WAR 09-30-2017-to-10-06-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(288) 09-09-2017-to-09-15-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...9-15-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(289) 09-16-2017-to-09-22-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...9-22-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(290) 09-23-2017-to-09-29-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...9-29-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
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Sorry for the delay folks, the meat world has really been messing with me today... HC

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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.rudaw.net/english/analysis/30092017

Analysis

How long can the US balance its relations with Baghdad and Erbil?

By Paul Iddon
6 hours ago

In the wake of the crisis between Baghdad and Erbil caused by the Kurdish independence referendum on Monday, the United States is striving to balance its relations with both sides and prevent any potential outbreak of violence. How long they can feasibly do so, however, has yet to be seen.

“We're friends with the Kurds; we are friends with the central government of Iraq,” is how Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman, recently summed up the US position.

While the US is displeased the Kurds went ahead with the referendum now, weakly arguing it would take away the focus from the fight against Islamic State (ISIS), it has nevertheless reiterated its continued friendship with the Kurds. It has also affirmed that Baghdad's flight ban, along with its other actions which Kurdish officials have accurately described as “collective punishment”, is not constructive.

Nevertheless the US is still firmly adhering to its One Iraq policy with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson affirming that, “The vote and the results lack legitimacy” and that Washington continues “to support a united, federal, democratic and prosperous Iraq.”

Masrour Barzani, the Chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, told the Washington Post that he is “concerned about US passivity in the face of military threats against Kurdistan.”

Tillerson however cautioned the Iraqi government and its neighbours against the use of force.

However, given the US's interest in de-escalation and conciliation between both sides it's unlikely to do nothing were Iraq to attack Kurdistan.


Any confrontation or violence between Baghdad and Erbil, likely in Kirkuk, would doubtlessly be initiated by the former. Washington's opposition to violence is therefore, in reality, opposition to an Iraqi attack on Kurdistan and its call for continued dialogue is exactly what Kurdish President Masoud Barzani has, before the referendum and since the threats issued immediately after it, been calling for.

Furthermore Baghdad-Washington ties would become incredibly strained were Iraq to attack the Kurds. If Hashd al-Shaabi groups carry out an attack, as they've threatened to do, and Baghdad fails to prevent them then the US will likely urge the Iraqi government to publicly reject the actions of those attacking forces before militarily helping the Peshmerga repel them.

Were the Iraqi Army itself to attack and kill Peshmerga troops while marching into Kirkuk to seize the oilfields, as parliament recently called on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to do, Washington is unlikely to continue resupplying Iraq's fleet of M1 Abrams main battle tanks and its F-16 jet fighter-bombers with spare parts. While this wouldn't completely prevent Iraq, which still possesses significant numbers of Russian-built T-72 tanks, Su-25 attack planes and helicopter gunships, from launching an attack it would at least show Washington's opposition to Baghdad so readily resorting to the use of force.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has made evident from its statements that it doesn't want any such escalation to happen. During the premiership of Nouri al-Maliki President Barzani urged Washington not to sell Iraq F-16s while Maliki was in power. Maliki spoke to his generals about one day invading Erbil, but only after those jets were delivered.

In an Al Jazeera interview from the time Barzani was asked about the prospect of these warplanes being used against Kurdistan if delivered. To the Kurds, Barzani explained, there was little difference between these jets and the older MiGs used against Kurdistan by Iraq in past wars. He elaborated by saying that having warplanes, tanks, artillery and large numbers of troops attacking Kurdistan again wasn't what he and the Kurds feared but rather the mentality which still believes that the use of such lethal weaponry is the way to resolve Iraq's disputes and problems.

The same is true today despite Baghdad's harsh treatment of post-referendum Kurdistan, Barzani and the KRG are maintaining a wholly defensive posture while strongly urging the resumption of talks and a cessation of threats. This is essentially in line with how the US hopes this crisis will be resolved.

Although in the long-term the United States may move closer Erbil since the April election in Iraq could further empower the pro-Iranian elements in the Iraqi government which are much less friendly, and conciliatory, to the US and its interests in Iraq than Abadi.

It's worth remembering that in the faithful summer of 2014 the US fired its opening salvos on ISIS two whole months after Mosul's fall in June. It was ISIS's attack on the Kurdistan Region in early August and advance toward Erbil, with American-made weapons which the Iraqi Army abandoned, that prompted Washington to attack the militants and go to war. Earlier, as ISIS were marching toward Baghdad, the US didn't act at all because the Obama administration viewed working with Maliki as problematic given his past policies, particularly against Iraq's Sunni minority, and consequently conditioned US military support to Iraq on Maliki stepping down, which he did in September.

If Maliki and his associates attain more power after the aforementioned April election the present US balancing act between Baghdad and Erbil may be difficult to sustain and the Americans may gradually fall back on the latter, where their construction of an enormous consulate is a testament to their own interests in the continued stability, survival and success of this region.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm....

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Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkey-opens-military-training-somalia-capital-143507535.html

Turkey opens military training base in Somalia capital

Associated Press
September 30, 2017

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — The Turkish government has opened a military training base, its largest in Africa, in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

The Turkish chief of staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire inaugurated the newly-constructed facility on Saturday.

Khaire thanked Turkey for "unwavering" support to help Somalia rebuild its fractured army and stabilize the war-torn country.

Two hundred Turkish military officers will train 10,000 Somali soldiers at the base which includes army dormitories, training grounds and prisons.

Somalia's army, including former militia, is struggling to battle the Islamic extremist al-Shabab insurgents who are fighting to establish an Islamic state under strict Shariah law.

The Somali government is challenged to take over the country's security before the scheduled withdrawal of 22,000 African Union forces late next year.

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[Housecarl]

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/iraqi-pm-presses-case-baghdad-receive-kurdistan-oil-173923374.html

Iraqi PM presses case for Baghdad to receive Kurdistan oil revenue

Reuters • September 30, 2017

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Saturday pressed the case for the central government in Baghdad to receive the income from Kurdistan's oilfields, saying the money would be used to pay Kurdish civil servants.

Seeking to control the oil income from the autonomous Kurdish region is central to Abadi's strategy after the Kurdish referendum on independence held on Monday.

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The Kurdistan Regional Government said it plans to use the vote, which delivered an overwhelming yes for independence, as a mandate to seek the peaceful secession of the Kurdish region through talks with Abadi's government.

Abadi, who rejects any talks with the Kurds on independence, wrote in a tweet: "Federal government control of oil revenues is in order to pay KR (Kurdistan Region) employee salaries in full."

No other statement was forthcoming from the government. It was not clear whether Baghdad had had any success in taking control of oil income from the Kurdish region in the north of Iraq, which for years has kept oil revenue and paid Kurdish civil servants.

Abadi on Thursday said Turkey had told Iraq it would deal

only with the Iraqi government on crude oil exports. Iraqi Kurdish crude oil is exported to world markets through a pipeline to Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

Baghdad imposed a ban on direct international flights to the Kurdish region on Friday.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Stephen Powell)

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[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/catalan-nationalists-protest-barcelona-slideshow-wp-192808006.html

Catalan nationalists and Spanish pro-unity demonstrators protest in Barcelona

Yahoo News Photo Staff • September 30, 2017

Thousands of pro-unity demonstrators opposing a banned referendum on Catalonian independence from Spain gathered in a Barcelona square on Saturday in a sign of how the disputed vote on Sunday has divided the country.

The referendum, declared illegal by Madrid, has thrown the country into its worst constitutional crisis in decades and raised fears of street violence as a test of will between the central government and the wealthy northeastern region plays out.

Demonstrators waving Spanish flags filled the central square outside the seat of the regional government and Barcelona city hall. One man burnt the Catalan flag while a group tried to tear down a banner reading ‘More democracy’ hanging from the front of the town hall to cheers from the crowd.

Hours before voting was due to start, it was still unclear whether the referendum would go ahead despite the regional government’s assertions that it will proceed and Madrid’s insistence that it will block the move.

Tens of thousands of Catalans are expected to attempt to vote on Sunday, although the ballot that will have no legal status as it has been blocked by Spain’s Constitutional Court and Madrid for being at odds with the 1978 constitution.

Catalonia has 7.5 million people, many of whom speak the Catalan language, and has a larger economy than Portugal. (Reuters)

235 reactions

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41452173

Iran nuclear deal: Tehran expects US to ditch agreement, says FM

30 September 2017
From the section Middle East

Iran's foreign minister has said he assumes that the US will abandon the international deal restricting his country's nuclear activities.

But Mohammad Javad Zarif said he hoped Europe would keep the agreement alive.

US President Donald Trump - a stern critic of the deal - will announce next month whether he believes Iran has adhered to its terms.

If he says it has failed to do so, US Congress will begin the process of reimposing sanctions on Iran.

Mr Trump said the agreement was an "embarrassment" in a speech to the United Nations this month.

What will happen to the Iran nuclear deal?
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Iran nuclear deal: Key details

France, Germany and the UK - which along with Russia and China signed the deal - have recently defended it.

In an interview with two British newspapers, Mr Zarif said that if the deal collapsed, Iran would no longer have to follow its limitations on uranium enrichment, centrifuge numbers and the production of plutonium. But he insisted Iran would only use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

"You either live by it [the deal] or you set it aside," Mr Zarif told the Financial Times and the Guardian. "You cannot be half pregnant."

"My assumption and guess is that he [Trump] will not certify and then will allow Congress to take the decision," Mr Zarif said during the interview at the Iranian UN mission's residence in New York.

"The deal allowed Iran to continue its research and development. So we have improved our technological base. If we decide to walk away from the deal we would be walking away with better technology."

He said of Mr Trump: "I think he has made a policy of being unpredictable, and now he's turning that into being unreliable as well. He has violated the letter, spirit, everything of the deal."

Mr Zarif said Iran's options "will depend on how the rest of the international community deal with the United States"."If Europe and Japan and Russia and China decided to go along with the US, then I think that will be the end of the deal," he said. "Europe should lead."European Union officials have said they could act to legally protect European investors in Iran if the US reimposes sanctions.

But, in line with the US, they have also criticised Iran over its non-nuclear activities in the region.

More on this story

Iran tests missile despite Trump pressure
23 September 2017
Iran nuclear deal: US 'sunset clause' concern remains - Tillerson
21 September 2017
Iran's leader Hassan Rouhani slams Donald Trump in UN speech
20 September 2017
Trump: Iran 'atrocious' at sticking to spirit of nuclear deal
14 September 2017

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/islamic-state-regrouping-in-libyan-desert-experts-warn

Islamic State Regrouping in Libyan Desert, Experts Warn

by Voice of America
SWJ Blog Post | September 30, 2017 - 8:54am
Rikar Hussein and Nisan Ahmado - VOA News

As the Islamic State group faces military defeats in Syria and Iraq, the group has an eye on war-torn Libya, hoping to re-emerge there and organize in the country's desert, officials and experts warn.

Siddiq al-Soor, the head of the Public Prosecutor's Office in Tripoli, told reporters on Thursday that IS militants in the country were mostly operating through "a desert army" unit they set up after being pushed out of their stronghold of Sirte on the Mediterranean Sea last year.

"Now they are being monitored in the territories south of Libya," al-Soor said during a news conference.

Al-Soor said IS militants in the desert area were being led by Iraqi national Abdul Qader al-Najdi, also known as Abu Moaz Al Tikriti, with support from other IS leaders, including Mahmoud Al Bur'si and Hashim Abu Sid.

"Most of those leaders were members of al-Qaida and traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the fight before returning to Libya," al-Soor said.

He said Libyan prosecutors obtained information about the whereabouts of the group's desert army from an IS fighter who was wounded and captured after U.S. airstrikes in the Wadi Skir region last week.

Series of Strikes

The U.S. military has conducted airstrikes against IS in Libya this week. Two airstrikes 100 miles southeast of Sirte on Tuesday left "several" IS fighters dead, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which oversees American military activities on the continent, said in a statement.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/sites/default/files/libyamapisis.jpg
Sirte, Nofaliya, and al-Jufra District, in Libya

Six other U.S. airstrikes last Friday killed 17 IS members and destroyed three vehicles in a desert camp approximately 150 miles southeast of Sirte, according to AFRICOM.

IS considers southeast Sirte an important region for its operations because it is home to several major oil fields like al-Bayda, Mabruk, Bahi and Fida.

A country of about 6.4 million people, Libya descended into chaos in 2011 when an uprising and international intervention led to the overthrow and subsequent execution of dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

The civil war has divided the country into two governments, the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli and the Russian-backed Libyan National Army in Tobruk, with each laying claim to power.

Fragile Peace

After continued clashes, the two sides finally agreed on a cease-fire in July. Nonetheless, peace between them remains fragile.

Both sides continue to accuse each other of allowing terrorists to operate under their watch to further their own military objectives, with IS taking advantage of the situation to regroup in the country, according to Libyan militias fighting IS in Libya. They warn that IS is reorganizing in the southern Sirte countryside and the desert valleys and inland hills extending to the south of the country.

U.S. officials have echoed those concerns, adding the terror group is trying to use the spaces to recruit and facilitate the movement of foreign fighters.

"[IS] and al-Qaida have taken advantage of ungoverned spaces in Libya to establish sanctuaries for plotting, inspiring and directing terror attacks," AFRICOM said in a statement on Monday following its last Friday airstrikes.

AFRICOM has estimated that nearly 500 IS fighters remain active in Libya, a decrease from a peak of about 6,000 in 2016.

Anti-IS militias say the remaining IS fighters in the country have been mainly operating in smaller groups at night to avoid being detected. They say the fighters are setting up temporary checkpoints to kill and kidnap those opposed to the group.

An IS attack on a checkpoint 300 miles south of Tripoli in August left nine fighters of the Libyan National Army and two civilians dead.

Threat to Europe

Observers say Libya will continue to remain a hotbed for IS activities and other terrorist groups in years to come because of the divided government.

"They are unable to control their borders, unable to police inside the country effectively, and their large geographic area is relatively easy for not just terrorist elements but also criminal elements to operate across the borders," David Mack, an expert at the Middle East Institute and a former U.S. diplomat to Libya, told VOA.

Mack said the U.S. and EU must not let Libya move to their blind spot, because a stronger IS in Libya would threaten Europe, which is only a few hundred miles away across the Mediterranean Sea.

Jonathan M. Winer, a former U.S special envoy for Libya, told VOA that IS has an eye on Libya for a reason.

"They have been under so much pressure that they have to demonstrate that though they are shrinking and weakening, they still have power, and they want to demonstrate they can do it again in some other locations," Winer said.

He added the U.S. and its allies must provide the necessary help.

"The Libyans themselves did all the fighting and all the dying to get IS out of the region of Sirte, and United States and other countries owe it to the Libyan people to continue to assist them in keeping IS from controlling the Libyan territory."

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
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http://globalriskinsights.com/2017/09/shrinking-islamic-state-europes-heightened-terrorist-threat/

How a shrinking Islamic State means higher risks for Europe

The Islamic State’s battlefield defeats in Syria and Iraq will almost certainly lead to a greater focus on the group’s global operations. Europe will remain a target for both coordinated and crude attacks.

Islamic State is losing ground in the Middle East, where it is turning to more insurgency-style tactics. In parallel, it is also ramping up activities in Europe. As GRI previously forecast, 2017 has seen a rising volume of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamic State (ISIS) militants or Sunni extremists inspired by the group’s ideology. Despite improved threat monitoring capabilities by local intelligence services, Islamic State’s tactics in Europe are likely to continuously adapt.

Islamic State: Back to insurgency

The Islamic State is losing control over Raqqa and Dei el-Zor, the two last major cities in which it had a sizeable combat force. This comes after major defeats in the Aleppo province, Mosul, Palmyra, central and south-eastern Syria. As its territory in the Middle East shrinks, it is increasingly likely that ISIS will abandon its nation-building project to revert to armed insurgency. The legal and administrative structures that formed much of the state apparatus of ISIS in northern Syria and western Iraq have disappeared. Instead, the group will maintain a smaller and more dynamic fighting force well versed in the use of explosives and trained in surprise assaults. The volume of terrorist-style attacks on civilian soft targets will increase as ISIS operatives seek to heighten instability and insecurity in Syria and Iraq. The coordinated bombings in the Nasiriya area on 14 September were an example of this approach. This shift in tactics will enable ISIS to remain operationally active and claim periodic propaganda victories.

Focus on external operations

Meanwhile, ISIS cells will increasingly turn their attention to operations outside the Middle East. Europe will remain a key battle-ground for ISIS operatives and sympathizers. The group’s objectives will include plotting complex attacks in Western Europe as well as issuing propaganda to inspire more self-motivated lone attackers. A deteriorating Western European security environment is part of ISIS’ strategy to create divisions in European societies, maintain credibility in the eyes of its followers, and attract more acolytes. Any attack, even if unsuccessful, will be broadcast by the group’s media channels.

Since 2014, the group has explicitly sought to drive a wedge between Muslim and non-Muslim populations in Europe with the objective of destabilizing the region. The organisation will continue to use sophisticated propaganda methods in European languages, to appeal to young European Muslim populations. Also, there is a realistic possibility that radical Islamists will try to increasingly gain the support of local criminal networks, especially those linked to weapons and drugs smuggling, in order to maintain a relative freedom of action in specific European districts such as the northern suburbs of Paris or north-western neighborhoods of Brussels.

A mix of tactics

As ISIS devotes additional resources to external operations, its evolving strategy will be based on a mix of tactics. The organisation is likely to continue to attempt mass-casualty complex attacks involving small-squad assaults, coordinated bombings and maintain co-ordination between groups across borders. However, since 2015, European security services have grown increasingly capable of disrupting complex plots.

As such, it is highly probable that Islamic State militants will push their followers to plot and conduct attacks that have a comparatively higher chance of success. For this, ISIS will continue to encourage followers to carry out single-assailant attacks involving the use of vehicles, knives, firearms and homemade explosives. The Islamic State is also likely to try to carry out operations in countries that have not experienced any major terrorist incident in the last 12 months. Attacks in these locations would enable the group to avoid detection by unsuspecting local security forces, showcase its ability to hit anywhere in Europe and gain new recruitment and support areas.

Volume over quality

The Islamic State’s European strategy will almost certainly favour quantity over quality in the coming years. With its capabilities reduced by losses of territory, manpower and resources in the Middle East, ISIS will have less capacity to train commandos to hit European cities, as it did for the November 2015 attacks in Paris. The organisation will almost certainly try to capitalise on a high volume of attacks with a varying impact. As demonstrated by the Parsons Green failed bombing, the attempted stabbing of military personnel in Brussels and the failed attacks in France and Belgium, ISIS will continue to be able to cause disruption and generate a sense of insecurity regardless if the attacks it claims responsibility for are not always successful. With a high volume of operations in Europe, the Islamic State would achieve its goals of remaining at the forefront of the news cycle and instilling fear in European societies. While single-assailant and crude attacks tend to cause fewer casualties than complex operations, these will continue to negatively impact the economic, social and political environment of the affected European countries.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/201...deradicalization-program/141356/?oref=d-river

What Went Wrong With France’s Deradicalization Program?

