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

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-game-changer-for-air-warfare-darpa-unveils-stealth-longshot-drone-armed-with-air-to-air-missiles/ar-AA1td5YT?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=a3acd2d610f947329fb798331184311a&ei=21

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/landmark-flight-us-tanker-refuels-russian-jets-in-malaysia/ar-AA1u4TAI?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=8d81f65a53f943bd9fef57ef8dbef026&ei=11

[Body-by-Guinness]

This thread about common problems encountered when women are added to the mix is worth mulling:

https://x.com/myth_pilot/status/1857094248090218980?s=61

[ccp]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-s-ngad-white-emperor-6th-generation-fighter-is-a-problem-for-the-air-force/ar-AA1u5FD1?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=605ff7d5453f4ae1944021a1246aa84c&ei=17#fullscreen

Chinese :


https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=chinese+ancient+war+helmet&qpvt=chinese+ancient+war+helmit&form=IQFRML&first=1

Looks more Japanese :

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=samurai+war+helmet&qpvt=samuri+war+helmet&form=IGRE&first=1

[Crafty_Dog]

Saw a part of an interview today with General Keane saying except for submarines, China is #1.  Sounded like he was saying we would lose an all out war with China.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/weak-shipbuilding-could-be-the-us-navy-s-achilles-heel-in-a-war-with-china/ar-AA1ue2wX?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=ff9ccb21b8754f9e8dcdb67bf8187a30&ei=74

[Crafty_Dog]

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/navigating-the-fiscal-storm-a-new-course-for-u-s-national-defense/

[Crafty_Dog]

For no particular reason, it has been a long time since I have checked in with Stratfor (my lifetime subscription was formed and paid when George Friedman was there). 

I am decidedly underwhelmed by this analysis of a most timely subject even though there is some effort to be even handed.

=======================

The Potential Politicization of the U.S. Security Apparatus Under Trump, Part 1
Analysis
Nov 15, 2024 | 21:09 (UTC)
A U.S. flag is pictured on a soldier's uniform at the United States Army military training base in Grafenwoehr, southern Germany, on March 11, 2022.
(Photo by CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images)
A U.S. flag is pictured on a soldier's uniform at the United States Army military training base in Grafenwoehr, southern Germany, on March 11, 2022.
Editor's Note: This two-part series explores the implications of the potential politicization of various parts of the U.S. government under a second Trump administration. Part one focuses on the U.S. military, while part two will focus on the U.S. Intelligence Community.

In anticipation of Donald Trump's return to the White House, analysts, including ours, are wasting no time in assessing his priorities upon assuming office. While much attention has focused on Trump's repeated, high-profile pledges to implement tariffs, curb immigration and make other major policy moves, a comparatively less scrutinized area is Trump's plan for the U.S. military. On Nov. 12, The Wall Street Journal published a major scoop indicating that Trump's transition team is considering a draft executive order that would create a "warrior board" of retired senior military officers. These individuals would be empowered to review the upper echelon of admirals and generals and recommend the removal of those determined to be "lacking in requisite leadership qualities," which is apparently undefined in the draft executive order. It is unclear whether the transition team will formally present this order to Trump, if he would sign it as-is or an amended version, or whether he would even follow the board's recommendations. However, the mere fact that such an order apparently is being discussed — especially given Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail railing against "woke generals" and his controversial nomination of Fox News host and veteran Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense — raises serious questions about the potential politicization of the U.S. armed forces under a second Trump administration.

An Institution Apart
To be sure, as Commander-in-Chief, Trump would have the legal power to fire any officer at his discretion. Most recently, former President Barack Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal, who had been overseeing the U.S.-led multinational military operation in Afghanistan, after McChrystal and his aides criticized Obama and various other top members of the administration in a Rolling Stone article. Perhaps even more famously, former President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, who had been leading the U.N. military operation in Korea, for publicly disagreeing with Truman's regional strategy.

But these examples are few and far between precisely because remaining apolitical has long been a core value of the U.S. military. Of course, all those in uniform are allowed to have their own private political beliefs, but they are meant to stay silent when it comes to public expressions of political party affiliation, partisan policy preferences or other political issues while acting in an official military capacity. This is all the more important for the country's top military officers, given that they are not only the public faces for the services they represent, but are also the ones giving orders to the many men and women below them in the chain of command.

This separation between the military and the White House has helped ensure that the U.S. armed forces have not fallen into the trap seen in many other countries in which those in uniform become loyal to one political party or another. This development can lead to a variety of harmful consequences, ranging from intra-military factional disputes that undermine effectiveness to direct military intervention (at times, violently) to support one politician over another, or even outright civil war in which different military branches back different politicians.

