File.........

Posted for fair use.....

With Naming of New Atomic Chief, Is a Nuclear Taliban Possible?

"There has been no decision so far on the development of nuclear weapons," one Taliban official told Newsweek on the condition of anonymity.

www.newsweek.com

World
With Naming of New Atomic Chief, Is a Nuclear Taliban Possible?
By Tom O'Connor On 9/29/21 at 4:16 PM EDT

The new Taliban-led administration in Afghanistan has inherited an entire nation to run, and with it a wide range of responsibilities, one of them being a fledgling peaceful nuclear agency established a decade ago under the previous government.

With the naming of a new atomic chief, the Taliban appears poised to press forward in this field. That has raised questions as to whether the Islamic Emirate could seek to militarize nuclear energy to develop a weapon of mass destruction, though experts remain deeply skeptical of such an endeavor at this juncture.

Officially, no policy to this end appears to have been adopted, nor has the Taliban yet ruled out such an outcome.


"There has been no decision so far on the development of nuclear weapons," one Taliban official told Newsweek on the condition of anonymity.

Newsweek Newsletter sign-up >

But a number of observers took notice last week when a list of official postings for the Taliban's interim government decreed by Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and shared by the group's spokespersons identified "Engineer Najeebullah" as "Head of Atomic Energy."


Out of the 17 names on this list and dozens of others announced since the formation of the acting Taliban government earlier this month, Najeebullah has the distinction of only being mentioned by surname, casting intrigue on his identity and why the new administration sought to obscure it.


Reached for comment, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was following the situation.

"We are aware of the media reports you are referring to," IAEA head of media and spokesperson Fredrik Dahl told Newsweek.

Newsweek subscription offers >
But as a matter of protocol, he declined to weigh in on how this might affect the U.N. nuclear watchdog's relationship with Afghanistan.

"In line with standard practice related to Member State decisions and appointments," he added, "we have no comment."

Fighters of the Taliban's newly established Islamic Emirate pose in this image posted September 8 by the group's Al Hurat media outlet. Al Hurat

Afghanistan was among the founding members of the IAEA in 1957, and cooperated with the international organization for more than two decades. That relationship was interrupted in the late 1970s by civil unrest and an intervention by the Soviet Union against mujahideen rebels backed by the United States and Pakistan. The conflict stretched throughout most of the following decade, ultimately ending with a Soviet withdrawal and an eventual Taliban takeover in the 1990s.

IAEA cooperation would not restart until after the first iteration of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate was dismantled by a 2001 U.S.-led invasion that followed the 9/11 attacks conducted by Al-Qaeda, a Taliban ally at the time. In 2011, the Afghanistan Atomic Energy High Commission was established to explore nuclear technology for civil society.


As the Taliban began to resurge nationwide, however, the Afghanistan Nuclear Energy Agency began to voice concerns that instability could endanger its work.

In an address to the IAEA given in February of last year, then-Afghan ambassador to Austria Khojesta Fana Ebrahimkhel warned that "the current security situation in Afghanistan is such that some areas of the country are controlled by insurgent groups and national and international terrorist groups are active across the country," and "as a result, we have a serious concern about the illegal transportation of nuclear materials through Afghanistan by these groups.

"In light of this, we believe that such illegal activities will make the current situation more complex and may put the lives of thousands of people in danger," he said at the time. "Thus we sincerely request IAEA members to pay careful attention to this matter."


Unrest in Afghanistan only worsened, however, and two weeks later, the Trump administration reached a deal with the Taliban that paved the way for a U.S. military withdrawal from the country. The Biden administration completed the exit last month.

But the leadup to the pull-out was accompanied by rapid Taliban gains nationwide, and by the time the last U.S. military plane left Afghanistan, the group had established full control of Kabul with little resistance. For the second time in a quarter of a century, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was officially declared.

Though the new Taliban-led government remains unrecognized by any nation, it has pledged cooperation with the international community. This includes pledges to curb the spread of transnational militant groups, combat climate change and foster trade.



Read more

• Exclusive: Pakistan's Imran Khan Says Taliban Can Be U.S. Partner for Peace
• Islamic Terrorists or Chinese Dissidents? U.S. Grapples with Uyghur Dilemma
• Exclusive: Anas Haqqani Talks Taliban Plan to Secure Nation, Win World Ties

But in addition to worries about how the developments in Afghanistan could affect human rights issues, especially as they relate to vulnerable groups such as women and non-Pashtun minorities, some officials and commentators have raised the alarm over how any turmoil might undermine the security of neighboring Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

In a testimony that contradicted White House claims that the Pentagon backed a timely U.S. withdrawal by the August 31 deadline that had been set, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley told lawmakers Tuesday he and his team "estimated an accelerated withdrawal would increase risks of regional instability, the security of Pakistan and its nuclear arsenals, a global rise in violent extremist organizations, our global credibility with allies and partners would suffer, and a narrative of abandoning the Afghans would become widespread."