By training at-risk youths in history, philosophy, literature, and religion, the government hoped to fight terrorism at its root.

BY MADDY CROWELL
FREELANCE WRITER BASED IN NEW YORK., THE ATLANTIC
READ BIO
SEPTEMBER 29, 2017

Not long after his 19th birthday, David Vallat, a native Frenchman born to a secular family, converted to Islam. He was having an “existential crisis” and his new faith helped him curb his juvenile bêtises, or “bad behavior,” he told me. Few questioned his choice to convert either then or later when he joined the French army in 1992, to, as he saw it, protect the Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia. At the time, French troops were being sent to the Balkans as NATO peacekeepers, and Vallat jumped at the opportunity to join them. His motivation came from a promise he’d made to himself several years earlier after watching Nuit et Brouillard, a film about Auschwitz: He would not “stand idly by” in the face of another genocide. Yet the war was a shock: After escaping death twice in three days, Vallat considered returning home—“as a coward,” he said.

Then Vallat met Saudi Arabian and Qatari fighters on the frontline. They had a “momentum” he admired, a courage he desired. They taught him that if he sought to become a true Muslim, it didn’t matter if he lived or died in the war—Allah was waiting for him in paradise. He befriended several men who were members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which sought to export the Algerian civil war to French soil. They told Vallat that if he wanted to be a true martyr, he needed to “train himself.” (Two of the men, Khaled Kelkal and Boualem Bensaïd, were later convicted of masterminding the 1995 Paris bombings.)


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When Vallat returned to France in 1994, he began visiting a Salafi mosque his GIA friends had recommended. Salafism, an ultraconservative, fundamentalist strain of Islam that aspires to emulate the Prophet Mohammed and return to the religion’s supposed original ways, has been known to breed jihadists. At the mosque, he was told that modern-day Islam was a domesticated product of colonization, and that true Islam was that of combatants, of sacrifice, of blood. Anyone opposing the jihadists must be annihilated, he was told. He read the Koran and began learning Arabic.

Several months later, Vallat left France for an al-Qaeda base camp in Taliban-controlled territory in Khalden, Afghanistan, where he trained alongside Chinese, English, Yemeni, Malian, Turkish, Tunisian, Algerian and Filipino fighters in the “wild west,” as he called it: no state, no laws, just tanks, guns, and explosives. “There, they think only about death—how to kill and who to kill,” Vallat said.

After 10 months of training, the 22-year-old Vallat returned to France to stay with an Algerian friend he met at a Salafi cell in Chasse-sur-Rhône, a small town outside his hometown of Lyon. Working as a junior al-Qaeda operative, he prepared to return to Bosnia as an arms dealer and die for Allah “like the Americans in Normandy.” But on August 29th, 1995, just a month after a bomb exploded inside a Paris metro killing eight and injuring 100, French authorities raided the cell and arrested Vallat. They were so surprised to find a French native that his mother was asked to confirm that he was not an undocumented Algerian. He was sentenced to five years in prison for engaging in terror activities.

At first, Vallat was enraged. He considered himself a victim of colonial France’s anti-Islamic system. But, isolated from jihadi propaganda and his network of friends, he was forced to interrogate his own ideology, he said. He began to read two books a week and enrolled in university courses, studying French literature, history, geography, philosophy, and the Greek classics. Reading Machiavelli and Rousseau gave him a new political idea—what he later referred to as the “gift of humanism,” where the potential for human goodness is regarded as a more important force than anything divine. “I started to understand that all humans … can make a choice to believe in God,” Vallat, now 45, told me when we met at a sun-soaked café in central Lyon. “We can decide what we want, and the majority of our choices can be made to benefit us here on earth. Really, it shocked me.”

By his fourth year in prison, he was “completely deprogrammed,” he said. He claimed he never returned to jihad, and there’s no evidence that he did. GIA radicals issued a fatwa against him in 1995 when he began to speak out against them; last year, the Islamic State issued a second one via Facebook.

Though Vallat comes from an older generation of jihad, he insisted that radicalization remains much the same today. And the problem is worsening: some 350 “Islamic terrorists” currently sit in French prisons; another 5,800 are under police surveillance, and an additional 17,000 have been classified as a potential threat. Manuel Valls, France’s former prime minister, has declared the country’s fight against radicalization the “biggest challenge of our generation.” France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, reiterated Valls’s statement in a press conference last August, in which he said the fight against Islamic terrorism is France’s “top priority.” Since 2015, over 240 lives have been lost to terrorism, with the targets ranging from the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, to a kosher market, to a Jewish school outside of Toulouse, to the Bataclan concert hall, to the sidewalks of Nice on Bastille Day.

Following a year bookended by terror, Valls, looking like he hadn’t slept in months, addressed the French Senate in an emergency meeting in May of last year. “The radicalization of our youth is a deadly social model,” he said. “It’s the most serious challenge we’ve faced since World War II because it deeply damages the Republican pact,” a reference to France’s core principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. He proposed an €80-million, 80-point counterterrorism plan, to address France’s leading threat: homegrown radicalization, or the recruitment of young men and women on French soil into ISIS.

“The government realized they could no longer wait for radicals returning from Iraq or Syria,” a government employee for the Inter-ministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (CIPDR) told me when we spoke in her office in Paris. “We had to create something that would work with radicals already in France.”

The plan was to open an experimental “Center for Prevention, Integration, and Citizenship.” Radicalized men and women who’d been flagged by local prefectures for exhibiting withdrawn behavior were invited to voluntarily enter a program to “develop critical minds and appropriate citizenship and republican values,” according to its charter. If it went well, the government would open 12 more centers—one in each of France’s 13 districts.

Last September, nine residents showed up at a cream-colored 18th-century manor nested in rows of copper sunflower fields in Pontourny, a sleepy town in France’s Loire Valley. Aside from the video camera and a sign on the fence outside that read “No Filming,” there was little evidence that this was the site of an experimental government program. A team of 25 social workers, psychologists, special educators, and a Muslim chaplain, greeted them for what was expected to be a 10-month regimen. (The center was expecting three times as many people to show up.)

Residents, who were aged between 18 and 30 and came from all over France, received lessons in French history, philosophy, literature, media, and religion, all with the goal of teaching them to “muscle their intellectual immune systems,” as Gerald Bronner, a French sociologist who worked at the center in Pontourny, put it. They also participated in daily therapy, art, and music classes. Group conversations centered on democracy, religion and laïcité, the French concept dating back to 1905 that calls for the separation of religion from politics.

“You can’t tell someone, ‘What you think is bad, here’s good information,’” one social worker at the center told me in August. Instead, the center wanted to address what made the residents prone to their ideology in the first place. “We worked with each person on their history, job opportunities, home life, health programs, all to help them understand why they believe what they do and question whether it’s really the truth.”

The center did not intend to teach courses in religion, but a Muslim chaplain was brought in to meet with each resident individually. At first, no one would speak with him—they regarded him as unfaithful because he didn’t keep halal and worked with the French government, which they regarded as secular. But he decided to stay at the center, the social worker told me. The chaplain met with residents individually and in groups, and offered two workshops: the first was in Arabic so they could “better master the language of the sacred texts,” and the second a lesson on the history of Muslim civilization. “Secularism in France does not mean the rejection of religions,” the CIPDR clarified, “but, on the contrary, guarantees freedom of belief and worship of one’s choice.”

After a few months, the residents were eating non-halal food. Residents also received a rigorous training in French nationalism: They were asked to wear uniforms and sing La Marseillaise, France’s national anthem, each morning.

But deradicalization is a murky, unsettled science. A debate soon broke out among experts over how best to implement the program. Could radicalized youth be “cured” psychologically? Or was radicalization a structural problem, caused by inequality and segregation? What, for that matter, did it even mean to be radicalized?

When I posed these questions to the CIPDR, they admitted they were still working out the process. To be radicalized, they explained, was the “process by which an individual or a group adopts a violent form of action directly linked to an extremist ideology with a political, social or religious content that disputes the political, social or cultural order.” Part of the difficulty, though, is in creating a program that avoids falsely categorizing Muslims who are conservative but not radicalized. While French intelligence monitors mosques, neighborhoods, and online activities, often there’s no way to tell if someone has fully committed to jihad until it’s too late. And to Vallat, the problem extends in both directions. “Nobody knows they are radicalized,” he said. When I asked him his opinion of the government’s voluntary approach, he laughed. “What, I’m going to raise my hand and say, ‘Hi, I think I’m radicalized and I need a doctor?’”

The French deradicalization model was also unlike any other. Germany, Britain, and Belgium have developed programs that focus on further integrating radicals into their community. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, focuses on finding jobs and wives for recruited jihadists. But in France, the idea was to take subjects awayfrom their home environments.

To Vallat, the problem with a deradicalization program, especially one implemented en masse, is the ambiguity of terms. “Radicalization” is subjective; it’s not like being ill or suffering from addiction. The idea that someone can possess the “wrong” radical ideology presumes there’s some “right” corpus of values. The CIPDR claimed to be addressing this problem by using the term “disengagement” instead of deradicalization. “Deradicalization means that we are going to withdraw the beliefs of a spirit,” Bronner wrote in an email. “This is not really the objective of the center; everyone has the right to believe what he wants. Rather, we want to help these radicalized young people make a declaration of mental independence to better control certain processes of deceptive reasoning such as conspiracy theories.”

Bronner explained that he and his colleagues at CIPDR convened an independent team of psychologists, including the sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, to create a “psychometric test” to measure the extent to which the residents’ worldviews were changing. They were tested on their ability to identify conspiracy theories, and forced to examine how they may have fallen for a conspiracy. Many of their tools were modeled after the French government-designed program Epide, Bronner explained, which works with disenfranchised youth to better integrate them into French society. But the methods were controversial.

Esther Benbassa, a French senator of Val-de-Marne, told me the French program was a “total fiasco.” The problem, she explained, was not the government’s method but the model from the outset. “It’s a stupid idea to take young people from their homes. The problem is you need to re-socialize these people, not make them a bourgeois model.”

“Several errors were made,” Amelie Boukhobza, a clinical psychologist for Entr’Autres, an association that manages the state’s deradicalization cases, told me. “The issue of volunteering was very problematic.” But to Boukhobza, the “full-frontal” approach of “flag raising in the morning, courses in secularism, etc.,” was too aggressively nationalistic. “They’ve built a program in total opposition to the particular mental universe of the individuals. I don’t think it’s the right solution. Rather, they should propose not a counter-truth but something that can coexist.”

The issue of terminology, however, remains a problem. To push the term “disengagement” over “deradicalization” as the CIPDR does is still to assume that some ideas are safer than others. And to fully reject terms seems, in some sense, to admit the impossibility of deradicalization.

A few months after the program began, local protesters gathered outside of the château, carrying signs that read “Pontourny is in danger” and “Jihadist Danger.” They demanded the government shut down the center, fearing it would bring terrorism straight to their town. “Imagine having to tell local people that radicalized individuals are going to be living next to them and to tell them it ‘doesn’t matter,’” Jean-Luc Dupont, the mayor of Chinon, Pontourny’s next-door neighbor with a population of close to 8,500, said.

By February, all the residents had left the center, largely because of the protesters, the social worker explained. The media wrote the program off as “a total fiasco.” But the center, according to CIPDR, was not a total failure. “We were really starting to see an evolution in their thinking, but we didn’t have enough time,” the CIPDR said.

For now, the Pontourny Center is shut down indefinitely. The CIPDR said they were working on developing new methods and would release a plan next year. But as the country grapples with whether to institute a new program, radicalization remains something of an existential threat for France. A better understanding of the problem would require the French to look inward at an array of complex socioeconomic and racial issues—something Valls, at least, appeared unwilling to do when he announced to the press in November 2015 that he was tired of “social, sociological, and cultural excuses” to explain jihad. “To explain is to excuse,” he said.

Even a more sensitive approach, however, will have to address complicated questions about where to draw the line between radical and non-radical. Is someone who rejects principles of laïcité inherently radical, even if they aren’t violent? To Macron, France’s new president, the ambiguity appears not to matter. “There’s no place for naiveté, nor for fear of Islam which confuses Islamism and Islamic,” he said in a press conference at the end of August. Addressing the United Nations in New York last week, Macron emphasized his interest in maintaining France’s “exemplary relationship” with the United States to “fight terrorism in Africa and the Middle East.” How and when this will happen, however, remains to be decided. This week, the National Assembly will meet to decide on the French Senate’s new law, “To Strengthen Internal Security and Fight Against Terrorism,” and in November, the French government plans to convene to discuss a new plan for a “disengagement” program. Still, no one seems able to answer the question of what deradicalization actually means.

Even Vallat, still a practicing Muslim with a wife and daughter, doesn’t have an answer. “There always remains something of the pathway created from radicalization,” he wrote me later over email. “For example, I never go into a protected place without immediately imagining how to take it by storm. When I see a group of soldiers or policemen on the street, I cannot help but think how I’d neutralize them. I know today I will never do it, but this regard (or “outlook”) persists.”

Research for this article was made possible with the support of a Heinrich Boell Foundation Transatlantic Media Fellowship.

Maddy Crowell is a freelance writer based in New York. FULL BIO

 

[Housecarl]

"face up to life in prison"...WTF?!?! This guy is a classic example of someone who should be standing over a trap door or in front of a pock marked wall...

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/...lping-attack-us-army-base-in-afghanistan.html

N.Y. / REGION

Texas Man Convicted of Helping Attack U.S. Army Base in Afghanistan

By ALAN FEUER
SEPT. 29, 2017

In January 2009, two trucks packed with explosives careened toward the front gate of a remote United States Army base in the Khost Province of Afghanistan. The first truck exploded near the gate, injuring a pregnant Afghan woman and several others. But the terrorist plot to kill American soldiers was foiled when the second truck crashed into the blast crater left by the initial explosion.

On Friday, a Texas-born man, Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, was convicted of having helped to plan the attack as an operative of Al Qaeda. After a weeklong trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, Mr. Farekh was found guilty on charges of providing material aid to terrorists.

Born in Houston and raised in Dubai, Mr. Farekh, 31, served in Al Qaeda’s external operations unit from 2007 to 2014, prosecutors said, where his duties included collecting money for the terrorist group’s fighters. When he was first identified as a Qaeda operative, his case prompted a debate within the U.S. government over whether it was morally and legally defensible to kill an American citizen overseas without a trial.

Although the Pentagon nominated Mr. Farekh to be placed on the so-called kill list of terrorism suspects and the Central Intelligence Agency pushed for him to be killed, he was taken into custody in Pakistan in 2014 based on intelligence provided by American officials. After being questioned by a team of elite terrorism investigators, he was eventually brought to Brooklyn to stand trial.

At the trial, prosecutors described how Mr. Farekh had studied at the University of Manitoba in Western Canada and was radicalized in part by the online sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Islamic cleric who was killed by the C.I.A. in Yemen in 2011. Prosecutors said that Mr. Farekh and two friends, Ferid Imam and Maiwand Yar, traveled to Pakistan in 2007. There, they said, Mr. Farekh joined Al Qaeda, working his way up the ranks, his ascent assisted by marrying the daughter of a top Qaeda leader.

After an attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman on Jan. 19, 2009, forensic technicians were able to recover latent fingerprints from the adhesive packing tape used to bind together the explosive material in the second undetonated bomb, prosecutors said. At least 12 of those prints, they said, matched Mr. Farekh’s.

Starting in 2012, the Obama administration began a series of discussions about Mr. Farekh’s fate. Though American drones had shown him several times in Pakistan in the early months of 2013 and spy agencies were monitoring his communications, the decision eventually was made to spare his life.

Among the witnesses who testified against Mr. Farekh was Zarein Ahmedzay who said that while they were in the tribal areas of Pakistan, he had taught Mr. Farekh how to handle weapons, like pistols, machine guns and hand grenades. Mr. Ahmedzay took the stand against Mr. Farekh under a cooperation agreement with the government reached after he pleaded guilty in 2010 to planning an attack on the New York City subway system.

Mr. Farekh will face up to life in prison at his sentencing scheduled for Jan. 11.

Correction: September 29, 2017
An earlier version of this article misstated the status of a pregnant woman who was hit when a truck exploded near a United States Army base in Afghanistan. She was injured, not killed.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.atimes.com/article/academias-collaborative-role-fostering-pakistani-terror/

Academia’s collaborative role in fostering Pakistani terror

Security agencies have rounded on Ansarul Sharia Pakistan, whose operatives have committed a number of atrocities in recent months. Not for the first time, the links to educational institutions are clear

By F.M. SHAKIL SEPTEMBER 30, 2017 11:21 AM (UTC+8)

The abortive murder attempt on a senior leader of the secular Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) in Karachi early this month has exposed a previously unknown terror outfit with close links to academic institutions in Sindh and Balochistan: Ansarul Sharia Pakistan (ASP).

Investigators claim the organization’s operatives, who they say have been involved in the murders of dozens of police personnel in Sindh and Balochistan, have Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from Karachi University and Sindh’s NED University of Engineering and Technology, (NEDUET).

Following the attack on MQM’s Khawaja Izharul Hassan, the director general of the Sindh police force revealed in a press briefing that, among eight members of ASP identified so far, three had Masters in Applied Physics, three were previously enrolled in engineering degree programs, one was a Chartered Accountant and another had an MBA.

Sources in Pakistan’s spy agencies told Asia Times they believed academics and administrative staff at educational institutions were in collusion with the ASP in disseminating extremist values.

Police say the ASP first surfaced in February 2017 when it was responsible for the killing of a retired Brigadier in the Baloch Colony area of Shahrah-e-Faisal, in Karachi.

Since then, the organization has staged regular attacks, mostly on security personnel. The outfit derives its ideological foundation from Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and Jaiesh Muhammad (The Army of Muhammad).

One of ASP’s commanders, 29-year-old Abdul Karim Sarosh Siddiqui, was a student of Applied Physics at Karachi University. He accompanied the man, later identified simply as Hassaan, who attempted to kill Hassan on September 2.

The would-be assassin, who died in crossfire with the police, is said to have been a PhD engineer working as a lab technician at the Dawood University of Engineering and Technology (DUET), a private university in Karachi.

In an “intelligence-based operation,” security forces captured Siddiqui at Gulzar-e-Hijri, in Karachi, on September 6. Six others were also arrested, including Dr Abdullah Hashmi, 28, who is said to be the brains behind ASP.

