Quotes of the Day:

"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth." 

– John F. Kennedy

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." 

– Ernest Hemingway

"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see." 

– John Burroughs

1. Special Operations Forces: Documented Policies and Workforce Planning Needed to Strengthen Civilian Oversight

2. Calling on Congress to Pass the Jax Act (Recognition for Women in SOF)

3. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 4, 2024

4. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 4, 2024

5. When Will Ospreys Fly Again? That's Still a Question Mark After Defense Secretary Briefing.

6. I'd Never Fly the Osprey Again. My Heart Was Broken, Yet Somehow Full at the Same Time.

7. AMERICA’S LAST MORSE-CODE STATION

8. 'Ghost Town'? Historic Fort Leavenworth Homes Recommended for Demolition Soar to 185

9. A Distracted America Still Leads the World

10. U.N. Team Finds Grounds to Support Reports of Sexual Violence in Hamas Attack

11. Philippine and Chinese vessels collide in disputed South China Sea and 4 Filipino crew are injured

12. China drops 'peaceful reunification' reference to Taiwan

13. The UN won’t reform until its employees lose diplomatic immunity

14. China says economy will grow ‘around’ 5 percent this year

15.  Look deeper: Time may be on Ukraine’s side

16. Iran’s elite Quds Force is following former leader's vision of chaos in the Middle East

17. Drones are Transforming the Battlefield in Ukraine But in an Evolutionary Fashion

18. A Russian Dissident’s Remarkable Courtroom Speech

19. The Army and the Fortress Fleet: Reimagining Landpower in Maritime Warfare

20. How to Pave the Way for Diplomacy to End the War in Ukraine

21. A Self-Absorbed America Means Disorder for the World

22. Ukraine military official: half of all North Korean shells are duds

23. North Korea Helped Turn Iran Into a Missile Powerhouse

1. Special Operations Forces: Documented Policies and Workforce Planning Needed to Strengthen Civilian Oversight

The comprehensive 54 page report can be downloaded at this link: https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24106372.pdf

The one page highlight report is at this link: https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24106372high.pdf

The recommendations in this report still do not realize the intent of Nunn -Cohen Amendment of the Goldwater Nichols Defense Reorganization Act.

My thoughts on establishing a Secretary of Special Operations and a Chief of Special Operations from four years ago are at this link: https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2020/08/01/its-time-for-a-third-special-operations-revolution/

Excerpts:

Recommendations

GAO recommends that the (1) ASD-SO/LIC develop a staffing plan that incorporates workforce planning principles, (2) ASD-SO/LIC implement a systematic approach for identifying areas that require documented policies, and (3) ASD-SO/LIC and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy document an agreement that clarifies their respective administrative roles. DOD concurred with these recommendations.

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict implements a systematic approach for identifying and addressing areas that require documented policies. (Recommendation 1)

Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict develops a staffing plan for the Secretariat for Special Operations that incorporates strategic workforce planning principles, including aligning with the Secretariat's mission and goals, identifying critical skill gaps, and developing strategies to address any gaps. (Recommendation 2)

Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy finalize their ongoing efforts by documenting an agreement that clarifies their respective administrative roles, including those related to the Secretariat's hiring, office space, and IT needs. (Recommendation 3)

Special Operations Forces: Documented Policies and Workforce Planning Needed to Strengthen Civilian Oversight

gao.gov

Fast Facts

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict provides civilian oversight of U.S. special operations forces.

However, we found that the office doesn't have enough staff to effectively oversee these forces. It had 56 staff members as of September 2023. The office had finalized a staffing plan to reach 69 employees by early 2024, but it has said that it needs 80 to 94 full-time staff. Also, this plan doesn't include important information, such as the skills it needs in its workforce or strategies to get those skills.

We , among other things, that this office improve its staffing plan.

Highlights

What GAO Found

Since 2019, the Department of Defense (DOD) has increased the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict's (ASD-SO/LIC) oversight responsibilities for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). DOD has also increased resources for the Secretariat for Special Operations, which assists the ASD-SO/LIC in conducting oversight. However, as of September 2023, the Secretariat's staffing levels remained below the 80–94 full-time equivalent levels the Secretariat identified as required to oversee SOCOM.

Comparison of Secretariat Staffing Levels with Required Levels, as of September 2023

Note: Per the 2022 staffing assessment, the expanded requirement includes a 20-percent adjustment for unanticipated workload and staff availability (e.g., leave and training) for some functions.

In November 2023, the Secretariat finalized a staffing plan required by statute, including milestones to reach 69 full-time equivalents by early 2024. However, the finalized plan does not fully incorporate some key principles for strategic workforce planning, such as aligning with long-term goals, identifying critical skill gaps, and developing strategies to address them. Developing a staffing plan that incorporates these principles would help ensure that the Secretariat hires the personnel required to meet its future needs for overseeing SOCOM.

Section 922 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 strengthened the ASD-SO/LIC's service secretary-like role for overseeing SOCOM's activities. The Secretariat developed 57 benchmarks for implementing section 922 and reported completing 49 of them as of January 2023. However, according to officials, the respective work process policies for the Secretariat and SOCOM are not always documented for two reasons. First DOD's Office of the Director of Administration and Management has concerns about ASD-SO/LIC's authority to issue guidance. However, the ASD-SO/LIC has broad statutory and regulatory authority under its charter to establish DOD-wide policy. Second, the Secretariat does not have a systematic approach for identifying and documenting its oversight policies. Implementing a systematic approach for documenting policies would help ensure consistent oversight.

The Secretariat has at times had limited input into how its hiring, office space, and IT needs are met because of confusion about ASD-SO/LIC's administrative role, given ASD-SO/LIC's unique position within DOD. Until the ASD-SOLIC and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy clarify that administrative role, the Secretariat will continue to have limited input into its administrative services—affecting its ability to effectively oversee SOCOM.

Why GAO Did This Study

Congress established the ASD-SO/LIC in 1986 to oversee SOCOM's special operations activities. Section 922 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 strengthened the ASD-SO/LIC's service secretary-like role in overseeing SOCOM's activities, such as budgeting and programming.

Senate Report 117-130 includes a provision for GAO to review DOD's implementation of section 922. GAO examined the extent to which the Secretariat for Special Operations has (1) hired the staff needed to oversee SOCOM, (2) reported on its implementation of section 922 reforms and documented its oversight policies, and (3) faced challenges related to obtaining administrative support services.

GAO analyzed fiscal years 2019–2023 Secretariat staffing levels. GAO also compared the Secretariat's staffing plan with strategic workforce planning principles, and ASD-SO/LIC's policies and practices with leading principles for interagency collaboration.

Recommendations

GAO recommends that the (1) ASD-SO/LIC develop a staffing plan that incorporates workforce planning principles, (2) ASD-SO/LIC implement a systematic approach for identifying areas that require documented policies, and (3) ASD-SO/LIC and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy document an agreement that clarifies their respective administrative roles. DOD concurred with these recommendations.

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict implements a systematic approach for identifying and addressing areas that require documented policies. (Recommendation 1)

Open

Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict develops a staffing plan for the Secretariat for Special Operations that incorporates strategic workforce planning principles, including aligning with the Secretariat's mission and goals, identifying critical skill gaps, and developing strategies to address any gaps. (Recommendation 2)

Open

Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy finalize their ongoing efforts by documenting an agreement that clarifies their respective administrative roles, including those related to the Secretariat's hiring, office space, and IT needs. (Recommendation 3)

Open

gao.gov

2. Calling on Congress to Pass the Jax Act (Recognition for Women in SOF)

It is time to properly recognize these great Americans.

Download the letter at this link: 

https://soaa.org/wp-content/uploads/Jax-Act-Speaker-Mike-Johnson-Senate-Letter.pdf

Calling on Congress to Pass the Jax Act - SOAA

soaa.org · by Deanna Bowman · March 4, 2024

We have made monumental strides toward righting decades of wrongs against Cultural Support Team (CST) Veterans. The Jax Act, named after our board member and CST Veteran, Jaclyn “Jax” Scott, addresses the unrecognized combat service of our SOF sisters and will ensure they receive the VA entitlements they earned and need.

We have sent a letter to the Honorable Speaker Mike Johnson, urging him to take action to advance the passage of the Jax Act through Congress. The Jax Act was approved by Committee, but it has yet to come to vote before the entire House. We need Speaker Johnson to stand up for CST Veterans by wielding his leadership to push this important bill across the finish line.

Read Our Letter to Speaker Johnson

soaa.org · by Deanna Bowman · March 4, 2024

3. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 4, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-4-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev promoted Russia’s extensive territorial objectives that expand deep into Ukraine’s territory.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that unknown actors detonated explosives and severely damaged a Russian railway bridge over the Chapaevka River near Chapaevsk, Samara Oblast on March 4.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly awarded a Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) and Spetsnaz-affiliated Russian milblogger, likely as part of the Kremlin’s longstanding efforts to co-opt milbloggers and make them loyal to the Kremlin.
• The Russian government reportedly hid data on recipients of social support services in 2022, likely to obfuscate casualties suffered in the first year of the war in Ukraine or to cover up the government’s inability to pay promised social support to vulnerable populations.
• The Kremlin is continuing efforts to ensure high voter turnout in the upcoming presidential election to present the guise of legitimacy and widespread popular support among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s domestic electorate.
• Russian authorities continue to exploit the leaked recording of German military officers discussing the theoretical provision of Taurus missiles to Ukraine to deter Western military aid provisions to Ukraine.
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Donetsk City amid continued positional engagements along the entire frontline.
• A Russian news aggregator claimed on March 4 that Russian forces replaced Storm-Z convict units with Storm-V units, a mechanism for distributing convicts into the regular Russian military as opposed to keeping them siloed within convict-only units, as was the case with Storm-Z formations.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 4, 2024

Mar 4, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 4, 2024

Christina Harward, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Karolina Hird, and George Barros

March 4, 2024, 6:15pm ET 

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:30pm ET on March 4. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the March 5 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. 

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev promoted Russia’s extensive territorial objectives that expand deep into Ukraine’s territory. Medvedev gave a lecture on March 4 called “Geographical and Strategic Borders” at the Russian World Youth Festival, a Kremlin-organized event that includes attendees from more than 100 foreign countries, during which he claimed that “Ukraine is, of course, Russia.”[1] Russian forces currently occupy the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast, but Medvedev defined all the territories on the left bank of the Dnipro River and many territories on the right bank of the Dnipro River as “integral” to Russia’s “strategic historical borders.”[2] Russian forces currently do not occupy any territory in right-bank Ukraine. Medvedev spoke against the backdrop of a hypothetical English-language map of Eastern Europe that he originally posted on his Telegram channel in July 2022.[3] The map depicts parts of western Ukraine under Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian control — furthering the recently reignited Kremlin narrative that eastern European states have “territorial disputes” in western Ukraine that is aimed at spoiling Ukraine‘s relationships with its western neighbors.[4] The map shows Ukraine existing as a rump state only within the borders of Kyiv Oblast and the rest of modern-day Ukraine as part of Russia — well beyond the areas that Russian forces currently occupy, and the four oblasts Russia has illegally annexed.[5] The fact that Medvedev reused a map from 2022 underscores that the Kremlin’s maximalist territorial objectives have remained unchanged since the beginning months of the war.

Medvedev argued that the influence of sovereign great powers, like Russia, extends beyond their geographic borders, catering to a wider maximalist ideological interpretation of the “Russian World” (Russkiy Mir). Medvedev repeated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s previous statement that “Russia’s borders do not end anywhere.”[6] Medvedev alleged that a state’s strategic borders, which he differentiated from a state’s geographical borders, directly depend on “how strong and sovereign” the state and its authorities are.[7] Medvedev claimed that the more “powerful” a state is, the “further its strategic frontiers extend beyond its state borders” and the larger the state’s sphere of “economic, political, and socio-cultural influence.”[8] Putin made similar remarks recently that suggested that he views weaker states that are unable to unilaterally impose their will upon others, such as Ukraine, as having a truncated sovereignty.[9] Medvedev claimed on February 22 that Russia “probably” must seize and occupy Kyiv City, which he labelled an historically “Russian” city, at some point in the future.[10] Medvedev’s February 22 and March 4 statements suggest that the existence of a Ukrainian rump state in Kyiv Oblast — even after a hypothetical Russian-led negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine — may be temporary and subject to future Russian attacks.[11] Medvedev also did not specify to where Russia’s “strategic” borders would extend should Russia’s “geographic” borders expand as shown in the hypothetical map he presented. The map is notably a conservative depiction of possible Russian territorial claims, given Putin’s recent geographic definition of Russkiy Mir encompassing the former Russian Empire, which includes parts of Poland, Romania, Finland, and Moldova.[12]

Medvedev indicated that Russia is more interested in subjugating Ukraine’s people than taking its territory. Medvedev claimed that Russia’s “enemies constantly insist that Russia’s main goal is to seize Ukrainian lands” but, as the “riches” of Ukraine’s lands, such as wheat, steel, gas, and coal are “almost absent,” the main value that Russia seeks from its occupation of Ukraine is through controlling its people.[13] Medvedev also claimed that the concept of a sovereign Ukrainian state and the concept of a Ukrainian national identity that is not Russian must “disappear forever.”[14] ISW continues to document how Russian authorities are repeatedly engaging in large-scale and deliberate ethnic cleansing campaigns and systematically working to eliminate Ukrainian language, culture, history, and ethnicity in areas of Ukraine that Russia occupies.[15]

The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that unknown actors detonated explosives and severely damaged a Russian railway bridge over the Chapaevka River near Chapaevsk, Samara Oblast on March 4. The GUR reported that Russia uses the railway to transport military cargo, particularly ammunition produced at a joint-stock company in Chapaevsk.[16] Kremlin newswire TASS reported that the explosion delayed five trains and that Russian authorities suspended traffic across the bridge, but later opened one railway track.[17] The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) stated that it opened a criminal investigation into the explosion but did not speculate on the actor responsible for the explosion.[18] Some Russian milbloggers blamed Ukrainian forces for the explosion on the railway bridge.[19]

Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly awarded a Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) and Spetsnaz-affiliated Russian milblogger, likely as part of the Kremlin’s longstanding efforts to co-opt milbloggers and make them loyal to the Kremlin. Russian milblogger channel Rusich Army (also known as Archangel Spetsnaza) claimed on March 4 that Putin awarded the channel’s anonymous head the Russian Order of Merit of the Fatherland Second Class for his efforts in supporting the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[20] Rusich is the second Russian milblogger that has received a federal award for his activities as such (Putin awarded Rybar founder Mikhail Zvinchuk with the same award on November 16, 2023, likely after co-opting him).[21] The Rusich Telegram channel has over one million followers as of March 4 and is well connected among other prominent Russian ultranationalist voices, including the Rybar Telegram channel and Russian state TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov.[22] ISW previously assessed that Rybar’s public award was designed to incentivize other Russian milbloggers to offer their loyalty to the Kremlin in exchange for awards and accolades.[23] Rusich’s award demonstrates to other milbloggers that the Kremlin is actively willing to publicly praise milbloggers who embrace Kremlin messaging — and suppress negative reporting about Russia’s military performance in Ukraine — as the Kremlin continues to encourage self-censorship efforts in the Russian information space.

Kremlin-awarded milbloggers remain a minority in the Russian information space, however, and some milbloggers actively clash with state propagandists despite the Kremlin’s consolidation of the information space. Pro–Wagner Group Russian milbloggers strongly criticized Russian state propagandist and Solovyov-affiliate Boris Yakemenko on March 4 for disparaging deceased Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and for accusing Russian milbloggers of failing to contribute to the Kremlin’s war effort in late February 2024.[24] Other Russian milbloggers, including deceased milblogger Andrei “Murz” Morozov, who lost faith in the Russian command due to its censorship efforts, regularly clashed with Solovyov and other information-space voices whom these milbloggers deemed as liars or otherwise unreliable.[25] The Kremlin will likely continue to tighten control over some milbloggers by coercing some critical milbloggers into self-censorship and awarding those who are loyal to the Kremlin as it seeks to consolidate control over the Russian information space.

The Russian government reportedly hid data on recipients of social support services in 2022, likely to obfuscate casualties suffered in the first year of the war in Ukraine or to cover up the government’s inability to pay promised social support to vulnerable populations. Russian opposition outlet Verstka investigated the Russian Unified State Information System for Social Security (EGISSO) and reported on March 4 that EGISSO has hidden the data on recipients of social benefits in 2022.[26] Verstka noted that that some of the hidden data contain information that could reveal the scale of losses in Ukraine, such as indicators about “widows of military personnel who died during military service” and “citizens who were wounded, concussed, injured, and mutilated while performing military duties.” The EGISSO may have hidden this information to prevent social discontent arising around reports of Russian casualties in Ukraine and decided only to share this information in 2023 and 2024 when the Kremlin line on Russian losses has consolidated somewhat to eliminate social shocks. The Kremlin may have also hidden 2022 social services data to cover its issues in providing promised social support measures to various individuals, particularly those impacted by the first year of the war.

The Kremlin is continuing efforts to ensure high voter turnout in the upcoming presidential election to present the guise of legitimacy and widespread popular support among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s domestic electorate. Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported on March 4 that the Russian presidential administration is concerned about meeting its intended 70 to 80 percent voter turnout mark in March 2024 because there is a widespread sentiment in Russia that the election has already been decided and that Russians have generally accepted that Putin has already won again.[27] Meduza stated that the Kremlin hopes to obtain this voter turnout by mobilizing the domestic electorate affiliated with the Russian government, particularly employees of the public sector, state corporations, and companies loyal to the Russian government, as well as their families. United Russia employees, for example, are required to bring at least 10 people (family members, friends, and acquaintances) to polling stations. Meduza noted that the requirements of these employees decrease proportionately to their proximity to the Kremlin; for example, employees of large corporations only have to bring two people to polling stations. Meduza reported that there is no enforcement mechanism for the requirements but that the Kremlin is trying to encourage voting using electronic voting methods and QR codes to make voting more convenient. ISW has long assessed that the Kremlin’s election preparations are intended to cast the election as completely legitimate and widely popular with strong voter turnout.