Adding to these concerns, Pakistan has a history of extraterritorial nuclear proliferation. Nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan, commonly referred to as "the godfather" of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, has long been at the center of international accusations that he provided classified information, including centrifuge designs, to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

Libya shuttered its nascent nuclear program as part of a deal reached in 2003 with the United States, which earlier that year had invaded Iraq over what proved to be false allegations of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. would also go on to intervene in Libya and help overthrow its government in 2011.

Iran maintains a robust nuclear program, despite international accusations and assassinations of its scientists. Tehran has consistently denied any military aspirations for its program and has blamed the assassinations on Israel, which is also widely believed to have nuclear weapons.


North Korea possesses a full-fledged nuclear weapons program, complete with far-reaching missiles it credits with staving off foreign interference.

Pakistan, for its part, set out to attain nuclear weapons in response to rival India's first test in 1974. That test came a decade after China, also locked in a violent territorial dispute with India, conducted its first nuclear weapons test.

The Taliban finds itself in the midst of these geographic and geopolitical feuds, which persist to the present day, as it seeks to govern Afghanistan once again.

The logo for the Afghanistan Nuclear Energy Agency is seen as present on the agency's website and social media channels, which have gone inactive since the Taliban took Kabul in mid-August. Among the stated goals of the agency included innovations in the fields of security, economic growth, nutrition, medicine, water management, the regulation of radioactive activities, mining and nuclear electricity. Afghanistan Nuclear Energy Agency

And while Pakistan has maintained close ties to the Taliban throughout its rise, fall and resurgence, there remain concerns even in Islamabad that certain separatist and fundamentalist groups could take advantage of the situation to threaten the region.

Former Trump national security adviser and veteran Washington war hawk John Bolton has amplified this anxiety to the point of suggesting that the Taliban's return to ruling Afghanistan creates an imminent threat to Pakistan and the security of its nuclear weapons.


"The Taliban in control of Afghanistan threatens the possibility of terrorists taking control in Pakistan too, and there are already a lot of radicals in the Pakistani military," Bolton told the WABC 770 radio show on Sunday. "But if the whole country gets taken over by terrorists, that means maybe 150 nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists, which is a real threat to us and our friends."

Pakistani permanent representative to the United Nations Munir Akram responded to this take by Bolton, whom the senior diplomat argued had sought to disarm Islamabad's nuclear stockpile to no avail.

"Well, I believe that Mr. Bolton tried very hard to get his hands on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and he failed miserably," Akram told Newsweek. "If Mr. Bolton couldn't get his hands on our weapons. I do not believe that somebody like the Taliban are capable of doing so."


Daryl Kimball, who has served for two decades as the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Arms Control Association nonprofit membership group, shared skepticism toward the notion that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal faced any heightened threat in the wake of the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan.


Read more

• Exclusive: Taliban's Anas Haqqani Hopes U.S. Hostage Talks Are 'Successful'
• Exclusive: Anti-Taliban Forces Seek Power-Sharing Deal to Limit Sharia Law
• Seeking World Recognition, Taliban Vows to Fight Terror and Climate Change

"I just don't think that there's an added risk today versus a year ago vis-à-vis Pakistan, even though John Bolton is out there making some wacko claims," Kimball told Newsweek. "Is Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure more vulnerable today than it was a year ago? I don't think that anybody can say it is."


He argued that when it comes to the Taliban itself, acquiring or developing nuclear weapons was far from being in their interest, both as a result of technological shortcomings and their proven strategy of beating superpowers through conventional methods.

"I think the motives for the Taliban...to acquire nuclear weapons is extremely low or it should be, because their strategy of guerrilla resistance for the last two decades against the United States and the U.S.-supported government in Kabul has ultimately succeeded," Kimball said. "So their lesson from their history is that they can resist and they can do that without resorting to the most destructive of all weapons, nuclear weapons, which are outside of their reach."

But he did raise the prospect of another threat that has existed for some time: a more rudimentary "dirty bomb" in the hands of militants less invested in Afghanistan's stability and more focused on wreaking havoc in the region. He recalled how evidence emerged in past years that Al-Qaeda had explored plans to obtain such a device.


Kimball said that even in the limited amount nuclear materials used for medicinal purposes in hospitals, "you've got radioactive sources that could be stolen or could be sold and used as a dirty bomb." He explained that this kind of product may yield enough material to create "an IED," or improvised explosive device, "with radioactive material," a weapon that could inflict serious damage, but far from the scores of casualties associated with nuclear warheads.

Pakistani military helicopters fly past a vehicle carrying a long-range ballistic Shaheen III missile as they take part in a military parade to mark Pakistan's National Day in Islamabad on March 25. Pakistan is one of the world's nine suspected nuclear powers, alongside Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Israel and North Korea. AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images

Such a scenario, however, would almost certainly prove as devastating for the Taliban as it would the intended target. The new Afghan administration already finds itself in conflict with the Islamic State militant group's national Khorasan affiliate (ISIS-K), and has attempted to portray the Islamic Emirate as the answer to Afghanistan's decades-long security issues.