Hashmi has a master’s degree in Applied Physics from Karachi University and is a skilled IT expert. He was an employee of NEDUET and worked in the computer department of that university. Together, the affiliations of the men captured connect the outfit to Daesh, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and al-Qaeda.

On September 7, two further ASP operatives, from the Quetta and Pishin districts of Balochistan, were also seized and taken to an undisclosed location for further questioning. They were identified as Professor Mushtaq, a teacher at the Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS) and Mufti Habibullah, who was running seminaries in Karachi and Hyderabad. Both were accused of hatemongering and spreading militant ideas among students.

The emergence of such an organized, well-educated and tech-savvy terror outfit has prompted the Sindh government to declare that it is beefing up “verification processes and security auditing” at the province’s educational institutions, which appear to have become seedbeds for extremism and terrorism.

The spotlight has fallen on well-educated Pakistanis before, however, without the problem being rooted out. Names including Omar Saeed Sheikh, Naeem Noor Khan, Dr Arshad Waheed, Faisal Shahzad, Hamad Adil, and Owais Jakhrani continue to haunt the country.

As recently as 2015, the Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah surprised many when he disclosed that three “well-educated” students – namely Saad Aziz, Mohammad Azfar Ishrat and Haafiz Nasir – had been arrested in connection with terror attacks.

Aziz was a graduate of The Institute of Business Administration, Ishrat had an engineering degree from the Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, and Nasir had a Masters in Islamic Studies from Karachi University.

They confessed to involvement in the Safoora Goth bus shooting that resulted in the deaths of 46 Ismaili Shia, the murder of rights activist Sabeen Mahmud, the attack on American educationist Debra Lobo, and targeted killings of members of the Bohra community and police officials in different parts of Karachi.

Recent incidents involving young extremists, and the advent of ASP, point unequivocally to the transformation of educational institutions into terror-producing factories. It is well past time academia itself became accountable.

 

[Housecarl]

It's going to be interesting to see how this works out....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.france24.com/en/20170930-colombia-last-rebel-group-begin-truce-sunday

30 September 2017 - 22H20

Colombia and last rebel group to begin a truce on Sunday

BOGOTA (AFP) - After a half-century of armed struggle, Colombia's ELN rebels are poised to usher in a historic, if possibly temporary, truce starting early Sunday.

The initial ceasefire between the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army and government forces is set to extend until January 9. It represents the biggest achievement yet from peace talks carried out since February by the two sides in Quito, Ecuador, aimed at ending the longest armed conflict in the Americas.

The rebel group's leader, Nicolas Rodriguez, ordered his troops to "cease all types of offensive activities to fully comply with the bilateral ceasefire" starting at 0001 Sunday (05H01 GMT).

The armed forces are to suspend operations against the guerrillas at the same time.

President Juan Manuel Santos said he hoped the truce could serve as a "first step to achieving peace" with the rebel group. The government earlier secured the disarmament of the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the oldest and most powerful guerrilla force on the continent.

The runup to the truce, however, has been bloody, as ELN rebels attacked security forces and a major oil pipeline, leaving one soldier dead and causing oil spills in rivers near Venezuela.

- 'Foolish onslaught' -

The chief government negotiator, Juan Camilo Restrepo, on Saturday condemned what he called the "foolish onslaught" and said the ELN needed to "keep its commitments" if it wanted to erase its "bad image."

The rebels have killed or wounded 47 members of the security forces since January, according to Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas.

The ceasefire agreed by the ELN, which has 1,500 fighters by official count, goes beyond the strictly military.

The organization has also agreed to halt attacks on oil facilities, to stop all hostage-taking, to suspend recruitment of minors and to stop planting explosives.

For its part, the government has promised to improve prison conditions for 450 rebels and to strengthen protections for human-rights leaders, 190 of whom have died in attacks since January 2016, according to the government ombudsman.

Monitors from the United Nations, the government, the rebels and the Catholic Church will verify compliance on the ground and seek to resolve any disagreements.

Jorge Restrepo, of the Conflict Analysis Resource Center, said the ELN truce could be more fragile than the earlier one involving FARC, due to the ELN's looser command structure.

"The ceasefire is precariously structured and defined," he told the AFP.

A fourth round of peace talks is set for October 23 in Quito.

The FARC and ELN formed in 1964 to fight for land rights and protect rural communities. The conflict drew in leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and state forces and left 260,000 people dead, more than 60,000 missing and seven million displaced.

by Santiago TORRADO, Hector Velasco
© 2017 AFP

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.france24.com/en/20170930-cameroon-orders-3-day-total-lockdown-troubled-anglophone-region

Cameroon orders 3-day total lockdown in troubled Anglophone region

Video by Zigoto TCHAYA
Text by NEWS WIRES
Latest update : 2017-09-30

Cameroon authorities on Friday banned all gatherings of more than four people, ordered bus stations, eateries and shops to shut and forbade movement between divisions of its English-speaking region for three days to prevent planned protests.

Anglophone Cameroonians plan to demonstrate on October 1st, the day of their independence from Britain, over what they say is ill treatment and neglect by the predominantly Francophone government of President Paul Biya. The protests have become a lightening rod for opposition to Biya's 35-year rule.

The last time there were big protests in the western region, the government responded by unplugging the internet, shooting dead six protesters and arrested hundreds of others, some of whom were charged with crimes that carry the death penalty.

"Public gatherings and assembly of more than four persons shall be strictly forbidden. All off licences, snack bars and night clubs shall not operate. Motor parks shall remain closed," said the order signed by Adolphe Lele Lafrique, governor of the northwest region.

"Any persons who attempt to violate this order shall be prosecuted," it added.

Video

Thousands of Anglophone demonstrators

The draconian measures are likely to provoke further anger driving a movement that is fast morphing from a bid for equal rights into a full-fledged struggle for independence.

Cameroon's divide has its roots in the end of World War One, when the League of Nations divided the former German colony of Kamerun between the allied French and British victors.

Thousands of Anglophone demonstrators took to the streets last Friday, some of them hoisting separatist flags.

The government ordered its border with Nigeria closed this weekend. The Anglophone regions have strong ties to eastern Nigeria and authorities may fear that allowing the border to remain open during protests offers the demonstrators a rear base and makes it harder to maintain order.

Most campaigners want the country to resume a federalist system -- an approach that followed independence in 1960 but was later scrapped -- but a hardline minority is calling for secession. Both measures are opposed by the country's long-term president, 84-year-old Paul Biya.

On social media, some campaigners have been calling for October 1 to be symbolically named independence day.

In a statement issued in New York on Thursday, the UN said Secretary General Antonio Guterres was "deeply concerned" about the situation in Cameroon.

"He urges the authorities to promote measures of national reconciliation aimed at finding a durable solution to the crisis, including by addressing its root causes," the statement said.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

Date created : 2017-09-30

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.france24.com/en/20171001-violence-erupts-budget-opposition-protest-haiti

01 October 2017 - 01H40

Violence erupts at budget opposition protest in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Demonstrators in Haiti took to the streets of Port-au-Prince Saturday for an opposition-backed protest against the government budget, which many believe hurts the nation's poorest.

The unpopular budget, released in July, will come into effect on October 1 -- with opponents of President Jovenel Moses concerned poorer families will suffer tax increases.

After three hours, violence erupted on the sidelines of the peaceful procession of around 2,000 people as it arrived in the affluent area of Petionville.

Protesters dispersed from the march -- the latest in a series of demonstrations this month -- breaking shop windows and targeting vehicles and media covering the event with stones.

Some demanding the removal of Moses said they threw stones to demonstrate the issue had escalated past the point of no return.

"We need someone in power who can help the poorest people to survive, not once again favor the richest," protester Rene Sanon Fils, parading on Saturday by motorcycle, told AFP.

"If today Jovenel refuses to listen to reason, we will take our challenge to another level. Notice to everyone for the coming week: sharpen your machetes, we will tear off those that are only weeds," he warned.

During the second half of the march, demonstrators also blocked traffic using barricades made of stones and garbage.

Police were forced to use tear gas grenades to contain the violence, denounced by the political parties who organized the protest.

Opposition lawmakers have decried the budget for fiscal year 2017-2018, saying it would balloon Haiti's debt.

© 2017 AFP

 

[Housecarl]

Europe: Politics, Trade, NATO-October 2017
Started by northern watch‎, Today 02:37 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?525249-Europe-Politics-Trade-NATO-October-2017

ALERTS USA 9/30 North Korea missiles on CONUS inevitable...more
Started by Ben Sunday‎, Yesterday 07:59 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...rth-Korea-missiles-on-CONUS-inevitable...more

Trump: Talking to NK's Kim a waste, 'will do what needs to be done'
Started by Dennis Olson‎, Today 09:44 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...K-s-Kim-a-waste-will-do-what-needs-to-be-done

The Winds of War Blow in Korea and The Far East
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-of-War-Blow-in-Korea-and-The-Far-East/page61

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Terror attack by muzzie in a U-Haul van.Started by mzkitty‎, Today 02:50 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...anada-Terror-attack-by-muzzie-in-a-U-Haul-van.

France: Two dead in knife attack at Marseille St. Charles train station
Started by eXe‎, Today 05:55 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...attack-at-Marseille-St.-Charles-train-station

Catalonia Referendum Thread - Spain vs. Catalonia independence vote
Started by Melodi‎, Today 09:31 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-Thread-Spain-vs.-Catalonia-independence-vote

Main Russia/Ukraine invasion thread - Donetsk now claims all of Ukraine - Post #18742
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-now-claims-all-of-Ukraine-Post-18742/page475

-----

Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2017...-century-warfare-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/

What is the “First Tool of 21st Century Warfare” and what can we do about it?

BY CHARLIE DUNLAP, J.D. · 30 SEPTEMBER 2017

In recent years there has been much discussion about the “weaponization” of social media. This past week my friend, retired Special Forces colonel Dave Maxwell (who is now a Georgetown University professor), has weighed-in on this phenomena with several incisive observations. Most importantly, he offers something of a challenge to today’s youth as to what to do about it.

A little background: last week an article in Defense One (“Social Media is ‘First Tool’ of 21st-Century Warfare, US Lawmaker”) quotes Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va) as quipping that while America may have “the best 20th-century military that money can buy,” we are “increasingly in a world where cyber vulnerability, misinformation and disinformation may be the tools of conflict.” Warner adds that “What we may have seen are the first tools of 21st-century disinformation.”

Warner was reflecting on the recent allegations that Russia used social media to influence the elections, but the “weaponization” of social media has been a hot topic in military circles much before that.

For example, a description of the seminal 2015 study (“#TheWeaponizationOfSocialMedia”) by Thomas Nissen of the Royal Danish Defence College points out that in “democracies to autocracies, information is a valuable resource that is increasingly difficult to control.” While observing that such freedom is “how it should be,” it nevertheless notes that the platforms are also “enabling several dangerous trajectories” that include “new marketplaces for loyalty, the ability to opt-in (and out) of identities, perceived transparency across battlefields and diplomacy, and media illiteracy and a commensurate decline in the standards of journalism.”

There have been other examinations including this 2016 thesis by a student at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College that focuses on the use of social media by the Islamic State. Moreover, in a superb cover story last November in Atlantic magazine (“War Goes Viral: How social media is being weaponized across the world”) scholars Emerson Brooking and P.W. Singer found that “Social media has already revolutionized everything from dating to business to politics. Now it is reshaping war itself.”

After cataloguing a number of threats social media occasions, Emerson and Singer argue that:

[T]hese are the dilemmas that will come to define the social-media age as it confronts the timeless challenge of war. National leaders will have to reckon with a social-media environment that seeds violence through vast digital networks and a public that has never spoken with so loud and so immediate a voice. And they will face new kinds of conflict shaped by the internet’s next iteration.

Similarly, there are commercial implications to the threat as well. In a July 2017 article in Forbes (“The Weaponization Of Social And Digital Media”) Richard Levick describes how today companies “need to expect to confront a slew of freshly empowered adversaries that are weaponizing social and digital media, pirating thefts of [their] databases, leaking [their] customers’ proprietary information, and trying to deflate [their] stock price while twisting [their] earned media coverage.”

So what are Professor/Colonel Maxwell’s ideas about how to deal with this challenge, particularly in the security realm? He begins by cautioning that that social media “is just a tool” that can only be understood in the context of the “strategy that exploits it.” The task then becomes exposing and countering that strategy. He explains:

The open societies of the US and free and democratic nations are being subverted by active measures and propaganda to undermine political processes and sow cultural and political divisions to allow the closed societies of revisionist and revolutionary powers to dominate in international affairs.

The way to counter this effort is through a grass roots resistance movement that consists of an educated, activist, energetic, and empowered youth who seek to be part of something larger than themselves and validate their self-worth as disruptors of the status quo.

However, the closed societies are challenging their ability to disrupt because active measures and propaganda have taken away their initiative. A new grass roots movement, a cyber-underground, organized around special operations principles could create a nationwide and global network that will seek out, identify, understand, and expose active measures and propaganda from closed societies in order to protect free and open societies.

In short, our nationwide youth of disruptors could channel their abilities to beat the revisionist and revolutionary disruptors. The exposure of adversary active measures and propaganda can inoculate the population against adversary effects and render their efforts ineffective and useless. This movement will help to restore and sustain what George Kennan termed the “health and vigor of our own society” that is the vital antidote to the subversive threats that we face.

Sure, the devil is in the details, but Dave’s out-of-the-box ideas are certainly worth contemplating as a key step in confronting what really is the “First Tool of 21st Century Warfare.” We know the problem, and now we have to roll up our collective sleeves and focus on filling in the specifics as to how to implement the innovative concepts the Colonel Maxwell and others who are grappling with emerging reality are devising.

Update: Colonel/Professor Maxwell advises that he is writing a full article about his ideas. When it’s public, count on seeing a link on Lawfire.

 

[jward]

It gives me a chuckle to consider this situation... One of the best methods to combat social media would probably be to revert to actually educating young people. But, of course, we can't
actually learn em how to reason or think clearly, or our dreams of an army of low information voters who vote and march when, where, and how they're told, crumble.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...41773cd5a14_story.html?utm_term=.4537bad5da4a

National Security

A North Korean ship was seized off Egypt with a huge cache of weapons destined for a surprising buyer

By Joby Warrick October 1 at 6:49 PM

Last August, a secret message was passed from Washington to Cairo warning about a mysterious vessel steaming toward the Suez Canal. The bulk freighter named Jie Shun was flying Cambodian colors but had sailed from North Korea, the warning said, with a North Korean crew and an unknown cargo shrouded by heavy tarps.

Armed with this tip, customs agents were waiting when the ship entered Egyptian waters. They swarmed the vessel and discovered, concealed under bins of iron ore, a cache of more than 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades. It was, as a United Nations report later concluded, the “largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

But who were the rockets for? The Jie Shun’s final secret would take months to resolve and would yield perhaps the biggest surprise of all: The buyers were the Egyptians themselves.

A U.N. investigation uncovered a complex arrangement in which Egyptian business executives ordered millions of dollars worth of North Korean rockets for the country’s military while also taking pains to keep the transaction hidden, according to U.S. officials and Western diplomats familiar with the findings. The incident, many details of which were never publicly revealed, prompted the latest in a series of intense, if private, U.S. complaints over Egyptian efforts to obtain banned military hardware from Pyongyang, the officials said.

It also shed light on a little-understood global arms trade that has become an increasingly vital financial lifeline for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the wake of unprecedented economic sanctions.

Video

[The message behind the murder: North Korea’s assassination sheds light on chemical weapons arsenal]

A spokesman for the Egyptian Embassy in Washington pointed to Egypt’s “transparency” and cooperation with U.N. officials in finding and destroying the contraband.

“Egypt will continue to abide by all Security Council resolutions and will always be in conformity with these resolutions as they restrain military purchases from North Korea,” spokesman Karim Saad said.

But U.S. officials confirmed that delivery of the rockets was foiled only when U.S. intelligence agencies spotted the vessel and alerted Egyptian authorities through diplomatic channels — essentially forcing them to take action — said current and former U.S. officials and diplomats briefed on the events. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. and U.N. findings, said the Jie Shun episode was one of a series of clandestine deals that led the Trump administration to freeze or delay nearly $300 million in military aid to Egypt over the summer.


Whether North Korea was ever paid for the estimated $23 million rocket shipment is unclear. But the episode illustrates one of the key challenges faced by world leaders in seeking to change North Korea’s behavior through economic pressure. Even as the United States and its allies pile on the sanctions, Kim continues to quietly reap profits from selling cheap conventional weapons and military hardware to a list of customers and beneficiaries that has at times included Iran, Burma, Cuba, Syria, Eritrea and at least two terrorist groups, as well as key U.S. allies such as Egypt, analysts said.

Some customers have long-standing military ties with Pyongyang, while others have sought to take advantage of the unique market niche created by North Korea: a kind of global eBay for vintage and refurbished Cold War-era weapons, often at prices far lower than the prevailing rates.

Over time, the small-arms trade has emerged as a reliable source of cash for a regime with considerable expertise in the tactics of running contraband, including the use of “false flag” shipping and the clever concealment of illegal cargo in bulk shipments of legitimate goods such as sugar or — as in the case of the Jie Shun — a giant mound of loose iron ore.

“These cover materials not only act to obfuscate shipments, but really highlights the way that licit North Korean businesses are being used to facilitate North Korean illicit activity,” said David Thompson, a senior analyst and investigator of North Korean financial schemes for the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington. “It is this nesting which makes this illicit activity so hard to identify.”

At a time when North Korea’s other profitable enterprises are being hurt by international sanctions, Thompson said, such exports are now “likely more important than ever.”

Beneath yellow rocks
Even by North Korean standards, the Jie Shun was a veritable rust bucket. The freighter’s steel frame was corroded from bow to stern, and its fixtures caked with coal dust from previous voyages, U.N. investigators would later report. The desalination system had stopped working, judging from crates of water bottles officials would find strewn around the crew compartments. Whether its weapons were discovered or not, the ship’s 8,000-mile voyage last summer was probably destined to be its last.

“The ship was in terrible shape,” said a Western diplomat familiar with confidential reports from the official U.N. inquest. “This was a one-shot voyage, and the boat was probably intended for the scrap yard afterward.”

Seaworthy or not, the ship set sail from the port city of Haeju, North Korea, on July 23, 2016, with a 23-manned North Korean crew that included a captain and a political officer to ensure communist-party discipline on board. Although North Korean-owned, the vessel had been registered in Cambodia, allowing it to fly a Cambodian flag and claim Phnom Penh as its home port. Using a “flag of convenience,” as the tactic is called, allows North Korean ships to avoid drawing unwanted attention in international waters. So does the practice of routinely shutting off a vessel’s transponder, behavior documented in a February U.N. report that described the Jie Shun’s voyage.