Russian authorities continue to exploit the leaked recording of German military officers discussing the theoretical provision of Taurus missiles to Ukraine to deter Western military aid provisions to Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) summoned the German Ambassador to Moscow on March 4 in response to the leaked recording.[28] German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated on March 3 that the leaked recording is part of the “information war” that that Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging against the West in order to undermine Western unity and resolve in supporting Ukraine.[29]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev promoted Russia’s extensive territorial objectives that expand deep into Ukraine’s territory.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that unknown actors detonated explosives and severely damaged a Russian railway bridge over the Chapaevka River near Chapaevsk, Samara Oblast on March 4.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly awarded a Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) and Spetsnaz-affiliated Russian milblogger, likely as part of the Kremlin’s longstanding efforts to co-opt milbloggers and make them loyal to the Kremlin.
• The Russian government reportedly hid data on recipients of social support services in 2022, likely to obfuscate casualties suffered in the first year of the war in Ukraine or to cover up the government’s inability to pay promised social support to vulnerable populations.
• The Kremlin is continuing efforts to ensure high voter turnout in the upcoming presidential election to present the guise of legitimacy and widespread popular support among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s domestic electorate.
• Russian authorities continue to exploit the leaked recording of German military officers discussing the theoretical provision of Taurus missiles to Ukraine to deter Western military aid provisions to Ukraine.
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Donetsk City amid continued positional engagements along the entire frontline.
• A Russian news aggregator claimed on March 4 that Russian forces replaced Storm-Z convict units with Storm-V units, a mechanism for distributing convicts into the regular Russian military as opposed to keeping them siloed within convict-only units, as was the case with Storm-Z formations.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort — Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 — Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 — Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort — Southern Axis
• Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort — Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 — Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Limited positional engagements continued along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on March 4, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Ukrainian and Russian sources reported continued fighting northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; southeast of Kupyansk near Tabaivka; west of Kreminna near Terny; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka and Verkhnokamyanske.[30] One milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced near Yampolivka (west of Kreminna) and Terny, but noted that while Russian forces hold the initiative in this direction, they are unable to translate small tactical gains into serious operational successes.[31] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian Su-34 bombers are conducting FAB-500 glide bomb strikes against Ukrainian positions in the Lyman direction using universal planning and correction modules (UMPC) on FAB bombs.[32] Elements of the Russian 7th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps [LNR AC]), the “GORB” detachment, and the “Sever-V” volunteer brigade (Russian Volunteer Corps) are operating south of Kreminna.[33]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 — Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces recently advanced west of Bakhmut amid continued positional fighting in the area on March 4. Geolocated footage published on March 3 shows that Russian forces advanced into central Ivanivske (west of Bakhmut).[34] Russian milbloggers claimed that fighting is ongoing in western Ivanivske and that Russian forces are attempting to cut Ukrainian logistics lines that run into Ivanivske from the north.[35] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional fighting continued northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka; southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka; and south of Bakhmut near Niu York and Novoselivka.[36] Ukrainian Khortytsia Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces are attempting to transfer unspecified elements of motorized rifle regiments, Airborne Forces (VDV), and Russian Combat Army Reserve (BARS) formations to the Bohdanivka area.[37]

Russian forces advanced west of Avdiivka amid continued fighting in the area on March 4. Geolocated footage published on March 4 shows that Russian forces advanced in a windbreak south of Orlivka (west of Avdiivka) near the Orlivka-Tonenke road (west of Avdiivka).[38] A Russian milblogger claimed on March 3 that Russian forces advanced up to 450 meters deep along a 900-meter-wide front in the direction of Tonenke, and another milblogger claimed that Russian forces have captured most of the settlement but that Ukrainian forces still maintain positions in northwestern Tonenke.[39] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of the claimed Russian advances in Tonenke. Positional fighting continued west of Avdiivka near Berdychi, Orlivka, and Tonenke and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske and Nevelske.[40] Elements of the Russian 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Combined Arms Army [CAA], Central Military District [CMD]) are reportedly fighting near Berdychi.[41]

Russian forces recently advanced southwest of Donetsk City amid continued positional fighting west and southwest of the city on March 4. Geolocated footage published on March 4 shows that elements of the Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) advanced into central Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City).[42] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces only maintain positions in western Novomykhailivka and that fighting continues in the area.[43] Positional fighting continued west of Donetsk City near Krasnohorivka and Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Pobieda.[44] Elements of the 238th Artillery Brigade (8th CAA, Southern Military District [SMD]) continue to operate near Krasnohorivka.[45]

Positional fighting continued in western Donetsk Oblast and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on March 4, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in these areas. Ukrainian and Russian sources reported continued positional engagements in western Donetsk Oblast near Vodyane (northeast of Vuhledar) and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area near Prechystivka (southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and Urozhaine (south of Velyka Novosilka).[46]

Russian Supporting Effort — Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Positional engagements continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on March 4, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Robotyne and Verbove (east of Robotyne).[47] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces are struggling to clear seized Ukrainian trenches due to Ukrainian mines.[48]Elements of the Russian 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade (35th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Eastern Military District [EMD]) and the South Ossetian “Alania” volunteer battalion are reportedly operating in the Zaporizhia direction.[49] Elements of the Russian 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th CAA, Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating near Robotyne.[50]

The Ukrainian General Staff stated on March 4 that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast near Krynky.[51]

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Colonel Nataliya Humenyuk stated on March 4 that Russian forces are using Kh-31P anti-radar missiles more frequently in strike series to search for Ukrainian air defense systems and radar systems and detect vulnerabilities in Ukrainian air defense pathways.[52] Humenyuk stated that Russian forces have somewhat increased their use of Kh-31P missiles after Ukraine‘s downing of a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft on February 23 and Russian forces are suffering from an increased inability to conduct glide bomb strikes in southern Ukraine due to Ukraine’s increased shoot-downs of Russian bombers. Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated on March 4 that Russian forces have not used any A-50 aircraft in Rostov Oblast or over the Sea of Azov for the seventh day in a row out of fear of losing another high-value aerial asset.[53]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

A Russian news aggregator claimed on March 4 that Russian forces replaced the Storm-Z project — a project that generated specialized “Storm-Z” convict units — with the Storm-V project — a new mechanism for distributing convicts into existing units within the regular Russian military.[54] The news aggregator claimed that the Storm-V project eliminates the legal grey areas that Storm-Z convicts had to navigate to receive official pardons for their crimes. The news aggregator also implied that convicts serving in the Russian military through the Storm-V project are expected to serve in the military for longer than six months — the original service duration for a Storm-Z convict — in order to receive a pardon. The news aggregator claimed that the dissolution of Storm-Z convict units, which the Russian military used to conduct “high risk” assault operations, means that regular Russian units staffed with mobilized personnel and contract servicemen (kontraktniki) will now conduct similar assault operations.

Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii reported that Russian Railways Security Service Head Viktor Shendrik funds the “Hispaniola” private military company (PMC).[55] Vazhnye Istorii reported that the “Hispaniola” PMC, composed of “football hooligan” sports fans and extremists, is subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD)-controlled “Redut” PMC. Vazhnye Istorii reported that Russian oligarchs Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, whose businesses contract with Russian Railways, are interested in forming their own PMCs modeled after the “Hispaniola” PMC.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Nothing significant to report.

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Note: ISW will be publishing its coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts on a weekly basis in the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. ISW will continue to track developments in Ukrainian defense industrial efforts daily and will refer to these efforts in assessments within the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and other ISW products when necessary.

Ukraine continues efforts to build out its domestic defense industrial base (DIB) by increasing investments in technology and joint weapons production. Ukrainian Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated on March 3 that the Ukrainian defense innovation platform Brave1 has funded 173 grants totaling over $3 million to Ukrainian technology developers working on robotic platforms and drone developments.[56] Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced on March 4 that the Ukrainian government has allocated 40 billion hryvnia ($1 billion) for the purchase of drones to support Ukraine’s goal of producing one million drones in 2024.[57] Shmyhal noted that Ukraine intends to spend 50 percent of funds on the domestic purchase of weapons, specifically focusing on electronic warfare (EW) systems.[58] Shmyhal additionally stated that Ukraine has concluded five agreements with Western arms manufacturers on the joint production of weapons and intends to pursue “dozens” of such contracts throughout the year.[59]

Argentina reportedly transferred two Mi-171E helicopters to Ukraine. The Financial Times (FT) reported on March 1 that Argentinian president Javier Milei donated “two Russian-built military helicopters” to Ukraine.[60] Argentina first considered transferring the helicopters, specified as Mi-171E helicopters, to Ukraine in mid-December 2023.[61] Milei plans to organize a summit on “Latin America support” for Ukraine in 2024.[62]

Ukraine’s European partners continue efforts to provide Ukraine with military support. Czech Director General for Defense Policy and Strategy told Bloomberg on March 1 that the Czech Republic’s initiative to source weapons for Ukraine from outside the EU could send the first batch of artillery shells acquired through the initiative to Ukraine “within weeks.”[63] French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu stated on February 29 that France has ordered 100 loitering munitions for Ukraine from the Delair drone manufacturer.[64] The French Armed Forces Ministry also reported on March 4 that France has delivered over 2.6 billion euros ($2.8 billion) in military aid to Ukraine and trained over 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers between February 24, 2022 and December 31, 2023.[65] Belgium is also reportedly prepared to use 1.7 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s defensive needs.[66]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Note: ISW will be publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas twice a week in the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. ISW will continue to track activities in Russian-occupied areas daily and will refer to these activities in assessments within the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and other ISW products when necessary.

ISW is not publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas today.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian officials continued to misrepresent NATO Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises as threatening to Russia, despite the exercises’ defensive nature in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine and overt threats to NATO members. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko claimed that Russia is monitoring the Nordic Response 24 exercise (part of the Steadfast Defender 2024 exercise) in northern Finland, Sweden, and Norway, because NATO is conducting the exercises near Russia’s border.[67]

A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger criticized Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for his recent comments about “essentially” freezing Armenia’s participation in the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).[68] The milblogger claimed that Pashinyan is provoking Russia, which could lead to “dire consequences.”

A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger continues to highlight Russia and India’s defense cooperation, likely in response to recent reports that India seeks to distance itself from Russia.[69]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Belarusian companies likely continue to assist Russian businesses in sanctions evasions schemes likely in support of the Russian defense industrial base (DIB). Belarusian Ambassador to Russia Dmitry Krutoy stated on March 4 that the Belarusian enterprises, such as the Belarusian Metallurgical Plant and Minsk Motor Plant, are sending products to large enterprises in Vladimir Oblast allegedly for import substitution projects following Western sanctions on Russia.[70]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

4. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 4, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-march-4-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Iran reportedly requested Sudanese permission to establish a permanent naval base on the Red Sea coast, which would support Iranian out-of-area naval operations and attacks on international shipping.
• Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian fighters defended against Israeli clearing operations in the northern and central Gaza Strip.
• Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued conducting clearing operations around northern Khan Younis.
• Negotiations: Hamas reportedly made the return of civilians to the northern Gaza Strip a priority in ceasefire negotiations with Israel.
• Iraq: Former Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammad al Halbousi discussed unspecified bilateral cooperation with US Ambassador to Iraq Alina Romanowski and other US officials.
• Yemen: The Houthis launched anti-ship missiles that damaged the Liberian-flagged MSC Sky II commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden. The Houthi military spokesperson claimed that the group launched an unspecified number of anti-ship ballistic missiles and drones targeting US warships in the Red Sea.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, have conducted at least seven attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
• West Bank: Israeli media reported that Shin Bet arrested four “ISIS-inspired” Palestinians who planned to attack the IDF near Hebron.

IRAN UPDATE, MARCH 4, 2024

Mar 4, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, March 4, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Amin Soltani, Peter Mills, Andie Parry, Liam Karr, Marcus Mildenberger, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00pm ET

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Iran reportedly requested Sudanese permission to establish a permanent naval base on the Red Sea coast, which would support Iranian out-of-area naval operations and attacks on international shipping. The Wall Street Journal reported the Iranian request on March 3, citing a senior Sudanese intelligence official.[1] Ahmad Hasan Mohamed—an intelligence adviser to the Sudanese military leader—said that Iran offered “a helicopter-carrying warship” in exchange for Sudan allowing Iran to establish the base. Mohamed stated that Iran wanted the base to gather intelligence on maritime traffic around the Suez Canal and Israel and to station warships at the base. The Wall Street Journal report is consistent with Iranian leaders advocating for building a naval base along the east African coast in recent years.[2] Mohamed added that Sudan rejected the Iranian request. Both the Iranian and Sudanese foreign affairs ministries have refuted the Wall Street Journal report.[3] The report follows Sudanese Armed Forces-affiliated Foreign Affairs Minister Ali al Sadiq Ali traveling to Tehran and meeting with senior Iranian officials in early February.[4]

The Iranian request to establish a naval base in Sudan is part of growing military cooperation between the two countries. Western media previously reported in January that Iran had recently supplied the Sudanese Armed Forces with Mohajer-6 multirole drones.[5] The Iranian effort to establish a naval base likely reflects how Tehran views its defense exports as a means of facilitating the expansion of its overall military influence abroad.

Iran may be attempting to compete with other rival Gulf Arab states in Sudan. The United Arab Emirates is the main backer of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) owing to various ties between the RSF head (Hemedti) and the emirates.[6] Abu Dhabi has invested in Sudan as part of its larger strategic effort to expand its influence along the Red Sea with friendly states and client ports.[7] The United Arab Emirates has funded and supplied the RSF with weapons and used neighboring Chad as a logistics hub for these efforts.[8]

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Iran reportedly requested Sudanese permission to establish a permanent naval base on the Red Sea coast, which would support Iranian out-of-area naval operations and attacks on international shipping.
• Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian fighters defended against Israeli clearing operations in the northern and central Gaza Strip.
• Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued conducting clearing operations around northern Khan Younis.
• Negotiations: Hamas reportedly made the return of civilians to the northern Gaza Strip a priority in ceasefire negotiations with Israel.
• Iraq: Former Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammad al Halbousi discussed unspecified bilateral cooperation with US Ambassador to Iraq Alina Romanowski and other US officials.
• Yemen: The Houthis launched anti-ship missiles that damaged the Liberian-flagged MSC Sky II commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden. The Houthi military spokesperson claimed that the group launched an unspecified number of anti-ship ballistic missiles and drones targeting US warships in the Red Sea.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, have conducted at least seven attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
• West Bank: Israeli media reported that Shin Bet arrested four “ISIS-inspired” Palestinians who planned to attack the IDF near Hebron.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian fighters defended against Israeli clearing operations in the northern and central Gaza Strip on March 4. Hamas published footage of its fighters firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) targeting Israeli forces advancing in Tal al Hawa neighborhood, southern Gaza City.[9] Hamas fighters also fired an anti-tank RPG targeting Israeli armor south of Tal al Hawa on March 4.[10] These attacks follow the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) concluding a two-week-long operation to reclear Zaytoun neighborhood in southeastern Gaza City of Hamas fighters.[11] Several other Palestinian militias attacked Israeli forces and military equipment across the northern Gaza Strip, including in eastern Jabalia.[12]

The IDF Nahal Brigade (162nd Division) killed 15 Palestinian fighters using aerial, sniper, and tank fire in the central Gaza Strip.[13] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which is the self-proclaimed military wing of Fatah and aligned with Hamas in the war, mortared Israeli armor in the central Gaza Strip.[14]

Israeli forces continued conducting clearing operations around northern Khan Younis on March 4. The IDF published details of an operation its forces conducted in the last few days in Hamad neighborhood in northwestern Khan Younis, which the IDF had not entered until March 3.[15] Two IDF brigades surrounded the neighborhood before Israeli special operations forces (SOF) raided the area. Israeli forces found weapons storage facilities and other unspecified infrastructure belonging to senior Hamas officials. An IDF intelligence assessment concluded that Palestinian fighters retreated from other areas in Khan Younis to hide in Hamad. Israeli forces detained about 80 Palestinians, including members of Hamas and PIJ, in Hamad.[16] The IDF Bislamach Brigade continued clearing operations in the Qarara area in northern Khan Younis, where Hamas’ local battalion remains combat effective.[17]

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in several other sectors of Khan Younis on March 4. Hamas fighters returned from areas of fighting in al Amal neighborhood in western Khan Younis and reported attacks targeting Israeli armor and personnel.[18] Hamas fighters also captured two IDF drones in the area through unspecified means.[19] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades reported that its fighters clashed with Israeli forces in eastern Khan Younis.[20] The militia also mortared Israeli vehicles near Hamad.[21]

Hamas reportedly made the return of civilians to the northern Gaza Strip a priority in ceasefire negotiations with Israel.[22] An Israeli official and an unidentified source familiar with the matter told Axios that Egyptian and Qatari mediators conveyed Hamas' readiness to reduce the number of Palestinian prisoners whom Israel would release as part of a possible ceasefire agreement. The mediators added, however, that Hamas would instead require the IDF to allow civilians to return to the northern Gaza Strip and that Israel allow more aid into the area. Israeli negotiators were “surprised [by] how important the issue is to Hamas.”[23] Hamas presented the issue of Palestinians returning to the north as a humanitarian one. Axios reported that Israel is concerned that Hamas could rebuild itself as a governing body if Palestinians are allowed to return to the north, which would undermine the Israeli war objective of destroying Hamas. Over one million Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip have been displaced due to Israeli military operations.

Hamas could use the return of civilians to the north to bring its own fighters back into the area. CTP-ISW has previously assessed that Hamas is trying to reconstitute its military capabilities and rebuild its governance system in the northern Gaza Strip. An Israeli Army Radio correspondent reported in early February that Palestinian fighters are hiding among civilians in humanitarian shelters to evade capture and facilitate infiltration in the northern Gaza Strip.[24] Israeli forces have identified Palestinian fighters attempting to hide among civilians to disguise their movement elsewhere in the Gaza Strip as well.[25] Hamas retains a command structure in the northern Gaza Strip that is attempting to reconstitute Hamas cells.[26] The IDF has explicitly conducted operations to prevent Hamas fighters from infiltrating Gaza City from the southern Gaza Strip.[27]

An Israeli Arab journalist reported on March 4 that unspecified Palestinian clans in the Gaza Strip have pledged their allegiance to the Palestinian Authority (PA).[28] The clans rejected Israel’s post-war plan for administering the Gaza Strip, which the PA has itself criticized as well.[29] The journalist claimed that the PA urged these clans not to engage the IDF, including with regard to facilitating the distribution of humanitarian aid.[30]

This reported alignment follows the PA and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) indicating that they may reform themselves and are trying to unify Palestinian factions, including Hamas. PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced his cabinet’s resignation in late February amid calls for leadership changes within the PA.[31] The PLO separately attended an intra-Palestinian meeting in Moscow on February 29 to discuss the formation of a new Palestinian government.[32]

Palestinian militias conducted two indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip targeting southern Israel on March 4.[33] The IDF Nahal Brigade (162nd Division) identified PIJ fighters that fired rockets from the central Gaza Strip targeting towns in southern Israel on March 2.[34] Israeli forces directed an airstrike targeting the PIJ fighters.