This is not to suggest that any of these extreme scenarios are at all likely in the United States under another Trump administration, but the idea of creating an outside board to evaluate senior military officers separate from the Department of Defense's apolitical review and promotion process does open the door to a politically-motivated process guided by the president's desires. A U.S. president has rarely, if ever, fired a top commander for purely political reasons (McChrystal and MacArthur were relieved due to breaches of the chain of command, and in neither case was partisan political affiliation a matter of debate). And the supposed precedent cited in the draft executive order being considered is hardly one at all. In 1940, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army General George Marshall created a so-called "plucking board" led by retired officers to review senior ones still serving, but this was designed to weed out older officers near retirement who were believed too old to go into combat and promote younger ones deemed much more fit. Following the outbreak of conflict in Europe of what would later become World War II, this if anything was a prudent move — and, crucially, it was a military-led system, not one imposed by political leaders that risks decisions being made subject to their ideological whims.

While the fate of the draft executive order and Trump's broader plans for the military are uncertain, as analysts it is incumbent upon us to consider what could happen if the U.S. armed forces became more politicized along the lines that Trump and his key allies have repeatedly suggested would be on the table.

A MAGAfied Military?
Concerns about the U.S. military's politicization long predate Trump. In fact, he and his allies would argue Democratic administrations are the ones that have pushed politics more into the military with their focus on implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in the armed forces. But while there is ample blame to go around, if implemented, an independent Trump-backed review board authorized to recommend what admirals and generals to fire risks taking politicization to a new level by incentivizing those before the board to align themselves with the policies of the Trump administration. Certainly, there are reasonable arguments to be made to walk back some DEI initiatives in the armed forces — and indeed surveys show that active duty personnel have reported growing concerns about politicization under the Biden administration, with data indicating that Biden's decision to overturn the Trump-era ban on transgender people serving openly has been particularly controversial. However, goals to diversify personnel are hardly the same as creating a promotion and review system that seemingly incentivizes partisan alignment. Trump himself has frequently criticized generals, repeatedly arguing that the military's top officers are far too focused on being "woke" and that he values loyalty to him personally. And if his contentious nomination of Peter Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer and more recently Fox News contributor, for Secretary of Defense is confirmed, Trump would have a strong ideological ally in charge of the Pentagon and would thus be able to shape promotions and policy across the entire armed forces.

To be sure, the Pentagon is a sprawling organization that is never completely divorced from politics, and attempts to disrupt it would face significant institutional resistance. This means that major shifts would necessitate Trump and Hegseth also installing loyalists in myriad other positions at the deputy level and below — where policies actually get carried out. This is certainly a constraint on any wholesale transformation, but also one that can be overcome with sufficient will and the installation of similarly ideologically minded leaders throughout the military enterprise.

If Trump and Hegseth sought to leave their ideological imprint on the military, there are numerous steps they could take. To begin with, General Charles Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the most senior officer in the entire armed forces — likely would be canned or significantly sidelined. Brown has faced repeated Republican criticism for his supposed support for "woke" policies, and his removal would enable Trump and Hegseth to select a chairman much more ideologically aligned with them. Brown, who has publicly spoken about his experience as a Black man facing racial injustice in the military and aimed to diversify its ranks, could be critiqued for overstepping, but there are no clear indications his efforts have meaningfully harmed military readiness; additionally military leaders have testified that the armed forces' recruitment shortfalls are much more due to low unemployment, private sector wage growth and other non-DEI factors. More broadly, his faults are a far cry from the threat implied in the draft executive order — namely, the need for some sort of loyalty or political test for senior commanders to remove those "lacking in requisite leadership qualities."

Moving down the chain of command, other senior officers would likely be next in line to either be fired, pressured to retire or resign, or reassigned. Media reports indicate plans along these lines are already under consideration. And while the U.S. Senate has the power to check partisanship by having the power to confirm military promotions (with individual senators able to place holds on nominees to delay doing so), with Republicans in charge of the chamber and the massive mandate Trump has claimed, major pushback would be less likely (even if the process would take longer to overcome Democratic opposition). Trump's plans to fire large numbers of civil servants would probably also extend to the Department of Defense, which employs almost one million civilians, with those in positions that are at all linked to DEI initiatives or otherwise seen as "woke" likely the first to be dismissed. Even if mass dismissals never transpire, the mere discussion of them could have a chilling effect across the civilian and uniformed ranks of the military.

Beyond personnel, politicization could manifest in policy adjustments throughout the armed forces. The Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have significant power to shape policies throughout the armed forces, ranging from education for the children of those in uniform to access to healthcare for those who are enlisted and their families. Congress again has a role to play, especially regarding the appropriation of funding for the annual defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act. But with Republicans in control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, there would be far fewer checks.

Security Implications
There are numerous ways a more politicized military could affect U.S. national security. At the top, a more politicized military would risk undermining the advice given to the president and other key decision-makers who depend on impartial guidance to make decisions. With ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the U.S. military deployed in other global hotspots, politicized advice could at best be ineffectual and at worst deadly.

Moreover, even if politicization would mainly affect the top of the military, its effects could trickle down given that this is an organization in which the importance of following the chain of command is instilled from day one. Even if most junior personnel would likely be insulated, it is easy to imagine how in certain situations politicization could undermine cohesion within units and, when deployed to a conflict zone, lead to frictions and, at worst, even breakdowns in following orders.

