Military Science, Military Issues, and the Nature of War

[Crafty_Dog]

The Future of Warfare Is Electronic
An audacious Ukrainian incursion into Russia shows why. Is the Pentagon paying enough attention?
By Porter Smith and Nathan Mintz
Sept. 4, 2024 12:35 pm ET

The Ukrainian army has launched a stunning offensive into Kursk, Russia, under a shield of advanced electronic weapons. The war in Ukraine is demonstrating that 21st-century conflicts will be won or lost in the arena of electronic warfare.

Think of electronic warfare as casting spells on an invisible battlefield. Combatants strive to preserve their own signals, while disrupting those of the enemy. In Kursk, the Ukrainians took advantage of their technical knowledge to achieve a leap in battlefield tactics. Using a variety of electronic sensing systems, they managed to figure out the key Russian radio frequencies along the invasion route. They jammed these frequencies, creating a series of electronic bubbles that kept enemy drones away from Ukrainian forces, allowing reconnaissance units, tanks and mechanized infantry to breach the Russian border mostly undetected. This is the chaotic way of modern combat: a choreography of lightweight, unmanned systems driven by a spiderweb of electronic signals.

During visits to Ukraine over the past year, we observed the convergence of unmanned systems and electronic warfare, increasingly conducted by front-line troops. An island in the Dnipro River delta south of Mykolaiv is held by a contingent of Ukrainian special forces. These units would normally be supported by heavy artillery, attack aviation, and air-defense missiles, and resupplied by traditional maritime assets. Today, short on conventional resources but buoyed by Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs, they are pioneering the development and use of quadcopters and drone boats for resupply, reconnaissance, evacuation and amphibious assaults.

The Russians have so far been unable to dislodge these innovators but have begun using their own jammers to counter the waves of Ukrainian drone fleets supporting them, effectively creating a classic blockade. With the local electronic environment scrambled, Ukrainian drones have difficulty operating. If the Russians succeed, they could isolate the Ukrainian forces on the island. As these struggles reveal, the ultimate prize in modern warfare is spectrum dominance: ensuring one’s own control of drone networks while detecting and denying the adversary’s.

Connectivity has become as important to war as supply lines. Three decades of innovation have transformed cell phones from a luxury to some 15 billion internet-linked devices today. War zones are jam-packed with electronic brains. Unlike Cold War jets, tanks and ships, each system is primarily controlled by software and relies on the same connectivity found in doorbell security cameras, electric vehicles and consumer mobile apps. The value of a smartphone isn’t necessarily the aluminum rectangle in your hand, but the software it contains and the network to which it’s connected. This is also now true of military devices.

America has a reputation as a global innovator, yet it trails in the dark arts of electronic warfare. Improvised jamming systems and dozens of counter-drone systems have created a spectral environment that the U.S. military isn’t yet prepared to navigate. American drones and munitions frequently can’t overcome the jamming of their guidance systems. Yet we send them to Ukraine, where the Russians often scramble them before they reach their targets.

Our core jamming platforms, such as the EA-18G Growler and antiradiation missiles, are effective but expensive and difficult to build at speed and scale. Using a $1 million missile to destroy a $10,000 jammer and clear the way for a $1,000 drone is absurd. With our current platforms, it will be the norm.

The Ukrainians outside Mykolaiv solved their electronic-warfare woes, however temporarily, without seven-figure munitions. Their marines dangled direction-finding antennas inside PVC piping from a first-person view drone for rough triangulations of Russian jammers using tested, decades-old signals techniques, before using artillery to strike the locations. When we asked why a marine unit, which doesn’t typically specialize in electronic warfare, was running improvised hunter-killer missions on jamming sites, the Ukrainians reacted with surprise. Their electronic intelligence expert explained, “You can’t do anything in this war without first figuring out the jamming.”

A military that can’t build a dynamic electronic shield around its own forces will likewise be unable to maneuver in the coming drone wars. Modern electronic-warfare systems mounted on low-cost drones are now as necessary as munitions. New companies are in the early stages of building the right weapons but need the Pentagon to recognize the same future—and spend accordingly.

We aren’t the only ones watching Ukraine. China moves at the speed of war, while the U.S. moves at the speed of bureaucracy. If we retool our approach to electronic warfare, America will tip the scales in favor of deterrence and, if necessary, victory. If not, we will be subject to the harsh lessons inevitably faced by those who fight the last war.

Mr. Smith is a former U.S. Army attack aviator and officer of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Mr. Mintz, an aerospace engineer, was founding CEO of the defense startups Epirus, Spartan Radar and now CX2.

[Body-by-Guinness]

... and imports perhaps inferior or compromised parts used in critical military systems and weaponry, recieving a pro-forma fine for it:

State Department Fines RTX While US Security is Compromised
Many of the Violations Happened at Rockwell Collins, now Collins Aerospace, an RTX company

STEPHEN BRYEN
SEP 11, 2024

The State Department has let RTX corporation off the hook on serious violations of US export control laws that resulted in the compromise of major US military systems.  The transactions involved China, Iran and Russia among others and procurement of important parts for defense systems from China.


The RTX chalet at the 2023 Paris Air Show shows off both the rebranded company name and its older Raytheon Technologies title. (Aaron Mehta/Breaking Defense)
Despite reporting more than 750 violations, RTX was fined $200 million, although the real fine is only half that amount. No other action was taken.  Apparently no referrals were made to the Department of Justice.  No estimate was made of damages to US security.  The fine is just a number pulled out of a hat and is, in fact, a meaningless action given the severity of the violations.  RTX revenues are around $69 billion annually.

According to the State Department, most of the violations happened in the Collins Aerospace division of RTX, but there also were export violations in other parts of RTX.


Officials from Collins Aerospace and CASC at the contract signing ceremony.
The State Department says that its response was not harsher because the company voluntarily disclosed the violations and cooperated with the State Department on strengthening export compliance.

The violations include Iran, Lebanon, Russia and China.  China was used as a parts subcontractor for US defense systems and received export controlled technical data and design information so they could manufacture components.

These transactions allowed Collins, now a division of RTX, to buy cheap and potentially inferior components from China.  Collins has operations in Shanghai and is partnered with China Aerospace Systems Corporation

The US has three systems for controlling US exports.  The State Department administers the Arms Export Control Act and publishes regulations known as the International Traffic in Arms regulations (ITAR).  Defense companies know that most of what they produce is covered under ITAR regulation.

The Commerce Department administers Export Administration Regulations and publishes regulations known as the Commodity Control List (CCL).  CCL covers includes national security, foreign policy, short-supply, nuclear non-proliferation, missile technology, chemical and biological weapons, regional stability, crime control, and terrorist concerns.