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in four locations across the West Bank on March 4.[35] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed IED and small arms attacks targeting Israeli forces near Tubas, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, and Ramallah.[36] Hamas and PIJ claimed attacks targeting Israeli forces in Tubas on March 4 as well.[37]

Israeli media reported on March 4 that Shin Bet arrested four “ISIS-inspired” Palestinians who planned to attack the IDF near Hebron.[38] Shin Bet reported that the four individuals assembled 100 IEDs and received training from ISIS cells abroad. ISIS previously called for attacks targeting Israel in January 2020 and October 2023.[39] ISIS also claimed two terror attacks targeting Israeli civilians in March 2022.[40]

The IDF Army Radio reported that unspecified senior Israeli officials warned that a possible escalation in violence in the West Bank during Ramadan could halt IDF operations in Gaza Strip.[41] The unspecified source said that a violent escalation could force the IDF to transfer forces from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, have conducted at least seven attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 3. Hezbollah claimed that it detonated IEDs and fired artillery to repel Israeli forces attempting to enter Lebanon at two locations along the Israel-Lebanon border on March 4.[42] CTP-ISW cannot verify that the incident occurred. The IDF has not acknowledged any incident. An unspecified Iranian-backed militia group separately launched anti-tank missiles that killed a foreign farm worker and wounded seven others in Margaliot, Israel.[43]

Israel conducted airstrikes targeting the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Organization Civil Defense in southern Lebanon following the attack in Margaliot.[44] Hezbollah acknowledged that members of the civil defense organization died in the airstrike.[45]

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem warned the IDF against “expanding the campaign into Lebanon” on March 4.[46] Qassem stated that Israel ”will find itself facing an upgraded version of the 2006 war” if Israeli forces enter Lebanon.[47]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Former Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammad al Halbousi discussed unspecified bilateral cooperation with US Ambassador to Iraq Alina Romanowski and other US officials on March 4.[48] Halbousi previously met with Romanowski on February 22 to discuss the US military presence in Iraq and the status of the US-led coalition mission to defeat ISIS.[49] Halbousi has previously indicated opposition to the Iranian-backed effort to expel US forces from Iraq.[50]

The Iraqi Federal Supreme Court removed Halbousi from his role as parliamentary speaker in November 2023 on charges of abusing power and violating his oath of office.[51] Halbousi claimed that the ruling was unconstitutional and meant to create political divisions within society.[52] Halbousi‘s expulsion from Parliament may have removed an obstacle for Iranian-backed actors to advance anti-US legislation and resolutions as CTP-ISW previously reported.[53]

The Houthis launched anti-ship missiles that damaged the Liberian-flagged MSC Sky II commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden on March 4.[54] The UK Maritime Trade Operations Authority reported that one of two missiles impacted Sky II and set fire to the ship.[55] The crew later brought the fire under control, and the Sky II proceeded under its own power to its next port of call.[56]

The Houthi military spokesperson claimed that the group launched an unspecified number of anti-ship ballistic missiles and drones targeting US warships in the Red Sea on March 4.[57] Houthi-affiliated media claimed that the United States and United Kingdom conducted three airstrikes in northern Yemen on March 4.[58] US CENTCOM has not claimed any airstrikes or acknowledged the Houthi’s claimed attack on US warships at the time of this writing.

The Iranian defense minister discussed the Israel-Hamas war with his Qatari counterpart in Doha on March 4.[59] The Iranian defense minister is there to attend the 8th Doha International Maritime Defense Exhibition and Conference. The Iranian foreign affairs minister recently discussed a potential Israel-Hamas ceasefire, an exchange of prisoners, and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip with the Qatari prime minister on March 1.[60]

The Iranian judiciary executed an alleged Israeli Mossad-affiliated individual on March 3 for allegedly aiding Israeli sabotage of Iranian defense ministry facilities in January 2023.[61] The Iranian judiciary accused the individual of transporting Israeli drones into Iran for the purpose of striking Defense Ministry facilities in Esfahan.[62] The Esfahan provincial chief justice claimed that Intelligence and Security Ministry and IRGC Intelligence Organization agents apprehended the individual.[63] Israel conducted a one-way drone attack on a military munitions factory near Esfahan City, Esfahan Province on January 28, 2023.[64] The Defense Ministry reportedly uses the targeted facility to produce ballistic missiles and drones.[65]

5. When Will Ospreys Fly Again? That's Still a Question Mark After Defense Secretary Briefing.

The decision to fly again will come up when the next mishap concurs.

When Will Ospreys Fly Again? That's Still a Question Mark After Defense Secretary Briefing.

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin,Thomas Novelly · March 4, 2024

A senior defense official has confirmed that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been briefed on the plans to return the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to flight after a nearly three-month grounding, but the exact timing of that return remained unclear Monday.

Despite the briefing, which is seen as a step closer to lifting the grounding following a deadly crash of an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey on Nov. 29 that killed eight airmen, none of the services was answering the question of when it expects to fly the aircraft again.

The Associated Press reported Friday that the flight ban would be lifted this week. However, officials for the Navy and Air Force chose not to answer questions Military.com posed to them about that timing. The Marine Corps simply said it had no updates.

The move to return the aircraft to flight would raise many questions since the Osprey has had a spate of deadly crashes -- in addition to the Air Force's November crash off the coast of Japan, there was a deadly Marine Corps Osprey crash in Australia last summer for which the investigations have not been completed.

There is also an ongoing problem with the aircraft's clutch systems that turned deadly in June 2022. The military has claimed the issue is under control, despite it not having a full understanding of the cause.

Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon, said that she wasn't "going to get ahead of any notifications" when asked whether U.S. officials would notify Japan before resuming Osprey flights.

Japanese government officials expressed concerns over Osprey operations late last year shortly after the Air Force crash. Two months before the Nov. 29 Osprey crash, two Marine Ospreys flying over Japan had to divert within hours of each other due to "cockpit caution indications" in the aircraft while flying near where the Air Force Osprey crashed.

Marcia Hart, a spokeswoman for the Navy's Air Systems Command, the office that issued the grounding bulletin and the authority on when it will be lifted, confirmed only that "conversations are ongoing between V-22 stakeholders about when a return to flight of the V-22 will occur."

Hart did say that "currently, we have no evidence that suggests there is a correlation" between the hard clutch engagement issue that has been a problem for years and circumstances of the November crash of the Air Force Osprey.

Meanwhile, the Air Force, when asked similar questions by Military.com, chose not to answer any of them directly and instead said that Air Force Special Operations Command "remains in close coordination" with Naval Air Systems Command and "any change in the status of the V-22 fleet's operational status will come in the form of an updated flight bulletin" from that command.

Defense officials have stressed on several occasions that once Naval Air Systems Command lifts the grounding bulletin, it would still be up to the individual services to decide how and when Ospreys begin flying again.

The Marine Corps, which operates the vast majority of the military's V-22 fleet, has signaled that it needs to get the aircraft back in the air. A top Marine general told a conference panel in February that the Corps has seen "dramatic impacts" from the flying halt and on operations for three Marine expeditionary units, or MEUs -- including the 26th MEU currently on deployment with the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group in the Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, the Air Force has been more reserved.

Last month, Air Force officials publicly confirmed said that a parts failure occurred during the November Osprey crash in Japan, but said the root cause of the crash was still unknown.

The head of Air Force Special Operations Command, Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, told reporters last month that, while there is a "strong desire" to return to flying the Osprey, "we want to be able to return to fly with as much knowledge as we possibly can so that we can ensure that we are safely taking care of our crews as it goes forward."

Finally, the Navy, which was planning on using the aircraft to replace its aging fleet of C-2 Greyhounds that keep carriers supplied at sea, was forced to surge the last remaining squadron of 15 Greyhounds "to meet the Carrier Onboard Delivery mission for deployed aircraft carriers in U.S. 5th and 7th Fleets," Cmdr. Beth Teach, a spokeswoman for the Navy's aviation boss, told reporters last month.

-- Drew Lawrence contributed to this report.

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin,Thomas Novelly · March 4, 2024

6. I'd Never Fly the Osprey Again. My Heart Was Broken, Yet Somehow Full at the Same Time.

A heartfelt/heartbreaking story from a former Osprey pilot.

I'd Never Fly the Osprey Again. My Heart Was Broken, Yet Somehow Full at the Same Time.

thewarhorse.org · by Patricia Linck-Mceaney · February 28, 2024

June 9, 2022, started like any other day—I was up at five a.m. to get ready for work at Marine Aircraft Group 36 in Okinawa, Japan. At the end of my drive, I checked my phone and found a message from my good friend Teedha, my first flight doctor in the fleet.

There had been an Osprey mishap in California, she wrote, possibly at the VMM-364 squadron I’d left a little more than a year before. My stomach dropped as I pictured the faces of my friends still there and I told myself not to panic. I didn’t know anything yet—the severity of the crash or if anyone was hurt.

Nick and Patricia Linck-Mceaney about a year after they met and just before they deployed to Kuwait for the first time. Photo courtesy of the author.

Inside, I logged on to my computer and, while my email uploaded, typed “Osprey crash California.” Sure enough, the media had already begun a frenzied race to see who would be the first to report on another V-22 crash—information that may or not be accurate.

The first article I pulled up confirmed it was indeed a VMM-364 aircraft. The accompanying photo by an airborne news crew captured an aerial view of the wreckage. The streak of charred debris on the desert floor leading to larger chunks of metal and proproters barely resembled an Osprey.

Four dead. One missing. I took a deep breath.

I knew that it would be hours until I heard anything else, and probably even longer to hear the names of the deceased. Mishaps kick off a sacred and vital process that helps ensure families are the first to know that their loved one has died.

I sent two messages to my closest friends who were still with the 364—Daly and Nick, aka “Sloppy.”

I know you can’t say anything right now, I typed. But when you can, please tell me you’re OK.

Then I waited.

Patricia Linck-Mceaney and Nick ran the San Diego Rock and Roll half marathon together in 2018. They stuck together until 50 yards short of the finish line, when Nick sprinted to the end and “beat” her. Photo courtesy of the author.

For the next four hours, I did my best to get on with my day. But I constantly checked my phone and news sites, trying to squeak out any information I could. I received a text from my friend Martin, who had also moved on from the 364, asking if I’d heard. I told him what little I knew. He said he didn’t know anything for sure, but he’d heard rumors. If true, he wrote, It’s really going to hurt.

I was not prepared for that reply, which I took to mean that one of the two people we’d “grown up with” were among the dead. I closed the door to my empty office before anyone could see the tears leaking down my face. I tried to push away the sinking dread and compose myself. When my eyes were dry, I opened my door and got back to work the best I could.

My phone rang two hours later as I sat at my desk having lunch with a friend and coworker. It was Daly, one of the two friends I’d messaged at the start of the day. I picked up, relieved and grateful to hear her voice.

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“I’m so, so glad you are OK,” I told her once I stepped outside.

“Yeah … I’m OK. Trish … It was Sloppy.” Her voice caught at her sob.

Nick. The only other person I’d messaged that morning.

Martin was right. The pain of the news and all the built-up fear from the last hours hit me hard. I walked back inside because I didn’t want the entire world to see my pain as I stood in front of the headquarters building.

My friend was still in the office, and I closed the door behind me, sobbing.

“No. No. No,” I said over and over. It couldn’t be.

Eventually, I called my husband, Michael, who worked at 5th ANGLICO on Camp Hansen about 40 minutes north of Futenma, and told him who we lost. We both drove home and sat in disbelief together, thinking of Nick’s fiancee, his family, all our friends. We spent much of the next day messaging with family and friends. I made one call to break the news to Teedha, who hadn’t yet heard, and another difficult call to Nick’s fiancee.

Patricia Linck-Mceaney and her husband, Mike, at the Marine Corps Ball in Okinawa, Japan. Photo courtesy of the author.

A week and a half later, Michael and I traveled to Southern California to attend the crew’s memorial service followed by an all-night party at Nick’s favorite bar. I saw so many people I never thought I’d see again—or at least not so soon under these circumstances. I wore a fake mustache given out by a friend’s wife and a Hawaiian shirt (a request of Nick himself).

My heart was broken but somehow, at the same time, incredibly full to watch so many people who cared about Nick come together. His family was there too: his mom, dad, and younger sister. As I tried to comfort his mom and sister with a story or hug, they told me how much Nick had loved me—an incredible kindness amid their grief.

I knew he had. Nick was the first person I got to know when I showed up as a brand-new copilot at 364 six years earlier. After I’d left, he was among the few who made the effort to keep in regular contact.

Nick’s death hit me hard. It contributed to my final decision to never fly the Osprey again.

That being said, I don’t want anyone to make assumptions. It wasn’t because I feared flying the aircraft or questioned its safety. Aviation is an unforgiving and dangerous job, especially in the military. Everyone who chooses it knows and accepts this. If they don’t, they’re delusional, or they carry the perceived invincibility of youth.

At the time of the crash, I was medically disqualified and already trying to decide whether I wanted to fight to get into the aircraft again. When my husband and I got home the day Nick died, he looked me in the eye and said, “I’m so glad you’re not flying right now.” And I knew that was the end. After eight years in the Marine Corps—with two more to go—I was done taking the extra risk. I was ready to use my skills elsewhere.

Patricia Linck-Mceaney with a friend and fellow Marine in the old, barely running RV her squadron purchased. Photo courtesy of the author.

For the better part of a year following Nick’s accident, my nightmares were relentless. I dreamed Nick was still alive, and we were flying together again. Once, I dreamed my husband and I witnessed a multi-aircraft, midair collision and ran to the crash site only to find a massive wall of fire, completely encompassing the debris and people inside.

It has not been a good couple of years for the Osprey; everyone knows that. Within 18 months of Nick’s crash, there were two fatal V-22 mishaps, including one near Darwin, Australia. I was home making dinner when a former coworker messaged asking if I was OK. He sent me an article about the Darwin crash, which resulted in three fatalities. I hadn’t yet heard about it. I began hyperventilating as I walked into the living room. Unable to speak, I handed the phone to my husband.

I’d been with the VMM-265 (nicknamed the Dragons) in Okinawa as a night systems instructor for about a year before I stopped flying. They were now deployed and had been near Australia.

Michael knelt down beside me. “Trish, it wasn’t the Dragons. It was a Hawaii squadron,” he told me. His arms enveloped me as I worked to slow my breathing. While I was relieved the dead weren’t among those I knew personally, it was, at best, a small consolation. We’d still lost three people from our small community.

From the time of the VMM-364 mishap until the most recent grounding, it has felt like the V-22 community has been holding its breath, waiting for whatever was next. As we all wait for the results of the CV-22 crash that killed eight airmen in Japan this past November, we speculate what they will be and what it will mean for the safety of the aircraft; its crew; and the Marines, sailors, and airmen it carries. I will not share speculations or more thoughts on the state of the V-22. That’s not why I’m writing this story.

Patricia Linck-Mceaney speaks at Nick’s memorial service two weeks after the crash. Photo courtesy of the author.

Since my career began, whenever I meet someone outside my community and tell them I’m an MV-22 pilot, they grimace. Sometimes they make incoherent noises out of sympathy or aversion. If they’re grunts, their faces usually go a little pale and their eyes widen. Sometimes they say, “I’m sorry,” and laugh nervously. Or they ask me outright, “Are you afraid of the Osprey? What do you think about everything that’s going on?”

I always tell them I love the Osprey, it’s fun to fly, and it has among the best track records of any aircraft the Marine Corps has put into operation. And I’m not playing two truths and a lie. These are the facts.

There is always joy in grief. They follow one another and often eclipse each other, making it difficult to see that they are both always there. The people who ask me questions don’t know the other side of the story. They don’t see the joy; they only see the grief.

They don’t know about that time in 2019 when John and I, along with two of our favorite crew chiefs, flew to a forward operating base in Iraq to bring dip and Monsters to a motley crew of Marines. How we were eagerly greeted by a half-dozen bearded, shirtless Marines in short “silkies” and boots and one especially excited Marine wearing a MARPAT robe. They were so ecstatic they pulled the pallet off the aircraft themselves. That never happens.

They don’t know about that time I got to fly up to Lake Tahoe with two aircraft for a long weekend of training in the mountains. Or the time we flew two aircraft from Kuwait over the Red Sea to Djibouti, Africa. They also don’t know about the time the pilots in my squadron bought an old, beaten-down, barely running RV painted yellow with purple flames covering the front third. A bunch of us drove that thing down from Pendleton to the Miramar Air Show after-party the year we got it. I’ll never forget sitting in the passenger seat next to my friend Cory as he drove that beast down the 5, racing the sunset because our headlights didn’t work, topping out at 40 miles per hour.

Most people don’t know how exciting it is when you finally become an instructor and your first student co-pilots arrive. The feeling of watching those students grow in their skill with the aircraft, even incrementally, is one of the most satisfying things I’ve experienced. They don’t know what it was like to go through nearly every instructor training syllabus with Nick “Sloppy,” and the shared relief after each accomplishment we earned. Or what it means that Nick was the sole witness at our wedding in 2020. Or how it felt when, after I left for Okinawa, I heard his voice on the phone yell, “Trash Person!” when I picked up.

Maj. Patricia Linck-Mceaney was an MV-22 pilot for six years. The loss of her friend Nick ultimately led to her decision to never fly the Osprey again. Photo courtesy of the author.

All the rewards for the hard work put into the choice of becoming a Marine and Osprey pilot are there in the experiences and the people I have met along the way. I have found the aviation community in the Marine Corps to be heartbreaking, challenging, and rewarding. We showed up every day for the Marines we serve with—we made it through deployments, bad commanding officers, and more than one mishap. Nothing tops the friendships I’ve made or the satisfaction of doing the job, and now that I’m nearing the end of my time as a Marine, I am afraid that nothing ever will.

If all this happened back when I was flying, I would have said, “No, I’m not afraid.” Death comes for all of us, and we are often unprepared. That doesn’t mean we should live our lives in fear of it and not take risks. Being a Marine is a risk. Being a pilot of any aircraft is a risk.

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Most days I still cannot believe Nick is really gone; someone so full of life and plans just gone on a Wednesday that started like any other. Still, I would never sacrifice the joy of having him in my life to avoid the grief of his absence.

As I continue to grieve for one of my best friends and a career that is quickly coming to an end, I just want people to understand that I would do it all over again.

This War Horse reflection was written by Patricia Linck-Mceaney, edited by Kristin Davis, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Abbie Bennett wrote the headlines.

thewarhorse.org · by Patricia Linck-Mceaney · February 28, 2024

7. AMERICA’S LAST MORSE-CODE STATION

I seem to recall that our 18E's (Special Forces Communications Sergeants) had an existential crisis when Morse code training (standard 18/18 send./receive) was eliminated from the Special Forces Qualification Course.

AMERICA’S LAST MORSE-CODE STATION

Maritime Morse code was formally phased out in 1999, but in California, a group of enthusiasts who call themselves the “radio squirrels” keeps the tradition alive.

By Saahil Desai

Photographs by Ann Hermes

The Radio Squirrels of Point Reyes

The Atlantic · by Saahil Desai · March 2, 2024

“Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence.” With that, in January 1997, the French coast guard transmitted its final message in Morse code. Ships in distress had radioed out dits and dahs from the era of the Titanic to the era of Titanic. In near-instant time, the beeps could be deciphered by Morse-code stations thousands of miles away. First used to send messages over land in 1844, Morse code outlived the telegraph age by becoming the lingua franca of the sea. But by the late 20th century, satellite radio was turning it into a dying language. In February 1999, it officially ceased being the standard for maritime communication.