[The secret to Kim’s success? Some experts see Russian echoes in North Korea’s missile advances]

“The vessel’s automatic identification system was off for the majority of the voyage,” the report said, “except in busy sea lanes where such behavior could be noticed and assessed as a safety threat.”

Still, a 300-foot-long freighter big enough to hold 2,400 passenger cars is not easily concealed. U.S. intelligence agencies tracked the ship as it left North Korea, and then monitored it as it steamed around the Malay Peninsula and sailed westward across the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden. The vessel was heading northward through the Red Sea in early August when the warning was passed to Egyptian authorities about a suspicious North Korean vessel that appeared bound for the Suez Canal.

“They were notified by our side,” said a former senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the events. “I give their foreign ministry credit for taking it seriously.”

The Jie Shun had not yet reached the canal when an Egyptian naval vessel ordered the crew to halt for an inspection. At first, the cargo hold appeared to match the description on the manifest: 2,300 tons of loose yellow rocks called limonite, a kind of iron ore. But digging beneath stone and tarp, the inspectors found wooden crates — stacks of them.

Asked about the boxes, the crew produced a bill of lading listing the contents, in awkward English, as “assembly parts of the underwater pump.” But after the last of the 79 crates was unloaded and opened at Egypt’s al-Adabiyah port, it was clear that this was a weapons shipment like none other: more than 24,000 rocket-propelled grenades, and completed components for 6,000 more. All were North Korean copies of a rocket warhead known as the PG-7, a variant of a Soviet munition first built in the 1960s.

A closer examination by U.N. experts would reveal yet another deception, this one apparently intended to fool the weapons’ Egyptian recipients: Each of the rockets bore a stamp with a manufacturing date of March 2016, just a few months before the Jie Shun sailed. But the label, like the manifest, was false.

“On-site analysis revealed that they were not of recent production,” the U.N. report said, “but rather had been stockpiled for some time.”

A worldwide customer base
North Korea’s booming illicit arms trade is an outgrowth of a legitimate business that began decades ago. In the 1960s and ’70s, the Soviet Union gave away conventional weapons — and, in some cases, entire factories for producing them — to developing countries as a way of winning allies and creating markets for Soviet military technology. Many of these client states would standardize the use of communist-bloc munitions and weapons systems in their armies, thus ensuring a steady demand for replacement parts and ammunition that would continue well into the future.

Sensing an opportunity, North Korea obtained licenses to manufacture replicas of Soviet and Chinese weapons, ranging from assault rifles and artillery rockets to naval frigates and battle tanks. Arms factories sprouted in the 1960s that soon produced enough weapons to supply North Korea’s vast military, as well as a surplus that could be sold for cash.

By the end of the Cold War, North Korea’s customer base spanned four continents and included dozens of countries, as well as armed insurgencies. The demand for discount North Korean weapons would continue long after the Soviet Union collapsed, and even after North Korea came under international censure and economic isolation because of its nuclear weapons program, said Andrea Berger, a North Korea specialist and senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif.

“North Korea’s assistance created a legacy of dependency,” said Berger, author of “Target Markets,” a 2015 monograph on the history of Pyongyang’s arms exports. “The type of weaponry that these [client] countries still have in service is largely based on communist-bloc designs from the Cold War era. North Korea has started to innovate and move beyond those designs, but it is still willing to provide spare parts and maintenance. As the Russians and Chinese have moved away from this market, the North Koreans have stuck around.”

[How Russia quietly undercuts sanctions intended to stop North Korea’s nuclear program]

As a succession of harsh U.N. sanctions threatened to chase away customers, North Korea simply changed tactics. Ships that ferried artillery rockets and tank parts to distant ports changed their names and registry papers so they could sail under a foreign flag. New front companies sprang up in China and Malaysia to handle transactions free of any visible connection to Pyongyang. A mysterious online weapons vendor called Glocom — jokingly dubbed the “Samsung of North Korean proliferators” by some Western investigators — began posting slick videos hawking a variety of wares ranging from military radios to guidance systems for drones, never mentioning North Korea as the source.

The sanctions stigma inevitably scared away some potential buyers, but the trading in the shadows remains brisk, intelligence officials and Western diplomats say. Some remaining clients are fellow pariah states such as Syria, whose recent purchases have included chemical-weapons protective gear. Other long-term customers are nonstate actors such as the militant group Hezbollah, which has acquired North Korean rockets and missiles from arms smugglers and sympathetic regimes. North Korean-made rifles have even been recovered from the bodies of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, although U.S. officials believe the guns were probably looted from stocks sold to the late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi years earlier.

Still other customers look to North Korea as one of the last suppliers of low-cost parts and ammunition for older weapons systems that are scarcely found in commercial markets. The list includes sub-Saharan African countries such as Uganda and Congo, which for decades relied on North Korea to train and equip their armies.

The list also includes Egypt, a major U.S. aid recipient that still maintains diplomatic ties and has a history of military-to-military ties dating back to the 1970s with Pyongyang, said Berger, the Middlebury researcher. Although Cairo has publicly sworn off dealing with North Korea, she said, incidents such as the Jie Shun show how hard it is to break old habits, especially for military managers seeking to extend the life of costly weapons systems.

Egypt’s army today still includes dozens of weapons systems that were originally of Soviet design. Among them are at least six types of antitank weapons, including the RPG-7, the 1960s-era grenade-launcher that uses the same PG-7 warhead as those discovered on the Jie Shun. The number of Egyptian RPG-7 tubes in active service numbers has been estimated at nearly 180,000.

“Egypt was a consistent North Korean customer in the past,” Berger said. “I would call them a ‘resilient’ customer today.”

Diplomatic turbulence
When Egyptian officials were first confronted about their country’s possible ties to the Jie Shun’s rockets, the response was denial, followed by obfuscation, Western diplomats said.

At the time of the discovery, Egypt was a newly elected nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and its delegation resisted including information in official reports linking Egyptian officials or businesses to illicit North Korean weapons, said U.S. officials and diplomats familiar with the discussions. Saad, the embassy spokesman, said Egyptian officials sought only minor delays to ensure that their views on the events were properly reflected. He noted that Security Council officials had “recognized and praised Egypt’s role” in assisting the investigation.

In any case, the February U.N. report on the incident sidesteps the question of who was meant to receive the rockets, saying only that the munitions were destroyed by Egypt under U.N. supervision, and that “the destination and end user of the equipment was investigated by the Egyptian general prosecutor.”

But evidence gathered by U.N. investigators and later shared with diplomats left little doubt about where the rockets were bound. An early clue was the nature of the rockets themselves: All were practice rounds — fitted with removable, nonlethal warheads of the type used in military training — and the large quantity suggested that the purchaser had a sizable army with many thousands of recruits. Egypt’s active-duty military is 438,000 strong, with another 479,000 reservists.

[How to escape North Korea. Ordinary North Koreans are risking their lives to make a perilous journey out of Kim Jong Un’s clutches]

The most damning evidence was discovered on the crates. Each had been stenciled with the name of an Egyptian company, but someone had taken trouble of covering the lettering with a canvas patch. Diplomats familiar with the investigation confirmed the involvement of the Egyptian company, but declined to name it.

Likewise, the Egyptian company is identified nowhere in the U.N. report. A single footnote states, cryptically: “National authorities closed the private company and revoked its license.”

While U.S. officials have declined to publicly criticize Egypt, the Jie Shun incident — coming on top of other reported weapons deals with North Korea in recent years — contributed to the diplomatic turbulence that defined relations between Cairo and the Obama and Trump administrations. U.S. officials confirmed that the rockets were among the factors leading to the Trump administration’s decision in July to freeze or delay $290 million in military aid to Egypt.

During Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s visit to Washington that month, President Trump praised the military strongman before TV cameras for “doing a fantastic job.” But a White House statement released afterward made clear that a warning had been delivered in private.

“President Trump stressed the need for all countries to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea,” said the official statement, including the need to “stop providing economic or military benefits to North Korea.”

132 Comments

Joby Warrick joined the Post’s national staff in 1996. He has covered national security, the environment and the Middle East and currently writes about terrorism. He is the author of two books, including 2015’s “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS," which was awarded a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Follow @jobywarrick

 

[Housecarl]

It gives me a chuckle to consider this situation... One of the best methods to combat social media would probably be to revert to actually educating young people. But, of course, we can't
actually learn em how to reason or think clearly, or our dreams of an army of low information voters who vote and march when, where, and how they're told, crumble.

Yeah it is an interesting dilemma for "them"...never mind "US"....

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...ops-likely-in-afghanistan-for-another-decade/

Senate Foreign Relations chairman: US troops likely in Afghanistan for another decade

By: Leo Shane III  
13 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expects the United States will have troops stationed in Afghanistan for another decade, potentially pushing the war there into its 26th year or beyond.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Republican Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker — who announced this week he plans to retire from Congress in 2018 — said Afghan security forces today are still dependent on the United States, and appear to remain that way for years to come.

“Are we likely to have troops in Afghanistan for the next decade? Sure,” he said.

Corker entered the Senate in 2007, with the Afghanistan war already in its fifth year. U.S. end strength totals in the country peaked above 100,000 in late 2010, but steadily drew down to less than 10,000 deployed servicemembers during President Barack Obama’s administration.

Critics — including Republicans in the Senate and President Donald Trump — have pushed for a reversal of that drawdown for years. In August, Trump announced a change in U.S. strategy in the region, to include a plus-up for forces back above 10,000 this fall.

Corker, who has been critical of Trump’s penchant for using social media and public comments on sensitive political topics, praised the president for showing the courage to “change long-held positions about Afghanistan.”

But he did not say those changes would result in quick or easy fixes for the war-torn region.

“The entire (gross domestic product) of Afghanistan cannot support even their security forces,” he said. “The likelihood of us having troops there, some level of troops … but what matters is what are they doing. What are those troops doing?”

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Trump has repeatedly promised to loosen restrictions on rules of engagement for troops not just in Afghanistan but also in other regions of the world. But military officials said the U.S. role in Afghanistan remains primarily a training and assistance mission, with Afghan troops taking the lead on efforts to root out insurgent fighters.

Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr. are scheduled to testify before House and Senate defense panels on Tuesday to discuss progress in Afghanistan, and what the president’s recent changes mean for troops currently stationed there.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said at a defense hearing last week that lawmakers still have not gotten sufficient information on the new Afghanistan strategy, leaving them with “far more questions than answers” about long-term plans for military missions there.

About Leo Shane III
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies.

 

[Housecarl]

DOT....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/...rm=Editorial - Air Force - Daily News Roundup

Air Force seeks retired pilots to return to active duty

By: Kyle Rempfer  
8 hours ago

The Air Force is encouraging retired pilots to return to active duty to fill rated staff positions and help alleviate manning shortages within the pilot community, the Air Force Personnel Center said in an announcement Monday.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson approved the Voluntary Retired Return to Active Duty Program on July 11. It is one of many initiatives the Air Force is implementing to try and retain qualified pilots and improve their quality of life, said Air Force Personnel Center spokesman Michael Dickerson. This includes making sure pilots are used effectively, Dickerson said.

The Air Force is trying to increase the number of new pilots it trains each year by 200, while simultaneously increasing retention bonuses as an incentive to those thinking of separating, Wilson said in an Aug. 31 editorial board meeting with Air Force Times.

“We are a service that is too small for what’s being asked of us,” Wilson said. “We’ve got to come up with a better way of assessing manpower needs.”

Volunteers for VRRAD would help fill positions where pilot expertise is necessary, said Maj. Elizabeth Jarding, VRRAD rated liaison, in a press release Monday.

“We will match VRRAD participants primarily to stateside rated staffs that don’t require re-qualification in a weapon system, with emphasis on larger organizations like major command staffs,” she said. “They’ll fill critical billets that would otherwise remain vacant due to the shortage of active-duty officers available to move out of operational flying assignments.”

Eligible retires holding the Air Force Specialty Code 11X can apply on the Retiree Officer Assignment landing page of mypers.af.mil.

Pilots under the age of 60 who retired within the last five years at the rank of captain, major or lieutenant colonel, are eligible to apply. Participation is limited to only 25 retired pilots, with the active duty tour lasting 12 months, Dickerson said.

Additionally, applicants must be medically qualified for active duty with a flying class II physical and must have served in a rated staff position within the last 10 years, or have been qualified in an Air Force aircraft within the last five years, according to the press release.

The AFPC will accept applications until Dec. 31, 2018, or until all openings are filled, whichever happens first. Retired pilots returning to active duty will only deploy if they volunteer, but will not be eligible for an aviation bonus.

 

[Housecarl]

ACTIVE SHOOTER MANDALAY BAY HOTEL, LV NEV - 59 DEAD, 515 WOUNDED
Started by*annieosage‎,*Yesterday*10:15 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...Y-BAY-HOTEL-LV-NEV-59-DEAD-515-WOUNDED/page30

------

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.longwarjournal.org/arch...earned-from-15-years-in-afghanistan-sigar.php

Lessons learned from 15 years in Afghanistan: SIGAR

By Phil Hegseth | October 2, 2017 | phegseth@defenddemocracy.org |

The Congressionally mandated Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued a detailed report evaluating the current challenges facing the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) and the lessons learned from America’s nearly 15-year campaign in the country. The report argues that security priorities guiding US decisions early in the war effort negatively impacted the current priorities of building ANDSF long-term sustainability capabilities.

The report, which is the first of its kind, concludes that the ANDSF is plagued by debilitating attrition, corruption, equipment shortages, incomplete training, a lack of security infrastructure and widespread illiteracy.

ANDSF Shortfalls

SIGAR’s report shows attrition is a crippling issue faced by many branches of the ANDSF.* The Afghan Special Forces is the only branch with low attrition and high re-enlistment rates. SIGAR cited that from 2013 through 2016, attrition within the Afghan National Army (ANA) was so high that “about one-third of the force was lost annually … such high attrition increasingly created a military with little to no training.” These staggering attrition rates were largely fueled by high numbers of casualties, a lack of ministerial administrative support systems behind service members and the continued high illiteracy rates of the general population.

Given high casualties, the ANDSF prioritized force protection. Instead of taking on the Taliban’s rural support zones, ANDSF limited the mission to urban areas in an attempt to reduce casualties. The USFOR-A “restructur[ed] ANA force posture” to focus primarily on heavily populated “critical areas.” USFOR-A suggested that the loss of non-critical areas was “deliberate,” and less checkpoints to protect would bring down ANA casualties. These force-protection measures have ceded vast rural terrain to the Taliban, a key source of its resilience.

The Taliban views rural areas as highly valuable platforms from which they can launch comprehensive assaults on populated urban centers. LWJ recently assessed that the Taliban is intentionally piecing together belts of influence across the country. This buildup of rural influence supporting urban Taliban offensives demonstrates an inability of the national government to provide consistent security and undermines the public confidence. With a decreased government security presence in rural areas, the Taliban increasingly feel safe organizing in the open in large numbers, unafraid of potential U.S. or coalition airstrikes.

Afghan National Police (ANP) identity crisis

SIGAR was not shy in criticizing the role of the ANP, noting the force is still functioning as a counterinsurgency proxy, not the criminal justice force the Afghan people need and deserve. From the outset, the US campaign structured the ANP as a paramilitary counter-insurgency force. However, the continued presence of Taliban offensives has prevented the ANP from becoming the criminal justice policing force President Ashraf Ghani hoped they would be in his new four-year “Road Map” for the ANDSF. SIGAR noted the ANP “lacks the ability to protect the general populace as a civilian policing institution and struggles to address criminality and crime prevention that is not insurgent related.”

SIGAR inspector general John Sopko, speaking at an event at CSIS in Washington, cited two key weaknesses in the US and coalition ANP training program that lead to overall ANP ineffectiveness. First, ANP training on local policing is currently taught by “misaligned” US military personnel who are rarely themselves trained on such instruction. Sopko illustrated this by drawing on stories about “a US Army helicopter pilot assigned to teach policing” and another “US officer who watched TV shows like Cops and NCIS to learn what he should teach.” Second, these military training personnel are typically on six-month to one-year rotations, leading to a relative lack of institutional knowledge and continuity for learning Afghans.

Military versus civilian capacities

Throughout the report, and in their key findings, SIGAR emphasized the lack of administrative and institutional processes needed to support long-term sustainability of the ANDSF. This deficiency of support resources led to a poor quality of life for ANDSF personnel. The report notes, “corruption, poor leadership, and lack of equipment and support structures served to undermine the [ANDSF] recruit’s well-being.”

High illiteracy rates limit the ability of the civilian-support sector to contribute to ANDSF development. Without simple services in place to issue wages accurately, or to deliver equipment and specialized training efficiently, attrition will remain “one of the most pressing issues affecting ANDSF development and sustainability.” However, the SIGAR report does not suggest as to what should be prioritized first. Does the ANDSF need to clear and hold more Afghan territory and provide more reliant security in order for the civilian-side support institutions to thrive? Or, do the civilian-side support institutions need bolstering in order for a more capable ANDSF to take the fight to the Taliban? These questions remain unanswered.

If the US and its coalition partners want to someday hand off all aspects of security to an Afghan force that can hold itself against a proven and devoted insurgency, longer term strategies are needed that are not bound by arbitrary or politically-driven timetables. To support those strategies, funding must be committed that is meticulously tracked to ensure it reaches the most effective hands. And to back it all up, a commitment to appropriate training paired with a robust buildup of security-sector infrastructure is vital.

The SIGAR report can be viewed in its entirety here.*

Phil Hegseth is a social and digital media specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributor to FDD’s Long War Journal.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.defensenews.com/flashpoints/2017/10/02/us-mq-9-drone-shot-down-in-yemen/

US MQ-9 drone shot down in Yemen

By: Shawn Snow  
18 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down in western Yemen on Sunday, officials at U.S. Central Command confirmed to Military Times.

Multiple outlets reported on Sunday that Houthi rebels had claimed they shot down a drone. Images of the wreckage were posted by the rebel faction’s news agency SABA.

Houthi air defense systems brought down the drone in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, SABA claimed.

“We assess that an MQ-9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was shot down in western Yemen on Oct. 1, 2017. This incident is under investigation,” said Maj. Earl Brown, a spokesperson for U.S. Central Command.

The MQ-9 is predominately an armed hunter-killer drone but the unmanned aircraft is also capable of surveillance and intelligence collection.

Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war since a failed power handover between Ali Abdullah Saleh and President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Disenfranchised Houthis upset with Hadi’s ability to clamp down on al-Qaida factions within the country launched a rebellion in 2014 capturing much of northern Yemen, including the capital of Sanaa.

The rapid deterioration of the security situation in Yemen and rise of the Iranian-backed Houthis led Saudi Arabia to launch a coalition of other Sunni Arab countries to push back the rebel advances, and to restore Hadi to power.