Toby Dalton, co-director and a senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment's Nuclear Policy Program, found a more compelling argument for the Taliban to continue the previous administration's relationship with the IAEA, and saw the appointment of an atomic chief as likely evidence of this.

"Presumably the new Taliban government in Afghanistan would wish to continue cooperation with the IAEA for the good of the Afghan people, so the appointment of a new minister to oversee these issues makes sense," Dalton, who formerly served as acting director for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Safeguards and Security and senior policy adviser to the Office of Nonproliferation and International Security, told Newsweek. "Most countries have ministries for such applications, so Afghanistan is not unusual in this respect."

And, like Kimball, he emphasized how far away Afghanistan was from establishing even the most basic foundation for a nuclear weapons program. Such an effort would require "substantial outside assistance, whatever the political or military rationale it might have for seeking such weapons."


He also said the group's hesitation on taking a nuclear weapons stance might be strategic. By seeking to ensure continued cooperation with the IAEA, they could open yet another door to the international community.

"I'm not especially concerned that the government has not reiterated its commitment as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to not seek nuclear weapons," Dalton said. "If the Taliban government formally renounced its commitment to abjure nuclear weapons, that would be pretty noteworthy and unusual – only North Korea has done that before. It would also, practically, end Afghanistan's ability to cooperate with the IAEA on peaceful uses of nuclear technology."

 

[Housecarl]

Well that didn't take long......Pretty twitter insert heavy. HC

Posted for fair use.....

China Is Cloning Kratos' XQ-58A Valkyrie Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle Concept (Updated)

The FH-97 drone is nearly identical to the XQ-58A and its capabilities could be extremely attractive for the People's Liberation Army Air Force.

www.thedrive.com

China Is Cloning Kratos' XQ-58A Valkyrie Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle Concept (Updated)
The FH-97 drone is nearly identical to the XQ-58A and its capabilities could be extremely attractive for the People's Liberation Army Air Force.

By Thomas Newdick and Tyler Rogoway
September 28, 2021

• The War Zone

• The War Zone

Chinese Internet via Twitter
SHARE







Another new Chinese drone development has caught the eye of experts and observers at the country's big international airshow in Zhuhai, which began officially today. Known as the FH-97, it looks for all intents and purposes, like a clone of the XQ-58A Valkyrie, the stealthy, affordable unmanned aircraft that has been developed by U.S. drone-maker Kratos.
The Chinese FH-97 drone, which is being offered by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, or CASC, would seem to have been tailored to fulfill the same kinds of combat roles as envisaged for the Valkyrie, which is being developed for the U.S. Air Force as the centerpiece of its work on unmanned attritable platforms — drones that are low-cost yet still survivable enough that they can be employed in high-risk situations that might preclude the use of a more costly asset.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1442503317511294980

View: https://twitter.com/TychodeFeijter/status/1442503317511294980?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1442503317511294980%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept



The FH-97 was revealed at Zhuhai in the form of a mock-up on the CASC stand, one of a number of drones of different sizes being marketed by the company. Like the Valkyrie, the Chinese FH-97 features a stealthy trapezoidal fuselage, sharply swept main wings, a V-shaped tail, and an air intake located above the fuselage. Even the fuselage weapons bay features the same stealthy serrated edges to its doors, although the Chinese drone features an electro-optical sensor in a stealthy gold-plated windowed enclosure below the nose, similar in broad appearance to the one found on the F-35 and, to an extent, the J-20. It also features two small jet engines, instead of one. This is not too surprising considering what we understand about the limitations of China's indigenous jet engine manufacturing capabilities.

U.S. AIR FORCE / COURTESY PHOTO

One of the U.S. Air Force’s XQ-58A Valkyries releases a much smaller ALTIUS-600 drone from its internal payload bay.


While official promotional material for the FH-97 describes it only as a “medium- and long-range UAV system,” it has also been identified by observers as a reconnaissance and attack UAV system, which would seem to be accurate. It is being offered as part of a new Feihong (FH) series of drones, which also includes the FH-95 multifunctional UAV driven by a pusher propeller, an unmanned helicopter with a conventional main rotor plus two propellers for forward flight, and the FH-901 loitering missile, apparently previously known as the CH-901. The latter appears to be heavily influenced by loitering munitions like the AeroVironment Switchblade.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1441293349445570560

View: https://twitter.com/jesusfroman/status/1441293349445570560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1441293349445570560%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept



While we are yet to see specifications for the FH-97, it does appear to be similar in dimensions to the XQ-58A, which is 30 feet long, has a wingspan of 27 feet, and a maximum takeoff weight of 6,000 pounds. While China has been accused of copying Western designs in the past, and the FH-97 does look remarkably similar to the Valkyrie, it’s also worth noting that India, too, has opted for a very similar design approach for its own loyal wingman drone, the HAL Combat Air Teaming System (CATS). Russia's "Grom" is also very similar, as well, among others.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1356869565171425290

View: https://twitter.com/CNBCTV18News/status/1356869565171425290?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1356916200937201664%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1371431510356623362

View: https://twitter.com/GuyPlopsky/status/1371431510356623362?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1371431510356623362%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept


The new Chinese Feihong drones, although apparently not on display in finished form, are part of an interesting array of other equipment at Zhuhai, including the J-16D electronic attack jet, shown with jamming pods for the first time, as well as another CASC product, the CH-6 long-endurance, twin-jet multirole drone, seen for the first time in a full-size form.