Nestled within the Point Reyes National Seashore, north of San Francisco, KPH Maritime Radio is the last operational Morse-code radio station in North America. The station—which consists of two buildings some 25 miles apart—once watched over the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Both KPH sites shut down in 1997, but a few years later, a couple of radio enthusiasts brought them back to life. The crew has gotten slightly larger over the years. Its members call themselves the “radio squirrels.” Every Saturday, they beep out maritime news and weather reports, and receive any stray messages. Much of their communication is with the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a World War II–era ship permanently parked at a San Francisco pier.

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Last July, the photographer Ann Hermes visited the radio squirrels and stepped into their time machine. To send a message, they tapped each Morse-code letter into a gadget called a “bug,” generating a loud, staticky noise that reverberated throughout the whole building. “It’s almost like jazz,” Hermes told me—a music of rhythm and timing that can sound slightly different depending on who is doing the tapping.

Some of the hulking machines date back to World War II. The squirrels do their own repairs, and scrounge eBay for replacement parts on the newer units. To honor the station’s past, the volunteers start each Saturday morning with “services” for “The Church of the Continuous Wave,” in which they eat breakfast off vintage plates branded with the Radio Corporation of America’s old logo.

Morse code is not quite extinct: The U.S. Navy still teaches it to a few sailors, and in 2017, a British man who had broken his leg on a beach used it to signal for help in the dark with a flashlight. Many of the radio squirrels are retired or nearing retirement. But when Hermes visited over the summer, she spotted one 17-year-old hovering around the squirrels in action. Born after the effective end of Morse code, he was nonetheless eager to help keep the jazz going.

This article appears in the April 2024 print edition with the headline “The Radio Squirrels of Point Reyes.”

The Atlantic · by Saahil Desai · March 2, 2024

8. 'Ghost Town'? Historic Fort Leavenworth Homes Recommended for Demolition Soar to 185

Yes. Ft Leavenworioth will look like a ghost town if this happens. What if someone jammed through the legislation to designate these national historic landmarks? (I hope they do not). Would the Army then be stuck with the bill to maintain them (for which of course they would get no additional funding from Congress).

It is also interesting that this is a result of the decision to hire for-profit companies to maintain military housing.

This would seem to be a logical and practical resource decision. I am all for maintaining our history and landmarks but we have to be practical as well, especially in times of scarce resources.  

I am sure if these structures remain due to a military/government decision the for profit company will have to increase the contract costs so that it can continue to be a for-profit company. And the taxpayer will foot the bill, regardless.

Is the threat of demolition by the for profit company all part of an influence operation to support negotiating a higher contract for the for-profit company?

Excerpt:

A for-profit company, the Michaels Organization, manages the housing there and would be the one to recommend any demolition.

But the Army, for its part, has remained resolute. No solid plan to demolish any of the residences currently exists.

“Any numbers being recommended by our housing partners are pre-decisional, meaning they have not been agreed to by Army leadership at any level,” said Scott Gibson, Fort Leavenworth’s public affairs officer.

Michaels’ spokeswoman, Laura Zaner, told The Star in an email, “I can confirm that the Army has not yet told Michaels of any decision they have made regarding its plan (going) forward for these homes — so we really can’t comment at this time.”

But that Michaels has been discussing demolition to perhaps replace old structures with new has been an open secret on the post for at least a year. Late last month, the proposal to raze 185 historic units was shared in a meeting at Fort Leavenworth with Tami Bartunek, the Kansas City district director for the office of Kansas Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall.

'Ghost Town'? Historic Fort Leavenworth Homes Recommended for Demolition Soar to 185

military.com · by The Kansas City Star | By Eric Adler Published March 04, 2024 at 1:06pm ET · March 4, 2024

Residents of Fort Leavenworth were upset at the news last year that as many as 89 of the garrison’s historic homes are seen as too costly to maintain and could be demolished.

Now, The Star has confirmed, that number has ballooned to as many 185.

Whereas the first 89 included grand, gabled homes built before 1919, with sweeping porches and staircases, the nearly 100 more added to the list are in 12 multi-unit infantry barracks along Pope Avenue and Doniphan Drive dating to the early 1900s.

“This is literally erasing history,” said one military source familiar with discussions, requesting anonymity for fear of repercussions. “Once these are gone, they’re gone forever. If these are removed, Fort Leavenworth is a totally different place. It’s almost a ghost town.”

Fort Leavenworth, set to celebrate its bicentennial in 2027, is a National Historic Landmark with some 269 of its 1,700 living units built before 1919. It has more historic homes than any other military base. Fort Leavenworth is the oldest U.S. Army garrison still in operation west of the Mississippi River.

One of its barracks, The Rookery, built around 1830, is said to be the oldest occupied home in Kansas. Each fall and spring, the fort’s most beautiful historic homes are opened for tours on a parade of homes.

A for-profit company, the Michaels Organization, manages the housing there and would be the one to recommend any demolition.

But the Army, for its part, has remained resolute. No solid plan to demolish any of the residences currently exists.

“Any numbers being recommended by our housing partners are pre-decisional, meaning they have not been agreed to by Army leadership at any level,” said Scott Gibson, Fort Leavenworth’s public affairs officer.

Michaels’ spokeswoman, Laura Zaner, told The Star in an email, “I can confirm that the Army has not yet told Michaels of any decision they have made regarding its plan (going) forward for these homes — so we really can’t comment at this time.”

But that Michaels has been discussing demolition to perhaps replace old structures with new has been an open secret on the post for at least a year. Late last month, the proposal to raze 185 historic units was shared in a meeting at Fort Leavenworth with Tami Bartunek, the Kansas City district director for the office of Kansas Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall.

“That was a topic that was discussed,” Bartunek confirmed.

The Star also sought comment from David Guldenzopf, the Army’s federal preservation officer, but received no response. By law, any proposal to remove historical homes would first have to be vetted by the Kansas Historical Society and other stakeholders, including the public.

Since last year, the proposed destruction of the historic homes has nonetheless become a passionate topic on the post and in town.

Carol Ayres, president of the Leavenworth County Historical Society, said she understands that clash behind a company tasked with making profits versus the high cost of maintenance and preservation.

“It’s expensive to redo those old homes,” she said. “They’re expensive to replace, too. I think everyone understands the reality of the situation. I’m afraid the people that make those decisions, excuse me, don’t always think about the history and how important it is.

“We stand on the shoulders of the people who built that post, who built our town. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them.”

Marshall, the Kansas senator, on Friday sent a written statement of his own:

“The health, safety, and well-being of our service members and their families will always be our priority,’ the statement reads. “Ft. Leavenworth is in so many ways a historical landmark, and a source of pride for active-duty soldiers, veterans, and the local community. Our office will continue to work with military historians, Ft. Leavenworth leadership, and Michaels, to preserve as many of these beautiful homes as feasible.”

The Michaels Organization in 2006 signed a 50-year agreement to manage the fort’s housing. It currently does so through its management company, Fort Leavenworth Frontier Heritage Communities.

In taking on that obligation, the company also took on an inventory of homes more than 100 years old, burdened by problems such as outdated and faulty plumbing, old heating and electrical systems, asbestos, lead paint and aging wood.

Maintaining the housing is expensive, made more so by the fact Fort Leavenworth is on the National Register of Historic Places with homes in a National Historic Landmark District. Because of that, when the company looks to fix part of a historic home, it must adhere to the strict federal guidelines known as the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. Often, that means hiring special artisans who use original rather than replacement materials.

A complaint heard among post residents is that, over the last several years, instead of maintaining its older homes, Michaels is engaging in “demolition by neglect” — allowing a greater number of historic homes to sit unoccupied and to decay to the point that demolition may become inevitable.

Residents maintain that if Michaels simply lived up to its obligations under its “program agreement” with the Army to properly care for the homes, few to none would now be imperiled.

Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to inform state preservation officers, such as the Kansas State Historical Society, about actions affecting historic properties.

In December, through a Kansas Open Records Act request, The Star published a story cataloging what Fort Leavenworth’s Directorate of Public Works reported to be a growing list of ”adverse effects” to historic homes from Michaels’ deferred maintenance.

One report, on the Rookery, said that the “level of care and maintenance that this home has received. … Is the living definition of “Demolition by Neglect.’”

It included 50 photographs of rotted wood, peeling paint, missing boards, cracked support columns, along with rusted and leaking gutters. In one Colonial Revival home from 1905, a supposed fix included unpainted boards laid atop of rotted boards. The report included an email from a British officer who complained that the porch was in such disrepair that he worried for the safety of his children.

Reports on other historic homes chronicled falling plaster ceilings from water damage, crumbling bricks and insect infestation. A July report on Syracuse House, a two-story, yellow duplex built in 1855, included multiple photos of rotted planking, trim, soffits, fascia, railings and unpainted patchwork repairs.

Of the post’s 269 homes built before 1919, some 25% sat unoccupied last year because of their condition.

“The Army understands that we must balance the historic significance of our installation while providing the best quality of life for the soldiers and families who live here,” Gibson, the post’s public information officer, wrote. “As part of this responsibility, our housing partners at the Fort Leavenworth Frontier Heritage Communities, also must consider all options for safe, affordable, and quality housing.

“As we work toward solutions regarding our historic homes, there will likely be many more proposals and discussions between the Army and our housing partner, and we are confident that we can work together to preserve the historic relevance of Fort Leavenworth.”

©2024 The Kansas City Star. Visit kansascity.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

military.com · by The Kansas City Star | By Eric Adler Published March 04, 2024 at 1:06pm ET · March 4, 2024

9. A Distracted America Still Leads the World

China, Russia, and Iran (what about north Korea?). Yes, he includes Venezuela and north Korea as trying to undermine security and break American power. in the text. It is stillana afterthought and still listed last like in everyone else's list of threats (yes my bias is showing).

A Distracted America Still Leads the World

China, Russia and Iran see the U.S. as polarized and waning but underestimate the power of capitalism.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-distracted-america-still-leads-the-world-rivals-underestimate-power-of-capitalism-113009fc?

By Walter Russell Mead

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March 4, 2024 5:47 pm ET

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

These are terrifying times. As a technological revolution propels the most dangerous arms race in human history, a coalition of powers ranging from China and Russia to Iran, Venezuela and North Korea is trying to undermine American security and break American power. In the U.S., the foreign-policy establishment in both political parties is widely discredited, but populist isolationism offers little in the way of constructive alternatives. Meanwhile, culture wars and bitter polarization have distracted and divided the one country that can lead the world back toward a more peaceful path. If the potential consequences of this mix of global crisis and American incapacity don’t trouble your sleep at times, you haven’t been paying attention.

Many factors contribute to this distressing situation, but the economic and social disruptions brought on by the Information Revolution are the heart of the matter. As social media upends political parties and systems across the world, and technological change transforms industries, political leaders are struggling to maintain the authority and legitimacy necessary for far-sighted foreign policy. At the same time, advances in drone warfare, artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and cyberattacks are changing the nature of war and international competition. Global problems are getting more urgent and difficult even as political leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere are losing their ability to lead.

The U.S. remains the key actor in the international system, but American society is less focused on dealing with foreign challenges than in resolving economic, political and cultural issues at home. This has happened before. In the late 19th century, Americans were focused on managing the consequences of the Industrial Revolution, such as the rise of conglomerates, the centralization of financial power in Wall Street banks, and mass migration from Europe to the industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest. All the while, an agricultural crisis was unfolding as the economics of family farming became less favorable. International events commanded scant attention even as Europe drifted toward the disaster of World War I. In the 1930s, the Great Depression similarly led the U.S. to focus inward despite dangers beyond its borders.

Seeing a polarized America sliding toward less effective global engagement amid international conflict and crises, our adversaries in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang believe the clock is running out on the American Century. Their efforts to lower the curtain on the Pax Americana are growing more ambitious as Americans lose their sense of unity and purpose.

But the Pax Americana is more robust than it looks. Historically, these periods of internal dissention and social upheaval haven’t signaled the collapse of American power so much as prepared its resurgence. Between the Civil War and the early 20th century the inward-focused, polarized Americans created a massive industrial economy and a powerful financial sector that made us irresistible when we entered World War I. Ditto in World War II.

American power is grounded in capitalism, the most disruptive and revolutionary social system in the history of the world. Our openness to capitalism makes the U.S. quick to gain the benefits that capitalist development brings, and also quick to suffer the displacements effected by technological and economic change. Amid the struggle in American domestic politics today, we can still see the emergence of new industries, new forms of social organization, new technologies that are likely to make us a decisive actor in the 21st century.

Even as our politics descend into chaos, our farms and factories are becoming more productive. Our financial markets are becoming more sophisticated. Our computers are getting faster and more complex, our software more capable. More enterprises are harvesting productivity gains from new technology. Our struggles aren’t the death agonies of terminal decline. As I’ve written elsewhere, they are the awkward lunges of a butterfly struggling to escape a cocoon.

Those who expected a permanent peace and a long calm after the Cold War were profoundly mistaken about the impact of American power. America’s victory in the Cold War didn’t end history but accelerated it.

America’s internal dissensions are reaching a peak even as the world slides toward chaos. This is an explosive conjunction, and there is no guarantee of a smooth ride ahead. But if America remains a dynamic society filled with raucous, ambitious and impatient people, we are likely to continue to surprise ourselves and the rest of the world with the wealth we create—and the power that flows from it.

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Wonder Land: Historical parallels are never perfect. But given Donald Trump's isolationist rhetoric and increasingly threatening actions from Iran, Russia and China, the former President could learn much from the Munich Agreement of 1938. Images: Reuters/CTK via ZUMA Press Composite: Mark Kelly

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the March 5, 2024, print edition as 'A Distracted America Still Leads the World'.

10. U.N. Team Finds Grounds to Support Reports of Sexual Violence in Hamas Attack

U.N. Team Finds Grounds to Support Reports of Sexual Violence in Hamas Attack

The United Nations experts also said that they had “clear and convincing information” that hostages seized in Israel on Oct. 7 had been sexually abused in Gaza, and that they had looked into reports of abuse of Palestinians in Israeli detention.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-un-report-sexual-violence.html

The site of the music festival where sexual assaults were reported.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

By Farnaz Fassihi and Isabel Kershner

Farnaz Fassihi reported from the United Nations, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.

• March 4, 2024

A United Nations report released on Monday found signs that sexual violence was committed in multiple locations during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel and said that some hostages being held in the Gaza Strip had also been subjected to rape and sexual torture.

From late January to early February, the United Nations deployed a team of experts to Israel and the West Bank led by Pramila Patten, the secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict.

In their report, the experts said they had found “reasonable grounds” to believe that sexual violence occurred during the Hamas-led incursion into Israel, including rape and gang rape in at least three locations: the Nova music festival site and the area around it, as well as Road 232 and Kibbutz Re’im.

“In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at least two incidents relate to the rape of women’s corpses,” the report said.

The U.N. report, which also cited allegations that Palestinians detained by Israel have also been sexually abused, was issued three months after The New York Times published an extensive report on sexual violence during the Hamas-led attack, including several incidents along Road 232. Hamas leaders denied the accusations, and the U.N. report, noting the array of fighters who took part in the Oct. 7 attack, said its experts could not determine who was responsible for the sexual assaults.

In their report, the U.N. experts cited indications of sexual violence that had not previously been widely reported, including the rape of a woman outside a bomb shelter at the entrance of Kibbutz Re’im. That incident was corroborated by witness testimony and digital material, the report said.

The experts said they had also found “a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations.” Although the evidence was circumstantial, they said, the pattern could indicate some form of sexual violence and torture.

When it came to the hostages seized in Israel and taken to Gaza, the report offered a more conclusive finding.

It said it had found “clear and convincing information” based on firsthand accounts of released hostages that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, was inflicted against some women and children during their time in captivity. It also said there were reasonable grounds to believe that such abuse was taking place against the hostages still being held.

Israel welcomed the report for recognizing “that the crimes were committed simultaneously in different locations and point to a pattern of rape, torture and sexual abuse,” a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry said.

The U.N. report said that its experts could not verify the reports of sexual violence in Kibbutz Kfar Aza or Kibbutz Be’eri. But in both places, it said, circumstantial information — “notably the recurring pattern of female victims found undressed, bound, and shot,” in Kfar Aza, for example — indicated that sexual violence, including “potential sexualized torture,” may have occurred.

It said that two specific allegations of sexual violence in Kibbutz Be’eri that were widely repeated by the media, however, were “unfounded.”

First responders told The Times they had found bodies of women with signs of sexual assault at those two kibbutzim, but The Times, in its report, did not refer to the specific allegations that the U.N. said were unfounded.

The U.N. report detailed the daunting challenges to determining what happened on the day of the attack.

To begin with, it was nearly impossible to gain access to the sort of forensic evidence often used to establish sexual assault. In part, this was because of the large number of casualties and the widely dispersed attack sites.

The report also said that first responders — often untrained volunteers — focused more on search and rescue operations and the recovery of the dead than on gathering evidence. And many of the bodies were badly burned, compromising any evidence.

The experts said they had put out calls to women in Israel who survived assaults on Oct. 7 to come forward, but had not talked to any directly. A small number of survivors, they said, were reported to still be in treatment for trauma.

They also noted a deep reservoir of suspicion among Israelis toward international organizations like the United Nations, as well as the fact that the team was on the ground for a limited period of two and a half weeks.

“Overall, the mission team is of the view that the true prevalence of sexual violence during the 7 October attacks and their aftermath may take months or years to emerge and may never be fully known,” said the report.

The report said that the U.N. team had also heard accounts of sexual violence against Palestinians that implicated Israeli security forces and settlers.

Palestinian officials and civil society representatives, it said, told the U.N. team of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinians in detention, including various forms of sexual violence in the form of invasive body searches, threats of rape, and prolonged forced nudity, as well as sexual harassment and threats of rape, during house raids and at checkpoints.”

The U.N. team asked the government of Israel to give access to other U.N. bodies, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian Territory, so they can conduct thorough independent investigations into these allegations.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lior Haiat, said, “Israel rejects the report’s call to investigate Palestinian claims regarding ‘sexual violence by Israeli elements.’”

Ms. Patten had said that her trip was not intended to be investigative — other U.N. agencies have that mandate, she said — but to “give voices” to victims and survivors and find ways to offer them support, including justice and accountability.

The U.N. team included technical experts who could interpret forensic evidence, analyze open-source digital information and conduct interviews with victims and witnesses of sexual violence, the report said.

Ms. Patten said one challenge the U.N. experts had faced was sifting through the paucity of reliable information, and inaccurate accounts from untrained people.

“On one hand,” she said, “we have the fog of war that often silences grounds of sexual violence. But we have also seen in the history of war instances where sexual violence can be weaponized.”