The U.S. has been providing Saudi forces with intelligence and logistics support. U.S. forces in the region have also been battling al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.

It is not known at this time whether the downed U.S. drone was collecting intelligence to support Saudi operations or if it was targeting AQAP militants.

AQAP is one the most capable and dangerous terrorist groups in the region, officials at the Pentagon have previously told reporters.

The U.S. has conducted numerous drone strikes against the al-Qaida offshoot, including launching several American commando raids on the ground in Yemen.

In January, a botched raid on an AQAP target resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Chief Special Warfare Operator William Owens and a destroyed Osprey.


During troubled Yemen raid, U.S. troops fought and killed several women trained by al-Qaida
The high-risk operation left one American dead and at least six others hurt or wounded.
By: Andrew deGrandpre


About Shawn Snow
Shawn Snow is the editor of the Early Bird and a reporter for Military Times

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/chinas-secret-military-plan-invade-taiwan-2020/

China’s Secret Military Plan: Invade Taiwan by 2020

Book based on internal documents says Beijing's invasion plan would trigger U.S.-China conflict

BY: Bill Gertz
October 3, 2017 5:00 am

China has drawn up secret military plans to take over the island of Taiwan by 2020, an action that would likely lead to a larger U.S.-China conventional or nuclear war, according to newly-disclosed internal Chinese military documents.

The secret war plan drawn up by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese Communist Party's armed forces, calls for massive missile attacks on the island, along with a naval and air blockade that is followed by amphibious beach landing assaults using up to 400,000 troops.

The plans and operations are outlined in a new book published this week, The Chinese Invasion Threat by Ian Easton, a China affairs analyst with the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank.

The danger of a Taiwan conflict has grown in recent years even as current tensions between Washington and Beijing are mainly the result of U.S. opposition to Chinese militarization in the South China Sea and China's covert support of North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

"Of all the powder kegs out there, the potential for a war over Taiwan is by far the largest and most explosive," the 290-page book states, adding that the growing likelihood of a war over Taiwan will dominate worries within the Pentagon for years to come.

"China has made clear that its primary external objective is attaining the ability to apply overwhelming force against Taiwan during a conflict, and if necessary destroy American-led coalition forces," the books says.

Democratic-ruled Taiwan poses an existential threat to China's communist leaders because the island, located some 90 miles off the southeast coast "serves as a beacon of freedom for ethnically Chinese people everywhere," the book states.

"Consequently, the PLA considers the invasion of Taiwan to be its most critical mission, and it is this envisioned future war that drives China's military buildup."

Parts of the PLA invasion scheme were first revealed publicly by the Taiwan Defense Ministry in late 2013. The plan calls for military operations against the island to be carried out by 2020.

The invasion program was confirmed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping during the major Communist Party meeting five years ago when Xi committed to "continue the 2020 Plan, whereby we build and deploy a complete operational capability to use force against Taiwan by that year."

Other internal PLA writings that surfaced recently indicate China is ready to use force when it believes non-military means are not successful in forcing the capitulation to Beijing's demands, and if the United States can be kept out of the battle.

Current U.S. law under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act requires the United States to provide defensive weaponry to Taiwan to prevent the use of force against the island.

China currently is using non-lethal means—psychological, diplomatic, propaganda, and informational warfare—against Taiwan. Once these are exhausted, the plan for large-scale amphibious assault will be carried out.

Any attempt by the Chinese military to take the island will be difficult and costly, the book says. The island has rough, mountainous terrain that has created a wind tunnel effect in the strait that produces very difficult weather for carrying troop and weapons transports, both air and sea.

Taiwan is around 230 miles long and 90 miles wide. Taiwanese military forces have been preparing for an invasion since Chinese nationalist forces first took refuge on the island at the end of the civil war with the communists in 1949.

However, since the 1980s, China has been rapidly building up its military capabilities for a battle to forcibly unify the island with the mainland. Over 1,000 ballistic and cruise missiles currently are stationed within range of the Taiwan.

According to the book, China's invasion plan is known as the Joint Island Attack Campaign.

"Only by militarily occupying The Island can we fundamentally conquer the ‘separatist' force’s natural living space, and totally end the long military standoff across the Strait," one PLA field manual states.

The war plan calls for rapidly capturing the capital Taipei and destroying the government; seizing other major cities and clearing out surviving defenders; and occupying the entire country.

Military operations will emphasize speed and surprise to overwhelm coastal defenses and create so much destruction in the early phase that Taiwan would surrender before the U.S. military can deploy forces to the area.

"The conceptual plan, which is referred to in internal PLA writings as the Joint Island Attack Campaign, appears to be highly centralized and updated regularly based on the latest intelligence, weapons production, and lessons learned from exercises and training," the book says.

The campaign is one of China's most closely held secrets but has been discussed in internal military manuals and technical writings that recently leaked from within the PLA.

"These provide an extraordinarily detailed look into Chinese thinking on this campaign," the book says.

The step-by-step invasion process will involve three phases: blockade and bombing, amphibious landing, and combat operations on the island.

Several layers of a naval and air blockade and massive missile strikes on 1,000 targets will be used in the first phase. China then plans to launch sea-borne assaults with an armada of warships against 14 possible beach sites.

"Before the invaders began landing along Taiwan's coast, the PLA would launch wave after wave of missiles, rockets, bombs, and artillery shells, pounding shoreline defenses, while electronic jammers scrambled communications," the book says.

The PLA believes a future invasion of Taiwan is inevitable, although the exact time is uncertain.

China regards Taiwan as a "renegade province" and considers reuniting the island with the mainland part of larger Chinese strategic goals of achieving global dominance.

"In the end, only by directly conquering and controlling the island can we realize national unification … otherwise ‘separatist' forces, even if they momentarily compromise under pressure, can reignite like dormant ashes under the right conditions," one PLA document states.

A PLA field manual warns that Taiwan's geography and defenses will require massive and masterful military campaigns that will be extremely challenging, requiring great sacrifices.

A restricted PLA manual, "Course Book on the Taiwan Strait's Military Geography" warned military officers that external militaries could use Taiwan to cut off China's trade lines and for use as a U.S. military base to blockade China.

Also, many of China’s seaborne oil imports, pass through the Taiwan Strait and are highly vulnerable to military interdiction. "So protecting the security of this strategic maritime passageway is not just a military activity alone, but rather an act of national strategy," the manual says.

China also regards Taiwan as a critical chokepoint for Japan and could be used by China to choke its rival.

On the information warfare front, China plans to use the internet and other media outlets to wage psychological warfare aimed at weakening Taiwan's resistance prior to a main attack.

Psychological warfare actions will be combined with legal and media warfare and other political warfare tools.

An internal Chinese military report outlines the use of information operations:

Utilize legal warfare and public opinion warfare together with psychological warfare to divide and erode the island's solid willpower and lower the island's combat strength. Of these, utilize legal warfare against the enemy's political groups and their so-called ‘allies' as a form of psychological attack. Clearly make the case that a joint attack campaign against the main island is legally justifiable and based on a continued, and internal, war of liberation…utilize public opinion warfare against the enemy's military groups as a form of psychological attack. Point out the benefits of giving up their support for ‘independence' with effective messaging themes…Use the Internet media heavily against non-governmental groups on the island and the masses as a form of psychological attack. Proactively spread propaganda regarding the benefits of unification for the nation and the people, and erode the social foundation of the ‘separatist' forces on the island.​

Taiwan's leaders also will be targeted in bombing strikes, including the presidential office in Taipei and other government leadership headquarters.

A PLA document tells military leaders to find leadership organizations and their defenses.

"Then you should use high tech weapons that have a strong capability to penetrate their airspace with precision and destructiveness to execute fierce strikes against their head person(s)," the document says. "Assure they are successfully knocked out with one punch."

Chinese commandos also will be used to abduct or kill Taiwan's key political and military leaders, weapons experts, and scientists using clandestine means and direct attacks.

China, according to the book, would "almost certainly" fail in its full-scale invasion of Taiwan but its military appears driven to prepare and carry out such an attack.

"China's leaders recognize the roadblocks in their path and will continue to invest heavily in strategic deception, intelligence collection, psychological warfare, joint training, and advanced weapons," the book says.

"Barring countervailing efforts, their investments could result in a world-shaking conflict and an immense human tragedy."

For the Pentagon, China's plan to seize Taiwan has worried those in the Air Force who expect Chinese missile and other attacks on nearby U.S. bases, notably Japan's Kadena air base, a central U.S. military hub in the Pacific.

American Navy officials fear Chinese submarines will sink U.S. aircraft carriers or the USS Blue Ridge, the region's only command ship.

"No one seemed clear on exactly what might happen, but all were sure a future Chinese surprise attack would be worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined," the book says.

Others note that a Taiwan conflict could rapidly escalate to a U.S.-China nuclear war.

"The trigger could very well be an accident or innocent act, something calculated as benign but perceived as hostile," the book says. "It may go down in history as an infamous event, or it may not be understood what exactly happened. Like the case of World War I, the true cause may be debated for a century and still undecided."

Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the book presents important policy prescriptions for deterring war. The use of restricted Chinese military writings also provides new clues to Chinese intentions, plans and its ambitions to conquer Taiwan.

"What Easton has done is provide a vital warning to America and its allies, China could try to invade Taiwan as early as the first half of the next decade," Fisher said. "That means we are right now in a Taiwan Straits crisis and we need to react like we are in a crisis or we risk falling into a war we have successfully avoided since 1950."

 

[Housecarl]

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http://thehill.com/policy/defense/3...work-with-pakistan-on-terrorism-one-more-time

Mattis: US will try to work with Pakistan on terrorism 'one more time'

By Rebecca Kheel - 10/03/17 05:40 PM EDT
27 comments

The United States will try to work with Pakistan on terrorism “one more time” before taking punitive action to pressure them to do more, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Tuesday.

“We need to try one more time to make this strategy work with them, by, with and through the Pakistanis, and if our best efforts fail, President Trump is prepared to take whatever steps are necessary," Mattis said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Mattis was testifying at the House Armed Services Committee alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, the pair’s second hearing of the day on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

The U.S. relationship with Pakistan has ebbed and flowed over the course of the 16-year war in Afghanistan, getting most tense after U.S. special forces killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

In his August speech outlining his new strategy for Afghanistan, President Trump said the United States would do more to pressure Pakistan to combat terrorist safe havens in its borders.

But he did not provide any details on how.

Pakistan denies that it provides safe haven to terrorists, often pointing to the operation launched in 2014 to clear groups such as the Haqqanis from the Waziristan border region with Afghanistan.

But at the Tuesday morning Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Dunford said he believes Pakistan’s main spy agency has ties to terrorist groups.

“It is clear to me that the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] has connections with terrorist groups,” Dunford said.

Reported options for pressuring Pakistan to do more include curtailing or conditioning aid, sanctioning Pakistani officials, stepping up drone strikes inside the country, taking away its status as a major non-NATO ally or naming it as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Asked Tuesday at the House hearing whether taking away Pakistan’s status as a major non-NATO ally is an option on the table, Mattis said he’s “sure it will be.”

Mattis said assistant secretaries and national security staff will visit Pakistan to discuss the issue, followed by himself and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Mattis said he’d “like to think we will be successful,” but that the United States has an “enormously powerful number of options” if not.

“I think that right now with the growing consensus against terrorism, they’ll find themselves diplomatically isolated, they’ll find themselves economically in increasing trouble as countries that are damaged by this terrorism coming out of there say enough is enough and take steps,” he said. “There’s an awful lot of advantage to Pakistan coming on line with the international community.”

 

[Housecarl]

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https://amp-timeinc-net.cdn.ampproj...-u-s-strategic-command-up-at-night?source=dam

You Have To Hear What Keeps The Head Of U.S. Strategic Command Up At Night

It's not Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin.*

Tyler Rogoway @Aviation_Intel
Sep 22, 2017 5:17 PM EDT

Out of all the presentations and panels at this year's Air Force Association convention, one speaker in particular had a most important, brave, and sobering message. A message that goes against the "company man" attitude we seem to find in many of the military's top brass, and one that deals with something we here at The War Zone have been talking about for a long, long time. Instead of worrying about Kim Jong Un's missiles or Putin's huge nuclear arsenal, what keeps the head of Strategic Command, General John Hyten, up at night is the cold hard fact that America's defense industrial complex has lost the ability to "go fast."

Hyten's remarks on the topic begin at 25:48, if the player doesn't take you there automatically when you push play: Video

In his powerful delivery of an eye opening messaging, the general states:

"I'm very concerned that our nation has lost the ability to go fast. And we have adversaries now, and we see proof in those adversaries that they're going faster than we are... *Slow, expensive, that's the way it is... *I'm criticizing the entire process...the entire process is broken...We have to go faster, and we’re not, and it is frustrating the heck out of me. Look at the threat, if we're not going faster than the threat than it's wrong."​

He goes on to highlight how the Minuteman I ICBM program met or exceeded all its expectations and objectives, delivering 800 three stage solid fuel rocket ICBMs, silos to put them in, and a very elaborate command and control architecture in just five years at a cost of $17B in today's dollars—and none of it had been done before. Now, even with all we have learned over more than half a century, it takes 12 to 17 years and $84B to build half the missiles, refurbish the existing silos they will sit in, not build new ones, and the command and control architecture is a separate budget altogether.*

Hyten is on the right path here, and he has to be commended for making such a bold and inconvenient statement. But I think he goes too easily on the defense and aerospace industries. Some outfits have been known to do amazing things with small, agile teams that are less affected by bureaucratic red tape. But often times these units also have the advantage of operating in the classified world with a steady stream of cash that isn't constantly under fire on Capitol Hill.*

We have talked about this same exact kind of issue many times before. Maybe a post that best encapsulates the technological and industry aspects of this issue is one I wrote called "Broken Booms: Why Is It So Hard To Develop A New USAF Tanker" that you can read here. In it I state, among other things, the following:

"The 1950s saw the first jet tanker built by Boeing and fielded by the USAF. This aircraft was the KC-135 Stratotanker, and 60 years and some new engines later it remains the backbone of America’s tanker force. How on earth could we have gotten the tanker concept that right on the first try, way back then, in a time of drafting tables and slide rules, yet we have so much trouble fielding a suitable replacement 60 years later in an age of iPhones and computer aided drafting? Especially considering these replacements are based on airliners that have been flying for decades, the Boeing 767 and the Airbus A330...

...The truth is that the Manhattan Project took far less time than it has taken to procure just a partial replacement for the KC-135 Stratotanker fleet, and this new aircraft is hardly a clean-sheet design... What the hell is so hard about taking an existing wide-body airliner, with an existing track record of millions of hours in the sky, and turning it into a tanker?

What am I missing here?

The KC-135 took from 1954 to 1957, just three years, from the time the jet aerial refueling competition was launched to the time the aircraft became operational. When it comes to the KC-46, it took the DoD and Congress 10 years just to pick an airplane to buy under the stumbling, spastic and downright alarming KC-X procurement initiative...

...Being the word’s preeminent aerial fighting force does not require every single platform to be completely cutting edge just for cutting edge’s sake. Instead, the Pentagon needs to pick and choose where to strategically spend their “cutting edge” dollars and where to spend their “need the hardware on the ramp yesterday” dollars.

Case in point: the KC-46 isn’t any existing aircraft at all, it deviates from the already painstakingly developed KC-767 that the Italians and Japanese use. An aircraft’s whose development is already paid for in full. Instead, the KC-46 combines the 767-200ER’s fuselage, with the 767-300F’s wing, gear, cargo door and floor, with the 767-400ER digital flightdeck and flaps. It then pairs this hodgepodge of components with uprated engines and a “sixth-generation” fly-by-wire remote controlled boom and adds various other US specific sub-systems. So now you have a plane whose components may have been in production for many decades, but has never actually flown in the KC-46A form...

The realities of the crazy KC-X competition aside, the USAF probably would be better served with the already developed and proven KC-767 and thrown out all the gadgetry such as “remote booms” in order to get the hardware out there ASAP at the lowest possible cost and lowest possible developmental and operational risk.

Sure, the KC-767 may have slightly less range, or it may use 1000 more feet of runway when totally grossed out on takeoff when compared to the KC-46 Pegasus “frankenplane,” but if we can get it cheaper and faster, and it will be more reliable, who really cares? Any slight capability lapses will only impact a tiny percentage of the theoretical missions the plane may actually be called to perform during service. Furthermore, when compared to the ancient KC-135 that the USAF already has in droves, the KC-767 is an upgrade of epic proportions, so why jeopardize a program with added development time, cost and risk for relatively minor performance improvements?

...As far as development goes, to a large degree, the aerospace industry in America has lost its way. It is sad but true. Sometimes a boom can be just a boom. Not everything has to be Star Wars and Steve Jobs. Just because you can apply new technology to something does not mean it is beneficial or cost effective. But considering the “show it on Power Point and they will buy it” proven business model that exists, with the Pentagon being the suckers they are, how can you really blame industry for piling on the expensive tech, even if it is not needed?

Still, big aerospace defense contractors need to look back in history and find out how incredibly complex problems (at the time) were solved so efficiently and without the incredible technological benefits we enjoy today. Maybe there is a systemic issue in our engineering educational process or within the the workflow itself that has hampered our ability to create fast and cost effective solutions to relatively straight-forward problems."​

Sadly, the article still rings true today. The KC-46 is further delayed for various reasons, one of which includes problems with the boom chronically scraping the skin of the aircraft it refuels—fine if you are flying an A-10, not fine if you are flying a radar absorbent material coated B-2, F-22, or F-35.*

One way the USAF can break the habit of long development cycles—at least in the tactical aircraft domain—as well as solve a whole list of other issues including pilot shortages and operational budget shortfalls, is by moving toward an increasingly unmanned fleet. I detail all this is my piece "The Alarming Case of the USAF’s Mysteriously Missing Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles" that you can read here.

There are some signs that the Pentagon is slowly coming to terms with unsustainable procurement practices. For instance, more investments in the development and fielding of so called "rapid capabilities" are being made, along with investments into research programs that aim to unlock the possibilities of today's latest technologies and manufacturing techniques to build weapons cheaper and faster than using traditional processes. Budget austerity (relatively speaking) has also slowly begun changing the Pentagon's affinity toward buying "and the kitchen sink" weapon systems that are loaded with features beyond their basic requirements list to more streamlined systems that can be upgraded later down the road.*

Additionally, programs like the B-21 Raider are being tailored to avoid requirements creep, spiraling costs, and massive developmental timetables. But it will take more officers in leadership positions to come to terms with the reality that Hyten describes so well and to demand change and enact policies that will help realize those changes. If the Pentagon cannot make systemic changes in the way it develops new weapons and capabilities, or even simply replaces old hardware with conservatively updated new hardware, parity will become further within our competitors reach, and in some key areas we will fall behind our potential enemies. This invites major risk on both a military and geopolitical level.