Politicization would also introduce the risk of weakening, even if only on the margins, the military's cooperation with allies and partners that coordinate, train and fight with U.S. personnel across the world. While such collaboration is driven by strategic interests that generally override changes in presidential administration, a sense that the military, even if only its top leadership, has become partisan would open the door to a wide list of potential disruptions, ranging from perhaps making U.S. military academies less attractive to officers from foreign countries, to possibly spurring harmful disputes between U.S. and other foreign commanders deployed abroad.

Finally, there is the homefront to consider. More so than any recent president, Trump has repeatedly tested the limits of using military personnel for domestic duties, including to combat civil unrest and, likely in his next term, to oversee mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Putting the military to work in ways that are seen as highly partisan would not only risk undermining force readiness to counter foreign threats, but it would also threaten to further erode public trust that is at its lowest in two decades. And were top commanders to resist the president's orders to carry out domestic duties (after all, officers have an obligation to not follow orders they deem unlawful), there could be a severe breakdown in the chain of command.

A Lifetime to Build, Far Less to Destroy
None of these scenarios will necessarily come to pass under the incoming Trump administration, but the fact that they are at all within the realm of possibility is important enough to consider the serious consequences of a politicized military. One former senior Pentagon official quoted in The Wall Street Journal article wryly asked, "Do they start wearing MAGA hats in formation to signal who's where?" While that is a bridge too far, politicization could have wide-ranging insidious effects in far more discreet ways that would likely outlast a Trump administration. After all, once a taboo is broken, it becomes much more likely to be broken again. Who is to say that a future Democratic administration would not pursue more aggressive politicization from its ideological perspective? Given charges that Democrats' embrace of DEI has already introduced some politicization, this is eminently possible. Even if not, reversing politicization to merely end up at the status quo ante would be difficult.

And looming over all of this is the fact that the military is hardly operating in a vacuum. Across the globe, U.S. forces are deployed to places where they routinely face enemy fire and, when they do not, are routinely preparing for a range of contingencies that could require their much greater role in active combat in the not-so-distant future. In such an environment, introducing politics to the frontline could have lethal consequences. So even if MAGA hats will not appear on the heads of admirals or generals any time soon, as the same unnamed former senior military official cited by The Wall Street Journal said, "The potential for this to go wrong is infinite."

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/chinese-marines-are-becoming-more-like-us-marines-while-the-usmc-returns-to-its-roots/ar-AA1uBPxw?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=725ae2f915e14e91b0dd56d597fe5b3c&ei=157

[Crafty_Dog]

second

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/senator-freezes-promotion-of-general-who-led-during-afghanistan-evacuation/ar-AA1uB3eE?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=725ae2f915e14e91b0dd56d597fe5b3c&ei=176

[Crafty_Dog]

U.S. military may medically discharge trans members: We could practically hear the anguish in the voice of the UK Times when it reported that Donald Trump was weighing an executive order that would undo the morale-depleting scourge of so-called transgenderism from the U.S. military. "The order could come on his first day back in the White House, January 20," reports The Times. "There are believed to be about 15,000 active service personnel who are transgender. They would be medically discharged, which would determine that they were unfit to serve. It would also lead to a ban on trans people joining the military and would come at a time when almost all branches of the American armed forces are failing to meet recruitment targets." While it's true that all branches have struggled to hit their recruiting numbers in recent years, The Times seems to be incapable of connecting the dots for this shortfall. Could it be that young American warrior-types have been turned off by the prospect of serving in a woke military? If so, such a ban is just what the doctor sergeant ordered.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/military-leaders-are-rattled-by-a-list-of-woke-officers-that-a-group-urges-hegseth-to-fire/ar-AA1vpYw1?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=751baf85db074e3cb540778e65395dca&ei=52

[Crafty_Dog]

https://americanmind.org/salvo/women-should-not-die-on-the-battlefield/?utm_campaign=American%20Mind%20Roundup&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-82EFefLqgd9VBaBeeUOABrRbpfCYXAn-k9R3jjKs4_X_UfmgkkqtBtYI9OR7JjFVbvzWFJCiGEGldhVhvgd9XJRL1pAg&_hsmi=337333964&utm_content=337333964&utm_source=hs_email

[Crafty_Dog]

(1) U.S. HOUSE APPROVES NEW NDAA FOR FY25: The U.S. House has approved an $895.2 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2025, representing a 1% increase in defense spending over last year’s budget.
The bill provides a 14.5% pay increase for junior enlisted troops, a 4.5% across-the-board pay raise for all service members, and an additional $954 million for housing and quality-of-life improvements for service members.
The bill prohibits the Pentagon from doing business with companies that sell computer chips and services to Huawei Technologies and requires the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to develop a plan to secure US biotechnology supply chains critical to national security.

Fewer than half House Democrats voted for the NDAA, citing the bill’s ban on transgender medical treatments for minors.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the NDAA may be taken up for a vote in the Senate as early as next week.
Why It Matters: Traditionally, the NDAA receives bipartisan support in Congress and easily passes both chambers, but this year’s bill contains a number of Republican priorities expected to divide support in the House and Senate. Senate Democrats are likely to scrutinize the bill’s ban on transgender medical treatments for minors and its lack of funding for IVF and other fertility treatments, making future changes to the bill certain. Nevertheless, the FY25 NDAA reflects a bipartisan desire to address the military’s recruitment and retention crisis as well as longstanding vulnerabilities in defense supply chains, and these provisions are likely to remain intact as the bill moves to President Biden’s desk for final signature. – M.N.