Farnaz Fassihi is a reporter for The New York Times based in New York. Previously she was a senior writer and war correspondent for the Wall Street Journal for 17 years based in the Middle East. More about Farnaz Fassihi

Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990. More about Isabel Kershner

A version of this article appears in print on March 5, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.N. Sees Signs of Sexual Abuse in Hamas Attack. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

11. Philippine and Chinese vessels collide in disputed South China Sea and 4 Filipino crew are injured

Philippine and Chinese vessels collide in disputed South China Sea and 4 Filipino crew are injured

AP · by JIM GOMEZ · March 5, 2024

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels collided in the disputed South China Sea and four Filipino crew members were injured Tuesday in high-seas confrontations as Southeast Asian leaders gathered for an Asian summit where alarm over Beijing’s aggression at sea was expected to be raised.

The Chinese coast guard ships and accompanying vessels blocked the Philippine coast guard and supply vessels off the disputed Second Thomas Shoal and executed dangerous maneuvers that caused two minor collisions between the Chinese ships and two of the Philippine vessels, Philippine officials said.

The BRP Sindangan of the Philippine coast guard had minor structural damage from the collision that happened shortly after dawn. Over an hour later, another Chinese coast guard ship first blocked then collided with a supply boat the Philippine coast guard was escorting, the Philippine officials said.

The supply boat, manned by Filipino navy personnel, was later hit by water cannon blasts from two Chinese coast guard ships. Its windshield shattered, injuring at least four Filipino crew members, according to a statement from the Philippine government task force dealing with territorial disputes.

The task force said the actions by the Chinese was “another attempt to illegally impede or obstruct a routine resupply and rotation mission.”

“China’s latest unprovoked acts of coercion and dangerous maneuvers” against Philippine ships en route to deliver supplies and fresh troops to the Philippine-occupied shoal “put the lives of our people at risk and caused actual injury to Filipinos,” it said.

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila summoned China’s deputy ambassador to convey a protest against the Chinese coast guard’s actions, which it said were unacceptable.

“The Philippines demands that Chinese vessels leave the vicinity of Ayungin shoal immediately,” the department said in a statement, using the Philippine name for the contested shoal.

A small Philippine marine and navy contingent has kept watch onboard a rusting warship, the BRP Sierra Madre, which has been marooned since the late 1990s in the shallows of the Second Thomas Shoal.

China also claims the shoal lying off the western Philippines and has surrounded the atoll with coast guard, navy and other ships to press its claims and prevent Filipino forces from delivering construction materials to fortify the Sierra Madre in a decades-long standoff.

The shoal has been the site of several tense skirmishes between Chinese and Philippine coast guard ships last year.

The Chinese coast guard said in a statement that “it took control measures in accordance with the law against Philippine ships that illegally intruded into the waters adjacent to Ren’ai Reef,” the name Beijing uses for Second Thomas Shoal.

A Chinese coast guard spokesperson said a Philippine ship deliberately rammed a Chinese coast guard vessel, causing a minor scratch.

Washington strongly condemned the Chinese coast guard’s actions and its ambassador in Manila, MaryKay Carlson, said the U.S. stands with the Philippines and proponents of international law. Australia and Japan separately expressed their concern over China’s actions.

The long-simmering territorial disputes in the South China Sea are expected to be discussed at a summit of leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their Australian counterpart on Wednesday in Melbourne.

On Monday, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in the Australian city that his administration “will do whatever it takes” to manage any threat to his country’s territory but stressed that Manila would continue “to tread the path of dialogue and diplomacy” in resolving disputes with China.

The Philippines and Vietnam plan to raise their alarm over China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the disputed waters during the summit, a senior Southeast Asian diplomat told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Philippine security officials have accused the Chinese coast guard and suspected militia ships of blocking Philippine vessels and using water cannons and a military-grade laser that temporarily blinded some Filipino crew members in a series of high-seas confrontations last year.

The Chinese Embassy in Manila accused the Philippines of frequent provocative moves in the South China Sea and said China acted “in accordance with law to defend its own sovereignty, rights and interests.”

The confrontations have sparked fears of a larger conflict that could involve the United States.

Chinese and Philippine officials met in Shanghai in January and agreed to take steps to lower tensions but their latest confrontation at sea underscores the difficulty of doing so.

The U.S. has warned it is obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea. China has warned the U.S. to stop meddling in what it calls a purely Asian dispute.

Brunei, Malaysia Vietnam and Taiwan also have overlapping claims to the strategic waterway, a major global trade route which is also believed to be sitting atop rich undersea deposits of oil and gas.

___

AP video producer Caroline Chen contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

AP · by JIM GOMEZ · March 5, 2024

12. China drops 'peaceful reunification' reference to Taiwan

Hmmmm.....taking a page from north Korea. I bet Kim Jong Un thinks he is an international influencer. 

China drops 'peaceful reunification' reference to Taiwan

By Yew Lun Tian and Laurie Chen

March 5, 20244:32 AM ESTUpdated 4 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-drops-peaceful-reunification-reference-taiwan-raises-defence-spending-by-2024-03-05/

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BEIJING, March 5 (Reuters) - China will boost its defence spending by 7.2% this year, fuelling a military budget that has more than doubled under President Xi Jinping's 11 years in office as Beijing hardens its stance on Taiwan, according to official reports on Tuesday.

The increase mirrors the rate presented in last year's budget and again comes in well above the government's economic growth forecast for this year.

China also officially adopted tougher language against Taiwan as it released the budget figures, dropping the mention of "peaceful reunification" in a government report delivered by Premier Li Qiang at the opening of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber-stamp parliament, on Tuesday.

Tensions have risen sharply in recent years over Taiwan, the democratically ruled island that China claims as its own, and elsewhere across East Asia as regional military deployments rise.

Li Mingjiang, a defence scholar at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, said that despite China's struggling economy, Taiwan is a major consideration in Beijing's defence spending.

"China is showing that in the coming decade it wants to grow its military to the point where it is prepared to win a war if it has no choice but to fight one," Li said.

Since Xi became president and commander-in-chief more than a decade ago, the defence budget has ballooned to 1.67 trillion yuan ($230 billion) this year from 720 billion yuan in 2013.

The percentage rise in military spending has consistently outpaced the annual domestic economic growth target during his time in office. This year the growth target for 2024 is about 5%, similar to last year's goal, according to the government report.

The defence budget is closely watched by China's neighbours and the United States, who are wary of Beijing's strategic intentions and the development of its armed forces.

Based on data from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), this year's budget marks the 30th consecutive year of Chinese defence spending increases.

Japanese government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi on Tuesday urged greater openness from Beijing, warning of serious international concerns.

China's continuous military spending increases without sufficient transparency were "the greatest strategic challenge ever to ensure the peace and stability of Japan and the international community and strengthen international order", Hayashi said in Tokyo.

South Korea's defence ministry declined to comment. Australia's defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

James Char, a security scholar at the RSIS, said that despite the defence budget's outpacing GDP growth, it had remained at about 1.3% of overall gross domestic product in the last decade and had put no stress on the national coffers.

"Of course, the country's longer-term economic fortunes will determine whether this can be sustained going forward," Char said.

Soldiers of People's Liberation Army (PLA) march in formation past Tiananmen Square during a rehearsal before a military parade marking the 70th founding anniversary of People's Republic of China, on its National Day in Beijing, China October 1, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

The purchase of new equipment is likely to take up the largest single chunk of the budget as the military works to meet Xi's goal of full modernisation by 2035, the IISS said in research published last month.

That push continues across several fronts, with China producing weapons ranging from warships and submarines to drones and advanced missiles that can be equipped with both nuclear and conventional warheads.

Char said tighter management would also be a priority for military leadership after high-profile personnel purges related to weapons procurement.

The Central Military Commission, China's top military body, last July ordered a "clean up" of the procurement process and invited the public to report irregularities.

The commission has not announced the results of its investigation, but at least nine generals, including four directly in charge of procurement, have been stripped of their title as parliamentarians, a necessary procedure before they can be charged in court.

Two former defence ministers, Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, have also gone missing without explanation, which in China often means they are under investigation.

Li had been in charge of military procurement from 2017 to 2022. When asked whether Li would attend the parliament sessions, parliament spokesman Lou Qinjian told Singapore paper Lianhe Zaobao on Monday that Li "cannot attend because he is no longer a delegate".

In the government work report, China reiterated a call for "reunification" with Taiwan, but added emphasis that it wants to "be firm" in doing so and dropped the descriptor "peaceful", which had been used in previous reports.

Although it is not the first time that China had omitted the word "peaceful", the change in language is closely watched as a possible sign of more assertive stance towards Taiwan.

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council on Tuesday urged China to accept the fact that the two sides are not subordinate to each other, and urged China to create health cross-strait exchanges.

The island's defence minister had said on Tuesday Taiwan's armed forces would increase the number of missile drills they hold this year.

Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist and fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that the language on Taiwan has "moderately hardened".

"Beijing appears to be balancing between projecting increased toughness on Taiwan with stabilising relations with Taiwan's international friends," he said.

After the Democratic Progressive Party's Lai Ching-te won the presidential election in Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party's fourth-ranked leader, Wang Huning, said at a high-level Taiwan policy meeting last month that China would "resolutely combat" any efforts towards Taiwan independence this year.

Previous statements from the annual meeting only vowed to "resolutely oppose" Taiwan independence.

($1 = 7.1987 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Reporting by Beijing newsroom, additional reporting by Yimou Lee in Taipei, Greg Torode in Hong Kong, Yoshifumi Takemoto in Tokyo Hyonhee Shin in Seoul and Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Tom Hogue, Christopher Cushing, Gerry Doyle and Kim COghill

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Yew Lun Tian

Thomson Reuters

Yew Lun Tian reports on China's politics, diplomacy, security and society. She was previously Beijing bureau chief for a Singapore paper Lianhe Zaobao.

Laurie Chen

Thomson Reuters

Laurie Chen is a China Correspondent at Reuters' Beijing bureau, covering politics and general news. Before joining Reuters, she reported on China for six years at Agence France-Presse and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. She speaks fluent Mandarin.

13. The UN won’t reform until its employees lose diplomatic immunity

The UN won’t reform until its employees lose diplomatic immunity - Washington Examiner

By 

Michael Rubin

March 4, 2024 10:22 am

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2900820/un-wont-reform-until-employees-lose-diplomatic-immunity/

The rot surrounding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East keeps accumulating. Not only did the UNRWA allow Hamas command posts under local hospitals and the UNRWA’s own headquarters, but UNRWA employees hid weaponry in their homes and then reportedly participated in the Oct. 7 kidnappings in Israel. Some employees held Israeli civilians hostage in the aftermath of the mass kidnapping. Israel alleges that 10% of UNRWA employees are Hamas members, a figure that, if anything, seems low.

Nevertheless, the U.N. response has been to obfuscate, bluster, and deny evidence. It is impossible to ignore the implication of hundreds of miles of Hamas tunnels built with diverted supplies under the nose of UNRWA employees. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres deflects. While the U.N. says it has fired some UNRWA employees about whom Israel provided evidence, the fact that the UNRWA has not handed over employees complicit in kidnapping to face justice in Israel shows it is more interested in covering up the scandal.

The UNRWA scandal reflects decades of corruption, mismanagement, and incompetent leadership at the helm of both the agency and the United Nations, but the likelihood that it will be the U.N.’s last scandal is nil. Recent history suggests the U.N. simply does not learn as scandals repeat.

There was a pro forma attempt to investigate the Oil-for-Food scandal, though then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan successfully diluted the inquiry into the multibillion-dollar kickback scheme because it touched too many in power, including Annan himself.

Peacekeeper scandals repeat. U.N. employees in several different peacekeeping missions across Africa coerced sex in exchange for food and aid, sometimes even victimizing children. The U.N. continues to ignore a UNRWA-like scandal in the Democratic Republic of Congo with members of the Pakistan contingent radicalizing and providing aid to the Allied Democratic Forces, the local Islamic State. In 2010, U.N. peacekeepers dumped sewage into a river in Haiti, sparking a cholera outbreak that killed nearly 10,000 in a country that, until then, was cholera-free. The U.N. stonewalled to avoid paying compensation to the victims.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is also prone to scandal. Twice, after riots at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, the UNHCR cut off food assistance and water access to its population, including women and children, until residents of the camp rebuilt destroyed structures. Collective punishment is a crime by any interpretation of the law, but U.N. officials engaged in it with impunity.

As U.N. scandals accumulate, it is foolish to believe that Guterres has any more interest in policing his organization than any of his predecessors. In certain countries and territories, U.N. corruption claims more lives than its interventions save.

Back to Gaza: Western donors have responded to the participation of U.N. employees in the massacre of Jews by pausing some funding, even if only temporarily. Any shortfall of funding grabs the attention of U.N. agencies whose employees fly business class and who enjoy a lifestyle akin to 19th-century colonial officers. But suave public relations, effective lobbying to whitewash corruption, and crying wolf about humanitarian hardship often lead to the quick restoration of funding.

Perhaps a better approach, then, would be to strip U.N. officials of the immunities they enjoy in the countries where they serve. If Nepalese peacekeepers or the U.N. bureaucrats who supervised them had realized they could face negligent homicide charges for killing 10,000 Haitians, perhaps they would have thought twice about dumping sewage in a river Haitians relied on for drinking water in the first place.

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Likewise, U.N. officials in Kenya would think twice about collective punishment against Somali refugees if they faced charges in the Hague for gross violations of international law. Even Guterres might have acted proactively against UNRWA corruption had its supervisors risked charges of accessory to murder for their underlings moonlighting as Hamas combatants with U.N. property.

Conventions granted U.N. workers diplomatic immunity to prevent retaliation by rogue regimes. However, as U.N. workers go rogue, perhaps it is time to reconsider the diplomatic privileges they enjoy. If nongovernmental workers live without immunity, U.N. bureaucrats can as well.

Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Washington Examiner · March 4, 2024

14. China says economy will grow ‘around’ 5 percent this year

China says economy will grow ‘around’ 5 percent this year

The Washington Post · by Christian Shepherd · March 5, 2024

BEIJING — China will target economic growth of “around” 5 percent this year, Premier Li Qiang announced on Tuesday, laying out Beijing’s plans to weather a slowdown that has shaken consumer and investor confidence in the world’s second largest economy.

China will make “full use of a new system for mobilizing resources nationwide” to achieve “breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields,” Li said in a speech at the Great Hall of the People to mark the opening of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber stamp parliament.

These included “disruptive and frontier technologies,” he said. The growth target is in line with economists’ expectations and only slight below the 5.2 percent recorded last year, but is a long way from the double-digit growth of the early 2000s.

More than 5,000 delegates are gathered here for the annual meetings of the NPC and China’s top advisory body, events jointly known as the “Two Sessions,” which together set the policy agenda for the coming year.

It’s shaping up to be a difficult one. In the year since Xi Jinping, the country’s powerful leader, formally began his third term, huge property giants have gone into liquidation, foreign direct investment has dropped to 30-year lows and the markets began the year with a 10-percent slump.

Beyond those immediate pressures, Beijing is staring down mountains of local government debt, a shrinking population and the potential of renewed tensions with the United States as China becomes a focus of debate on the presidential campaign.

So far, the Chinese leadership appears ready to batten down the hatches, ride out the turmoil and focus on long-term bets to control the technologies of the future.

Xi’s security-focused approach — which tries to defuse the most severe economic and financial risks while focusing on indigenous innovation in key emerging industries — “naturally lends itself to pushing the economy to line up with that long-term strategy,” Diana Choyleva founder of Enodo Economics, a consultancy.

“They're trying to smooth what's going to be a painful adjustment,” said Choyleva. “But that plan is very different from what foreign and international investors want to hear.”

This year is the first time Li has delivered a “work report,” after being promoted to number two on the powerful seven-man Politburo Standing Committee in October 2022. Already, it appears he will be less transparent than his predecessor, Li Keqiang, who died of a heart attack only seven months after leaving office.

An NPC spokesperson on Monday announced that the premier, who is responsible for the day-to-day running of China’s economy, will not hold a news conference after the closing ceremony this year, ending a show of openness that has been in place since the 1980s. The press conference is one of the rare occasions when the Chinese public, and foreign observers, get to hear a top Chinese leader answering questions, even if they are pre-selected.

Policy signals at this year’s meetings are being watched even more closely because top Communist Party officials were expected to set out an economic agenda at a plenum late last year, but the gathering never took place.

The delays and opacity have fueled concern that Beijing plans to muddle through the downturn with piecemeal policy support instead of bold measures to spur growth.

“The long delay of the plenum means there is no economic reform road map out there, at least not in the public domain,” said Nis Grünberg, lead analyst at MERICS, a China-focused German think tank.

Instead, Grünberg added, the consistent messaging from top Chinese officials suggests that state control will prevail, as the focus on security and “self-reliance” limits desire for liberalizing economic reforms.

Xi’s main announcement in the buildup to meetings was a callback to the Communist Party’s Marxist roots. In December, he instructed officials to unleash “new productive forces” to prevent a sharp slowdown, leaving foreign investors to puzzle through pages of jargon to work out what that means for markets and businesses.

“The essence of innovation is ‘establishing a new production function,’ which means introducing into the production system a ‘new combination’ of conditions and factors of production that have never existed before,” Chen Binkai, dean of economics at the Central University of Finance and Economics, explained to Qiushi, a Communist Party magazine.

Close observers of Chinese politics says Xi’s announcement is less about economic policy and more about establishing his position as an epoch-defining leader by following the example of past strongman rulers.

Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic, called for the “liberation” of laborers from feudal society. Deng Xiaoping, who unleashed market reforms in the 1980s, promised the “development” of production using science and technology.

Now Xi wants a high-tech upgrade to the Chinese workforce that can keep the economy afloat and secure dominance in strategically important emerging industries like clean energy, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors.

Economists broadly agree China needs to do away with the old growth model, which relied on debt-fueled construction. But there is little consensus about whether the leadership’s laser-focus on advanced manufacturing will be enough to prevent a sudden slowdown.

Some believe that officials would be better served by boosting consumption with a mixture of short-term subsidies and structural reforms to health and social care to make the less-well-off feel empowered to spend again.

Prominent voices within China are warning that Xi’s policies favoring the heavy hand of state intervention have gone to far and are dampening innovation in policymaking.

“Officials at all levels no longer have the space to make decisions on their own, economic activity is constrained and less dynamic, and social freedoms have been restrained,” Yao Yang, dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, wrote in an article translated and published last week by Sinification, a newsletter.

In the academic journal originally published in December, Yao argued that decades of unfettered and unsustainable growth had landed China in a period of “rectification” comparable to that faced by the United States ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.

For Yao, the leadership methods of trying to reassert control — a crackdown on “over-marketization” of the economy and emphasis on Marxist notions of egalitarianism — had been excessive and spooked entrepreneurs and the wealthy.

“The Party’s official theories are still stuck in Marx’s doctrines and have fallen far behind the realities of the reform and opening period,” he said.