Also worth noting in the General Hyten's address was his clear response to a question regarding the threat posed by an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). The EMP threat is a murky one to say the least. Some see it as an overhyped boogeyman whose danger has been perpetuated by the survivalist, doomsday prepper, and to some degree, the science fiction communities. Others see it as an incredibly deadly asymmetric weapon, one that would be ideal for a rogue state like North Korea to use against the U.S. and its allies.*

Recently Pyongyang threatened exactly that, which does add some validity to the threat itself, not to mention they now have the delivery systems to make the possibility of using such a tactic a reality. The truth is that Americans are far more likely to suffer similar effects from a series of cyber attacks than from a high-altitude EMP (HEMP), but still, Hyten makes it clear that it is a grave threat—one that Strategic Command is prepared to survive, but the rest of country clearly isn't (fast forward to 41:30 if the video doesn't take you there directly): Video

Among other things, the general states:

"An EMP pulse is a very dangerous threat, and it's a realistic threat. If you are not nuclear hardened it will basically shut down any operational computer in the range of the EMP... I was asked if STRATCOM was prepared to respond to an EMP attack, and the answer is yes because we have nuclear hardened satellites, nuclear hardened command and control shelters, we can respond to that etc. But our nation as a whole really has not looked at EMP, we have not looked at the critical infrastructure that could be damaged by EMP, and we need to kind of take a step back and look at that entire threat because it is a realistic threat."​

That is a sober assessment from the man who knows nuclear systems and their implementation probably better than anyone in the United States.*

The video has a ton of other great tidbits of information, like how Hyten wants to move ground based sensor systems that America's rickety missile defense system relies on to a space-based system, and some interesting insight into work-life balance for a man who has his own SCIF in his basement.*

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.airforce-technology.com/...g-minuteman-iii-icbm-5939330?WT.mc_id=DN_News

USAF completes upgrade of LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM

On Oct 3 2017

The US Air Force (USAF) has completed the upgrade of the LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) as part of its effort to further modernise the nuclear enterprise.

The $68m upgrade programme involved replacing the legacy cartridge tape unit (CTU) and launch facility load cartridge (LFLC) systems with a new data transfer unit (DTU).

USAF 91st Operations Support Squadron ICBM codes operations chief captain Kevin Drumm said: “The legacy LFLC’s take about 45 minutes to produce the Wing Codes Processing System, and about 30 minutes to load at a launch facility.

“The new DTU takes less than 30 minutes to produce, and about seven minutes to load.”

The DTU has been designed to load the Missile Guidance Set, which is the brain of the Minuteman III, with sensitive cryptographic data and other information the missile needs in order to function.

A single DTU has enough capacity to store the same amount of data as 12 LFLCs.
The LFLC can only hold enough data and information for a single launch facility, which meant airmen would need to carry up to 50 LFLCs to achieve a complete code change.

Airmen who previously carried two CTUs can now take one DTU to enable faster, reliable and more secure ICBM operations.

The new device was first used on 23 June, the USAF stated.

Drumm added: “After its first operational use, we transitioned to using DTUs 100% of the time during the 742nd Missile Squadron’s Operation Olympic Step.”

During Olympic Step, maintenance teams using DTUs observed a significant increase in productivity.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://thediplomat.com/2017/10/revealed-russias-new-experimental-icbm-warheads/

Revealed: Russia's New Experimental ICBM Warheads

Russia pilots independent post-boost vehicles for more precise and flexible multiple warhead delivery.

By Ankit Panda
October 04, 2017

Russia tested a new and experimental type of intercontinental-range ballistic missile multiple warhead delivery method in September 2017, the Diplomat has learned.

According to a U.S. government source with knowledge of a recent U.S. intelligence assessment of Russian ballistic missile testing who spoke to the Diplomat, Russia’s strategic missile force recently tested an independent post-boost vehicle (IPBV) configuration for a three-warhead version of its solid-fuel, road-mobile RS-24 Yars ICBM.

The test was carried out on September 12 from a silo at Russia’s Kura Missile Test Range in Kamchatka Krai. It occurred just days before the start of the massive Russia-Belarus Zapad-2017 military drills. It’s unclear if this was the first test of an IPBV configuration on a Russian ICBM.

A Russian Defense Ministry official told the country’s state-run TASS news agency that the September 12 test involved an experimental “detachable” warhead design. The test was reportedly successful.

Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) capable ICBMs normally feature what’s known as a post-boost stage that can maneuver while outside the earth’s atmosphere—after the launch vehicle’s powered flight has concluded at high altitudes—to dispense individual warheads to multiple targets at different approaches, allowing a single ICBM to strike targets separated by great distances.

The independent post-boost vehicle configuration tested by Russia is based on a similar concept, but would presumably allow for more complex and flexible targeting off a single ballistic missile in midcourse. Post-boost vehicles are not considered to be a separate missile stage as they do not generally enhance range; they can allow for more precise guidance and targeting.

It’s unclear if the September 12 test also involved penetration aids and decoys, which could help the missile bypass existing U.S. ballistic missile defense systems.
Russia and China operate a range of MIRV-capable ballistic missiles. MIRVs generally allow for a most cost-efficient mode of nuclear targeting, given that*the costs of manufacturing additional nuclear warheads and reentry vehicles is lower than the cost of manufacturing more ballistic missiles.

The United States’ only active ICBM, the Minuteman III, was designed to be capable of delivering three warheads to multiple targets, but the current missiles on alert feature a single high-yield warhead. The Trident II D5, the United States’ only submarine-launched ballistic missiles, features four to five warheads, though each can carry as many as eight.

Russia’s September 12 test-launch of the Yars ICBM was followed by a transporter-erector-launcher-based launch of the RS-12M Topol ICBM on September 20 from Kapustin Yar.

That test involved the demonstration of what the Russian Defense Ministry described as an “advanced combat payload,” but did not involve similar experimental midcourse maneuvering technology.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/nato-s-necessary-nuclear-debate

September 29, 2017

NATO’s Necessary Nuclear Debate

By Stephen Blank

On September 14, Russia commenced not only the Zapad 2017 military exercise, it simultaneously (and in contravention of the spirit of many arms control accords), launched an exercise for the nuclear-armed Northern Fleet and a joint exercise with the Chinese navy in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan.*

North Korea can now evidently miniaturize nuclear warheads to fit atop delivery vehicles and relentlessly defies the United Nations (UN) with its missile and nuclear tests. Iran has violated the spirit of a UN Security Council resolution by conducting ballistic missile tests and the US government as well as many US analysts expect it to resume its nuclear weapons program when the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action)—the nuclear deal Iran reached with the P5+1 countries—ends in the next decade.*

Not only do these phenomena signal crises of nonproliferation, Asian, and European security, they make it clear that the use of nuclear weapons as instruments of politics and war has increased and, if anything, is flourishing.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine, procurement, and behavior all indicate a willingness to consider, if not actually use, nuclear weapons as means of threat and intimidation. *Indeed, some researchers suspect that the firebreak between conventional and nuclear strikes may be eroding in Russian thinking.* At present, Russia produces over twenty different nuclear weapons: short, intermediate, and long-range systems, is modernizing old systems, and deploying new ones while working on next generation nuclear capabilities like hypersonics. China’s nuclear opacity is legendary and Pyongyang and Tehran’s behavior speaks for itself. Perhaps, counterintuitively, Moscow is also now advocating arms control. But that actually makes sense because whenever the United States is about to begin its own nuclear modernization Moscow suddenly wants talks especially as it is close to completing its nuclear buildup.

Russian and some European analysts and officials are also now hinting that it is time to revive conventional arms control talks. Moscow’s motives are clear since its conventional modernization is under pressure, but has already reached a satisfying plateau. Meanwhile NATO, led by the United States, is now slowly reinvigorating its capabilities. European organizations like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the German Foreign Ministry under Minister Sigmar Gabriel that have called for these arms control talks also think that the OSCE can regain some credibility as a functioning security organization by championing this idea. And those diplomats who regularly advocate dialogue with Russia, regardless of the circumstances, think this may be a suitable opportunity to resume these discussions.

Of course, such thinking forgets that Russia has declared war on the entire west by means of information warfare and the invasion of Ukraine, not to mention its unending nuclear and conventional threats. Neither should we overlook that every arms control treaty except the New Strategic Arms Reduction (START) has been violated by Moscow and Russia is currently over the numerical limits for its nuclear arsenal that it must reach by 2018 as mandated by that treaty. Thus, unless Moscow reduces its nuclear deployments next year—which apparently is quite unlikely—it will be in violation of this treaty as well.

Given the scale of Russia’s current nuclear weapons production, only a brave man would bet that Russia actually destroys the excessive numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) it has.* And then, of course, there is the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that Moscow has broken as Washington has known since 2007.

The fact that some allies think Russia is “suspected” of violating the INF Treaty hardly demonstrates allied cohesion. Attempting to divide the allies is another reason for Moscow to advocate nuclear arms control and strategic stability talks. For Russia, strategic stability includes the United States’ high-tech precision and global strike capabilities that frighten it so Moscow hopes to preserve its nuclear intimidation capability while depriving Washington and NATO of those conventional capabilities that deter it without threatening nuclear war.

All these facts taken together should compel NATO to have the debate it needs to have on the role of nuclear weapons in the defense of Europe. As the leading nuclear power and defender of Europe, Washington should lead that discussion and even formulate proposals. However, while the answers to such a debate cannot and should not be predetermined, a real debate must be held because numerous actors now threaten Europe and the West. Those actors clearly announce their intention to use nuclear weapons not only to escalate an already occurring war, but also to control escalation throughout crises and force Western surrenders and retreat because they are more willing to threaten the use of these weapons.

Europe needs arms control, to be sure, but it needs peace and Russia, not Europe, has launched the war that takes the form of kinetic combat in Ukraine, elsewhere across Europe, Latin America, the United States, and the Middle East, and threatens to use force against Alaska and US forces in Asia and the Pacific.

As a US delegate to the OSCE observed, it is not a propitious time to enter into arms control discussions with Moscow when it is conducting aggression against Ukraine.* Since Moscow has shown itself to be a habitual recidivist when it comes to breaking arms control treaties, those urging such treaties bear the burden of proof in showing that such discussions can lead to effective, credible, verifiable, and enforceable arms control treaties.

Nevertheless, and regardless of the future destiny of conventional and/or nuclear arms control, NATO must face reality and debate these issues soberly, judiciously, and transparently among its members because the threats are real and growing.

Stephen Blank is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. He is a former MacArthur Fellow at the US Army War College. Follow him on Twitter @traininblank1.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/10/folly-tactical-nuclear-weapons/141440/?oref=d-river

The Folly of Tactical Nuclear*Weapons

Some soothsayers say they boost deterrence. But the point of deterrence is to have no mushroom clouds, not new, tailor-made ones.

By Michael Krepon
Read bio
October 2, 2017

Amid the threats of Armageddon being hurled by Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, there is much discussion of tactical nuclear weapons — in South Korea, where there is growing sentiment for their return, and in the United States, where there is growing interest in adding new types to the arsenal. Both ideas are unwise and deserve to be*rejected.

The arguments for adding another low-yield warhead design to the current U.S. stockpile don’t add up. We already have three warhead types whose yields can be dialed down (or up). They would be delivered by air, not by forces in the field, because the U.S. Army reached the conclusion that it’s folly to use tactical nuclear weapons in a land battle. However delivered, tactical nuclear weapons get in the way of U.S.*soldiers.

Advocates argue that small mushroom clouds are better than big mushroom clouds. They believe it is important to have rungs for escalation and escalation control in nuclear exchanges. If, however, large mushroom clouds are insufficient as a deterrent, small mushroom clouds are unlikely to be more*persuasive.

The fixation with tactical nuclear weapons reached its apogee in the 1960s. Herman Kahn’s massive tome,*On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios, posited a notional escalation ladder of no less than 44 rungs. In Kahn’s fertile mind, signaling escalation and escalation control was akin to buying a new Studebaker from the dealer and haggling over the price. I’ll see your five kilotons and raise you seven. Your*move.*

Kahn and the other brilliant minds that conceptualized nuclear deterrence did not come close to answering the central question of how a nuclear war ends. One fundamental problem is that nuclear exchanges are not tidy; another is that nuclear weapons cannot be domesticated by downsizing yields. If two states have screwed up so badly that they have used nuclear weapons on a battlefield, how are they supposed to agree on the number of detonations and*yields?*

Tactical nuclear weapons haven’t gone away. They remain crutches for weak states against stronger ones. The United States, which enjoys conventional military superiority, powerful allies, and possesses a few thousand operational nuclear weapons with widely varying yields, doesn’t need to fight tactical nuclear weapons with tactical nuclear weapons. Instead of fighting fire with fire, the Pentagon can fight fire with very high-pressure water hoses. The way to beat tactical nuclear weapons is with overwhelming conventional firepower. There are no targets for small mushroom clouds that conventional capabilities can’t handle. And if conventional firepower isn’t effective enough, then small mushroom clouds won’t help,*either.

Nuclear soothsayers tell us that tactical nuclear weapons aren’t about battlefield use; they are about deterrence. But the point of deterrence is to have no mushroom clouds, not new, tailor-made mushroom clouds for escalation control and battle*management.*

Even with expensive bells and whistles, deterrence has already failed twice between nuclear-armed states. Disagreements over borders led to limited wars between China and the Soviet Union in 1969 and India and Pakistan in 1999. These wars ended in draws, as did the first Korean War. A second war on the peninsula would result in a punishing U.S. victory. The introduction of tactical nuclear weapons won’t change this bottom*line.

When it comes to capabilities for nuclear warfare, better is the enemy of good enough. Bells and whistles for warheads are expensive. They might also require the resumption of nuclear testing – not just by the United States, but also by Russia, China, India and Pakistan. The pursuit of a new warhead design isn’t worth these*costs.*

As for the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea, nearly three decades after President George H.W. Bush ordered them removed in 1991, two reasons have been advanced: to reassure a jittery ally, and to dissuade Seoul from seeking its own nuclear deterrent. Neither argument can withstand serious scrutiny. Land-based nuclear weapons in South Korea will not calm allied jitters, nor are they needed. The United States is already signaling readiness to come to South Korea’s defense by many means, including by bomber over-flights. These signals have not altered Kim Jong Un’s behavior. Repositioning tactical nuclear weapons won’t,*either.

As for the nonproliferation argument, as long as Washington and Seoul remain strong allies, South Korea will not build nuclear weapons. All bets are off, however, if the alliance falls apart because the Trump administration initiates a war on the Korean peninsula in which there are heavy casualties and mushroom clouds. This Pyrrhic victory would irreparably damage the nuclear safety net of treaties constructed painfully over five decades to prevent proliferation and reduce nuclear*dangers.*

Michael Krepon is co-founder of the Stimson Center and author of "Better Safe than Sorry: The Ironies of Living with the Bomb." Full bio

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/world/europe/france-terrorism-law.html

Europe

French Parliament Advances a Sweeping Counterterrorism Bill

By ALISSA J. RUBIN and ELIAN PELTIER
OCT. 3, 2017

PARIS — The French government on Tuesday moved a significant step closer to making permanent some of the emergency measures put in place after the terrorist attacks of 2015, expanding the powers of the security forces to combat terrorism in ways that critics say may also curtail civil liberties.

The legislation, approved by a wide margin in the lower house of the French Parliament, codifies measures like search and seizure and house arrest without judicial review — steps once considered exceptional — and effectively institutionalizes a trade-off between security and personal liberty.

The upper and lower houses of Parliament still need to smooth over differences in their versions of the bill before a final vote this month, but most of the provisions are expected to stand in their current form.

The bill, President Emmanuel Macron’s first major piece of security legislation, would allow the government to lift the state of emergency imposed nearly two years ago while still being able to reassure the public that the state will exert, if anything, even greater vigilance.

Critics say the measures included in the law lack sufficient judicial oversight, substituting instead the judgment of security forces whose suspicions could be based on faulty or thin intelligence. They say the new legislation could exacerbate racial profiling by law enforcement, undercutting Mr. Macron’s efforts to reach out to Muslims and minorities, both of whom could be disproportionately affected by the measures.

Related Coverage

graphic
Three Hours of Terror in Paris, Moment by Moment NOV. 13, 2015

Scores Die in Nice, France, as Truck Plows Into Bastille Day Crowd JULY 14, 2016

Paris Attacks Spur Emergency Edict and Intense Policing in France NOV. 23, 2015

After Paris Terror Attacks, France Struggles With Faith on the Job FEB. 20, 2016


The interior minister, Gérard Collomb, justified the legislation as “a lasting response to a lasting threat.” It is expected to take effect on Nov. 1, when the emergency law is scheduled to end.

“We are still in a state of war, even if Daesh has suffered some military defeats,” Mr. Collomb, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, said in an interview on the radio station France Inter on Tuesday.

The legislation codifies, among other things, the power to restrict the movement of people if they are suspected of threatening national security or harboring terrorist ideas. Before the state of emergency, such decisions would be made by a judge. Similarly, the bill allows searches of private property at the request of a departmental prefect, a government official, rather than requiring review by a judge or prosecutor.

The legislation also expands the areas where the police can set up checkpoints at will. It would allow them for up to 12 hours within a 14-mile perimeter around international airports, ports and train stations with international service. Under another expanded power, local officials may restrict access, without court approval, to a public place or event if they deem them vulnerable to terrorists. The restrictions could last as long as a month, with an option to renew.

A number of these provisions, or similar ones, came into force in November 2015 when President François Hollande put in place a state of emergency after terrorist attacks in and near Paris killed 130 people, including 90 at the Bataclan concert hall. The state of emergency has been renewed periodically for two to six months.

Underlying the measure is a dilemma for politicians. Lifting the state of emergency has become politically fraught, but leaving it in place indefinitely would raise questions about France’s commitment to democracy. Whether codifying the emergency measures will prove palatable to critics is unclear.

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the United Nations special rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism, said in a Sept. 22 letter to the French government that the legislation offered only “vague definitions of terrorism and threats to national security” and exacerbated “concerns that the powers may be used in an arbitrary manner.”

The government, which must respond to the letter within two months, has argued that the legislation includes safeguards.

Critics have also questioned whether the provisions will improve the security services’ ability to detect potential attacks beforehand. Of the 3,600 house searches carried out in the first seven months after the state of emergency went into effect, only six resulted in terrorism-related criminal proceedings, according to information in a parliamentary report and a report by Human Rights Watch.

Far more potent as an antiterrorism measure was a law approved in 2015 that greatly expanded the surveillance and eavesdropping powers of the intelligence services, according to lawyers who study terrorism.