The Treasury Department administers various US export sanctions managed by the Office of Foreign Asset Controls.  The US has sanctions on Russia, China and Iran. All three countries also run aggressive spying operations against the United States including extensive cyber hacking, often described as an “advanced persistent threat.”

While the above three agencies administer the programs there is sometimes overlap and controversy over categories, and there are interagency mechanisms to sort them out.  In addition other agencies, most notably the Defense Department, the Department of Energy (especially for nuclear-related technology) and US Intelligence (mainly the CIA) participate in establishing technology controls, tracking adversaries, and adjudicating export license applications.

Collins Aerospace

Rockwell Collins was acquired by United Technologies Corporation (UTC) on November 27, 2018 for $30 billion and now operates as part of Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies). A significant part of the company's business is commercial aviation (but many of the same products are used in military aviation).  In terms of defense projects Rockwell Collins was involved with the Common Avionics Architecture System (CAAS), Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT), Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR), and Future Combat Systems. Importantly, Collins Aerospace, the successor division of RTX, specializes in integrated battlefield management.  As the company says, "With our long history of providing software-defined radios, gateway solutions and communication systems, we know what it will take to connect the battlespace. We’re bringing new technologies and capabilities to allied forces faster with innovative solutions that integrate legacy and new assets, open systems architecture, digital engineering and militarized commercial technologies."  Collins Aerospace has revenues of $26.2 billion.

According to the State Department, since 2020 there have been 27 voluntary disclosures concerning Collins Aerospace. "In at least two cases, such unauthorized exports resulted in the manufacture of thousands of defense articles (comprising approximately 45 distinct part numbers) in the PRC [China], importation of those defense articles into the United States, and the eventual integration of those defense articles into multiple U.S. and partner military platforms. In 16 cases, Respondent [Collins? or RTX?] or its foreign affiliates exported or reexported without authorization defense articles related to military aircraft and missile system programs..."  The State Department contends that most of these violations occurred before Rockwell Collins was acquired by UTC in 2018.

It is especially disturbing that the State Department took no action for four years after being informed about these violations that included purchases of Chinese products for US defense systems.  Was the US military informed about Chinese parts showing up in its military systems?  There is no information in the State Department report.

The State Department "Charging Document" also reveals that the US AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) was also compromised. "In two disclosures that Respondent initially submitted to the Department in 2021 and 2022, it disclosed unauthorized exports that occurred at Respondent’s facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the form of unauthorized releases of USML [US Munitions List, namely the ITAR] ... technical data related to the Boeing E-3 Sentry Airborne Early Warning and Control Aircraft and the Embraer KC-390 Millennium Medium Weight Transport Plane to a Chinese foreign-person employees (FPE)."  There is no comment why a Chinese citizen was employed by Collins Aerospace or any other follow up regarding other Chinese employees of the company.  Are these employees still in Cedar Rapids?

Collins, through its subsidiary in Shanghai, China also sought Chinese-company bids for an aluminum display housing components for the US stealth F-22 fighter bomber.  At least two Collins Chinese employees were involved. Collins also also "contemporaneously and separately exported without authorization the same technical data to four entities in the PRC."

In another disclosure in 2023 RTX reported that Collins "released certain circuit card assemblies" to PRC companies.  These are printed circuit boards that are covered under ITAR rules (e.g. specially designed for military use).  Collins claims they were inadvertently mis-classified as falling under Commerce Department Export Administration Act rules.  No information is given that the Commerce Department actually issued any license to Collins, so we are left with the impression that Collins treated the transaction as a commercial transaction not requiring an export license.  The Charging Document does not reveal what defense products were involved.

According to the Charging Document Rockwell Collins also sought printed wiring circuits (printed circuit boards) from China for the following US systems:

• VC-25 Presidential Transport Aircraft (Air Force One)

• A-10 Thunderbolt II Close Air Support Attack Aircraft

• B-1B Lancer Supersonic Strategic Heavy Bomber

• B-52 Stratofortress Strategic Bomber

• C-17 Globemaster III Strategic Airlifter

• C-130J Super Hercules Military Transport Aircraft

• CH-53 Super and King Stallion Cargo Helicopter

• F-15 Eagle Fighter Aircraft

• F-16 Fighting Falcon Fighter Aircraft

• F/A-18 Hornet Fighter Aircraft

• KC-46 Pegasus Tanker Aircraft

• KC-130 Tanker Aircraft

• KC-135 Stratotanker Tanker Aircraft

• MQ-4 Triton Surveillance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

• MQ-8 Fire Scout UAV Helicopter

• MQ-9 Reaper Combat UAV

• MQ-25 Stingray Refueling UAV

• P-8 Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft

• U-2 Reconnaissance Aircraft

The Charging Document does not reveal information about the "wiring boards" beyond saying that Collins was trying to subcontract them to China.

The company also disclosed that it reexported and retransferred to 25 countries including China items (not otherwise described) that are parts of the following military systems:

• Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System

• B-2 Spirit Bomber Aircraft

• F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet Fighter Aircraft

• F-15 Eagle Fighter Aircraft;

• F-16 Fighting Falcon Fighter Aircraft

• F-22 Raptor Fighter Aircraft

• F-35 Lightning II Fighter Aircraft

• National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System

• PATRIOT Air Defense System

• Phalanx Close-In Weapons System

• RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile

Iran and Russia

"In March 2019, an employee hand carried a company-issued laptop, which contained ITAR-controlled technical data, to Iran. The company detected the employee’s attempt to use the laptop to connect to the internet while in Iran and initiated a “freeze” in response, restricting access to the laptop’s hard drive.

Following the employee’s return to the United States, the company determined that the laptop contained USML Category...  technical data related to the B-2 Spirit Bomber Aircraft and F-22 Raptor Fighter Aircraft," according to the Charging Document.  The employee's name is not included, nor what division of the company employed this person.

Similarly, in 2021 an RTX employee traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia with a company issued laptop. Unlike the Iranian laptop which the company was able to "freeze," that did not happen in St. Petersburg, as the cyber team in RTX decided that the use of the laptop in St. Petersburg, Russia was a "false positive."  It isn't clear if this trip was for personal reasons but the Document says the employee made four personal trips to Russia to see his fiancé.  The laptop contained highly sensitive information. The laptop hosted 152 files that contained technical data "related to the F-15 Eagle Fighter Aircraft, F/A-18 Hornet Fighter Aircraft, the F-22 Raptor Fighter Aircraft, the F-35 Lightning II Fighter Aircraft, and the U-2 Reconnaissance Aircraft."

It is well known that the Russians and the Iranians have extensive cyber-hacking capabilities.