[Crafty_Dog]

HT BBG


https://www.twz.com/air/china-stuns-with-heavy-stealth-tactical-jets-sudden-appearance

[Crafty_Dog]

( INDIA TO PROLIFERATE MILITARY TECHNOLOGY: Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh announced yesterday that India saw a ten times increase in defense exports over the last ten years. He followed up by saying India intends to double its current exports, $24 billion, over the next five years.
Why It Matters: India frequently develops military technology with the U.S. and Russia and repackages the technology as its own. This poses a significant risk to American technology such as the P-8 antisubmarine warfare aircraft and several signals intelligence collection aircraft as India could mimic the technology and sell it. – J.V.

[Crafty_Dog]

WSJ
Why Would China Undermine Global Shipping?
Its vessels are suspected of involvement in the sabotage of undersea cables.
By Elisabeth Braw
Jan. 3, 2025 5:37 pm ET


A ship allegedly linked to sabotage in the Baltic Sea resumed its voyage on Dec. 21 after spending a month in the waters of Denmark’s exclusive economic zone. In November, North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries’ vessels had followed the bulk carrier on suspicion that it deliberately severed undersea fiber-optic data cables—one linking Germany and Finland and another linking Sweden and Lithuania—by dragging its anchor along the seabed for more than 100 miles. The ship under suspicion bears China’s flag.

China has been less than cooperative with local authorities in Sweden, in whose waters the damage occurred. This is no surprise considering the country’s record of noncompliance with maritime rules in other parts of the world. China seems intent on proving that maritime rules are deficient. That may be so, but the rules are better than maritime disorder.

Officially, the Chinese-flagged Yi Peng 3 is a merchant ship that transports cargo around the world. On Nov. 17-18, when the two Baltic Sea cables in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone were cut, the vessel was in the area. After the incidents, it sailed on toward the Atlantic Ocean. When it stopped in Denmark’s exclusive economic zone, Swedish authorities thought China would help them investigate the severed cables. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which forbids sabotage of undersea infrastructure during peacetime, flag states have such responsibilities. But according to Sweden, instead of cooperating, China barred the Swedish prosecutor from boarding the Yi Peng 3, and the ship sailed away.

This was the second time in recent months that a Chinese merchant ship sailed off after suspected cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea. In October 2023, after two data cables and a pipeline between Finland and Estonia were damaged by an anchor dragged across them, the Hong Kong-flagged, Chinese-registered vessel Newnew Polar Bear was the prime suspect. But when local authorities asked China to cooperate in the investigation, they received no response.

Meantime in the Red Sea, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis are attacking Western-linked ships with powerful weapons, some provided by Iran, and with some targeting data provided by Russia. Even though the Law of the Sea convention grants every merchant ship the right of innocent passage through any waters and the People’s Liberation Army Navy has the world’s largest fleet of active warships, Beijing has done nothing to enforce order in this crucial waterway. Western-linked ships continue to sustain assaults while Chinese ships sail through the Red Sea largely spared from Houthi attacks.

And in the South China Sea, Beijing is increasingly using its impressive maritime power to harass vessels in the waters of neighboring countries—waters that Beijing claims as its own. “First, fishing vessels from the Chinese Maritime Militia swarm a location, and then they’re joined by ships from the Chinese coast guard,” Ewan Lawson, a Manila-based fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank, said in a phone interview. “And because the Chinese are using the coast guard, any response by the other country’s navy would be seen as an escalation.” Shortly before relinquishing command of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Adm. John Aquilino told reporters last spring: “Philippine coast-guardsmen and service members have been injured. That’s a step up the ladder beyond a pressure campaign.”

Undermining the global maritime order seems an odd strategy for a country that owes its rapid economic rise to the oceans. Until a decade or so ago, Beijing mostly collaborated in the maritime order. When piracy skyrocketed off the Horn of Africa in the early 2000s, Chinese vessels joined Western and Russian ships to deter it. Retired Vice Adm. Duncan Potts of the Royal Navy, who commanded the antipiracy Operation Atalanta in the Indian Ocean in the early 2010s, said in a phone interview that “at that time China participated in an information exchange program with Western navies. We even explored whether Chinese tankers could refuel tankers in the Indian Ocean. But today it’s a very different situation.”

Chinese leaders now publicly dismiss maritime rules as outdated. The Law of the Sea convention “should keep pace with the times to better adapt to international maritime practices,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi argued at the convention’s 40th anniversary event in 2022. Like other agreements and treaties conceived during the Cold War, the maritime pacts contain a large Western footprint. For this reason, Beijing seems eager to refashion them. China is sacrificing ocean safety in its quest for a post-Pax Americana world.