France is not alone in ramping up its counterterrorism laws after extremist attacks. Britain, Germany and the United States have all tightened their laws and expanded state powers relative to individual rights. However, France’s laws are among the broadest and, unlike in the United States, where the extension of some counterterrorism measures has been checked by Congress, the expansion has been unabated.

“Since 1986 there has been a succession of laws whose goal is to fight organized crime and terrorism,” said Christine Lazerges, a professor of penal law at La Sorbonne, noting that they had gradually “stripped terrorism suspects of their fundamental rights.”

“Legally speaking,” she said, “we’ve armed ourselves to the teeth in the fight against terrorism.”

The public broadly supports the state of emergency despite its many restrictions and its deprivation of rights for those suspected of having links to terrorism. Many French have not suffered ill consequences from it, and they fear any retreat from the emergency measures will leave them more vulnerable.

“People don’t feel their liberty is threatened,” said Jérôme Fourquet, the chief pollster for IFOP, a major polling organization, which has surveyed people extensively about the trade-off between security and civil liberties. In those surveys, he said, many French have been supportive of the state of emergency and the new legislation.

“They say, ‘Why should we lift it?’” he said.

Those surveyed have pointed to terrorist actions. Just this past Sunday, a knife attack at the train station in Marseille killed two 20-year-old women; a couple days earlier, what appeared to be an explosive device was found near an apartment building in Paris.

“The French are confident that we are in a new era,” Mr. Fourquet said, one that requires the state to have more powers in order to protect them, even if it means diminishing some civil rights.

But the approach worries even some conservatives, not least because the language in the new measure is seen as vague.

“A project like this one constitutes a threat to our rights because it replaces facts by suspicion,” said Jacques Toubon, who now serves as the country’s human rights watchdog, and served as justice minister in the government of Jacques Chirac, speaking on the radio network RTL last week.

He was referring to the legislation’s vague language referring to terrorism and its use of such terms as “serious reasons” to suspect a terrorist connection, without providing specific detail as to what that means.

“It constitutes a risk for our future,” he said. “If these provisions, which touch our liberties, fall into the hands of an undemocratic government, think of our children.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 4, 2017, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: French Parliament Approves Broad Counterterrorism Law.

 

[doctor_fungcool]

"The Folly of Tactical Nuclear*Weapons"

Walk softly and carry a big stick.....but never use that stick if one call help it.........for the old adage that POWER PERCEIVED IS POWER ACHIEVED still holds true to this very day.

 

[Housecarl]

Swedish_SSN article Covert Shores
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?525203-Swedish_SSN-article-Covert-Shores

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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.atimes.com/article/south-korea-design-nuke-submarine-reactor/

South Korea has design for nuke submarine reactor

Building sub will take 3-5 years

By Asia Unhedged October 4, 2017 1:47 AM (UTC+8)

South Korea has a design for nuke reactor ready if the Moon Jae-in government goes ahead with plans to build a domestically produced nuclear submarine.

The Korea Times quoted military officials as saying earlier this week that a preliminary sketch has been drawn up for a 4,000-ton nuclear-powered submarine.

Moon’s government is reportedly negotiating with Washington to build the country’s own nuclear-powered submarines in response to an evolving North Korean nuclear threat.

The officials said scientists at the Agency for Defense Development, which is under the wing of the Ministry of National Defense, completed the design for a nuclear reactor three years ago.

The Korea Times says this indicates the military is ready to create a nuclear submarine prototype if the Moon government finishes negotiating with the US.

“The country is virtually ready to work on the detailed design of the reactor and make it once relevant policies are finalized,” an official said. “Production is estimated to take three to five years. It will require consent from the US on having South Korea use uranium enriched up to 20 percent as the source for the submarine’s reactor.”

 

[Housecarl]

3 Green Beret's dead in Niger
Started by AlfaMan, Yesterday 07:09 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?525387-3-Green-Beret-s-dead-in-Niger

Russia Military Accuses U.S. Of Supporting ISIS (in Syria)
Started by Possible Impact‎, Yesterday 10:09 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ary-Accuses-U.S.-Of-Supporting-ISIS-(in-Syria)

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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-targets-soldier-smartphones-western-officials-say-1507109402

Russia Targets NATO Soldier Smartphones, Western Officials Say

Moscow seeks information on operations and troop strength, according to officials with NATO countries

By Thomas Grove in Tapa, Estonia, Julian E. Barnes in Brussels and Drew Hinshaw in Orzysz, Poland
Oct. 4, 2017 5:30 a.m. ET

Biography
@drewfhinshaw
drew.hinshaw@wsj.com Oct. 4, 2017 5:30 a.m. ET

179 COMMENTS

Russia has opened a new battlefront with NATO, according to Western military officials, by exploiting a point of vulnerability for almost all allied soldiers: their personal smartphones.
Troops, officers and government officials of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries said Russia has carried out a campaign to compromise soldiers’ smartphones. The aim, they say, is to gain operational information, gauge troop strength and intimidate soldiers.

The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment. Russian officials deny that Moscow stages such attacks.

U.S. and other Western officials said they have no doubt Russia is behind the campaign. They said its nature suggests state-level coordination, and added that the equipment used, such as sophisticated drones equipped with surveillance electronics, is beyond the reach of most civilians.

The campaign has targeted the contingent of 4,000 NATO troops deployed this year to Poland and the Baltic states to protect the alliance’s European border with Russia, as tensions with Moscow are on the rise, Western military officials said.

Targets are soldiers like*U.S. Army Lt. Col. Christopher L’Heureux, who took over as commander of a NATO base in Poland in July.*Soon after, he said he returned to his truck from shooting drills to find a hacker had triggered the lost mode on his personal iPhone. The hacker was attempting to breach a second layer of password protection through a Russian IP address, he said.

“It had a little Apple map, and in the center of the map was Moscow,” said Col. L’Heureux, stationed not far from a major Russian military base. “It said, ‘Somebody is trying to access your iPhone’.”

Col. L’Heureux, who prepares tactical troop positions to repel a potential Russian invasion, also found he was being physically tracked through his iPhone.

“They were geolocating me, whoever it was,” he said. “I was like, ‘What the heck is this?’”

Col. L’Heureux said at least six soldiers he commands have had phones or Facebook accounts hacked. He said he suspects the incidents were meant as a message that Russian intelligence forces were tracking him, could crack his passwords and wanted to intimidate his soldiers.

Western officials declined to describe technical security precautions in detail, but note that allied soldiers are trained on a variety of risks including cyberattacks.

Military cyberespionage experts said the drone flights and cellphone data collection suggest Russia is trying to monitor troop levels at NATO’s new bases to see if there are more forces present there than the alliance has publicly disclosed.

Some Western defense officials played down the military significance of the campaign, saying it has caused little if any damage and often involves public information.

Still, other Western officials said that in a crisis, compromised cellphones could be used to slow NATO’s response to Russian military action if, for example, the personal cellphone of a commander was used to send out fake instructions. While such communications via private device ought to be disregarded, it could sow confusion, they said.

And if a compromised phone were brought into a secure area such as a military command post, it could be used to collect sensitive information.

Near Estonia’s border with Russia,*numerous soldiers in January complained of “strange things” happening to their phones on the Tapa military base shortly before French and British NATO soldiers were due to arrive, according to an officer on the base with knowledge of the incident.

A probe indicated Russia had used a portable telephone antenna to gain access to phones in the area, said the officer.*The device apparently grabbed data sent from mobile phones and*erased information on them.

“They were stripping everyone’s contacts,” the officer said.

In March, an Estonian conscript’s phone started playing hip-hop music he hadn’t downloaded while he was stationed on the Russian border, the soldier said. Contacts started disappearing from his phone around the same time, he said.

Since the Tapa incident in January, soldiers on the Estonian base remove SIM cards from their phones and are allowed to use the internet only at designated secure hot spots. Use of geolocation is forbidden.

Estonian conscripts said they are forced to jump into a lake during operations to ensure they are following a strict “no smartphones” policy. Some get around the practice by wrapping their phones in condoms.

The British contingent at the base said it has taken necessary measures to protect troops.

Information gleaned from personal communication, contact lists and social-networking sites has been used in encounters that indicate a goal of harassment or intimidation, according to Western officials.

In Latvia, a U.S. soldier standing in line for a sports event was approached by a person who casually dropped details of the soldier’s life, including information about family members, said a person close to NATO. A similar incident happened to a U.S. soldier on a train in Poland, that person said. Both encounters were believed to have been with Russian agents.

“Russia has always sought to target NATO servicemen for intelligence exploitation,”*said Keir Giles, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Program. “But such a campaign of harassment and intimidation is unprecedented in recent times.”

Mr. Giles has given briefings on information warfare to some NATO countries’ troops ahead of their deployment to the Baltics and Poland, where they are within reach of Russian antennae and drones that can suck up data from mobile devices lacking advanced military encryption.

The Baltics—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—have previously faced cyber assaults on their national internet networks and other connected systems, which they blamed on Russia.

“We are already in an unconventional cyberwar,” said Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė. “We know what neighborhood we live in.”

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said a number of suspicious drones were spotted during his decade in office that ended last year.

U.S. military officials say the campaign remains more harassment than a security risk.

Col. L’Heureux, who served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, says the hacking of his smartphone was a wake-up call.

“I thought this would be easy…nobody’s shooting at me,” he said of his Poland posting. “But this is different.”

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com, Julian E. Barnes at julian.barnes@wsj.com and Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 5, 2017, print edition as 'Russia Targets NATO Soldiers in Phone Hack.'

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Hummm....Considering the general demeanor of Americans to such "approaches", said "agents" were probably lucky to be walking away with all their parts and pieces attached...

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1204247/implement-the-jcpoa/

Implement the JCPOA

by Mark Hibbs | October 4, 2017 | No Comments

Very shortly, the United States government will make decisions about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that may have immediate and profound implications for Iran and the U.S; for the future of the Middle East; and for global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear arms.

The JCPOA ultimately rests upon the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify that all of Iran’s nuclear activities are declared and peaceful. Without the agreement, IAEA verification would be far more difficult. This should dissuade President Trump and the Congress from taking reckless actions that could curtail the IAEA’s fact-finding, preempt American credibility in dealing with Iran in the future, and terminate enhanced oversight in a country that could respond by ramping up its nuclear program to a crisis level.

The unending polarized debate in the U.S. about the JCPOA has allowed both defenders and detractors to misrepresent the facts concerning the implementation of the accord. In their zeal to burnish the JCPOA, advocates assert*that the IAEA has concluded that Iran is complying with the agreement. That’s overstated, as are woefully gratuitous claims by declared opponents of the JCPOA that Iran is hiding current non-compliance because the Obama Administration “gave away any right to conduct meaningful inspections in Iran.”

The IAEA is the JCPOA’s verification agency. Its authority for drawing conclusions about nuclear activities in Iran, as in other states, derives from a bilateral comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) to which the IAEA is a legal party. *The IAEA does two main things in Iran—monitoring and verifying. It monitors Iran’s commitments to restrain its nuclear activities, such as on enriching uranium, stockpiling of heavy water, and manufacturing of gas-centrifuge parts. Some IAEA monitoring uses IAEA-verified declarations as a starting point. But the hardest part of the verification work remains to be done, to ensure that Iran’s declarations about the scope and extent of its nuclear program are complete as well as correct.

Contrary to specious claims that the JCPOA prevents meaningful inspections, the agreement is a vehicle that should facilitate the IAEA’s finding out whether all of Iran’s nuclear activities are exclusively dedicated to peaceful uses. That’s possible because under the agreement Iran will implement its Additional Protocol (AP), an instrument that gives the IAEA more access to information about a country’s nuclear activities beyond what is required by its CSA. Implementation of the AP can permit the IAEA to draw the so-called “broader conclusion” that all nuclear material in a state is in peaceful uses. To draw this conclusion in*other states with a CSA and an AP in force, it can take the IAEA a number of years. In Iran, where the JCPOA has a broader scope, this process has been underway only for about 18 months.

The IAEA has never said that Iran is “in compliance” with the JCPOA. That’s for two reasons. The first is that such a statement would have no legal basis because the IAEA is not a party. Reason two is that, whereas the IAEA has said that Iran isn’t exceeding the limits it agreed to concerning specific nuclear activities, and that currently there are no indications that Iran is conducting undeclared activities contrary to JCPOA nuclear-related commitments, the IAEA has not yet concluded that Iran’s declaration of its nuclear activities is complete and correct.

The process for getting to that conclusion would begin by the IAEA’s initially focusing on, and, as appropriate, requesting access to, nuclear sites that have been declared by Iran. Over time, the IAEA would zero in on locations that host Iran’s nuclear fuel-cycle industry, and thereafter, on myriad universities, laboratories, and other R&D installations—including military sites—that may be involved in doing work that is pertinent to Iran’s nuclear program. Doing verification this way may disappoint critics looking for instant results, but it may build confidence while at the same time posing incrementally greater risk that Iran may not cooperate.

The IAEA is at an early stage in this process. In the hypothetical best case, a “broader conclusion” for Iran will result. How long this takes will depend upon the IAEA’s information-collection and analysis capacity, but also on Iran’s political will and the capacity of its nuclear accounting system to provide information to the IAEA. It is not certain that the IAEA will draw a “broader conclusion” in Iran. The IAEA has not done this for about 50 countries that have a CSA and an AP. None of these countries, however, have declared nuclear programs with sensitive nuclear activities.

The JCPOA is a complementary instrument that should permit the IAEA to provide greater assurance that Iran is in compliance with its safeguards agreement and to confirm the completeness of Iran’s nuclear declaration. Besides the AP, the JCPOA includes a raft of other extra verification provisions. The sum total affords the IAEA a level of information about Iran’s nuclear program that exceeds all other nuclear programs subject to safeguards.

Put the JCPOA to the Test
Setting aside premature or misleading claims that the JCPOA “is working” or Iran is “not complying,“ the agreement’s nuclear provisions thus far have not been severely challenged in the field. That may change over time, as the IAEA continues to do its work and becomes increasingly beset with sensitive issues—including any information that suggests that Iran may not have declared all its nuclear activities.

The United States government should consider the verification “opportunity costs” of taking actions that might terminate the JCPOA. Instead of putting the JCPOA in jeopardy, the U.S. would be well advised to permit the implementation of the agreement to go forward and, together with other parties, encourage the IAEA to vigorously pursue its obligations under the agreement.

To facilitate implementation, JCPOA parties should make adjustments in the agreement where needed, and the parties and the IAEA should identify and counteract developments that could damage confidence about implementation.*Effective verification may be hindered by internal bureaucratic approval procedures and by lack of pursuit by personnel; recalcitrant state parties; and deficiencies in the agreement itself. Potential obstacles in the text include the absence of definitions for key terms of reference and for specific IAEA verification activities. There will be difficult-to-overcome concern that the IAEA will be pressured by parties to the agreement to make political—not technical—verification judgments. More attention may have to be given to Russian misgivings about how the IAEA collects and uses third-party information, which first came to a head in 2012. Unless member states request and obtain from the IAEA additional reporting on the IAEA’s verification activities and findings, there will be*less transparency compared to before the JCPOA, because implementation of the AP obligates the IAEA to respect its confidentiality provisions.

Some issues could be addressed in a straightforward manner among the parties and the IAEA as appropriate. Iran could agree to provide the IAEA a declaration about its current and past activities in areas that are pertinent to nuclear weapons-making. Technical criteria could be established for certain equipment and technologies related to nuclear weapons-making that would prompt an IAEA request for clarification or access from Iran. The IAEA could establish clear procedures for forming and withdrawing the “broader conclusion.” Doing these things would contribute to greater confidence that IAEA safeguards conclusions—including on Iran—are impartial and are based on technical findings.

Nuclear verification is at the heart of the JCPOA. To the IAEA, the JCPOA is a bird in the hand—a tool that for at least a decade can enhance verification of Iran’s safeguards agreement and contribute to keeping Iran from reaching for nuclear weapons. That said, all JCPOA parties and the IAEA must know that if the IAEA does not unflinchingly implement the agreement, its credibility, and the credibility of the JCPOA, will be damaged. In ten to fifteen years, some key provisions will sunset. The prospects that Iran will thereafter indefinitely restrict its nuclear behavior to the current and effective level called for in the JCPOA will depend on success in multilateral diplomacy. That will be less likely if the United States does not support the agreement that it concluded with Iran two years ago.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Opinion | Ernest J. Moniz

The world can’t afford a nuclear Iran. Keep the current deal

By Ernest J. Moniz *
October 04, 2017

When the Iran nuclear agreement was concluded more than two years ago, many questioned whether Tehran would live up to its terms. Incredibly, now it’s our continued compliance that’s in question. If the president pulls the United States out — either by failing to certify Iranian compliance without clear evidence of violations or by making a clean withdrawal — he will trigger a crisis that will significantly increase nuclear dangers.

A nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to the region and the world and must never be allowed to happen. The 2015 nuclear agreement is foundational for preventing this outcome, not an enabler as President Trump and others have suggested. If the United States walks away from our obligations, Iran could walk away without notice. To understand the stakes, it’s important to be clear about what this agreement accomplished and what we would lose if the United States causes the deal to collapse.

First, we would lose important restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities. As a physicist involved with the US nuclear weapons program for decades, I know what it takes to build a nuclear bomb. As the principal negotiator of the final Iran deal nuclear provisions, I know that its 159 pages of unprecedented detailed requirements are a significant barrier to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Without the agreement, restrictions that effectively block every potential path to an Iranian bomb for more than a decade would vanish. We would lose stringent limits that have already reduced Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium by 98 percent, kept uranium enrichment at or below 3.67 percent, reduced the number of installed centrifuges by two-thirds and limited their technology. We also would lose prohibitions that keep Iran from producing significant amounts of plutonium, require all spent nuclear fuel to be sent out of the country, and prevent any kind of research or development that could contribute to a nuclear weapons program.

Second, we would lose critical visibility into Iran’s nuclear activities. The agreement imposes unprecedented inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency to provide continuous eyes and ears on Iran’s nuclear activities to detect covert weapons activities. The monitoring covers every stage of Iran’s nuclear activities with the most robust inspections and verification protocol ever negotiated with any country. Prominent scientific leaders well versed in nuclear weapons technologies declared that the agreement is a model that could “serve as a guidepost to future nonproliferation agreements.” Inspections and verification provide the best assurance we can have about whether Iran is using a peaceful nuclear program to conceal work to develop a weapon. Without the agreement, the IAEA will no longer have assured access to any suspicious location. The United States would also lose the ability to review, and potentially reject, any nuclear-related purchases Iran seeks to make.