Conclusion

RTX was fined $200 million, but the State Department allowed that half that amount could be used by the company for export compliance.  One hundred million dollars for export compliance does not make any sense, since a few million invested in compliance would be more than enough, even in a large company.  We can thus conclude that the actual fine is $100 million and the $200 million figure is just for public relations purposes.

No effort was made to determine the actual cost to the US in compromised security systems or in illegal Chinese products stuffed into US weapons.

The fact that the State Department has been sitting on this information for years is greatly disturbing. 

The lack of prosecutions and punishments is equally problematic. No one is being held accountable.

Nor do we know if the voluntary disclosures actually cover what happened, since there is not a shred of evidence that the State Department investigated any of the disclosures to see if they truly reflected what took place.

The bottom line is that the enforcement agencies really did as little as possible to protect American security interests.

https://weapons.substack.com/p/state-department-fines-rtx-while?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

[Crafty_Dog]

https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/08/25/navy-to-sideline-17-ships-due-to-lack-of-manpower-n2400105?fbclid=IwY2xjawFUf1FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHf1bbHhplVlKRW-NLA7foRSholhCf4Si_kTyx97bjHMkg2L-qAOi4LIlig_aem_PElzUZkc3RVw2moAZlawvQ

Not to worry though , , ,

https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/09/15/navy-launches-gender-neutral-submarien-n2400987?utm_source=twdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=a1714aba6c197395707aecde9ada65a65090b7be5f45291f6611e9cf3bd6bace&lctg=2677215

[ccp]

armed with sea to air missiles, torpedos, and stealth

nicknamed "Jersey Girl"  it includes condoms, birth control medicines and plenty of azithromycin and doxycycline and even ceftriaxone just in case they come against an enemy  third generation  - gonorrhea  .

but we are safe!   

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/railgun-revolution-why-the-u-s-navy-s-abandoned-dream-could-be-china-s-next-big-thing/ar-AA1qIjL2?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=1d7fb8b57e534fb88ec5a50d8d46098b&ei=20

[Crafty_Dog]

Hezbollah: Behind the Headlines
Israel infiltrates with exploding pagers, but against what target?
Robert W Malone MD, MS
Sep 18

Hezbollah exploding pager trail runs from Taiwan to Hungary
12 killed, 3,000 wounded in unprecedented security breach

Hezbollah ordered pages months ago; vows retaliation

Pagers made by Europe firm BAC, Taiwan-based firm says

Devices modified by Israel at production, Lebanon security sources say

Israel makes not comment

A new phase of the war between Israel and Hezbollah has begun, another ethical boundary has been breached, and a wide variety of state and non-state actors will now adopt and adapt this strategy. This new battlefront involves personal electronic devices and the integration of triggered explosives into those devices. In the current embodiment, these devices were deployed using non-specific personnel targeting. However, it seems likely that future deployment will involve both non-specific and individually targeted exploding devices. The implications for public transportation (including air transport) and crowded environments are self-evident. Beyond the damage done to an individual, the potential of this strategy to evoke terror, existential fear, and a variety of forms of disruption is immense. To illustrate the point, remember that psychological bioterror strategies and events are associated with 100 to 1000 times the economic and societal damage related to a bioterror agent's actual, physical deployment. In this current example, current reports indicate something in the range of 10 - 20 direct deaths attributable to exploding personal electronic devices and up to 3,000 wounded. However, the indirect psychological effects will be far more damaging. And this is undoubtedly what was intended. Not only Hezbollah fighters, but virtually the whole world now must be alert and actively mitigating the possibility that their personal electronic devices may incorporate explosives capable of killing or maiming them. Of course, this will include pagers, laptops, cell phones, and all other electronic devices.

Please remember that we are rapidly approaching an age of General artificial intelligence, drones, and robot warriors. The lithium batteries that most personal electronic devices employ are notorious for exploding or otherwise burning. It seems highly likely that there will be many variations and derivatives of this strategy. In a sense, this is an extension and escalation of the “Improvised Explosive Device” (IED) tactic that has been so successfully deployed in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East by insurgent and resistance cells.

The potential economic impacts should not be overlooked, particularly for personal electronic device markets. This will inevitably lead to the need for some packaging and validation solutions to reassure consumers that a purchased device is certified and free of explosive risk, as well as new screening and monitoring processes for air travel. The implications are profound, and I doubt that the Mossad or whatever organization is responsible for this has fully considered the blowback.

Returning to the Reuters wrap-up summary:

BEIRUT, Sept 18 (Reuters) - A Taiwanese pager maker denied on Wednesday that it had produced devices that wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon when they exploded, an audacious attack that raised the prospect of a full-scale war between the Iran-backed group and arch-foe Israel.

Gold Apollo said the devices were made by under license by a company called BAC, based in Hungary's capital Budapest.

Israel's spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of pulling off sophisticated attacks on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.

The death toll rose to 12, including two children, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday. The attack wounded nearly 3,000 people, including many of the group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts. The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, fueling fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.

Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of a regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation on many fronts.

"Hezbollah wants to avoid an all-out war. It still wants to avoid one. But given the scale, the impact on families, on civilians, there will be pressure for a stronger response," said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Hezbollah, Iran's most powerful proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement it would continue to support Hamas in Gaza and Israel should await a response to the pager "massacre" which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalized, or dead.

One Hezbollah official said the detonation was the group's "biggest security breach" in its history.

Footage from hospitals reviewed by Reuters showed men with various injuries, some to the face, some with missing fingers, and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.

The plot appears to have been many months in the making, several sources told Reuters. It followed a series of assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas commanders and leaders blamed on Israel since the start of the Gaza war.

TRAIL LEADS TO BUDAPEST

The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 pagers from Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year.

Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that Gold Apollo named in a statement as BAC.

"The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it," Hsu told reporters at the company's offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.

The stated address for BAC Consulting in Hungary's capital Budapest was a peach building on a mostly residential street in an outer suburb. The company name was posted on the glass door on an A4 sheet.

A person at the building who asked not to be named said BAC Consulting was registered there but did not have a physical presence. The CEO of BAC Consulting, Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, says on her LinkedIn profile that she has worked as an adviser for various organizations, including UNESCO. She did not respond to emails from Reuters.

BAC's registered activities are wide-ranging, from computer game publishing to IT consulting to crude oil extraction.

The senior Lebanese security source identified a photograph of the model of the pager, an AR-924. Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking.

Gold Apollo AR924 Rugged Pager


The senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel's spy service "at the production level." Israeli officials did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

"The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It's very hard to detect it through any means," the source said.

The source said about 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.

Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months.