The Washington Post · by Christian Shepherd · March 5, 2024

15. Look deeper: Time may be on Ukraine’s side

Excerpts:

Soon, the Kremlin may confront a personnel challenge of a different sort. Vladimir Putin is no spring chicken. At age 71, and in questionable health, he’s years past the life expectancy for a Russian male born in 1953. The longer the war goes on, the more Putin is likely to think about his own mortality and hence his legacy—and the more likely it is that he could depart this world with a festering border war. That’s quite an unappealing legacy for Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Stalin and somebody who purportedly cares greatly about how history may judge him.

To be clear, Ukraine remains in dire straits. It desperately needs more long-term U.S. military assistance, more training, more troops, and a new strategy. Tragically, many of its soldiers and, increasingly, its civilians will perish as Russia wages its unjustified, immoral war before there’s even a chance of a Ukrainian victory. Nonetheless, if Ukraine can hold out through 2024—and if the United States does its part—Kyiv’s odds of eventual victory may increase, not decrease.

Look deeper: Time may be on Ukraine’s side

defenseone.com · by John R. Deni

A daily demonstration in Krakow, Poland, seen here on March 3, 2024, is emblematic of continued strong support for Ukraine in Europe. Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

If Kyiv can hold out through the next winter—a big if—there are trends that run in its favor.

By John R. Deni

research professor, U.S. Army War College

March 4, 2024 11:47 AM ET

Conventional wisdom is that time is on Russia’s side as Ukraine battles to fend off Moscow’s invasion. Although much remains unclear, it seems certain that if Congress fails to fund more military assistance to Ukraine or if U.S. policy shifts dramatically after Inauguration Day 2025, Kyiv may be forced to sue for peace. However, if these two possibilities do not come to pass, and if Ukraine can hold out through next winter, there are some indications that the tide will turn in Kyiv’s favor.

Perhaps the most significant indication that a longer war would advantage Ukraine is the fact that U.S. defense industry is slowly but steadily reprising its role as “the arsenal of democracy.” For instance, the United States has increased its output of 155mm shells far faster than expected, with plans to increase it further. From a rate of around 14,000 rounds per month before Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, the United States has exceeded its target of 24,000 rounds by the end of 2023 and is now on track to produce around 36,000 per month by March. Furthermore, that rate should be doubled by this time next year.

European defense industrial production remains hampered by a lack of long-term contracts, an inability to rearrange the priorities of private industry, and competing requirements to fulfill NATO collective defense needs. However, even European defense industry is showing some signs of progress, as Germany announced last week that it will deliver four times as many artillery shells to Ukraine in 2024 as it did in 2023, and that new factories will increase that rate even more starting in 2025. Additionally, European defense manufacturers are developing production facilities for new armaments in Ukraine, and the EU is about to launch a new defense industry strategy as well as a new European Defence Investment Programme to facilitate joint procurement.

Perhaps more importantly, Europeans remain steadfast in their support for Ukraine. Nearly 90 percent of those polled last November continue to support humanitarian aid for Ukraine, and nearly as many favor efforts to welcome Ukrainian war refugees—paradoxical at a time when populist parties across Europe are on the rise, in part due to migration issues. Meanwhile, nearly three quarters favor continued financial support to Ukraine, which was reflected in this month’s agreement by EU leaders to extend $54 billion in financial support to Kyiv over the next four years. Roughly the same number support continued economic sanctions against Russia, despite the high energy costs entailed in such policies. And for a continent sometimes accused of falling victim to its pacifist impulses or shirking its hard security responsibilities, 60 percent favor additional military support to Ukraine.

At the same time, the EU is finally getting serious about responding to not merely China’s role in helping Russia evade sanctions but the roles played by companies in an array of other countries, including Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, the UAE, and Uzbekistan. Tightening existing sanctions is a critical, long-overdue step toward steadily increasing Russia’s costs. Over time, these efforts are likely to become more robust, and given the structural headwinds facing the Chinese economy, even Beijing may increase compliance so as not to lose access to customers in Europe, North America, and elsewhere.

Admittedly, Russia will continue to benefit from having placed its economy on a war footing, something the West is unlikely to do. However, from Russia’s perspective, a forever war is increasingly unpalatable and perhaps unsustainable for several reasons. First, despite its larger population relative to Ukraine, Russia still faces a significant military manpower challenge, especially if it wants to launch a large offensive. Even as Moscow mulls legal changes that would enable it to force prisoners into military service, that population—just like the Soviet-era tanks Russia has been forced to rely upon – remains finite. Eventually, Moscow will be unable to continue sourcing troops from its prisons. A second mobilization is politically difficult, even for Putin, and would likely result in another mass exodus of draft-age men from the country.

Soon, the Kremlin may confront a personnel challenge of a different sort. Vladimir Putin is no spring chicken. At age 71, and in questionable health, he’s years past the life expectancy for a Russian male born in 1953. The longer the war goes on, the more Putin is likely to think about his own mortality and hence his legacy—and the more likely it is that he could depart this world with a festering border war. That’s quite an unappealing legacy for Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Stalin and somebody who purportedly cares greatly about how history may judge him.

To be clear, Ukraine remains in dire straits. It desperately needs more long-term U.S. military assistance, more training, more troops, and a new strategy. Tragically, many of its soldiers and, increasingly, its civilians will perish as Russia wages its unjustified, immoral war before there’s even a chance of a Ukrainian victory. Nonetheless, if Ukraine can hold out through 2024—and if the United States does its part—Kyiv’s odds of eventual victory may increase, not decrease.

John R. Deni is a research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and an associate fellow at the NATO Defense College. He’s the author of NATO and Article 5 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017). The views expressed are his own.

16. Iran’s elite Quds Force is following former leader's vision of chaos in the Middle East

Excerpts:

To date, Ghaani seems to have successfully navigated the transition between replacing the charismatic figure of Qassem Soleimani and advancing Iran’s interests through Quds Force operations with the full backing of Khameini.

He may never be as revered in Iran as Soleimani, but by managing the Quds Force’s relationship with Axis of Resistance groups, Ghaani has proved to be a formidable and capable adversary who should not be underestimated.

The recent escalation of multifaceted tensions across the Middle East has provided both opportunities and potential pitfalls for Ghaani’s strategy – how to encourage the activities of its Axis of Rrsistance while insulating Iran from any direct blowback from the United States.

But one thing is becoming clear: Reversing the Quds Force’s influence while bolstering U.S. interests is likely to be a top policy priority for Washington as it attempts to manage the developing conflict in the Middle East.

Iran’s elite Quds Force is following former leader's vision of chaos in the Middle East

Esmail Ghaani, who took over when the U.S. killed Qassem Soleimani, has doubled down on the strategy of supporting, arming and funding terrorist and insurgent groups.

BY JAVED ALI

GERALD R. FORD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY

MARCH 4, 2024 03:48 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Javed Ali

Most Americans have likely never heard of Esmail Ghaani, despite his fingerprints being over a slew of recent attacks on U.S. targets.

As the powerful chief of the Quds Force, the unconventional warfare wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Ghaani is charged with overseeing Tehran’s network of allied and proxy groups across the Middle East.

But despite recent media attention following a significant increase in attacks by Quds-backed militants since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel, Ghaani remains a figure who largely shuns the public spotlight.

This is both like and unlike his predecessor Qassem Soleimani, who died in a controversial 2020 U.S. strike in Iraq.

For the first decade of his stint as Quds Force commander, which began in the late 1990s, Soleimani also kept a low profile. But in the years leading up to his death in 2020, he promoted his accomplishments openly on social media.

Soleimani’s loss was seen as a massive blow to the Quds Force and Iran’s national security agenda overall given his popularity in Iran and his achievements, making the task of replacing him daunting. Ghaani had been Soleimani’s deputy, and the two had known each other since the early 1980s during their military service in the Iran-Iraq War.

In the initial aftermath of Soleimani’s death, experts questioned whether Ghaani would be a capable replacement.

But despite differing from Soleimani in both personality and attitude toward publicity, Ghaani has managed to expand upon the foundation that Soleimani carefully cultivated over a 20-year period.

Under Ghaani, the Quds Force has doubled down on the strategy of supporting, arming and funding terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.

Building from Soleimani’s legacy, Ghaani is responsible for developing the network into what Iranian officials call the “Axis of Resistance.”

It is a coalition that cuts across ethnic and religious divides in the region, despite Iran itself remaining a hard-line theocracy with an ethnic Persian and Shia Muslim identity. In cultivating the network, first Soleimani and now Ghaani have displayed a degree of pragmatism and flexibility at odds with the extreme ideological position of Iran’s ruling ayatollahs. And Ghaani, like Soleimani before him, appears to have done this with the full trust and support of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As an expert in national security issues with a focus on counterterrorism, I have observed how the Quds Force’s unconventional warfare strategy has changed the security landscape in the region. It is premised on creating pressure against Iran’s enemies — Israel, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia — through partnering with groups within the axis.

As Quds Force commander, Ghaani has to manage his organization’s relationships with each of these groups. This is made all the more tricky as each maintains its own agendas, decision-making calculations and, at times, independence despite Iran’s influence and largesse.

Take the Quds Force’s relationship with Hamas. Despite the long planning involved with the horrific Hamas attacks in Israel in October 2023, the Quds Force does not appear to have had a direct role.

Not that the assault wasn’t welcomed by Ghaani, in public at least. In late December 2023, he was reported as saying on Iran’s official news agency that, “Due to the extensive crimes committed by the Zionist regime against the Muslim people of Palestine, [Hamas] themselves took action. … Everything they did was beautifully planned and executed.”

With other militant groups in the region, Ghaani appears to have a more hands-on approach. The deadly Jan. 28, 2024, drone attack against a U.S. military outpost in Jordan, launched by the Iraq-based and Iran-supported Islamic Resistance in Iraq network, significantly escalated tensions in the region.

It provoked a significant U.S. and British response in Iraq and Syria. After the incident, it was reported that Ghaani spent considerable effort getting the Iraqi groups responsible to temporarily pause anti-U.S. attacks.

Whether that pause lasts for an extended period or if attacks resume will be a test of Ghaani’s ability to wield his influence in Iraq.

Ghaani’s calculus in regard to Yemen, where the Houthis have emerged as a dangerous insurgent group, looks less clear.

Having been armed throughout a decadelong civil war by Iran, the Houthis responded to Israel’s campaign in the Gaza Strip by launching hundreds of rocket, missile and drone attacks against commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea.

Retaliatory strikes by the U.S. and other coalition members on Houthi targetshave destroyed a significant amount of the capability that Iran had provided. Yet the Houthis seem undeterred and have continued anti-shipping operations.

It is unclear if Ghaani has attempted to dial those operations back or if he has encouraged the Houthis to maintain their pace, given the shared goals between Iran and the Houthis to keep pressure on the United States and Israel.

Beyond Israel, Iraq and Yemen, Ghaani is also likely attempting to manage the Quds Force’s relationship with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, arguably Iran’s strongest partner in the Axis of Resistance. The partnership stretches back to the early 1980s and has transformed Hezbollah into a powerful force in Lebanon and a serious security concern in the region.

Since Oct. 7, the group has engaged in near daily conflict with Israel, with both sides conducting cross-border strikes. Hezbollah’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, seems wary of engaging in a broader war with Israel, but at the same time he has not reined in the attacks and has vowed to retaliate against Israel for the death of civilians in Lebanon.

Although Iran may well welcome Hezbollah becoming a persistent irritant to Israel, Tehran is also wary of a full-blown conflict. In such a scenario, Nasrallah, Ghaani and Supreme Leader Khamenei would have to worry about whether the United States would get directly involved – as, reportedly, the White House had been considering in the days after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Any future statements by Ghaani regarding Hezbollah will be a strong indicator of Iran’s intent in regard to how it sees this volatile aspect of tensions in the Middle East developing.

To date, Ghaani seems to have successfully navigated the transition between replacing the charismatic figure of Qassem Soleimani and advancing Iran’s interests through Quds Force operations with the full backing of Khameini.

He may never be as revered in Iran as Soleimani, but by managing the Quds Force’s relationship with Axis of Resistance groups, Ghaani has proved to be a formidable and capable adversary who should not be underestimated.

The recent escalation of multifaceted tensions across the Middle East has provided both opportunities and potential pitfalls for Ghaani’s strategy – how to encourage the activities of its Axis of Rrsistance while insulating Iran from any direct blowback from the United States.

But one thing is becoming clear: Reversing the Quds Force’s influence while bolstering U.S. interests is likely to be a top policy priority for Washington as it attempts to manage the developing conflict in the Middle East.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

defenseone.com · by Javed Ali

17. Drones are Transforming the Battlefield in Ukraine But in an Evolutionary Fashion

Excerpts:

Because most of the drones in Ukraine are commercially derived systems, the technology has quickly diffused to the enemy and has not provided an enduring advantage to either side. Throughout the war, there have been rapid cycles of adaptation as both sides have learned from each other, adopting tactics and technologies that have been used successfully and developing counters to improve their defenses.

This pattern is likely to continue as the war drags on, but there are steps that can be taken to bolster Ukraine’s drone capabilities and harness its people’s technical ingenuity. First, the United States and Europe should help Ukraine to develop software that would enable semi-autonomous first-person-view drones. Because Russia has been less adept at incorporating commercially derived software into its weapons and operations, do-it-yourself kamikaze drones with autonomous terminal guidance could provide Ukrainian forces with a more durable advantage. Second, the United States and Europe need to help Ukraine to evolve from an artisanal start-up model of production to industrial-scale drone manufacturing, especially for larger kamikaze drones and first-person-view drones. Russia has surpassed Ukraine in the drone fight because of its ability to scale production of small military drones. On a one-for-one basis, Russia’s drones are often inferior to Ukrainian drones, but Russian forces simply have deeper inventories of these critical weapons. Ukraine can and should expand its capacity to produce drones, which will necessitate picking winners and losers and scaling production of the best systems.

Over time, as drones become more autonomous and are more broadly connected with other weapons, they may fundamentally reshape military doctrine and organizations and truly revolutionize warfare. But thus far in Ukraine, drone warfare has been an evolution, not a revolution. It is clear that drones alone will not determine who prevails in this conflict, but they will certainly play a prominent role in the ongoing war in Ukraine and in other battlefields in the future.

Drones are Transforming the Battlefield in Ukraine But in an Evolutionary Fashion - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Stacie Pettyjohn · March 5, 2024

Headlines would lead one to conclude that the age of killer robots has arrived. In Ukraine, autonomous drone swarmssupposedly hunt for enemies and independently decide what to attack. Because Ukraine and Russia are employing many different types of drones, which are omnipresent over the frontlines, some observers have concluded that drones have fundamentally changed the character of war and are the key factor that will decide who prevails in the conflict. In my new Center for a New American Security Report, Evolution Not Revolution: Drone Warfare in Russia’s 2022 Invasion of Ukraine, I conclude the opposite. Drones have not fundamentally altered the character of war and will not determine who wins or loses this war. Nevertheless, drones are changing how Ukrainian and Russian troops fight at a tactical level and will impact all future battlefields.

Drones have indeed transformed the battlefield in Ukraine by providing accessible and affordable capabilities at a scale that did not previously exist. They are making it difficult to concentrate forces, achieve surprise, and conduct offensive operations. While drones are not more survivable than crewed aircraft, they enable greater risk acceptance. Moreover, drones do not have to be survivable if they are cheap and plentiful as they can achieve resiliency by reconstitution. Nevertheless, the overall impact of drones has been more evolutionary than revolutionary. Drones connected to ground-based fires units have made common artillery shells precision weapons. First-person-view kamikaze drones can accurately hit mobile targets, making the frontlines even more lethal. Nevertheless, even large numbers of small drones cannot match the potency or volume of artillery fire and thus cannot substitute for howitzers. Also, while drones provide affordable airpower, they have not replaced traditional air forces, nor have they been able to obtain air superiority. With this in mind, Washington should continue helping Ukraine improve its drone fleet, while being realistic about the impact this will have.

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These Are Not the Drones You Are Looking For

Distinguishing fact from fiction during a war is often difficult, particularly when both sides are actively engaging in information warfare to shape others’ perceptions. The first drone that comes to mind for many when they think about the war in Ukraine is much-hyped Turkish built Bayraktar TB2, which was active in the first days and weeks of the war and helped to repel Russia’s initial attack. Yet overall, medium-altitude long-endurance drones, like the TB2 or the Russian Orion, have not played a large role in this war. Turkish propaganda portrayed the TB2 as a fantastic weapon that could evade even advanced air defenses and was affordable. In reality, however, once Russia relaxed the rules of engagement for its surface-to-air missiles most of the TB2s were quickly shot down and they essentially disappeared from the battlefield.

While large reusable military drones are rarely employed in this war, Ukrainian and Russian ground forces are making extensive use of smaller military and commercial or do-it-yourself drones. Military intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance drones, such as the Ukrainian Furia or Flyeye or the Russian Orlan-10 or ZALA 421 variant, are more capable and costly than most of their commercial counterparts and thus are usually commanded by larger units, like battalions. As seen Figures 1 and 2, these military drones fly farther, can stay aloft longer, and using their sophisticated sensors offer persistent surveillance.

In contrast, small commercial quadcopters, which only cost a few thousand dollars, are ubiquitous, but have shorter ranges and limited battery life as seen in Figure 3. Commercial drones are providing intelligence to frontline soldiersabout the battlespace that previously was only available to higher headquarters. Thus, no Ukrainian or Russian unit would try to maneuver or launch an assault without at least one small commercial drone to scout and provide real-time information on the disposition of nearby enemy and friendly forces. Because Russian and Ukrainian ground units at every echelon have multiple commercial drones in their inventory, the skies above the front lines are blackened with small quadcopters.

The net effect of many small military and commercial drones on the war is to make the defense dominant and the frontlines extremely lethal. Consequently, it is difficult for Ukrainian and Russian forces to move or mass, and thus to achieve tactical surprise or to go on the offensive. But, as Franz Stefan-Gady has explained, offensive operations are still feasible if one side takes advantage of environmental factors that inhibit drone operations. The frontlines in Ukraine are not impenetrable or completely transparent, but drones are forcing troops to disperse and conceal themselves, which has overall made it harder to maneuver and attack.

The accessibility and affordability of drones is creating new capabilities at a scale that previously did not exist, but it is not drones alone that are transforming the battlefield. Instead as Mick Ryan and Clint Hinote have argued it is the combination of large numbers of weapons systems linked together that is truly disruptive. In Ukraine, the dominant pairing has been unarmed drones and artillery, which have accelerated targeting timelines and enabled responsive and precise ground-based fires. As Jeffrey Edmonds and Samuel Bendett have highlighted, drones are the key links in what Russia calls its reconnaissance-strike complex, or the network of forces that conduct targeting for artillery units. As artillery firepower has been the dominant weapon of this war, drones have played a critical enabling role as spotters that acquire targets and help to adjust fires by communicating targeting information using virtual battle networks, such as Kropyva and Strelets, to fires units. Oftentimes, it is multiple drones operating in stacks in the same airspace that perform different roles, creating a highly distributed and resilient kill chain. One high-flying drone initially identifies the potential target and then sends in a cheaper smaller drone to verify that it is an enemy formation worth engaging. A third drone acquires the targeting quality data and passes it to the howitzers that then fire. The same drone responsible for targeting or another small drone may assess if the target was destroyed and if not help to adjust the aimpoint. In this way, drone spotters enable imprecise indirect fire weapons to have precision effects.