The First XQ-58A Valkyrie Is Already Headed To A Museum (Updated) By Thomas Newdick Posted in The War Zone

Flanker Fighter Appears Among Unmanned Aircraft At China's Secretive Test Base By Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone

China’s Big New Twin-Jet Long-Endurance Armed Combat Drone Emerges By Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone

Stealthy XQ-58 Drone Busts The Networking Logjam Between F-22 And F-35 By Joseph TrevithickBy Thomas NewdickBy Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone

China's Reported Plan To Deploy Weaponless Stealth Drones On Its Carriers Make Perfect Sense By Tyler Rogoway Posted in The War Zone


What makes the FH-97 especially interesting is that it suggests strongly that China is following the path now being taken by the U.S. Air Force, and increasingly by other air forces, too, toward fielding a stealthy, attritable drone, optimized for flying more hazardous sorties, including strike, electronic warfare, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), within contested airspace.

In addition, when coupled with parallel developments in artificial intelligence, these same kinds of drones are also expected to work as loyal wingmen in direct support of manned aircraft, or as networked swarms for a range of missions, including air-to-air combat. It is widely understood that China is already working to flight test an AI computer 'brain' similar to how the U.S. is executing its own Skyborg initiative. This testing could support future loyal wingmen endeavors, but really you don't need AI for this capability. A semi-autonomous control interface from the cockpit of a manned combat aircraft within line of sight of the loyal wingman drones will provide a perfectly acceptable concept of operations and overall combat capability.

Continued.....

 

[Housecarl]

Continued.....

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1440249400727465984

View: https://twitter.com/louischeung_hk/status/1440249400727465984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1440249400727465984%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept



With this in mind, China is also showcasing its concept for a two-seat variant of its J-20 stealthy heavy fighter. The second seat would be highly relevant for a mission controller directing unmanned aircraft and taking care of the overall tactical 'picture.' Similar capabilities are being eyed for two-seat American fighters equipped with wide-area displays, such as the F-15EX.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1441424045287755789

View: https://twitter.com/china_arms/status/1441424045287755789?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1441424045287755789%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1442724225618362370

View: https://twitter.com/louischeung_hk/status/1442724225618362370?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1442724225618362370%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept


Showing the FH-97 alongside the FH-901/CH-901 also raises the possibility that the larger drone may be intended to launch smaller UAVs of its own, paralleling the kinds of tests that are underway in the United States involving the XQ-58A, as well as the smaller Airwolf, also from Kratos. The ability to air-launch stores beyond the kinds of offensive munitions usually associated with strike drones would offer considerably more versatility. These smaller drones could be used for kinetic strikes, to collect intelligence remotely, or, maybe most importantly, to provide stand-in electronic warfare support.

CASIC


Based on the model and the artworks of the FH-97 seen so far, it’s not immediately clear how it is supposed to be launched or recovered, although there would appear to be internal space for conventional wheeled landing gear. However, as far as the XQ-58A is concerned, its main focus is being runway independent—taking off via rocket assistance and landing via a parachute—making it more suitable for distributed operations, in theaters where access to conventional runways may not be guaranteed.

USAF

An XQ-58 seen being launched on a test sortie.


Kratos has also shown a model of a launch system for the Valkyrie that can be accommodated inside a standard shipping container, which could also be an option for the Chinese drone. Regardless, a capable jet-powered combat drone that is runway independent would drastically increase the possible locations from which the PLAAF could project power during a major conflict and wildly complicate its foe's defensive plans. It could also provide relevant air combat punch over substantial ranges, even from mainland China, without relying on vulnerable runways and other infrastructure to do so.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1441783289837203456

View: https://twitter.com/MIL_STD/status/1441783289837203456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1441783289837203456%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept



China has been notably active in the unmanned aerial vehicle field for some time now, producing a succession of drones of all kinds for both domestic use and for export. With that in mind, it may well be that the FH-97 is aimed at foreign customers as well as for the People's Liberation Army, with CASC identifying burgeoning interest for this class of drone, based on the ongoing interest in the XQ-58A program. Moreover, the appearance of the FH-97 confirms that China, too, is at least considering the options presented by a class of drone that is both stealthy and that could have a low-cost point built-in from the outset. This would be in addition to China's many traditional higher-end stealthy unmanned aircraft programs.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1442511360781271043

View: https://twitter.com/0verHorizon/status/1442511360781271043?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1442511360781271043%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept



Above all, a stealthy yet attritable multirole drone like the FH-97 would fit with what we already know about China’s efforts to rapidly enhance its unmanned capabilities across the board, including the development of manned-unmanned teaming and optionally manned air combat concepts. Drones like the FH-97 also bring the potential for rapidly increasing air combat ‘mass,’ with the aim of overwhelming an enemy by using significant numbers of drones, as well as payloads and tactics that are intended to overwhelm or confuse hostile air defenses. A possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, for instance, is just one example of the kind of scenario in which drones of this kind could be of extreme value.