[Body-by-Guinness]

Hezbollah: Behind the Headlines
Israel infiltrates with exploding pagers, but against what target?
Robert W Malone MD, MS
Sep 18

Hezbollah exploding pager trail runs from Taiwan to Hungary
12 killed, 3,000 wounded in unprecedented security breach

Hezbollah ordered pages months ago; vows retaliation

Pagers made by Europe firm BAC, Taiwan-based firm says

Devices modified by Israel at production, Lebanon security sources say

Israel makes not comment

I will note this Rubicon was long ago crossed by the US, China, and others where insertion of passive spyware etc. was concerned, and indeed the high speed uranium enrichers (bet that phrase will attact NSA attention) that rotated themselves into high speed oblivion were a result of stuxnet insertion. In short, not quite the Brave New World the above indicates....

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-world-s-largest-shipyard-is-helping-the-u-s-catch-up-to-china-s-navy/vi-AA1qOjxU?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=fc9ec13e1d1c40d299680811ff7e9317&ei=38#details

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-us-navy-hasn-t-got-the-ships-and-hasn-t-got-the-men/ar-AA1qYvCu?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=cd125a44beb9435fa7b0dbf0812b7fa4&ei=68

US Marines and sailors on the flight deck of USS Bataan as the ship passes the Statue of LIberty on the way to Fleet Week in New York City. The US Navy is struggling to recruit - Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty
US Marines and sailors on the flight deck of USS Bataan as the ship passes the Statue of LIberty on the way to Fleet Week in New York City. The US Navy is struggling to recruit - Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty
To keep pace with an expanding Chinese fleet, the US Navy is still clinging to an ambitious – but so far unrealised – plan to grow its front-line fleet from around 290 warships to at least 350.

But the Navy doesn’t have enough sailors to fully man the ships it has already – to say nothing of the extra ships it wants. Equally troubling, the manpower shortage means fewer sailors are doing the hard work of keeping ships in top condition during deployments. That could shorten the ships’ service lives, further delaying any fleet expansion.

Yes, the Navy has a hardware problem. But its people problem is far more vexing.

The Navy’s 2024 budget, which – incredibly – is still awaiting Congressional approval, authorises the service to have 347,000 active-duty personnel. But as of January, the service actually employed just 324,599 active-duty sailors – 269,628 enlisted and 54,971 officers. That’s a shortfall of more than 22,000 people, or seven per cent.
The manpower gap means more ships with incomplete crews. It takes 84,400 enlisted sailors to fully man all the fleet’s vessels. As recently as November, however, there were just 70,700 enlisted sailors at sea – a 16 per cent shortfall.

“We found that across the fleet, the Navy is assigning fewer personnel to positions than required,” the US Government Accountability Office explained in a September report. Ships’ crews with too few sailors struggle to perform routine maintenance at sea: patching hulls, fixing machinery, keeping computers running smoothly.

Related video: Inside the US Navy's $500 Million Littoral Combat Ship (Sam Eckholm)

Sam Eckholm
Inside the US Navy's $500 Million Littoral Combat Ship
“The Navy risks not being able to maintain equipment and not achieving the equipment’s expected service life,” the GAO warned.

And where captains do perform all the required maintenance, they often do so by overworking their too-small crews. “According to sailors on the ships we visited, increased workloads can lead to fatigue risks to readiness, and low morale,” the GAO found. And low morale can drive sailors out of the fleet at the ends of their enlistments, further exacerbating the manpower shortfall.

It’s a mess. And the Navy is scrambling to fix it as it awaits much-delayed Congressional action on its 2024 and 2025 budgets. As an expedient, the fleet deliberately neglects entire classes of warships that are scheduled for imminent retirement. The fleet’s few remaining Ticonderoga-class cruisers – 1980s stalwarts that have struggled with outdated and unreliable hulls and machinery – are sailing with practically skeleton crews.

Altogether, the 11 cruisers need 5,100 enlisted sailors. But according to the GAO, they actually have just 3,900 – a gap of more than a third.

How the Navy got into this predicament is complex. The COVID pandemic interrupted recruiting. Post-COVID, the US economy quickly recovered to nearly full employment, with monthly unemployment rates hovering around three percent. Less slack in the labor market means fewer young people finding their way into military service.

Moreover, one key demographic – young men – is less enthusiastic about joining the military. Navy Times cited a study that found just 11 percent of men between the ages of 16 and 21 were interested in military service in 2021, down from 22 percent in 2014.

The Navy’s not alone in its struggle to hire. With the exception of the Marine Corps, all the US military services – even the quasi-military US Military Sealift Command – have fallen short of recruiting goals in recent years. Even the Navy’s industrial base is grappling with a labor crisis and, as a result, falling behind on the production of new ships.

To solve the manpower crisis over the medium term, the Navy is assigning more sailors to its recruiting command – and boosting enlistment bonuses and educational benefits. But arguably the biggest factor in the naval enlistment shortfalls – competition from well-paying civilian jobs – is entirely outside the Navy’s control. Enlistments will improve when the economy worsens.

In the meantime, the Navy plans to cheat. The service expects to ask for nearly 15,000 fewer funded billets as part of its 2025 budget: in essence, eliminating jobs it can’t fill. But where the billets will come from is critical. If fleet leaders reduce at-sea manning without actually redesigning ships to function with smaller crews, they’ll just paper over the manpower problem.

Ships will still break while underway … or wear out years ahead of their planned decommissioning dates. And the Navy’s ambition for a bigger fleet will continue to founder.

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/28/china-navy-us-royal-buildup-taiwan-strait-missiles/

Tom Sharpe
China’s navy is now growing at terrifying speed
Like a chess game where one player keeps getting more and more pieces



tmg.video.placeholder.alt QRq-_ImJnxg
Tom Sharpe
29 May 2024 9:32am
Tom Sharpe
Four days ago, Exercise Joint Sword finished, an annual exercise by the Chinese armed forces that sees increasing numbers of Chinese ships and aircraft encircle Taiwan. This year China described it as “strong punishment” in response to the inauguration of Taiwan’s newly elected President Lai – the candidate Beijing did not want to win. Forty-six People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships encircled the island and 82 of the 111 aircraft detected violated the Taiwanese Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), the highest count on record.


Meanwhile the PLAN has just produced the first of a new class of corvette, taking less than a year to build it.

Whether improved global influence, economic growth, countering US hegemony or increasing national security and sovereignty is President Xi Jinping’s priority, the protection and expansion of trade is a golden thread that runs through all these themes. Recent events, in different ways, all support this objective.

Putin’s war in Ukraine, although existential to Ukrainians, will be seen through Xi’s lens as a useful drain on Western resources. The encircling of Taiwan shows ever-improving military cohesion which in turn increases the demand signal to the US and others to consider ‘what if?’