Its recurrent game isn’t as dramatic as a direct naval assault. But it’s even more dangerous. Around 80% of global trade travels by sea and requires protection. Similarly, the vast amounts of data, energy and money that travel via undersea cables and pipelines depend on orderly oceans. By undermining maritime pillars, Beijing is causing disorder that will harm every country that depends on oceans for its prosperity—including China.

Countries from Cambodia to the United Arab Emirates dislike details in existing treaties (and the U.S. hasn’t ratified the Law of the Sea convention, although it adheres to it), but the deterioration of those treaties benefits no one. Beijing’s friends and foes should call out its behavior before the maritime order deteriorates beyond repair.

Ms. Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an adviser to Disruptive Industries.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/06/meet-the-chinese-typhoon-hackers-preparing-for-war/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/chinas-new-assault-rifle-the-qbz-191-44817586

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEnC6eOT72v/?igsh=MWx5ZDVwNDdjcHY3aA%3D%3D&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR1pOOBW_HCZH1YCKIcACAEDQHGY8n9-leS6306NpU3lZZnV9gm-Bflrac4_aem_tonBFt3ipUSOC3XmRmwdRg

[ccp]

The technology can also create limitless flashbang deterrents and generate painful non-lethal deterrents, such as heat through microscopic pinpricks, to disorient and deter targets. These advancements are expected to be fielded to troops in the coming years, enhancing non-lethal options for crowd control and perimeter security.

like phasers on "stun"

another Star Trek innovation that foresaw the future.
and William Shatner lives long enough  to witness. 

[Body-by-Guinness]

Given DOGE and all, a new cabinet level department is likely a hard sell, albeit perhaps one whose time has come:

Is it Time to Finally Put Someone in Charge of Waging America’s Irregular Wars?

Small Wars Journal by Arizona State Univ... / by Charles T. Cleveland / Jan 12, 2025 at 8:47 PM

Is it Time to Finally Put Someone in Charge of Waging America’s Irregular Wars?

By Charles T. Cleveland and Daniel Egel

The United States is now learning that terrorism – which defined America’s national security posture during the first two decades of the 21st century – was just the leading edge of a broader national security risk facing the nation.

Consolidating America’s approach to irregular warfare in a single high-level agency could help the U.S. address this larger and growing risk, and ultimately win.

The New National Security Challenge

By maintaining deterrence in nuclear and traditional war, the United States has forced adversaries to turn to a version of Kennan’s political warfare and its offensive component –irregular warfare – to achieve their objectives.

Through lawfare, economic means, foreign malign influence, material support to “fifth columns,” and sabotage, these adversaries are demonstrating the willingness, capacity, and capability to combat the United States and stay below the threshold of traditional war.  Chinese merchant vessels dragging anchors in the Baltic Sea, Iranian drones in Ukraine, North Korean troops fighting in Europe, and expanding Chinese-Iranian-North Korean-Russian cooperation in the ongoing information war are indications beyond early warning that a global irregular war against America and her allies and friends is well underway.

U.S. Response: Decentralized and Inefficient

While these adversaries have professionalized their ability to leverage this phenomenon in pursuit of strategic objectives, the United States has not. This reflects, in significant part, a simple fact: America’s irregular warfare capabilities are distributed across an increasingly large array of U.S. civilian and military agencies and there is no single organization responsible for deploying this capability on behalf of the nation.

The consequence of this lack of centralized leadership for irregular warfare is that the current U.S. approach is as inefficient as it has been ineffective.

A Proposed Solution: A Cabinet-Level Secretary

One approach for addressing this gap would be for the United States to establish a Cabinet-level secretary equivalent to the World War II-era British Ministry of Economic Warfare.

Lessons from the British Ministry of Economic Warfare

The Ministry of Economic Warfare provided two capabilities during World War II that are of paramount importance in the current competition. The first was to provide the British a coordinated capability to attack “the industrial, financial, and economic structure of the enemy…to cripple and enfeeble his armed forces that they can no longer effectively carry on war.” The potential of such a capability vis-à-vis the current competition with China – perhaps in an updated version of the U.S. Office of Economic War – is clear.

However, equally and perhaps more importantly, this World War II-era ministry also became the home of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The SOE provided the British government the capability to counter Nazi control and influence across Europe, including “industrial and military sabotage, labour agitation and strikes, continuous propaganda, terrorist acts against traitors and German leaders, boycotts and riots.” The SOE was the forbearer to the U.S. Office of Strategy Services which – at the end of the war – would lay the foundation for both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. Army Special Forces.

The establishment of the SOE in 1940 under the British Ministry of Economic Warfare reflected two realities of the time. The first was the need for a standing organ of the state, that combined the spy, diplomat and soldier and was purpose-designed to professionally intervene in statecraft for the purpose of manipulating and harnessing indigenous capacities in pursuit of strategic objectives. The second was that this mission was “not something which [could] be handled by the ordinary departmental machinery of either the British Civil Service or the British military machine.”

The Case for a New Cabinet Secretary for Irregular Warfare

What was true in 1940 for the United Kingdom is equally true for the United States in 2025: There is both a need for the capability in which the SOE was imbued and there is not a U.S. Executive Branch agency that is capable of effectively wielding such broad and multidisciplined capability on behalf of the United States.