The Chinese inventory now boasts everything from long-endurance, medium-altitude, propeller-powered surveillance types, to more advanced high-altitude, long-endurance intelligence-gathering jet-powered drones, and even rocket-propelled high-speed reconnaissance drones. However it’s intended to be used, the FH-97 provides yet another piece in the Chinese aerial drone puzzle, one that could quickly become a top priority within China's increasingly complex unmanned military aircraft ecosystem. Of course, could is the operative term here as we don't know at this time just how far along the FH-97 is in its development.

UPDATE:
We have some conceptual video of the FH-97 in action and yes, the smaller loitering munitions are meant to be launched from its weapons bay:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1443191410304376833

View: https://twitter.com/jesusfroman/status/1443191410304376833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1443191410304376833%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1443222677288751105

View: https://twitter.com/0verHorizon/status/1443222677288751105?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1443222677288751105%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedrive.com%2Fthe-war-zone%2F42555%2Fchina-is-cloning-kratos-xq-58a-valkyrie-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-concept


Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

What makes Iran’s bomb any worse than Israel's? | Opinion | Opinion

***

www.haaretz.com

Home | Opinion
Opinion | What Makes Iran’s Bomb Any Worse Than Israel's?

Yossi Klein
Sep. 30, 2021 8:25 PM

About two weeks ago, Haaretz reported that the Iranian nuclear bomb is almost here; the missiles are already in the air. But nothing happened. The supermarket didn’t run out of toilet paper or long-life milk supplies. That’s surprising. What happened to our famous preparedness? Where is the alertness that’s been praised by all who have seen it? Have you forgotten how our leaders scared us with the Iranian threat? How much money they invested in it? When it came, nothing, silence. Instead, we’re arguing about whether or not to vaccinate.


We know that politicians lie, but not on the issue of the Iranian threat. It’s not a matter of submarines or the morality of the most moral army in the world. It’s a matter of our existence. We trusted the Iranian threat. For its sake, we inflated the defense budget and made sure to be attentive and obedient in the way that rulers love. We want to know everything about vaccinations, but not about this.



We didn’t want to ask. The Iranian threat was one of those subjects about which they told us: Forget it. There’s no point in our giving you all the details. What do you understand about centrifuges? Trust us. Everything will be all right, as in the case of the submarines. We trusted them. We didn’t ask whether Iran is also under an existential threat, or only us. We thought that in Tehran they should empty the supermarket shelves, not here. We knew that they had reason to fear. Any child can log in to Wikipedia and see that we have over 100 nuclear bombs and intercontinental missiles that can carry nuclear warheads to a range of thousands of kilometers.


So what should we be afraid of? Columnist Israel Harel was right. According to him, we should embark on a military confrontation immediately, now, today, after the holiday at the latest. The main thing is not to “contain” the problem, the main thing is not to sit on our fat backsides and discuss the question of who benefits from the Pfizer vaccines.

It’s true that there’s a price to pay for the great satisfaction that accompanies a preliminary attack, but it’s not sky-high. Ehud Barak estimated in his day that an Iranian retaliatory attack would produce fewer than 500 corpses. A real bargain relative to the tremendous benefit of destroying, erasing and eradicating the Iranian threat forever and ever. Or at least, as usual, for three months.


That means that we’re talking about acceptable losses. Amos Yadlin, director of the Institute for National Security Studies, spoke of chemical warheads and suicide ships. Historian Alex Wellerstein, an expert on nuclear weapons, estimates that a nuclear bomb in central Tel Aviv would kill 84,000 people (he reassured us that dying would take from “a few hours to a number of weeks”).



So then we’re not talking about an existential threat but an “operation.” We’re threatening them, and they’re threatening us. Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid recently threatened, and were preceded by Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz. It’s true that Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, said “We won’t use nuclear weapons,” but go trust a Muslim. It’s just Oriental imagination, entirely different from our Western credibility. Yes, we also lied here and there, we flaunted “ambiguity” and “the textile plant in Dimona,” but we’re allowed to (because of the Holocaust and all). It’s understandable why we don’t trust them – it's impossible to trust an ultranationalist religious regime that thinks that it’s God’s gift to the world. It’s impossible to rely on a country whose considerations are based on the insanity of megalomaniacal clerics (I’m referring to Iran, of course).