On the back of this, China’s military build-up continues at a remarkable pace. China is currently building the equivalent of the entire Royal Navy every two years. It was recently reported in these pages that they have built the first of a new class of stealth corvette in under a year. The US Navy’s equivalent, the Littoral Combat Ship, took four years (and is so useless that some are being paid off after only five years at sea). America’s new frigate, although bigger and more complex (assumption), will take seven years from laying down to sea trials. The Royal Navy’s equivalent, the Type 26 Frigate, about five (that is from keel being laid to trials. The timeline from ‘concept’ to ‘operational’ is much longer). Our industrial capacity to build ships is being outstripped by a factor of five.


Corvettes are interesting in their own right. They generally sit somewhere between offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) and frigates in terms of size and armament (although the Thaon di Revel class Italian ‘OPV’, which is as big as a British frigate and more heavily armed, proves that there is no universal convention when it comes to classifying warships). Normal, small corvettes are not limited by their ability to carry weapons, it’s more that they can’t fight as well in bad weather (though they can usually cross oceans), they don’t have the crew numbers to be able to multi-task and they lack the power generation, connectivity and bandwidth to contribute to the wider picture in the way destroyers and above can. Because they are small, they are also less flexible and adaptable over their lifespan.

Start putting expensive weapons and sensors in corvettes and you quickly have a ship inherently limited by these factors but that costs nearly as much as a frigate or destroyer. This is why the Royal Navy has never considered them. In fact, for the duration of my service, the word was forbidden for fear that it could be seized upon by the Treasury as a cheap alternative to ‘proper’ warfighting ships. The French have come to the same conclusion.

But the Chinese got into the corvette game in 2012, building 79 of their Type 056 of which 50 went to the PLAN, 22 to their coastguard and seven were exported. Then in 2021 they stopped. Maybe they thought that these ships were too small to project power globally but not survivable in a conflict closer to home – the classic ‘corvette trap’.

That they have started building ships in this space again suggests they’ve realised two things. First, there is a huge swathe of global maritime activity between coastal peacetime operations and high-intensity warfighting in which a corvette has utility. This is the zone in which 99 per cent of naval operations take place. Posturing around Taiwan, operations in the South China Sea and further afield off, say, Africa are all viable in a smaller hull leaving your larger ships to prepare for the 1 per cent. You wouldn’t want corvettes near the Taiwan Strait if the missiles are flying but then when that happens, you wouldn’t want any kind of surface ship there either.

A US Arleigh Burke class destroyer launches a Tomahawk cruise missile. It costs $420m to fully load a US destroyer with missiles
A US Arleigh Burke class destroyer launches a Tomahawk cruise missile. It costs $420m to fully load a US destroyer with missiles Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Carlos M Vazquez II/US Navy via Reuters
Second, China is building corvettes because it can. If you want your fleet to have balance and mass, as any ambitious navy does, eventually you are going to cross a threshold where quantity starts to deliver a quality all of its own. You can add these hulls to the coastguard fleet and China’s thousands of non-fishing fishing vessels around the world and you have a considerable global maritime network to help assure your global trade network – some of which now has teeth.

It will be interesting to see how the new corvettes are armed. One thing is certain: being in the ship-borne missile game is eye-wateringly expensive. Tyler Rogoway of the War Zone did some analysis on this recently showing that even a smaller missile in the US inventory, the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile, costs $950,000 a round. Tomahawk land attack missiles are $1,890,000 per shot whilst the highest end SM-3 Block IIA used to engage ballistic missile warheads in space is $28,700,000 each. It costs no less than $420m to fully load up an Arleigh Burke class destroyer’s vertical launch cells with a sensible mix of the above and others I haven’t listed. That’s more than it cost to build a British Type 23 Frigate.

It’s clear why so much money is being diverted into developing cheaper methods of knocking out multiple drones and slower missiles but these cheaper methods will forever remain close-in systems. If you want range, missiles (and a large ammo bill) are still the answer.

My bet is that this emerging class of Chinese warship will be fast, have a mix of highly capable missiles, guns and emerging technology. The corvettes will be perfect for trialling new equipment and as an added bonus will provide operational experience to the big ship commanding officers of the future, something that current Chinese destroyer and frigate captains reportedly lack.

Back to the top. Chinese engagements of the last few days are a continuum of the norm: meetings with Putin to see how their invasion of Ukraine can be sustained; Exercise Joint Sword to impose themselves locally and regionally; a tri-lateral diplomacy meeting with Japan and South Korea to discuss trade options. Whether it’s draining western resources, bullying at sea and maritime trade assurance (or denial), then corvettes can contribute very handily – and long before the shooting starts.

If I was head of the PLAN I’d be lobbying hard for 50 of the new stealth corvettes. I’d be delighted that I could get them five times faster than anyone in Nato, and I wouldn’t be worrying too much about the bill either.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwMU0T1AxZg

[Crafty_Dog]

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-92424-pr-tour-sours-as-ukraines?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#media-666c6a72-2d5f-418e-b04c-71e98c3b0443

[ccp]

https://www.westernjournal.com/shipbuilder-discovers-vessels-provided-u-s-navy-may-intentionally-sabotaged-production/

[Crafty_Dog]

Reminds me of the ships that our Constitution had in mind with "letters of marque".


https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/auxiliary-cruisers-now-more-than?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=247761&post_id=149638909&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=z2120&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[Crafty_Dog]

Will Schryver
@imetatronink


 Telling Fact

Two US destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean launched TWELVE SM-3 ballistic missile interceptors today in a futile bid to stem the tide of a huge Iranian ballistic missile salvo.

You know how many SM-3 missiles the US produces each year?

TWELVE.

Me: of those 12, how many actually shot down an Iranian missile?

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-u-s-navys-missile-production-problem-looks-dire/


Compared to the previous year’s projections, the 2025 White House defense budget cuts previously planned procurement of SM-3 IB over the next five years from 153 to zero—saving $1.9 billion. However, these savings are not reinvested in SM-3 Block IIA production, of which quantities remain stagnant at 12 missiles annually over the next five years.

Twelve missiles. Per year.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://notthebee.com/article/100m-navy-ship-with-diversity-hire-lesbian-captain-runs-aground-catches-fire-sinks?fbclid=IwY2xjawFxVB5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHfd67t9zUfkjyMzuzRUpWqxYyNlkz6RrAlIr04W6amR-7WzTg_KETOn7-w_aem_Z-cgDi7TT9hO-p1m1NnARQ

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-real-reason-china-is-building-a-fleet-of-aircraft-carriers/ar-AA1s81oV?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=c1eeeb4c71ff44468e35bb1905b2cbda&ei=33

[DougMacG]

This article makes me think of the Hezbollah pagers...