The President – ideally with congressional support – should take a proven civilian leader and put him or her in charge of creating this new agency. This leader would need to have both professional credibility within the national security community, but also a relationship with the President.

That leader should be paired with the right senior military deputy – one steeped in unconventional warfare.  Together they should be empowered to take necessary assets from today’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM), CIA, federal law enforcement agencies, and other civilian cabinet secretaries. Military assets would include the CIA’s paramilitary and influence capabilities and SOCOM’s indigenous focused special warfare capabilities, found mostly in its Army Special Forces and psychological operations units. Civilian assets would include the FBI’s intelligence and overseas networks, Drug Enforcement Administration’s assistance arm that works with foreign paramilitary police, the Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations and Global Engagement Center, elements of the Department of Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and elements of the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, among others.

Benefits: Increased Efficiency and Efficacy

Such an approach would be both more effective and also more efficient. It would allow for purpose-designed and synchronized irregular warfare campaigns while consolidating and eliminating the multitude of redundant capabilities that are artifacts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the war on terror, on drugs, on crime, and numerous counterinsurgency support campaigns, such as Colombia and the Philippines. And it would let the Department of Defense and CIA focus on their core purposes of nuclear war, traditional war, and intelligence.

Conclusion: Time to Professionalize America’s Approach to Irregular Warfare

The American approach to irregular warfare must turn to that which made it dominant in conventional and nuclear war. Namely, attack the challenge head on with energy, ingenuity, and purpose. If America is to win this war, the one chosen by our enemies on the field of battle we drove them to, it can no longer rely on the scattered actions of orphaned offices and units in departments built primarily for other purposes. So yes, it is time for the United States to professionalize its approach to irregular warfare. America needs a 21st Century version of Britain’s “Ministry of Economic Warfare.”

The post Is it Time to Finally Put Someone in Charge of Waging America’s Irregular Wars? appeared first on Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/01/13/is-it-time-to-finally-put-someone-in-charge-of-waging-americas-irregular-wars/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/watch-okeefe-media-group-exposes-former-fbi-special/

[Crafty_Dog]

(11) U.S. NAVY SWO BOSS SHARES INCREDIBLE LETHAL STATS: The Naval Surface Warfare head (SWO Boss) Vice Admiral Brendan McLane disclosed at the Surface Navy Association conference yesterday that the Navy was averaging two “rounds” expended per inbound missile. The expended munitions include several hundred missiles and naval artillery rounds.
Why It Matters: Without getting too deep into the doctrine, an average of two rounds per missile is an unbelievable kill rate. This effectively shows that the Navy is killing threats on the first engagement every single time. The SWO Boss also shared that low-level drone threats are generally handled without using missiles at all, proving the Navy’s integrated air defense concept in combat. Most of our allies have adopted our concepts and technology. This radically improves the outlook on a potential Pacific war. – J.V.

[Body-by-Guinness]

This looming capability is worth tracking. I was among many federal employees and affiliates (I was in the latter category) that had their information stolen via a Chinese hack; combine the info gleaned w/ AI and all sorts of fun can ensue:

The Challenge of AI-Enhanced Cognitive Warfare: A Call to Arms for a Cognitive Defense

Small Wars Journal by Arizona State Univ... / by Douglas Wilbur / Jan 22, 2025 at 1:06 AM

Specialist Jones was in the motor pool when he received the Facebook post that led to his demise. A Facebook friend he had never met with sent him a video. His wife Carla was engaged in sexual intercourse with Sergeant Martinez. Jones, who is prone to impulsive behavior, became enraged and irrational. He went home, grabbed a hammer, and beat Carla to death. Then he committed suicide. For the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) system, it was a spectacular success. A well-trained and experienced soldier was neutralized in an hour at a negligible cost. The AI system analyzed the social media history of Jones and his wife, and within 20 seconds, determined that Jones was liable to violence if presented with a deepfake video denoting marital infidelity. The AI gathered social media pictures of Carla and Martinez and made a reasonably accurate assessment of what they might look like naked. This speculative and graphic example demonstrates how emerging AI-enabled cognitive threat systems and methodologies can be employed to exploit systemic personnel vulnerabilities and undermine the health and functionality of America’s warfighters. To date, this cognitive threat receives little, if any, consideration within the DoD.

The advent of AI-driven information warfare weapons is leading a new revolution in military affairs, and the future could be grim unless defensive measures are undertaken. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is aggressively pursuing what they call cognitive warfare. The goal is to manipulate a target’s mental functioning in a wide variety of manners to obtain some desirable goal. The Chinese Communist Party Party’s (CCP) philosophy of conflict is evolving to consider the human brain as an operational domain. They envision an integrated system of systems where humans will integrate into and be cognitively enhanced by information technology (IT) systems as some type of transhuman evolutional development. In this theory of victory, war no longer entails the destruction of enemy troop formations on the battlefield. A new form of victory where one’s systems overwhelm, disrupt, paralyze, or destroy the ability of enemy systems to operate at all, let alone engage in a traditional military offensive. This fictional story presents hypothetical scenarios presented here are meant to elucidate the threat that powerful emerging technologies can exploit human biological weakness.