In that case, why are we yawning when the missiles are on the way? Why are we so apathetic? It’s possible that very quietly, with a sudden flash of illumination of unknown origin, we have started to doubt the existence of the “Iranian threat.” Perhaps we have come to understand that this is a case of the famous “hold me back” tactic from the elementary school playground, when two kids are fighting and waiting for someone to come from the teachers’ room and rescue them from their threats to kill one another.

• On nuclear Iran, Israel faces two terrible options
• Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state challenges Israel's policy of ambiguity
• Schism between U.S. and Israel on Iran may grow in coming months

Now we understand that the chances that their missiles will land on us are like the chances that ours will land on them – in other words, a minuscule chance – and that we’re extras in a dialogue of the deaf. And, there’s another, really hair-raising possibility: That it’s not only the Iranian nuke that is endangering world peace but also our domination in the territories, which is likely to serve as an excuse to use the bomb.

Historian Benny Morris wrote in Haaretz that the choice we face is to live in constant fear of Iran or to attack it. He didn’t write that it is also Iran’s choice, that maybe it should attack us rather than living in constant fear of an insane nuclear power.

 

[jward]

Been noticin' that mentality creep in Israel for a year or so- which makes me wonder how long it's really been since it took hold.
..and don't get me started on the idea of a nuclear taliban. I keep feelin' like someone's spiked my drink or playing "candid camera" tricks. Is it coz I'm such a novice that I'm misreading things, or have they all really gone bat-scat cray cray out there?
:: wanders back beneath the covers, rosary in one hand, sign o' the cross bein' made w/ the other ::

 

[Housecarl]

Been noticin' that mentality creep in Israel for a year or so- which makes me wonder how long it's really been since it took hold.
..and don't get me started on the idea of a nuclear taliban. I keep feelin' like someone's spiked my drink or playing "candid camera" tricks. Is it coz I'm such a novice that I'm misreading things, or have they all really gone bat-scat cray cray out there?
:: wanders back beneath the covers, rosary in one hand, sign o' the cross bein' made w/ the other ::

Yeah, they're graduating from smoke signals to 50 foot high digital marquees warning everyone to chill out or Aaron, Saul and Mishael in the back room playing cards are going to be coming out next and "take care of business".....The problem is the rest of the neighboring idiots mistake reluctance to "give in kind" as weakness as opposed to them hating being made to do it.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

The Nuclear Balance Is Changing—and Not For The Better

As the nuclear posture review begins, the United States faces serious dilemmas.

nationalinterest.org

September 29, 2021 Topic: Nuclear Triad Region: World Tags: Nuclear ModernizationRussiaChinaNuclear TriadDeterrenceNuclear Posture Review

The Nuclear Balance Is Changing—and Not For The Better

As the nuclear posture review begins, the United States faces serious dilemmas.

by Peter Huessy

The rise of China’s nuclear forces, added to Russian “exotic” new nuclear systems, is raising considerable concern in the United States for two separate but highly interconnected reasons. This rise in power poses a few questions. Is the nuclear force structure that America is planning to rebuild and modernize adequate enough to deter these threats? Is the New START arms control deal that America just extended for another five years in danger of becoming irrelevant? What is the new threat that America faces and is it serious? The answer is: yes, it is serious.

First, the recent discovery of three large silo construction fields in China by commercial satellites let the “nuclear cat out of the bag,” allowing the U.S. government’s top nuclear professionals to publicly lay out the details of China’s secret activity.

Second, according to Bill Schneider, the former head of the Defense Science Board, the Chinese could be heading toward deploying a seriously expanded nuclear force. In his view as many as 250 Chinese new Dongfeng-41 missiles each with ten warheads could be deployed, a far greater build than the assumed doubling warned about earlier this year by our intelligence services.

Third, a top former nuclear military commander thinks the Chinese can, in two to four years, deploy an even greater number of warheads—upwards of 3,500—at a time when U.S. nuclear modernization is set to begin in 2028–29 and then only to 1,550 warheads.

Fourth, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten has argued that the United States remains in a “slow” acquisition structure that does not allow the United States to respond more quickly to emerging threats to its security.

So, while the rough outlines of the new Chinese nuclear threat are beginning to emerge, China’s plans and the breadth of its nuclear forces are simply not fully known. Plus, those forces are not subject to any inspection or verification that might come from an arms control agreement or a Chinese proffer of nuclear information.

Thus, this leads to a dilemma. Since the United States does not have a clear definition of the future nuclear forces arrayed against it, then how does it plan the nuclear force of the future and the proper arms control agreement—if any? It remains wedded to Russia, taking into account what is roughly known about the threat it poses. But it doesn’t have a full understanding of the threat China poses.

As Commander of U.S. Strategic Command Adm. Charles Richard has explained, the Chinese are seeking not just a limited or minimal deterrent force but one which mirrors that of Russia. On top of which he notes China is seeking a “coercive capability” to force the United States to stand down in a crisis and not come to the defense of its allies in the event of Chinese aggression.