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/10/14/the_dawn_of_offensive_supply_chains_1064896.html

From the article:
"This new concept, “offensive supply chain” involves controlling and turning the adversary’s supply chain against them, without their immediate knowledge. For example, rather than bombing a tanker, the offensive supply chain contaminates the fuel in the tanker, causing damage to the aircraft receiving it. Rather than bombing a supply ship, the offensive supply chain inserts a virus in the 3D printing files such that the spare parts are faulty. In both cases, the damage is broader and perceived later. It is also more difficult to recognize where the supply chain was compromised, which complicates recovery."

[Crafty_Dog]

That captures an important essence.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/navy-seal-who-killed-osama-bin-laden-gives-stern-warning-to-joe-biden/ss-AA1suM6R?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=d1ddf97b3b2e45008e7a4999d4908a15&ei=10

[Body-by-Guinness]

A grim prognosis for US/European weapons systems and supply chain v. Russian ones. The finding? Weapons vendors are getting rich supplying inferior, expensive systems they don’t have the capacity to resupply should a shooting war break out:

A DISTURBING STUDY MAKES IT CLEAR EUROPE CANNOT BE DEFENDED TODAY

STEPHEN BRYEN
OCT 23, 2024
The German Kiel Institute has published a disturbing, but accurate report on German and European defense.  The report suggests that the overall picture for Germany, Europe and the United States, is grim. The bottom line is that despite all the NATO war talk, NATO (including the United States) is not ready for any conflict with Russia. It also suggests that the pricing of defense equipment is making defense companies rich, but not helping the overall cause of security.

The Kiel Institute was founded in 1914 and is regarded as Germany's leading influential think tank. In September, the Institute produced a study called "Fit for war in decades: Europe's and Germany's slow rearmament vis a vis Russia." The study is very important: it points out how unprepared Germany and other European countries are should Russia attack them.  It tells a sad tale about how overpriced and insufficient is European, specifically German, defense manufacturing. 

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Caracal Air Assault Vehicle
A great example is a German Air Assault vehicle called Caracal.  A Caracal is a kind of wild cat found in Africa, Pakistan, the Middle East,  and parts of India.  The German vehicle, which is an unarmored gussied-up jeep based on a Mercedes G class chassis, was put together by Rheinmetall, Mercedes-Benz AG and ACS Armored Car Systems GmbH.

The Caracal has no armor on its sides (which are open). A little more than 3,000 of these vehicles were provided to Ukraine at a cost of € 1.9 billion, which works out to a unit price of €620,000. You could bolt an antitank gun or machine gun on a 4 wheel drive commercial jeep for less than $35,000 per copy.  (And since Ukraine has no airlift capability, an air assault vehicle dropped onto the battlefield is a non-starter.)  The Euro is currently valued compared to the dollar at $1.08.

An equally appalling example is 30mm ammunition for the German Puma.  The Puma is an infantry fighting vehicle. The Puma costs a staggering $5.3 million each!  But get this, the 30mm ammunition for the Puma comes to around €1,000 per shot!  Puma can fire up to 600 rounds per minute.  That compares to a US 30mm High Explosive Dual Purpose round (more specialized than a run of the mill bullet) at $100.  So German 30mm ammunition is ten times more expensive than from the US.


PUMA IFV, first Series
The German army also is buying tactical military headsets for soldiers.  Commercially available tactical headsets are available on a retail basis for $299.  If you add features such as noise cancellation, the price may go up to $400, not more.  But the German headsets cost a whopping € 2700!

The bottom line is that people are making a lot of money supplying European armies or sending stuff to Ukraine.  Some might say it is outright corruption, since governments are unwilling, perhaps complicit, in these deals.  Mind that the Kiel Institute only goes as far as saying these purchases are uber-expensive, no more.

The Kiel report has a lot to say about defense industrial output in Russia (which is a lot), by the fact that the Russians are not going to run out of weapons anytime soon, and that supplies are now augmented by North Korea in the form of artillery rounds and missiles.  North Korea, it seems, has been grinding out weapons well in excess of anything it can use, and until now it did not export.  The Russian deal with North Korea sustains the Kim dictatorship, of course, by providing cash (or the equivalent) and underwriting jobs.

All of this helps explain, in part, that Germany's investments in defense are corrupted (I think that is the right word) by excessively expensive hardware.  Even if Germany actually meets the NATO target of 2.1% of GDP for defense, what the German army ends up getting is extremely overpriced, not to mention that a lot of it is ending up in Ukraine and only slowly, if at all, replaced on the home front.

Even with adequate spending, what money is spent on boggles the mind.  Very little, for example, is going into air defense, something that is vital for future defense needs.

Overall, NATO-supplied air defenses have done a mediocre to extremely poor job in Ukraine, a harbinger of a deadly future in Europe unless the problem is corrected.

Larry Johnson pointed out to me an intriguing footnote (page 25) in the report, set in ultra-small type and easily ignored.  The footnote discusses Ukraine's ability to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. "Sample interception rates for commonly used Russian missiles in 2024: 50% for the older Kalibr subsonic cruise missiles, 22% for modern subsonic cruise missiles (e.g. Kh-69), 4% for modern ballistic missiles (e.g. Iskander-M), 0.6% for S-300/400 supersonic long-range SAM, and 0.55% for the Kh-22 supersonic anti-ship missile. Data on interception rates of hypersonic missiles is scarce: Ukraine claims a 25% interception rate for hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon missiles, but Ukrainian sources also indicate such interceptions require salvo firing all 32 launchers in a US-style Patriot battery to have any chance to shoot down a single hypersonic missile. By comparison, German Patriot batteries have 16 launchers, and Germany has 72 launchers in total."

Take note that interceptor missiles for Patriot are in ultra short supply.  These missiles take a long time to manufacture, and gearing up to make them has proven challenging.  There is a shortage of critical components, also bolloxing production lines.  While Lockheed Martin is the main producer, Boeing provides key parts for the seeker the missile uses to strike its target (when it works).  Boeing won't solve that problem, at the earliest, until 2027.  Meanwhile Boeing faces a massive industrial strike and an internal crisis far from a solution.

But there are big questions about air defenses.  The US has sold Patriot and other systems to Ukraine.  The Russians spend a lot of effort destroying them, but even when they function their intercept rate is below par.  Europe has supplied IRIS-T, NSAMS and other systems that, so far as can be determined, are roughly equivalent to Patriot.  On the whole Israeli systems are better, but they are not deployed in Ukraine.  What is regarded as the top US system for air defense, AEGIS (in the form of AEGIS Ashore), is not in Ukraine.  The systems are in Poland and Romania.