The Rise of the Kamikaze and Do-It-Yourself First-Person-View Drones

Additionally, in the last year kamikaze drones or loitering munitions have provided a precision-strike capability, especially when paired with unarmed drones and artillery. Kamikaze drones are one-way systems that crash into their targets and are more akin to a munition than an aircraft that is supposed to fly many sorties. Military-grade kamikaze drones, such as the Ukrainian Switchblade 600 or Russian Lancet-3, have become the preferred weapon for counterbattery fire. When an unarmed drone, such as a Puma or Orlan-10, finds an enemy artillery unit, a kamikaze drone is then launched to destroy the gun or radar. Thus, military kamikaze drones and surveillance drones are a key factor in determining who wins an artillery duel.

In the last six months, do-it-yourself first-person-view kamikaze drones flown by operators wearing goggles have proliferated. Ukraine was the first to assemble these cheap weapons from commercial racing drones, but Russia was a fast follower and its production of first-person-view drones now outstrips that of Ukraine. At approximately $400 each, do-it-yourself kamikaze drones cost a fraction of other weapons and allow soldiers to attack moving targets beyond their line of sight. First-person-view drones offer cheap precision anti-personnel and anti-tank capabilities, but they remain tactical weapons with limited range, even with the help of drone communications relays. Typically, these racing drones operate with unarmed surveillance drones that have more endurance and thus can find the targets, conduct battle damage assessment, and direct the fast-flying kamikaze towards the target before its battery dies.

First-person-view kamikazes were an unexpected development fueled by commercial technologies that have disrupted the battlefield because they are so cheap and thus abundant. Yet do-it-yourself drones by themselves are not substitutes for existing weapons systems. These kamikaze drones have significant limitations and are most effective when operating with unarmed drones and artillery. While first-person-view drones have a longer range than most anti-tank weapons, they carry smaller payloads than the American Javelin. Typically, first-person-view drones disable or achieve a mobility kill against tanks vice destroying the vehicle with one strike. Once a tank has been immobilized, it then is destroyed by artillery fire or follow-on kamikaze attacks that focus on weak points, such as the gas tank or the rear of the turret, which if pierced are likely to cause a larger explosion that can destroy the vehicle. These tactics employing first-person-view drones, surveillance drones, and artillery have proven very effective and, as Michael Kofman and Rob Lee have noted, forced forces near the frontlines to eschew the use of vehicles in favor of distributed dismounted maneuver and assaults. Do-it-yourself kamikaze drones, therefore, are an effective complement to existing weapons that can help to conserve scarce artillery ammunition and supplement offensive firepower on the frontlines.

Importantly, even large numbers of small do-it-yourself kamikazes cannot match the potency of artillery fire. Artillery shells pack a bigger explosive punch and can be rapidly fired in large salvos. Howitzers also can provide sustained fires at a slower but continuous rate. The basic U.S. 155mm shell, for example, contains almost 24 pounds of explosive compared to the three pounds carried by a first-person-view drone. Large kamikaze attacks consisting of many first-person-view kamikazes currently are limited in size due to electronic interference and because each drone must be individually controlled and actions between drones manually coordinated. Thus, first-person-view drones cannot currently produce the volume of fires of artillery salvos.

Moreover, racing drone attacks are limited by the need for very skilled pilots. Because first-person-view drones are not fire-and-forget weapons, they require an operator with the acuity to quickly identify weak points on a target and the physical dexterity to guide the kamikaze into the exposed point. Unlike basic commercial quadcopters, not everyone can acquire these skills. Moreover, even those who have the core capabilities need weeks if not months of training to become truly proficient.

The fact that first-person-view drones remain tethered to their human pilot is also a liability on the battlefield. While racing drones are difficult to physically intercept, they can be stopped by jamming the control link. Ukrainian developers have been working on creating software that enables the first-person-view drone to lock onto its target and complete its kamikaze mission even if the control link is cut. This would be a notable breakthrough that could negate one of the most effective defenses against first-person-view drones and potentially reduce the amount of skill that is needed to pilot them. In other words, if this breakthrough were to occur, it might overcome training bottlenecks and enable do-it-yourself kamikaze drones to scale more effectively. Yet the use of artificial intelligence and autonomy in the Ukraine war is another topic that is often misunderstood.

Armies of Drones Tethered to Humans

Despite many headlines about autonomous Russian and Ukrainian drones, discussions about artificial intelligence and autonomy generally lack precision and as a result create false impressions about the level and type of autonomy that exists on the battlefield. The vast majority of drones in the war in Ukraine are remotely piloted and humans not machines remain the interface that manually coordinates the actions of multiple drones. Thus, there are no true drone swarms or cooperative autonomy. Drones usually operate together in stacks with pilots communicating via text chat in a virtual battle network or via cell phones. As Jack Watling has highlighted, uncrewed weapons are still people-centric. Similarly, Stefan-Gady has observed that Ukrainian assault squads have nearly the same number of drone operators as infantrymen. Each drone usually has two human operators, one who is focused on navigation and communications and the other to steer the aircraft. Even though most drones remain piloted by humans, limited forms of autonomy abound. For instance, many military and commercial drones autonomously perform mundane but important tasks, such as automatic take-off and landing, and have collision-avoidance software built in.

These types of autonomous capabilities are critical but are a far cry from the fully autonomous drones that independently make decisions about who, what, and when to kill. According to Paul Scharre, the author of Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War and Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, fully autonomous weapons “are defined by the ability to complete the engagement cycle—searching for, deciding to engage, and engaging targets—on their own.” Ascertaining whether a weapon autonomously makes decisions about life and death is particularly challenging because it is unobservable except to the drone operator. A drone dropping a bomb or crashing into the target looks the same whether it was remotely controlled with an operator selecting the target and deciding when to engage it or if the drone had the capability to autonomously identify targets and to strike them independently. Oftentimes, as was the case with the Russian Lancet-3 kamikaze drone, one discovers that a weapon’s manufacturer has exaggerated the capabilities of the system, which does not have the level of autonomous capability promised or perform as expected.

Other times, the degree of autonomy is circumscribed, and the drone has a form of narrowly bounded autonomy that is common in other types of weapons. The type of autonomy that Ukraine is trying to develop for its first-person-view kamikaze drones is an example of this. For its do-it-yourself kamikaze drones, Ukrainians are building software to autonomously perform object recognition and navigation. These capabilities already exist in military kamikaze drones like the Switchblade 300 or other homing weapons like the Javelin or the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile. The human selects the target and then the weapon automatically guides itself to the identified target. Fire-and-forget terminal guidance is tightly bound in time and space and should not be feared. If the Ukrainians can develop this type of software cheaply using commercially available systems, it would be another major step in the democratization of precision strike, but not a fully autonomous killer robot.

There are signs that Ukraine and Russia are working on developing fully autonomous drones, but these have not been widely fielded — likely because they are not yet effective. The Ukrainian Saker Scout drone supposedly has object recognition capability and aspires to be able to act fully autonomously. David Hambling reports that the Saker Scout can identify 64 different targets and that it has been used in a fully autonomous attack. Yet today fully autonomous drones seem to be an exception rather than the norm in Ukraine, which suggests that the fully autonomous systems are very expensive or do not work as promised. In all likelihood, it is the latter. Object recognition is easier in uncluttered environments, like the air or sea, but much more difficult on the ground when an enemy is trying to hide. On the frontlines in Ukraine, where there is little standardization in terms of equipment, it would be particularly difficult to develop a fully autonomous system that could recognize all of the different variations of military equipment that was also trusted by its users. As artificial intelligence matures, fully autonomous drones may be fielded in the future. But it would likely be a more incremental process that keeps a human in or on the loop and allows soldiers to refine and develop trust in the system. For instance, an unarmed drone tasked with target acquisition may use artificial intelligence to identify targets that can then be verified by a human and engaged by an armed drone.

In sum, many drones in Ukraine have different types of limited autonomous capabilities and Ukraine may be close to creating semi-autonomous first-person-view drones, but there are few if any fully autonomous drones in this war. Given the rate at which artificial intelligence is developing and the pace of innovation on the battlefield, this could change in the next year or two, especially since fully autonomous drones could provide important tactical advantages.

Evolution in Military Affairs

Individually all of these drone innovations are notable advancements, but even cumulatively they do not add up to a revolution. According to Andrew Krepinevich, revolutions in military affairs must “fundamentally alte[r] the character and conduct of a conflict” by “producing a dramatic increase—often an order of magnitude or greater—in the combat potential and military effectiveness of armed forces.” Revolutions in military affairs are so disruptive that they render old weapons, ways of fighting, and organizational constructs obsolete. Thus, revolutions require more than widespread adoption of new technologies. Additionally, militaries must develop new operational concepts, integrate new capabilities into broader military systems, and adapt their organizational culture and structure. Not surprisingly, this wholesale sort of change takes time. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently announced the creation of a separate Ukrainian drone service, which could be the harbinger of a revolution. Yet this is far from certain. Because drones in the Ukraine war have been most effective when they are combined with other capabilities, creating a separate service could create more barriers to effectively integrating drones with other weapons. In many ways this is an academic debate about what constitutes a revolution in military affairs, which is irrelevant to the larger point that the accessibility and affordability of military drones and cheap commercial drones are profoundly changing warfare at a tactical level in Ukraine. But it is important not to exaggerate the impact of any one technology or weapons system because there is no one technological silver bullet that will win this conflict for Ukraine.

Because most of the drones in Ukraine are commercially derived systems, the technology has quickly diffused to the enemy and has not provided an enduring advantage to either side. Throughout the war, there have been rapid cycles of adaptation as both sides have learned from each other, adopting tactics and technologies that have been used successfully and developing counters to improve their defenses.

This pattern is likely to continue as the war drags on, but there are steps that can be taken to bolster Ukraine’s drone capabilities and harness its people’s technical ingenuity. First, the United States and Europe should help Ukraine to develop software that would enable semi-autonomous first-person-view drones. Because Russia has been less adept at incorporating commercially derived software into its weapons and operations, do-it-yourself kamikaze drones with autonomous terminal guidance could provide Ukrainian forces with a more durable advantage. Second, the United States and Europe need to help Ukraine to evolve from an artisanal start-up model of production to industrial-scale drone manufacturing, especially for larger kamikaze drones and first-person-view drones. Russia has surpassed Ukraine in the drone fight because of its ability to scale production of small military drones. On a one-for-one basis, Russia’s drones are often inferior to Ukrainian drones, but Russian forces simply have deeper inventories of these critical weapons. Ukraine can and should expand its capacity to produce drones, which will necessitate picking winners and losers and scaling production of the best systems.

Over time, as drones become more autonomous and are more broadly connected with other weapons, they may fundamentally reshape military doctrine and organizations and truly revolutionize warfare. But thus far in Ukraine, drone warfare has been an evolution, not a revolution. It is clear that drones alone will not determine who prevails in this conflict, but they will certainly play a prominent role in the ongoing war in Ukraine and in other battlefields in the future.

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Stacie Pettyjohn is a senior fellow and director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Stacie Pettyjohn · March 5, 2024

18. A Russian Dissident’s Remarkable Courtroom Speech

Russia has a long history of inspirational dissidents.

What if Russia had a government and leaders who embraced the philosophies of these dissidents? 

A Russian Dissident’s Remarkable Courtroom Speech

‘We Are Being Punished for Daring to Criticize the Authority’

Following a grim tradition, a brave Russian human-rights advocate speaks out before being sent to prison.

By Anne Applebaum

The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · March 3, 2024

Oleg Orlov began his career by protesting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. At about the same time, he joined Memorial, Russia’s first and most important historical and human-rights organization—in Russia, the two subjects are organically connected—while it was still an underground, dissident operation. In the 1990s, Memorial emerged into the open and began publishing books detailing the mass arrests and murders committed by the Soviet Union. During the decade I spent researching the history of the Soviet Gulag, I ran into Memorial historians and activists all over Russia, including in their one-person “office” in Syktyvkar and in the spectacular museum, now dismantled, that they built on the site of a former concentration camp near Perm.

Anne Applebaum: Russia has a new Gulag

Memorial is dedicated both to revealing the truth about the past and preventing that past from repeating itself in the future. Its activists work in archives, but they also monitor human-rights violations in modern Russia. Orlov, who became Memorial’s co-chairman, worked especially hard to expose the horrors of Russia’s wars in Chechnya, and the cultural and political destruction that followed. He did so because he wanted to live in a different kind of Russia. Now he will pay a high price for his patriotism.

On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the regime shut down Memorial, after 30 years of operation. The same regime arrested Orlov, who had criticized the invasion with the same unsparing language he had used for the previous four decades. “This brutal war,” he wrote in an article, is “not only mass murder of people and destruction of the infrastructure, economy, and cultural sites” of Ukraine, but also “a severe blow to the future of Russia,” a country that “is now pushed back into totalitarianism, but this time into a fascist totalitarianism.” Like Alexei Navalny, whose funeral took place in Moscow Friday, Orlov was extraordinarily brave—brave enough to publish his criticism of the war, of President Vladimir Putin, and of Putin’s regime.

Anne Applebaum: Why Russia killed Navalny

On February 27, Orlov received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for “discrediting the Russian army.” Following in a long tradition of Soviet dissidents before him, Orlov made a courtroom speech, addressed to those in the room and beyond. Joseph Brodsky, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature, sparred in 1964 with a Soviet judge who asked him by what right he dared state “poet” as his occupation: “Who ranked you among poets?” Brodsky replied, “No one. Who ranked me as a member of the human race?” That exchange circulated throughout the Soviet Union in handwritten and retyped versions, teaching an earlier generation about bravery and civic courage.

Orlov’s speech will also be reprinted and reread, and someday it will have the same impact too. Here are excerpts, translated by one of his colleagues:

On the first day of my trial, terrible news shocked Russia and the entire world: Alexey Navalny was dead. I, too, was in shock. At first, I even wanted to give up on making a final statement. Who cares about words today, when we have not recovered from the shock of this news? But then I thought: These are all links in the same chain. Alexey’s death or, rather, murder; the trials of other critics of the regime including myself; the suffocation of freedom in the country; the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army. So I have decided to speak.

I have not committed any crime. I am being tried for writing a newspaper article that described the political regime in Russia as totalitarian and fascist. I wrote this article over a year ago. Some of my acquaintances thought back then that I had exaggerated the gravity of the situation.

Now, however, it is clear that I did not exaggerate. The government in our country not only controls all public, political, and economic life, but also aspires to exert control over culture and scientific thought … There isn’t a sphere of art where free artistic expression is possible, there are no free academic humanitarian sciences, and there is no more private life either.

Read: How I lost the Russia that never was

Orlov continued by reflecting on the absurdity of his case, of the legalistic rigamarole in Russia that conceals the regime’s lawlessness. In fact, the law is whatever Putin dictates. Everything else, the lawyers, prosecutors, and judges, are just there for show, to pretend that there is rule of law when there is not.

Let me now speak about my current trial. When it began, I refused to participate. Thanks to that, I had the opportunity to reread The Trial, a novel by Franz Kafka, during the court sessions. The current situation in our country has a lot in common with the world that Kafka’s protagonist inhabits in the book. We live with the same absurdity and arbitrariness, camouflaged by a formal adherence to some pseudo-legal procedures.

Here we are accused of “discrediting the military,” but no one explains what this means or how it differs from legitimate criticism. We are accused of “spreading deliberately false information” without anyone bothering to prove that it is indeed false. The Soviet regime used exactly the same methods when it branded any criticism as lies. Our attempts to prove the veracity of this information are punished as crimes … We are being given prison sentences for doubting that aggression against a neighboring country is being carried out for the sake of international peace and security.

This is absurd.

Kafka’s hero has no idea, until the end of the novel, of the nature of the accusation against him. He is ruled guilty and executed anyway. In Russia, the accusation is formally announced, but it is impossible to understand it within the framework of law and logic. Unlike Kafka’s hero, we do understand why we are being detained, arrested, sentenced, or killed: We are being punished for daring to criticize the authority. That is completely banned in modern Russia.

Orlov listed a few of the thousands of Russians who have been detained for criticizing the Russian government and the war, and then continued:

In recent days, they have grabbed, punished, and even imprisoned people only for coming to memorials to victims of political purges to pay tribute to the murdered Alexey Navalny, a remarkable man, brave and honest. He never lost optimism and faith in our country’s future even in the extremely hard conditions that had been set up especially for him.

The authorities are fighting against Navalny even when he is dead; they are afraid of him even after his death, and they are right to be afraid. They are destroying people’s memorials to his memory. They do this because they hope to demoralize that part of the Russian society that still takes responsibility for their country. This is a false hope.

We remember Alexey’s appeal: “Don’t give up.” I will add to this: Don’t lose your spirits, don’t lose your optimism. The truth is on our side. Those who have led our country into this hole represent the old, the frail, the outdated. They do not clearly see the future, only false images from the past, mirages of “imperial grandeur.”

Read: Who is Vladimir Putin’s revisionist history for?

Finally, Orlov addressed the court itself, the government officials and clerks, the judges, and the prosecutors. Of course, he knows, as any student of Soviet history knows, that a single dictator cannot enforce an authoritarian regime by himself. Thousands of collaborators are required. Orlov’s last words were for them.

Not all of you believed in this repressive system, of course. You sometimes regret that you are forced to participate in all of this. But you tell yourself: And what can I do? I am only following the instructions from my superiors. The law is the law.

I am speaking to you, your honor, and the others accusing me: Are you yourselves not afraid? Are you not afraid to watch what our country is becoming, our country that you, too, probably love? Are you not afraid that not only you, but also your children and, God forbid, your grandchildren, will have to live in this absurdity, this dystopia?

Do you not acknowledge the obvious truth, that the repressive machine will sooner or later also flatten those who launched it and promoted it? This has happened many times in history …

I am not completely sure that those who have created and implemented Russia’s illegal, anti-constitutional “laws” will face judicial persecution. But the punishment will definitely come. Your children or grandchildren will be ashamed to talk about the work and the deeds of their fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers. The same will happen to those now committing crimes in the Ukraine. This, I think, is the most terrible punishment. And it is inevitable …

I regret nothing.

The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · March 3, 2024

19. The Army and the Fortress Fleet: Reimagining Landpower in Maritime Warfare

Excerpts:

Moving beyond the technical and the tactical, the evolved fortress fleet would likewise have concrete strategic effect on national and coalition interests. Representing an extension and evolution of the fleet-in-being concept, where the very existence of premier naval power affects adversary calculus, the development of twenty-first-century coastal forts would assure allies of American political resolve and signal coalition reliability in expeditionary theaters. Similarly, and equally valuable, the long-term military investment in forward areas would deter adversaries by constructing reciprocal antiaccess architectures that not only dramatically raise the cost of territorial aggrandizement, but also counter malign informational designs by presenting visible and credible intent to defend national interests.