Traditionally, the chain of command has ultimate responsibility for the discipline and welfare of military personnel. However, cognitive warfare requires a different kind of response as military command systems are not currently situated to deal with these new emerging threats. Manipulation of cognitions and emotions is not completely a discipline issue. Nations will have to leverage and bolster their behavioral health systems as never before. First, they need to aggressively invest in scientifically developing new methods for how to identify, prevent, and neutralize the effects of this emergent threat. Second, they will need to train and integrate behavioral health personnel into the chain of command to advise and assist in the implementation of these new methods. This is a very challenging task that will take much time and effort to fulfill. This effort needs to begin post-haste, and it starts with a serious conversation.

Framing the Problem

The structure of the human brain leaves us vulnerable to cognitive biases and heuristical shortcuts that are the default method of thinking. People are being cognitively manipulated into squandering their life savings for a fake romantic enterprise or simple exploitation of their greed with a get-rich-quick scam. Criminals have already discovered how to exploit these vulnerabilities, so national security apparatuses of great power nations could already be far ahead of them. The cyber domain presents a historically unparalleled ability to communicate with and influence the masses of any nation connected with the web. Democracies are especially vulnerable because cyberspace is largely an ungoverned Wild West. Adversarial authoritarian nations like China have a key advantage in the cyber domain. While the ‘great firewall’ can be breached, China is a much harder target. They have prioritized cyber-self-defense.

The main problem at hand is that Western democracies are not prepared to defend themselves during the current great power struggle with the authoritarian nations led by China. Russia has been employing online propaganda in NATO countries to agitate extremists on both sides of the political spectrum to generate political violence and disruption of civil society. Specifically, Russia has been attempting to degrade the integrity of the 2024 election with trolls and bots to influence public sentiment since the previous election. e more resources law enforcement must dedicate towards extremists are resources that cannot be dedicated to important defensive tasks like counterintelligence. The present situation is very precarious, but we must imagine the future. As AI matures, it will magnify adversarial threat capabilities that can maximize the creation of social chaos. Trust is essential for a democracy to function, and AI-enhanced cognitive warfare can erode trust.

Artificial Intelligence: The Great Magnifier

 Intelligence assessments of the PLA indicate that they have direct energy sonic or microwave weapons based on evidence from their conflict with India in the Himalayas. These kinetic but ostensibly non-lethal weapons attack neural functioning with inaudible sound waves. They are the paragon of cognitive warfare since they directly attack the neural functioning of adversarial personnel. Think tank analysis of these weapons conclude that they would cause significant permanent physiological damage to victims. However, their employment would be high risk since the same weapons can be easily used on their soldiers as well. Asymmetric non-kinetic systems driven by artificial intelligence can assume a much greater range of potentially covert weapons available to strike an enemy from the front line to the homeland. The most obvious is traditional propaganda.


The Microsoft corporation identified that a Chinese artificial intelligence software program with a feature to create art was engineered to autonomously create anti-American propaganda online (Figures 1 & 2) to exacerbate political polarization. It is pushing this propaganda throughout the social media ecosystem far faster and more effectively than humans could. Two abilities make AI-created propaganda so dangerous. First, AI can experiment in real time by observing human behavior and quickly determine which strategies and tactics are more effective. It can use this information to improve much faster than a human. Second is that it will eventually be able to rapidly customize a propaganda message to a person’s unique psychological vulnerabilities. Russia has already used AI to create personalized disinformation messages about 2024. While these messages are currently artistically crude, in Figure 1 the headline is not bolded so it does not look like a news article. Adversary AI will evolve and become more effective. Artificial intelligence can analyze our digital lives and financial transactions and create a psychological profile or targeting package for almost everyone.

Artificial intelligence analysis of spending patterns collected from purchasable financial data can lead to a relatively accurate assessment of a person’s Big Five personality traits. This information can feed a more precise advertising campaign. Theoretically, if the AI determines that a target has a neurotic personality trait, it could create a propaganda message that triggers severe stress that they are more vulnerable to. Artificial intelligence is still far from being able to diagnose disorders, but it’s rapidly moving in that direction. If a soldier is detected as being depressed, the AI could potentially attempt to provoke a suicide.

Targeting families and friends also presents a ripe cognitive warfare target. For instance, they could use a practice from the Ukraine War whereby they collect facial photographs of deceased soldiers. Comparing the corpse’s face to social media posts can lead to identification, which enables the enemy to send photos of the deceased soldier to their family. Of course, they can always just use a deep fake. The impact of this activity would have a devastating effect on the family, which, of course, erodes morale and creates fear. The rear detachment command and garrison behavioral health team will be overwhelmed. If soldiers on the front line learn about this turmoil, it would have a negative psychological impact. The prudent course of action is to assume this will happen and be prepared to create a defensive strategy. This would include technical solutions to prevent the delivery of propaganda, the development of a mental inoculant, such as inducing psychological reactance against it, and a behavioral health response team that can deal with enemy victories.