Europe has very little in the way of home-deployed air defense (Britain essentially has none).  The US is not much better off.  Some system, especially the Ground Based Mid-Course Interceptor (based in Alaska) is a mixed bag, and the Pentagon is now looking for new interceptor missiles that work better than what they have. Despite a lot of tests that were optimized to try and assure success, the forty of so missiles in inventory only work about half the time.

And the future is also concerning as hypersonic weapons arrive on the battlefield, as already they have in Ukraine in the form of Kinzhal and Zircon.  Systems like Patriot or Iris-T or any of the other NATO air defense systems hardly stand a chance against hypersonic attack missiles.


Kh-47M2 Kinzhal. 2018 Moscow Victory Day Parades
The picture also isn't pretty when it comes to drones, which are being fired off by the thousands by the Ukrainians and Russians.  They are hard to kill, and systems like the Russian Lancet drone can destroy modern battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.  No one so far, including Israel, has come up with an efficient way to destroy swarms of drones, or even some lesser attacks that get through.


Russian Lancet Drone
Above all the Kiel report puts a new and important perspective on Europe's security situation and, by extension, the US as it is pledged by treaty to help defend Europe. Instead of constantly expanding NATO and creating angst in Europe and Russia, it is time to step back and see if a credible defense of Europe is possible.  Right now, the answer is, it cannot.

https://weapons.substack.com/p/a-disturbing-study-makes-it-clear?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

[Crafty_Dog]

https://libertarianinstitute.org/blog/money-to-burn-pentagon-blues/

This sentence in particular caught my attention:

"The chaos avalanche continues. And with all this money spent, the US armed forces are not a long sustainment peer competitor in a hot war."

[Body-by-Guinness]

A powerful dissection of our military leaders, leaders that all too often abandon their craft to serve the political ends of the political masters:

These days, we’re mostly Confederates

Antebellum strategy/policy ethos in 21st century America

by

Martin N. Stanton COL, USA (Ret)

Introduction:

Despite the recent Orwellian attempts to “unperson” him, Robert E. Lee remains an iconic figure in American military history.  He was a great field commander who probably got more out of his outnumbered and ill-supplied tatterdemalion army than any other general of his time could have by sheer professional acumen and force of personality.  However, with him (and every other senior Southern commander) that’s as far as it goes.  He failed utterly in his responsibility to convince his political superiors of their folly in the strategic prosecution of the war.  He also dissipated combat power he could not afford to lose in two futile invasions of the North.  Worst of all, he allowed Jefferson Davis to tie the Army of Northern Virginia to the defense of Richmond and Petersburg like a staked goat for the implacable Grant to ultimately devour.  By June 1864 he could see the writing on the wall.  If he stayed in Grant’s gory embrace the Army of Northern Virginia would perish and with it the Confederacy.  But he could not bring himself to forcefully challenge his civilian leadership who were willfully blind to the facts – or walk away from them.  Instead, he soldiered on as nemesis approached.

The fact of the matter is that the South had terrible national level leadership and a national military strategy that was ill suited to achieve its policy goals.  Worse, Southern military leadership was unquestioning in their acquiescence to the elite and insular civilian authority that was driving their cause to ruin. 

You can see many similarities between the national level leadership of the Confederates and the civilian and military leaders in Washington today.

In my kinder moments, I compare most of the senior military leaders at the national level over the past two (+) decades to Robert E. Lee.  Semi-tragic figures - honorable dignified individuals and competent practitioners of their craft, driven by duty to make the best of bad circumstances.  But this is mitigation, not praise.  Like Lee, they too have allowed their nation to be tied to losing strategies developed by obtuse elitist dilettantes with little protest.

         

Our Strategy and Policy community has lost a lot of ground

When we look at the military giants of the last century, G.C. Marshall, Eisenhower, King, Bradley etc. we see men of immense talent and leadership ability. However, if you’re going to compare them to the leaders of today you must first consider the overall milieu of strategy/policy decision making they operated in back then.  A good deal of the reason they were successful is that they had educated, responsible and thoughtful civilian leadership with whom they could interact.  To put it succinctly, General Marshall could be the Marshall he was because he had a Roosevelt, a Hull and a Stimson to work with. 

This isn’t the case today. Today’s media, civilian administrative and political class, comes increasingly from an increasing insular elite that has little training in strategic affairs, is not inclined to learn and is becoming alarmingly divorced from reality in its outlook.  The elites of Washington today resemble nothing so much as the Southern planter aristocracy in the lead up to the civil war.  Those guys lived in a self-affirming bubble too; were focused on their own narrow interests and had a short strategic horizon.  The impact of our 21st century political elite (planter) class on America’s national defense and security policy has been almost as ruinous.

Of Generals and Reindeer

  It’s interesting to look at the criteria our WA DC political elite uses to choose our military senior leaders.  In many ways their thought processes are like those of the Saami people of Lapland in choosing reindeer.  They breed their reindeer for docility and strength.  Any reindeer that looks too independent gets culled out. The Saami look for obedient, powerful sled pullers.  Over time, our senior generals have become like reindeer, selected by the political elites for their professional competence but also for their ideological conformity and accommodating nature.  George C. Marshall would unsettle today’s political elites and never be chosen for CJCS.  A Robert E. Lee would probably be acceptable to them (although they’d snigger amongst themselves behind his back at his obsession with morally upright personal behavior).  But mainly they’re looking for people who will do what they are told and who don’t ask many questions.

Or to use a phrase from Josiah Bunting’s insightful novel of the Army in the Vietnam War, The Lionheads, they are looking for “Cocker Spaniels that wouldn’t soil the rug”.

In turn, prolonged exposure to the political elite of this nation, their ethics, thought processes and priorities has had a corrosive impact on Senior Military leaders who serve in DC.  Our political class and senior civilian policy makers all have largely the same resume of schools and rotational jobs within the beltway.  Their view of the world comes from the faculty lounge and the bureaucracy.  Their strategic horizons are limited to the 4-year US presidential election cycle.  They’re also increasingly amoral and largely focused on their own interests.  Washington and its politics have always had an unsavory side.  But corrupt actors used to be the exception rather than the rule.  It’s no accident that scandals like Fat Leonard and Army Generals trying to improperly influence promotion boards happen now.  It also explains why we seem to be constantly beset by incoherent strategic / policy direction and scandal in the military’s senior leadership.  Work with the DC Swamp for too long and you start to think like them.

One wonders what the ghost of General Marshall would say.