When the agreement was finalized, some asked why we would agree to a “temporary agreement,” noting that not all the restrictions were permanent. The simple answer is that we didn’t. While some restrictions on enrichment and nuclear activities sunset between 2026 and 2031, the most important aspects of the agreement remain in perpetuity — a permanent prohibition on Iran having a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program, and continuous comprehensive inspections. Under this agreement, we retain all options today and in the future to respond to any move by Iran to develop a nuclear weapon and have much better information to act on. Statements claiming that the agreement somehow automatically makes Iran a nuclear weapons state after 10 or 15 years are absurd.

Third, we would lose a streamlined process for getting the support of other nations to quickly reimpose tough sanctions through the UN Security Council should Iran seriously breach the agreement. Sanctions would not be our only option, since there is nothing in this agreement that prevents the United States from taking military action if there is evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb.

Fourth, pulling out of the agreement would isolate the United States. The United States brought China, Russia, Europe, and the rest of the world together to constrain Iran’s nuclear program. We would likely walk away alone. Should we destroy the agreement in the name of improving it, as some now advocate, we may succeed in uniting the world with Iran and against the United States — a gift to our adversaries across the globe.

The criticism of the deal fails to put forward anything better. Some point to what it doesn’t address — Iran’s support for Hezbollah, its missile program, its regional ambition, and its support for the murderous regime in Syria. There is a long history of negotiating nuclear agreements with countries that have diametrically opposing views to the United States — there is no better precedent than President Reagan negotiating nuclear agreements with the Soviets as we contested them in many other arenas. That said, there is nothing that precludes us and our allies from addressing issues outside the nuclear agreement with Iran now, and indeed addressing all of these issues without this agreement would be much more dangerous if Iran had nuclear weapons. Just look at the situation in North Korea. Instead of ripping apart the Iran nuclear agreement and starting from a dangerous scratch, Trump should focus on strengthening prohibitions against nuclear weapons for all countries, including Iran.

When we entered into the Iran agreement, Iran stood only a few months short of a nuclear weapon, and if diplomacy had failed, only military options could have hoped to stall their path. We froze the program to allow for a diplomatic solution and we got one, comprehensively verifiable, and scientifically and technically sound. This was not just a diplomatic achievement, but an extraordinary joint effort by responsible countries to remove an urgent danger to peace and stability. For the United States to now turn its back on this deal would be more than an embarrassment, it would be an unconscionably perilous act.

Ernest J. Moniz is chief executive officer and cochairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He served as US secretary of energy from 2013 to January 2017.

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[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.longwarjournal.org/arch...-militias-eject-islamic-state-from-hawija.php

Iraqi troops, Iranian-backed militias eject Islamic State from Hawija

BY BILL ROGGIO | October 5, 2017 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio

The Iraqi military and Iranian-supported Shia militias have retaken the town of Hawija from the Islamic State just two weeks after launching an offensive, leaving the Islamic State with just one major stronghold in Iraq.

The Islamic State had controlled Haija since early 2014.

The Iraqi military and Iranian-backed militias that operate under the aegis of the Popular Mobilization Forces launched the offensive to regain control of the town from the south and west on Sept. 21. The joint forces rapidly advanced across the Hamrin Mountains and reached the center of Hawija. Islamic State forces still control a small pocket of villages to the north and east of the town, but are now surrounded.

Hawija was the Islamic State’s last major stronghold in northern Iraq. The Islamic State maintained control of the town even after it was ejected from the nearby cities of Tikrit, Baiji, Al Qayyarah and Mosul over the past year.

The Islamic State appears to have put up a minimal fight to defend Hawija. It may be an indication that its combat power is largely tapped in northern Iraq. However, the jihadist group may have withdrew the bulk of its forces to live to fight another day.

The Islamic State’s last bastion in Iraq is along the western branch of the Euphrates River Valley, from the towns of Anah and Rawa to al Qaim on the Syrian border. The Islamic State also holds territory along the Euphrates on the Syrian side of the border. Its leadership appears to have regrouped in Mayadin.

Shia militias continue to play a role on the Iraq battlefield

Like previous operations to retake cities and towns from the Islamic State, the Iraqi government has relied on the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the grouping of militias mostly backed by Iran, for support. Iranian-linked militias have played a key role in liberating cities such as Mosul, Ramadi, Fallujah, Tikrit and Baiji.

The top PMF leaders are Iranian proxies. The PMF’s operational leader is Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, a former commander in the Badr Organization who was listed by the US government as a specially designated global terrorist in July 2009. The US government described Muhandis, whose real name is Jamal Jaafar Mohammed, as “an advisor to Qassem Soleimani,” the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – Qods Force, Iran’s expeditionary special forces. Hadi al Ameri, the head of the Badr Organization who has been close to Iran for decades, is also a key leader in the PMF.

At least two Iranian-supported militias, Harakat al Nujaba and Asaib al Haq, have been spotted on the Hawija front. Qais Qazali, the leader of Asaib al Haq, and Akram al Kaabi, the secretary general of Harakat al Nujaba, have been photographed outside of Hawija discussing their militia’s role in the Hawija offensive. Both groups are Iranian proxies and their leaders are close to Qods Force commander Soleimani. Qazali is listed by the US as a specially designated global terrorist, while Kaabi has been designated by US as threat to Iraq. Both Qazali and Kaabi have threatened the United States and Kaabi has said he would overthrow the Iraqi government if ordered to do so by Iran’s Supreme Leader.

The PMF has become an important branch of Iraq’s security apparatus. The Iraqi government officially incorporated the PMF as an “independent military formation” that reported directly to the prime minister in July 2016. The PMF was established as a parallel security organization akin to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The move was hailed by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as an “important and blessed phenomenon,” while Iranian generals have said that the PMF is an extension of Iran’s plan to export the revolution.

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

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/unforced-error-risks-confrontation-iran

POLICY ANALYSIS NO. 822
Unforced Error: The Risks of Confrontation with Iran

By Emma Ashford and John Glaser
October 9, 2017
Executive Summary

During the 2017 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump was open about his hostility toward Iran and his disdain for the Obama administration’s diplomacy with that country. Since January, the Trump administration has been engaged in an Iran policy review. News reports and leaks suggest the review is highly likely to recommend a more confrontational approach to Iran, whether within the framework of the Iranian nuclear deal or by withdrawing from it. This paper examines the costs of four confrontational policy approaches to Iran: sanctions, regional hostilities, “regime change from within,” and direct military action.

Increased economic sanctions are unlikely to succeed in producing policy change in the absence of a clear goal or multinational support. Indeed, sanctions on Iran are likely to meet with strong opposition from U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, who continue to support the nuclear deal. The second policy we examine — challenging Iranian proxies and influence throughout the Middle East — is likewise problematic. There is little coherent, effective opposition to Iran in the region, and this approach increases the risks of blowback to U.S. forces in the region, pulling the United States deeper into regional conflicts.

The third option, so-called regime change from within, is a strategy that relies on sanctions and on backing for internal Iranian opposition movements to push for the overthrow of the regime in Tehran. This approach is not feasible: regime change — whether covert or overt — rarely succeeds in producing a stable, friendly, democratic regime. The lack of any good candidates for U.S. support inside Iran compounds this problem. The final policy alternative we explore is direct military action against Iranian nuclear or military facilities. Such attacks are unlikely to produce positive outcomes, while creating the risk of substantial escalation. Worse, attacking Iran after the successful signing of the nuclear deal will only add to global suspicions that the United States engages in regime change without provocation and that it cannot be trusted to uphold its commitments.

We suggest an alternative strategy for the Trump administration: engagement. This approach would see America continue to uphold the nuclear deal and seek continued engagement with Iran on issues of mutual interest. Engagement offers a far better chance than confrontation and isolation to improve Iran’s foreign policy behavior and empower moderate groups inside Iran in the long term.

Continue to full version - https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa_822.pdf

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.realcleardefense.com/ar..._redeploying_the_nuclear_tomahawk_112426.html

Evolving Challenges: Redeploying the Nuclear Tomahawk

By Adam Cabot
October 04, 2017

In the few years since the United States retired the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile-Nuclear (TLAM-N) from service, circa 2013, the world has been faced with rapidly evolving challenges. Such as a Russia increasing willingness to use force to achieve strategic objectives, the ongoing island building and militarization of the South China Sea by the People’s Republic of China and the nuclear posturing of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, corresponding with its ongoing development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons technology. With these challenges posing a potential threat to the United States and its allies, perhaps it was a premature decision to retire the TLAM-N from naval service. This non-strategic nuclear weapon would be useful in the current global climate as an additional option in negating evolving threats.

Let’s look at Russia first. There is a clear tactical nuclear imbalance between the United States and Russia, both in quality and quantity. While the U.S. currently deploys 150 B-61 tactical nuclear gravity bombs, Russia has at its disposal, approximately 1850 non-strategic nuclear weapons capable of being fitted to a diverse range of platforms including the Iskander short-range ballistic missile, the sea-based Kalibr cruise missile and the A-135 missile defense system to name a few. Redeploying the TLAM-N to a select number of naval units would close this gap without breaching the INF treaty. While the B-61 needs to rely on the combat range of aircraft such as the F-16 and runs the gauntlet of avoiding surface to air missile defenses, the TLAM-N would have a significantly increased range, accuracy and ability to avoid ground-based air defense. If deployed on nuclear attack submarines such as the Los Angeles, Seawolf or Virginia class, the TLAM-N could potentially be launched from an undetected position within range of targets, as opposed to the aircraft carrying the B-61 which must contend with a greater risk of being detected well in advance of reaching its target. If Russia chose to invade the Baltic States, the currently deployed B-61s in Western Europe and Turkey would be unable to be deployed effectively due to limited range and penetration ability. The TLAM-N would circumvent this limitation, providing NATO with a viable strike option.

China is currently in the process of fortifying the South China Sea. In the case of war, China could effectively close this major shipping choke point and destabilize the global economy. In addition to this, China is not subject to the INF Treaty and has deployed a diverse group of land-based ballistic missile variants such as the DF-21D MRBM believed to be designed to destroy U.S. aircraft carriers. This has been classed as an Anti-Access Area Denial (A2/AD) weapon as it would potentially limit the ability of U.S. aircraft carriers to operate within the South China Sea region. If China were to close the South China Sea to shipping, there would be significant challenges to dislodging their forces. Redeployment of the TLAM-N opens the door to military and coercive options, from a reactive angle to combat Chinese forces already in position in the event of war and from a deterrence angle to prevent any Chinese aspirations to close South China Sea shipping lanes. At this point, the U.S. has no tactical nuclear option deployed in the Asia region. Redeploying the TLAM-N to naval units in the region could counter Chinese A2/AD weapon systems.

North Korea has made no secret of its desire to be able to reach the continental United States with high yield nuclear weapons. If it does not have this capability already, it appears to be on the way there. Currently, the only nuclear counterforce option available for dealing with North Korea is the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal. This would potentially take time to reach targets in North Korea depending on which of the triad is utilized and depending on from where the missiles are launched, they could be mistaken by Russia and China as a First Strike attack against their forces. These problems can be overcome by deploying the TLAM-N on vessels within the U.S. Seventh Fleet. If intelligence was obtained that North Korea planned an imminent nuclear attack on South Korea, Japan or the United States, multiple TLAM-N cruise missiles could be launched directly at targets within North Korea with the ability to penetrate through ground-based air defense. Although deploying B-61 tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea is a potential future option that should not be discounted, the TLAM-N is a far superior option due to the B-61 carrying aircraft being vulnerable to surface to air missile batteries as discussed. Deploying the TLAM-N within this region may also have political benefits as South Korea would not necessarily need to base nuclear weapons in their territory.

Another crucial advantage to redeploying the TLAM-N is the reassurance it would provide to U.S. allies. In the current geopolitical landscape of multidimensional challenges and threats, redeploying tactical nuclear cruise missiles would send a message to nations both within and outside the U.S. extended deterrence umbrella that the U.S. is serious about increasing its options at a tactical level beyond conventional force projection.

Opponents to this outlook will evidently argue that this is a step backward for nuclear arms control and disarmament. This argument is often based on blind ideology. The U.S. made a decision to drastically reduce its tactical nuclear weapons force to the current point where only a handful of barely effective gravity bombs remain, yet all of the nuclear powers continue to modernize their arsenals and Russia retains a massive non-strategic nuclear weapons capability. A case in point is North Korea which pushes ahead at an alarming pace with nuclear warhead and ballistic missile advancement regardless of any non-proliferation efforts made by global powers and sanctions imposed. Steps taken by the U.S. to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons have not been met with the same actions by certain global actors.

The redeployment of the nuclear Tomahawk (TLAM-N) provides the U.S. with a range of options to deal with challenges at a tactical level that conventional weapons may not be able to counter. At a strategic level, the TLAM-N can have an increased deterrence effect to potential adversaries and a reassurance effect for allies. One must wonder if the TLAM-N would have been retired if decision makers had faced the current challenges faced by the world today. I would hope strategic reasoning and analysis would prevail, not blind ideology.

Video

Lieutenant Junior Grade Patrick Grumley, Naval Gunfire Liaison Officer with 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, talks about Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) Flight Test 409 and it's purpose aboard San Nicolas Island off the coast of California, Jan. 28, 2015. TLAM Flight Test 409 is used by 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, alongside 3rd Fleet, in order to bring the TLAM from the strategic and operational level down to a more tactical environment.

Adam Cabot has a Masters in International Relations and is currently researching Russian nuclear strategy.

 

[Oreally]

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http://www.airforce-technology.com/...g-minuteman-iii-icbm-5939330?WT.mc_id=DN_News

USAF completes upgrade of LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM

On Oct 3 2017

The US Air Force (USAF) has completed the upgrade of the LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) as part of its effort to further modernise the nuclear enterprise.

The $68m upgrade programme involved replacing the legacy cartridge tape unit (CTU) and launch facility load cartridge (LFLC) systems with a new data transfer unit (DTU).

USAF 91st Operations Support Squadron ICBM codes operations chief captain Kevin Drumm said: “The legacy LFLC’s take about 45 minutes to produce the Wing Codes Processing System, and about 30 minutes to load at a launch facility.

“The new DTU takes less than 30 minutes to produce, and about seven minutes to load.”

The DTU has been designed to load the Missile Guidance Set, which is the brain of the Minuteman III, with sensitive cryptographic data and other information the missile needs in order to function.

A single DTU has enough capacity to store the same amount of data as 12 LFLCs.
The LFLC can only hold enough data and information for a single launch facility, which meant airmen would need to carry up to 50 LFLCs to achieve a complete code change.

Airmen who previously carried two CTUs can now take one DTU to enable faster, reliable and more secure ICBM operations.

The new device was first used on 23 June, the USAF stated.

Drumm added: “After its first operational use, we transitioned to using DTUs 100% of the time during the 742nd Missile Squadron’s Operation Olympic Step.”

During Olympic Step, maintenance teams using DTUs observed a significant increase in productivity.

Does this mean we have dumped the floppy disks?

 

[Housecarl]

Does this mean we have dumped the floppy disks?

Yes....

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.dawn.com/news/1362001

Pakistan warns India against targeting its N-installations

Anwar Iqbal
Updated October 06, 2017

WASHINGTON: Foreign Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif warned on Thursday that if India launched a surgical strike on the country’s nuclear installations, nobody should expect restraint from Pakistan either.

Indian Air Force chief B.S. Dhanoa said on Wednesday that if India needed to carry out a surgical strike, his aircraft could target Pakistan’s nuclear installations and destroy them.

The foreign minister addressed the Indian air chief’s remarks at a talk at the US Institute of Peace in Washington on Thursday, urging Indian leaders not to contemplate such actions as those could have dire consequences.

“Yesterday, the Indian air chief said we will hit, through another surgical strike, Pakistan’s nuclear installations. If that happens, nobody should expect restraint form us. That’s the most diplomatic language I can use,” said Mr Asif.

The foreign minister, who is in Washington on a three-day official visit, met US National Security Adviser Gen H.R. McMaster on Thursday, a day after he held wide-ranging talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. While both US and Pakistani sides have described the Asif-Tillerson talks as “positive” and “useful”, Mr Asif indicated that his meeting with Gen McMaster was not as friendly as the earlier meeting.

“I will not be extravagant, yesterday’s meeting went very well, today’s meeting with Gen McMaster in the morning, I would be a bit cautious about it. But it was good. It was good. It wasn’t bad,” said the foreign minister when asked if his trip to Washington was going well.

Talks with Tillerson
The shared interest in a secure, prosperous and democratic Pakistan was one of the key issues discussed in a frank conversation between Mr Tillerson and Mr Asif, says the US State Department.

The two top diplomats met at the State Department in Washington on Wednesday for talks aimed at halting a rapid deterioration in bilateral ties.

Also read: Don't blame Pakistan, Haqqanis were your 'darlings' at one time: Asif tells US

“They talked about the importance of partnering together to establish peace and prosperity in the region. They talked about their mutual commitment to advancing a multifaceted relationship between the United States and Pakistan based on our shared interest in a secure, prosperous, and democratic Pakistan,” said State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert when asked what was discussed in the meeting.

“The foreign minister and the secretary talked about the president’s South Asia strategy that was announced back in August. They also exchanged ideas about how our countries can work together to help stabilise Afghanistan,” she added.

Although their relations were already tense, the tensions worsened after US President Donald Trump’s Aug 21 policy speech in which he warned Pakistan to eradicate alleged terrorist safe havens from its soil or be ready for the consequences.

Later, senior US officials told various media outlets that the United States could stop providing economic and military assistance to Pakistan, degrade its status of a major non-Nato ally and place Pakistani officials with alleged ties to terrorists on a terrorist-watch list.

At the State Department briefing, a journalist pointed out that when the new US strategy was unveiled, the language about US-Pakistani ties was much harsher than what Secretary Tillerson used in his remarks after the meeting. “Was none of (the punitive actions underlined by US officials) discussed with the Pakistani foreign minister?” the journalist asked.

“We typically don’t provide the fulsome types of readouts, we don’t do a play-by-play, a blow-by-blow of everything that happens in our private diplomatic conversations,” the spokesperson responded.

“What I just read to you, that’s what I can provide to you from the meeting. I know our conversations with the Pakistani government continue to be frank,” she added.

Another journalist reminded Ms Nauert in that response to a question at this stakeout on Wednesday, Secretary Tillerson had expressed concerns about the future of government of Pakistan. “What did he mean by that?”

Ms Nauert said she did not get the chance to ask the secretary about those remarks and that’s why she did not know what he meant.

Responding to a question about US-Pakistan relations at his stakeout, Secretary Tillerson had said: “We have concerns about the future of Pakistan’s government too, in terms of them — we want their government to be stable. We want it to be peaceful. And many of the same issues they’re struggling with inside of Pakistan are our issues.”

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2017