Espionage and Subversion

 Communist psychological and political warfare has traditionally relied on subversion more intensely than other political systems. The reason is that their philosophy of assuming power attempts to avoid direct intense combat by undermining existing power structures and converting citizens to adopt their ideology. At the right time, the people will rise up and overthrow the existing system, ideally without a deadly war. The CCP still embraces a subversion strategy. For instance, secret police stations have been discovered operating covertly within western countries that serve to spy on and silence the Chinese diaspora as certain western citizens. Artificial intelligence cognitive warfare can greatly expand the scope and scale of this threat. One of the three pillars of a functional democracy is representation. For elected officials to be responsive to their constituents, they must be able to correctly know what they think. Artificial intelligence-driven public opinion warfare can manipulate social media to create confusion and spread misinformation to subvert elected officials’ views of constituent’s opinions. If the civilian populations of democracies are seduced into believing that Ukraine and Taiwan are not worth defending, we render ourselves more vulnerable to invasive tyranny.

Imagine a pervasive honey pot trap increasing insider espionage and subversion threats. Except this time, counter-intelligence investigations are hampered by the physical absence of human intelligence agents, which are usually required to recruit and manage traitors. The Indian Army is already developing AI to protect its soldiers from enemy AI honey traps.

This novel type of attack could manifest as AI girlfriends or boyfriends specifically targeting people vulnerable to these pseudo-relationships. Chinese IT companies are alleged to be earning up to a billion dollars in profits by successfully marketing romantic AI partner to their citizens. Bonding with AI mates is possible through a phenomenon called para-social relationships. They are traditionally described as one-sided, unreciprocated relationships that individuals typically develop with media personalities that are not based on actual interactions or mutual communication between the individual and the media personality. However, recent research has discovered that the same process happens with AI chatbots.

The crux of the scam is that the AI mate initiates a loving relationship with you, and as you bond over time, the AI starts demanding money to maintain this relationship. A study by tech company Mozilla discovered that AI mates harvest enormous amounts of highly sensitive personal data from their customers who are emotionally vulnerable. This information can include passwords, deep personal fears, and confidential workplace information. Furthermore, many of these companies sell the information they collect.

Lonely government workers can be manipulated by their AI mates into sharing national secrets. This can be achieved through overt manipulation, but referencing the Mozilla study, it can be done by seducing the target through intimate conversation. They could be manipulated to sabotage national security systems or government operations. Ordinary people could theoretically be radicalized into joining extremist groups that commit hate crimes to overwhelm the police. The incidental effect is also that the targets can be emotionally traumatized by the AI mate. In 2021, a depressed Belgian man was persuaded to commit suicide by his AI girlfriend after six weeks of conversation, and this is not an isolated case. This is a force health protection issue for both uniformed and government civilian workforces. Psychologically neutralizing vulnerable members of the team is cognitive warfare par excellence. We only discussed a few potential risks presented by AI-powered Chinese cognitive warfare, but these provide a clarion call that national security systems need to start developing preventative and defensive strategies.

A Call to Action

 Currently, only a few voices are engaging the public about the current and potential future threats posed by malignant actors empowered by AI. Much of the discussion revolves around defending systems, with little discussion on defending people. The first step needs to be amplifying the intensity and scope of this conversation. Threats will not be countered if there is no consensus that they are threats. Hopefully, this venue will develop its strains of debate about these threats.

Discussion of countering these threats focuses on technological solutions, including developing AI to counter adversarial AI While technological solutions are necessary and will be effective, they are not sufficient. The Chinese, Russians, and others will develop methods of defeating or circumventing our defensive technologies. They will succeed at some cognitive warfare attacks upon us despite our best efforts. Furthermore, our defensive umbrella will need to cover less advanced allies like the Philippines, which lacks the infrastructure to defend itself. Keeping allied societies stable is necessary to keep them in the fight. Thus, this problem requires an international all-hands-on-deck approach encompassing all free societies.

Our defensive strategy must be expanded to include behavioral and communication efforts to defeat the threat at the psychological level. Potential targets must be effectively educated to recognize attacks. They must be given psychological tactics to protect themselves. Social science needs to be drafted into this conflict. Some current counter-persuasion strategies, like inoculation theory, offer a solid starting point, but none of them are foolproof. They require more expansion and development to offer more comprehensive solutions. More research is needed to develop the scope and scale of defensive tools available.

Militaries that have behavioral scientists need to be leveraged to develop and implement cognitive defenses. Behavioral health specialists need to be trained and organized to cope with this threat. However, the civilian population is a prime target as well, and one that few democracies have the infrastructure to adequately defend. At the national level, behavioral and medical scientists need to be pulled into this effort and integrated at the center of this problem set. If the general population is unable to resist psychological attacks, defense against tyranny will fail. Threat technologies will succeed or fail based on their ability to influence the human brain. Thus, cognitive defenses are arguably more essential than technological solutions. Let the discussion begin!

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/01/22/the-challenge-of-ai-enhanced-cognitive-warfare-a-call-to-arms-for-a-cognitive-defense/

[Crafty_Dog]

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