            The Strategic Orkin Men

 We’ve recently marked the third anniversary of the fall of Kabul and the collapse of the Afghan government.  Lost in the grand guignol of recrimination, finger pointing and self-flagellation over why the campaign failed and whose fault it was, I never saw anyone ask the big question:

Was it a good idea to begin with?

I suspect if someone had gone to General Marshall and briefed him that the only way to keep the US safe from terrorist attack was to conduct a counter terrorism campaign on the other side of the world in perpetuity – necessitating the presence of a CT platform in one of the most remote nations on earth with tenuous lines of communication - he’d probably have taken the briefing stone faced.   Afterwards he’d have made a note to himself that the originators of the briefing weren’t a good fit for the Strategic Plans division and would have them moved to another job.

September 11, 2001, was a dreadful day in American history and it damaged our psyche.  Perhaps the worst outcome of it though was our resultant fixation with counterterrorism operations.  The Global War on Terror (GWOT) occasioned a complete loss of strategic perspective on the part of Senior Leadership.  September 11th was an outlier, and the USG did a pretty good job in closing the gaps in our intelligence and law enforcement cooperation that made the attack possible.  The chances of another 9-11 happening quickly became remote.

At the national strategic level (where four stars reside), terrorists are like roaches, they’re a quality-of-life issue, not a strategic threat that imperils the larger well-being of the household (nation).  Day-to-day you take reasonable precautions against roaches and periodically you have the exterminator come in and spray.  Anything more is wasting assets on an issue that – in the big scheme of things – is not of strategic importance.  Seeing the occasional roach on the floor is no reason to incur the cost and disruption of tent fumigating the house.

The single most inexcusable failure of strategic leadership in the first two decades of this century is that the senior military leaders of this nation passively allowed the post 9-11 political objective of “No-new-terrorist-attacks-on –the-US-homeland” to become a national strategic objective.

 Think about that for a second.

Each of the two main political parties in the US is eager to blame the other for any new terrorist attack in the US.  It’s the ultimate political “Gotcha!”  As a result, regardless of who is in office the military is given the do-not-drop-glass-ball strategic objective of no new terrorist attacks on the US homeland.  This has been going on since 2001.  A whole generation of officers grew-up and made flag rank under this cannot-fail requirement.

No one challenged it.

Not a single four star said.  You know, keeping tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan for a generation, spending trillions of dollars there and losing hundreds of people killed and wounded every year - all to keep a car bomb from going off occasionally somewhere in the USA is strategically unconscionable.  Doing this cost us assets and opportunity.  Our resources are finite and best used elsewhere or husbanded for likely future contingencies.

None of them pointed out the obvious to their political leaders; that terrorism is a tactic and cannot be defeated in the conventional sense.  That is: A war on terror cannot be won, it’s a mitigation exercise.  No one general in almost 20 years has gone to the president and told him that at a strategic level terrorism is not an existential threat to the United States and treating it like one wastes resources, tires the nation psychologically and prevents us from addressing other threats in a timely manner.

Our four stars – the best people our military produces, the guys responsible for sound military strategic advice to presidents and their administrations - allowed our planter elite political class to make counter terrorism a strategic imperative and prioritize it over the real strategic threats metastasizing before our very eyes.  The GWOT became a 21st century version of the Petersburg lines, that the US was pinned to by the unsound priorities of its political (planter) class.  A Marshall would have stood against this strategic malpractice.  But his successors in the 21st century were not up to the task.

You want to see an effective national strategy being executed?  I’m afraid you’ll have to go look at the Chinese.  Since 9-11 the US has outsourced strategy to the Orkin man.

Stockholm Syndrome

In 2017 we had a change of national leadership.  Our generals were ill-prepared for Trump.  For sixteen years they had successfully managed conflicts for the Bush and Obama administrations.  They had gotten comfortable with this. Victory was a chimera, but defeat didn’t seem possible so…just keep-on-keeping-on was what passed for strategic thought. Now suddenly here was this obnoxious Yankee reality TV host who wasn’t from the genteel administrative/political elite planter class they were used to and who was asking them all sorts of uncomfortable questions.   

Trump questioned the whole strategic worth of the Afghan campaign.  For the first time since 9-11 the generals had a president who was prepared to give them his political top cover to withdrawal from Afghanistan and reshape our counterterrorism strategy into something that was sustainable over the long term.

And in 2017, they talked him out of it.  The generals pushed back.  They could see that we had reached diminishing returns in Afghanistan but could not bring themselves to leave because of the artificial strategic imperative of “no-attacks-on-the –homeland” counter-terrorism that had been imposed upon them after 9-11 by the political class.  It was a true Stockholm syndrome moment.  Trump was telling them they could leave the bank vault (or the Petersburg lines – depending on which analogy you prefer) and they implored him to remain hostages.

This is where our 21st century military leaders differ from Robert E. Lee (and not in a good way).  Lee inwardly despaired at Petersburg.  He knew he was executing a ruinous strategy but couldn’t find a way out.  Conversely, most of our 21st century senior military leaders in DC were fully on board with the GWOT program.  In this, they resemble the perennial “Yes” men of the Wehrmacht, Generals Keitel and Jodl more than the tragic Lee. No strategy or policy was too bizarre or transparently unworkable for those guys either.  It’s one thing to serve political masters who are strategic incompetents and do your best to make it work - trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit as it were.  It’s quite another to convince yourself that chicken shit …tastes good!

Of course, things that can’t last, don’t.  We were eventually forced to leave Afghanistan - just like the Confederates had to abandon Richmond and Petersburg.  For Lee, it was a simple equation of military force.  For our 21st century leaders it was a confluence of factors, but the end was the same.

We emerged from Afghanistan to find that while we spent decades chasing the skewed priorities of our elite planter class, our nations enemies have been running the tables on us.  China has expanded its power and influence massively worldwide while we have been distracted, Iran as well, both in terms of their own combat power and that of their proxies.  (Quick question – who would have had the Houthis interdicting maritime traffic on the Bab al Mandeb for a year in the face of the US Navy on their bingo cards four years ago?)  The Russians made their move on Ukraine and all three are working together along with the North Koreans.  The groundwork for all this was laid by 21st century political leadership with venal, parochial, self-interested 19 century mindsets, their fixation with the GWOT and senior military leader’s acquiescence to it over the past twenty plus years.

The statues of the Confederates may be gone, but in AD 2024 the Confederacy’s strategic heirs dominate Washington DC.  Hooray for life’s little ironies.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/these-days-were-mostly-confederates-antebellum-strategypolicy-ethos-21st-century-america

[Crafty_Dog]

A thoughtful read.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-the-u-s-military-lost-a-250-million-war-game-in-minutes/ar-AA1tc4Jc?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=c3a93180bb4d4850ad45b3ce5a7df052&ei=83