On the other hand, U.S. nuclear forces are treaty-limited to an official 1,550 warheads although official reporting by the U.S. government indicates a nuclear force of slightly fewer warheads is being maintained on a day-to-day basis. This is due to the fact that U.S. bombers are not on alert nor nuclear-armed on a day-to-day basis.

The U.S. government is doing a nuclear posture review as every administration since the end of the Soviet empire has done. But just as the gathering nuclear threat is strengthening, the United States is being pushed by some elements in U.S. society, particularly in the disarmament community, to lower the role of nuclear weapons in its deterrent policy and reduce unilaterally U.S.-deployed nuclear weapons.

This might lead to a “sole use” doctrine. Nuclear weapons would only be for deterring the use of nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies, and not in response to a major cyber or electromagnetic pulse attack. And it might mean a “no first use” doctrine—where the United States would never initiate the use of nuclear weapons.

Such strategy changes are being pushed in parallel with unilateral reductions in U.S. nuclear force deployments, perhaps done informally but in concert or parallel with Russia. A quick 150 or 10 percent cut has been proposed, as well as a more significant but nonetheless unilateral reduction to 1,000 warheads has been proposed. On the other hand, a formal additional warhead reduction arms deal with Russia has also been suggested, including the assumption that if only the United States builds down even more but to the current Chinese level of nuclear warheads (350). The Chinese would have little incentive to agree to any bilateral or multilateral deal capping their own nuclear forces though.

The dual-track notions—seeking to reduce the U.S. options for the use of nuclear weapons and seeking to reduce U.S. warheads to no more than 1,000 warheads—may run into a stiff headwind. Russia and China have shown no interest in either outcome. China has recently threatened both Japan and Australia with nuclear strikes although both are nuclear-weapons-free countries and long-time signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. China may be on a path toward developing 2,500–3,500 nuclear warheads from its new silo building. The country has little incentive to negotiate a deal that significantly limits its nuclear forces.

A proposed new deal with Russia would probably fare no better. Russia has adopted a policy that top U.S. military and civilian experts have described as a “escalate to deescalate” strategy—using a limited number of nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict with the objective of forcing the United States to stand down in a crisis. This would give Russia “a fait accompli victory” as a policy indicative of Moscow expanding, not shrinking, the role of nuclear weapons in its overall defense doctrine.

And as for numbers of deployed nuclear warheads, while the New START treaty—extended now for five years—officially limits Russia to 1,550 warheads, there are no limits on Russia’s non-strategic, theater short-range nuclear arms. Additionally, there are no limits on some number of new exotic strategic systems Russia is deploying.

Reducing the role of U.S. nuclear weapons and the U.S. deterrent could shake the confidence of some of America’s allies who have traditionally pushed back hard against U.S. suggestions of adopting something like a no-first-use strategy. In the Republic of Korea, the opposition party, worried about the U.S. nuclear umbrella or extended deterrent, has been talking openly about seeking a ROK nuclear deterrent to deal with a nuclear-armed North Korea and an increasingly bellicose China. And in NATO, while no new nation is seeking to go nuclear, our extended nuclear umbrella remains a critical part of NATO’s alliance cohesion and a potential no first use strategy undermines that.

All of these developments are also critical to conventional deterrence. Of key concern with the U.S. military is how to maintain the firebreak between conventional and nuclear conflict. The United States has never fought a conventional conflict with a nuclear-armed enemy. But now, the United States has two emerging conventional peer adversaries, Russia and China. Both countries are nuclear-armed. Thus, while maintaining conventional deterrence only works if nuclear weapons are not being used by other countries, maintaining that firebreak may become more and more difficult to guarantee.

What New Policies Might the U.S. Pursue?

It is suggested that the United States develop long-range conventional strike capabilities to compensate for Russia and China pushing to use nuclear forces coercively. Such technology is being pursued by the United States but we have to understand Russia and China are both citing these very technologies being developed by the United States as justification for their own expanded nuclear efforts.

Better and expanded U.S. missile defenses could also be pursued, but Congress may remain hesitant to employ U.S. missile defenses against anything but limited strikes from rogue states such as North Korea or Iran. On top of this, Russia and China both cite the limited U.S. national missile defenses (forty-four to sixty-six interceptors) as the trigger for their own expanded nuclear efforts.

While U.S. deterrent needs are often laid out based on the bi-lateral balance between the United States and Russia, an emerging Chinese force that might even exceed the New START Treaty limits under which the United States and Russia operate, certainly calls into question whether the planned U.S. deterrent force of GBSD missiles, Columbia-class submarines and nuclear-capable B-21 bomber airplanes, will be adequate to maintain deterrence.

For the past thirty years, the United States has operated under the reality that U.S.-Russian forces have significantly declined under various nuclear treaties. In fact, deployed nuclear forces subject to the treaties have dropped by 90 percent since the end of the Cold War, which happened in 1991. If it can be assumed that Russia is observing treaty limits, then don’t count some exotic strategic systems in Russia and the entirely of its multiple thousand theater systems.

Can America Count on a Continuing Paradigm?

What if instead of balancing the nuclear threats posed by Russia and China separately, military planners thought of the two nations as working in concert? The conventional wisdom is that Russia and China won’t gang up on the United States and cooperatively threaten it with nuclear force. However, as noted expert Stephen Blank has explained, Russia and China are increasingly working together on military matters. They are even doing joint military exercises. Even some disarmament experts have acknowledged that if a conflict in the Pacific over Taiwan emerged involving the United States and China, for example, it is not just speculation that Russia may decide that aggression against the Baltics would be in the cards if the United States was otherwise distracted or busy answering aggression occurring in the Pacific region.

As the nuclear posture review begins, the United States faces serious dilemmas. Its military officials must ask if the strategy underpinning the current U.S. nuclear deterrent policy assumes a continued New START deal with Russia and a required force structure need be no larger than the one already maintained? They must also ponder if the force structure the United States builds and the arms control regime it expects to be in place will be adequate for the next nuclear storm.

Peter Huessy is Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute and President of Geostrategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland.

 

[jward]

Hmm

Authorities identify suspect in bizarre ninja attack on special ops troops at Calif. airport
Chad Garland

4-5 minutes

This photo released by the Kern County Sheriff’s office shows the sword used to attack U.S. Army Special Forces troops at Inyokern Airport in the Mojave Desert on Sept. 18, 2021. (Kern County Sheriff’s office)

Nonlethal rounds failed to stop a sword-wielding man dressed as a ninja who authorities say injured two special operations soldiers, then brandished his blade at sheriff’s deputies last month at a California airport, according to authorities.

Deputies from a Kern County Sheriff’s Office substation in Ridgecrest, Calif., responded to a call of an assault with a deadly weapon Sept. 18 at Inyokern Airport, the office said in a statement posted Friday on Twitter. The airport is located in the Mojave Desert, near Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake.

When deputies arrived on the scene, they found some 26 special operations soldiers training at the airport “hunkered down” in the hangar after an attack by a man dressed as a ninja, Ridgecrest Police Department records show. Stars and Stripes first reported details of the incident, which was revealed in a military report leaked on social media, earlier this week.

Officers discovered the suspect had assaulted one victim with a sword and hit another victim after tossing a rock through a hangar window, the sheriff’s office said.

The suspect, identified as 35-year-old Gino Rivera, was booked for attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, brandishing a weapon, brandishing a weapon with the intent to resist or prevent an arrest, vandalism, and obstruct/delay a peace officer in the discharge of their duties, according to the Kern County Sheriff’s Office.

The victims were identified as a staff sergeant and captain with F Co., 2nd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, according to the report posted on social media. A spokesman for the Army’s Special Operations Aviation Command confirmed the incident occurred, but declined to provide further details.

The staff sergeant was outside the hangar smoking when the ninja-clad Rivera approached and asked the soldier if he knew who he was. The soldier did not. Rivera then asked if the soldier knew where his family was — the soldier did not — prompting Rivera to slash the soldier’s phone, knee and leg with a sword.

This photo, released by the Kern County Sheriff’s office, shows Gino Rivera, the suspect in a bizarre attack against service members at Inyokern Airport in the Mojave Desert on Sept. 18, 2021. (Kern County Sheriff’s office)

The soldier then ran through the parking lot and jumped a fence before entering the hangar’s admin building, where the staff sergeant and an unnamed captain began locking doors and calling 911, the leaked report said.

Rivera gave chase, kicking and punching the building’s doors and windows before leaving to grab a large piece of asphalt that he tossed through the window, .

When Ridgecrest Police responded to the scene, Rivera refused to follow commands and brandished the sword at deputies, authorities said.

“Non-lethal rounds were deployed but were ineffective,” the sheriff’s office said in Friday’s statement.

Rivera ran and continued to disobey commands. He dropped the sword after a taser was deployed, authorities said.

“Deputies used control holds to take Rivera into custody,” the sheriff’s office said.

Officials said the wounded soldiers were taken to a local hospital for treatment. The military report on social media said the two soldiers both required multiple stitches for their wounds.

Chad Garland
Chad is a Marine Corps veteran who covers the U.S. military in the Middle East, Afghanistan and sometimes elsewhere for Stars and Stripes. An Illinois native who’s reported for news outlets in Washington, D.C., Arizona, Oregon and California, he’s an alumnus of the Defense Language Institute, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Arizona State University.

Authorities identify suspect in bizarre ninja attack on special ops troops at Calif. airport

Gino Rivera was booked for attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, brandishing a weapon, brandishing a weapon with the intent to resist or prevent an arrest, vandalism, and obstruct/delay a peace officer in the discharge of their duties, according to the Kern County Sheriff’s Office.

www.stripes.com