Looking toward an uncertain future, and echoing the success of the Ukrainian army in thwarting the Russian navy in the Black Sea theater, the fortress fleet concept can redefine the interplay of landpower, airpower, and seapower in maritime conflict. Seeking to fulfill the US military’s mandate to, as described in the 2022 US National Security Strategy, employ “integrated deterrence” to “shape adversary perceptions of risks and costs of action against core U.S. interests,” a revolutionized commitment by the Army to deny enemy access, safeguard national interests, and enable naval position and maneuver in competitive maritime environments promises to enhance, and potentially even transform, the projection of joint seapower. This reimagined contribution, representing just the next iteration in the ever-changing character of warfare, may provide a critical, and even vital, military capability for the American republic to compete and win in the twenty-first century.

The Army and the Fortress Fleet: Reimagining Landpower in Maritime Warfare - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Nathan Jennings · March 5, 2024

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On the evening of April 13, 2022, two Neptune antiship missiles streaked out from the northern coastline of the Black Sea to fatally strike the Russian cruiser Moskva. The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet sustained heavy damage and sank the next day as it attempted to return to Sevastopol in Crimea, becoming the largest warship to be sunk in wartime since World War II. This event, which represented a cross-domain solution to an asymmetric disadvantage, immediately transformed the maritime complexion of the Russo-Ukraine War. While anecdotal, the Ukrainian army’s successful attack demonstrated how ground forces equipped with long-range strike systems have unrealized potential to impact, and potentially transform, fundamental aspects of joint warfare.

This episode suggests that warfare may be evolving in ways that are empowering ground forces to more decisively influence tactics and strategy in maritime environments. For the US Army, in particular, it means that modernization of an older idea called the fortress fleet concept could allow novel contributions to joint and coalition seapower. Defined by naval strategist James R. Holmes as an approach where ground forces employ “long-range precision-guided weaponry” to “clear adversaries from a massive offshore zone,” the concept, echoing the Ukrainian army’s attack on the Russian navy, employs an array of artillery, missiles, drones, electronic warfare, and amphibious assault measures across both mobile platforms and hardened facilities to deny adversary access while enabling power projection.

Once disdained by naval theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan for limiting naval freedom of action and distracting from massive fleet battles, the dramatic expansion of long-range strike by land-based batteries with advanced detection and targeting mechanisms invites reconsideration of a fortress fleet strategy. This more robust approach to maritime affairs would allow the Army, as mandated in its capstone doctrine, to better “support joint defeat of enemy integrated air defenses, fires and strike complexes, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and integrated C2 networks to enable success.” It would enable, if optimized for the coastal mission, the landpower institution to protect maritime decisive points and forward basing while ultimately facilitating survivable naval offensive maneuvers at a larger scope and scale.

Fortress Fleet Concept

Coastal fortresses have long been an important component of naval warfare by providing fortified positions to protect military access and national interests in contested maritime spaces. With the long-standing British bastion at Gibraltar, the robust Russian defenses at Kaliningrad, and the sprawling harbor complex at Manila Bay in the Philippines representing notable historical examples, the construction of strategically located coastal forts bristling with cannon represented an important, and highly technical, field of expertise for the artillery and engineering branches of nation-state armies. In many ways, these imposing coastal fortresses came to serve as symbols of dynastic and national power for both domestic and foreign audiences while creating obstacles for adversary designs.

However, given the relatively short ranges of cannon and rocket artillery in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, as well as the expense of constructing and manning large fort complexes, some theorists cautioned against over investing in fortress-centric naval strategies. Criticized by Mahan as a “radically erroneous” idea, the preeminent naval strategist of his time argued that such an approach would lead to a defensive mentality that could only limit the offensive spirit of a battle fleet and result in dispersal of warships along extended coastlines. This criticism, which he illustrated with a biting critique of the Imperial Russian Navy in the Russo-Japanese War, sought to minimize the role of coastal fortifications in favor of decisive fleet engagements, merchant marine harassment, and the eventual strangulation of an economic blockade.

This assessment, and the context of joint warfare in maritime settings, changed dramatically with the advent of both carrier and ground-based aviation in World War II. While coastal artillery remained mostly limited in range to line-of-sight targeting from fixed points, maneuvering fleets and forward island airfields assumed outsized importance in both the Japanese centrifugal offensive of 1941–1942 as well as the subsequent American campaign to liberate the archipelagos of the Western Pacific. Called “unsinkable carriers” due to their depth, resiliency, and durability, forward airfields, in particular, allowed Army Air Forces fighter, bomber, and surveillance aircraft to exercise unprecedented operational reach with an intensity and endurance that naval aviation could not hope to match.

Enabling Joint Seapower

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and a new generation of ground-based detection and strike technologies are threatening to transform the very character of maritime warfare. With the dramatic sinking of the Moskva serving as a harbinger of future trends, the Army has an emergent opportunity to reimagine the fortress fleet concept by building out fortified positions at locations that hold critical value to American and coalition interests. Seeking to neither replace nor displace the traditional roles of the US Navy and US Marine Corps, America’s primary landpower institution could rather invest in twenty-first-century coastal fort complexes in forward areas that mitigate vulnerabilities and amplify strengths in order to enable joint protection and maneuver in increasingly lethal maritime environments.

This evolved approach centers on the age-old role of coastal forts in both antiaccess and protection operations, which continues to be a primary responsibility for Army forces in littoral settings. With dramatically increased missile ranges, a panoply of drone innovations (aerial, surface, and subsurface), and advances in active defense systems currently redefining relationships between fire and maneuver, ground forces can employ a variety of traditional and new targeting arrays to both safeguard forward ports for naval resupply and deny adversary interdiction in troubled regions such as the South China Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Persian Gulf. These cross-domain fires, when integrated with physical fortifications, electronic countermeasures, combined arms ground assault, and expanded logistical capacity, offer more effective options to safeguard power projection in support of US joint efforts.

A revitalized fortress fleet concept leverages the Army’s potential to enable decisive naval maneuver within range of adversary systems. With the centerpiece of the US battlefleet, the vaunted aircraft carrier, now under threat from an emerging array of antiship missiles and further threatened by the ominous onset of hypersonic missiles and advances in drone technologies, land-based batteries have a unique potential to employ superior magazine depth, higher volume of fire, and densities of drone swarms. Increased Army contributions would provide expanded endurance to absorb and recover from strikes in order to provide, as required by Army multidomain operations doctrine, “windows of opportunity” for potentially vulnerable warships to aggressively move into contested seascapes and deliver devastating strike packages.

Taking this idea further, a joint fortress fleet concept could also enable the US Marine Corps to better execute its new expeditionary advanced base operations concept with a lighter and more agile force design. With the Army providing an assured forward base of operations, expanded volumes of fire and counter-fire, and critical aspects of maritime air defense, deployed Marine forces could enjoy greater access and survivability for amphibious assaults that may be challenged by adversary precision fires. Similar to the opportunities that could be afforded to the Navy, the Army’s unmatched capacities for fires, logistics, electronic warfare, hardened construction, and, perhaps most important, formation reconstitution, would open fleeting vectors for Marine air-ground teams to execute amphibious maneuver and seize key terrain.

This evolved approach, as a joint concept, would essentially comprise a hammer-and-anvil solution to the acute maritime access threat posed by peer competitors such as China and Russia while securing forward positions prior to the commencement of armed conflict. With the fortress fleet providing the baseline to assure protected access and defendable positions in competitive spaces, the traditional maritime services would benefit from emergent opportunities to attack, or at least threaten, fatal points of enemy vulnerability. This approach, seeking to evolve rather than reinvent joint seapower, could increase US military capability to inflict attritional exhaustion over time or catalyze systemic collapse with decisive assault in noncontiguous maritime settings.

Fortress Fleet Strategy

The famed British admiral Horatio Nelson once reportedly quipped, “a ship’s a fool to fight a fort”—a reference to the conditional advantages that nineteenth-century coastal batteries held over their warship counterparts due to superior elevation, larger gun calibers, deeper magazine depth, and capacity to repair battle damage. While the rise of attack aviation upended that notion in the twentieth century, the sudden onset of long-range detection and missile strike has created new dynamics that may empower the once-derided fortress fleet concept. While general fleet actions such as the epic Battle of Midway in 1942 seem improbable given the US Navy’s blue-water primacy, more complicated engagements in proximity to littoral or archipelago landscapes are much more likely to occur, with unpredictable results.

This is because, similar to the dizzying transformation of airpower during World War I, a new generation of precision reconnaissance-strike technologies are changing how militaries conceptualize lethality and survivability. With the recent Nagorno-Karabakh and Russo-Ukraine Wars already demonstrating how missiles, drones, and ubiquitous surveillance have challenged ground offensives, the fate of the Moskva portends similarly disruptive results for naval and amphibious maneuver across contested seascapes. In future maritime combat, this will likely become only more complicated as land forces project a panoply of technologies that include next-generation interceptors, autonomous systems, synchronized drone swarms, artificially intelligent targeting, and new arrays of cyber and space capabilities from behind fortified bastions.

Moving beyond the technical and the tactical, the evolved fortress fleet would likewise have concrete strategic effect on national and coalition interests. Representing an extension and evolution of the fleet-in-being concept, where the very existence of premier naval power affects adversary calculus, the development of twenty-first-century coastal forts would assure allies of American political resolve and signal coalition reliability in expeditionary theaters. Similarly, and equally valuable, the long-term military investment in forward areas would deter adversaries by constructing reciprocal antiaccess architectures that not only dramatically raise the cost of territorial aggrandizement, but also counter malign informational designs by presenting visible and credible intent to defend national interests.

Looking toward an uncertain future, and echoing the success of the Ukrainian army in thwarting the Russian navy in the Black Sea theater, the fortress fleet concept can redefine the interplay of landpower, airpower, and seapower in maritime conflict. Seeking to fulfill the US military’s mandate to, as described in the 2022 US National Security Strategy, employ “integrated deterrence” to “shape adversary perceptions of risks and costs of action against core U.S. interests,” a revolutionized commitment by the Army to deny enemy access, safeguard national interests, and enable naval position and maneuver in competitive maritime environments promises to enhance, and potentially even transform, the projection of joint seapower. This reimagined contribution, representing just the next iteration in the ever-changing character of warfare, may provide a critical, and even vital, military capability for the American republic to compete and win in the twenty-first century.

Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jennings, PhD, is an associate professor and Army strategist at the US Army Command and General Staff College.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Maj. Robert Fellingham, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Nathan Jennings · March 5, 2024

20. How to Pave the Way for Diplomacy to End the War in Ukraine

Excerpts:

Adjusting Western officials’ rhetorical emphasis in public statements would be a modest but important signal. For example, officials could restate their openness to conditional sanctions relief as part of a negotiated outcome to the war. But talk is cheap and Moscow will likely not believe it. Therefore, the United States and the European Union should also consider appointing special representatives for conflict diplomacy. Even though these officials would spend months engaging with allies and Kyiv before talks with Moscow are even considered, the appointments themselves would signal to Russia that the United States and Europe are prepared to engage in eventual negotiations.

Kyiv and Moscow have more opportunities for signaling, because they are the belligerents. Moscow, especially, needs to find ways to signal; Russia should indicate that its war aims are limited, that it is prepared to negotiate an end to the war, and that it will abide by the terms of a settlement. In addition to appointing a diplomatic point person to serve as a counterpart to the new U.S. and EU representatives, Moscow could suspend strikes on Ukrainian cities, indicate a willingness to enact an all-for-all prisoner-of-war swap, and cease its inflammatory rhetoric about the Ukrainian leadership.

Kyiv, in turn, could soften the September 2022 presidential decree that established “the impossibility of conducting negotiations with the President of the Russian Federation, V. Putin.” Kyiv could clarify that the decree applies only to the Russian president and not to other representatives of the Russian government. And if Moscow stopped striking nonmilitary targets in Ukraine, Kyiv could reciprocate by ceasing strikes it has been conducting in Russia.

These proposed efforts—talking about talking among allies and with Kyiv, and signaling to Moscow—would not represent a change in policy. They do not even represent a move to start negotiations. Rather, they would merely begin what is likely to be a long process of moving toward eventual talks. Getting to the table will not be easy, but the alternative is an endless, grinding war that no side claims to want and both sides lose by continuing to fight.

How to Pave the Way for Diplomacy to End the War in Ukraine

No Negotiations Yet—but It’s Time to Talk About Talking

By Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro

March 5, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro · March 5, 2024

Ukraine and its Western backers have precious little common ground with Russia. Yet all the key players seem to agree on one critical issue: the war in Ukraine will end in negotiations. As Russian President Vladimir Putin told the conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson in a recent interview: “We are willing to negotiate.” A spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, while casting doubt on Putin’s sincerity, retorted in a statement that “both we and President Zelensky have said numerous times that we believe this war will end through negotiations.” The absence of decisive battlefield outcomes over the past two years have made the alternative to a negotiated end (one side’s absolute victory) seem like a fantasy.

Despite the absence of a viable alternative to eventual talks, there is no sign that the belligerents will start negotiations any time soon. Both sides believe that reaching an acceptable deal is currently impossible; each fears that the other won’t compromise or will use any pause to rest and refit for the next round of fighting.

Even if a deal is presently out of the question, all parties should take steps now to bring about the possibility of talks in the future. In the middle of a war, it is hard to know whether an adversary is genuinely ready to end the fighting or cynically talks of peace only to further the aims of war. The challenge of discerning an adversary’s intentions is nearly impossible in the absence of dialogue. Therefore, it is necessary to open channels of communication so as to be in a position to take advantage of the opportunity to pursue peace when that opportunity comes.

It is time to begin to build those channels. For Ukraine and its Western partners, that means “talking about talking,” or making conflict diplomacy a key subject of bilateral and multilateral interactions. And all parties should signal their openness to eventual negotiations. This will require the warring parties and their allies to take unilateral steps that convey their intentions to the other side. Such signals might include changes in rhetoric, the appointment of special envoys for negotiations, self-imposed limitations on deep strikes, and prisoner-of-war swaps.

If neither side begins this process, the warring parties will likely remain stuck where they are today—fiercely battling over inches of territory, at a terrible cost to human life and regional stability, for years to come.

AN UNTESTED PROPOSITION

Mutual mistrust makes it hard to take the first step toward the negotiating table. The West sees Moscow as a font of propaganda and lies, so addicted to untruths that it lies even to itself. Nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than the official rhetoric in the run-up to the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which numerous Russian representatives publicly and privately swore, and seemingly believed, would not happen. Moscow similarly sees the last 30 years as a series of broken Western promises. The prime example is the seemingly inexorable march of NATO enlargement, which numerous Western officials in the 1990s said, and seemingly believed, would not happen. Ukraine and Russia had a long history of mutual accusations of broken promises even before Moscow annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbas in 2014. After February 2022, trust became impossible.

Yet mutual mistrust between belligerents is a feature of every war, and thus of every negotiation that ended those wars. If trust were a prerequisite for communicating, belligerents would never start talking. The parties can and should begin talking despite their mutual mistrust.

But in this case mistrust is compounded by pervasive assumptions of maximalist intentions. Kyiv believes that Moscow is still seeking to install a puppet government in Ukraine and will use any respite in the fighting to gather strength before opportunistically resuming the battle. Russia, as Putin recently noted, sees the West as intent on using Ukraine as an instrument to ensure Russia’s “strategic defeat.” If an adversary’s objectives are truly maximalist, one faces a simple choice between capitulation and continuing to fight. As a result, both sides appear resigned to the inevitability of a long, hugely destructive war that both claim not to want.

It is possible that each side is right about the other’s maximalist goals. But neither side can know for sure without talking. In the absence of a channel of communication, any proposition about the other side’s true intentions is an untested one.

Not testing this proposition comes at a very high cost. The war of attrition is killing enormous numbers of soldiers and civilians and grinding up military and financial resources. U.S. officials estimated in August 2023 that almost 500,000 Ukrainian and Russian troops have been killed or wounded since February 2022. The war is also disrupting international security in ways that serve no one.

FIRST STEPS

For Kyiv’s allies, the opening gambit is to begin talking about talking among themselves. Some will need convincing; others are already convinced and simply need a sign that diplomacy is no longer taboo. U.S. officials have already repeatedly said they expect the war to end in a negotiated settlement. But they have not communicated to the other allies what that means in practice nor explicitly oriented the strategy for ending the war around a negotiated outcome.

Eventually, the discussion of conflict diplomacy needs to begin in North Atlantic Council and G-7 meetings, as well as bilateral engagements between allies at the highest levels. Talking about talking does not entail any changes in policy in the short term. Time and effort need to be spent on developing a diplomatic strategy long before negotiations actually start.

In parallel to the intra-alliance discussion, the issue needs to be brought to the table in engagements between allies and Ukraine. Kyiv justifiably worries that a move toward negotiations will mean an end to military assistance. As they begin to talk with Kyiv about talking, allies should therefore keep up or even increase security assistance.

The United States and its allies can start by soliciting Ukraine’s views on the subjects of communicating with the other side during the fighting and the nature of the war’s endgame. Right now, these issues are not on the agenda. Once Ukrainian officials begin to hear the same questions being asked by multiple interlocutors at multiple levels, they will engage in internal discussions to identify their preferences and approach to conflict diplomacy. Weaving the subject of talks into discussions concerning long-term military and financial assistance would also underscore an important reality: no amount of aid can ensure Ukraine’s security and prosperity without an end to the war.

SIGNAL ACHIEVEMENT

It is too early to begin real talks with Moscow. And Kyiv would have to be in the lead when they begin. But even today, the West can use signals to convey its intent to enable an eventual negotiated end to the war. Signals are unilateral actions, such as military deployments, public statements, sanctions, or diplomatic gestures, to convey a state’s intentions. Such signals are particularly useful when formal communication channels are closed, since they require no direct interaction with the other side in order to execute. Importantly, these actions are reversible; the point is to credibly demonstrate intent and provide space for the other side to reciprocate. When signals work, they can reduce the uncertainty about the other side’s true intentions.

Adjusting Western officials’ rhetorical emphasis in public statements would be a modest but important signal. For example, officials could restate their openness to conditional sanctions relief as part of a negotiated outcome to the war. But talk is cheap and Moscow will likely not believe it. Therefore, the United States and the European Union should also consider appointing special representatives for conflict diplomacy. Even though these officials would spend months engaging with allies and Kyiv before talks with Moscow are even considered, the appointments themselves would signal to Russia that the United States and Europe are prepared to engage in eventual negotiations.

Kyiv and Moscow have more opportunities for signaling, because they are the belligerents. Moscow, especially, needs to find ways to signal; Russia should indicate that its war aims are limited, that it is prepared to negotiate an end to the war, and that it will abide by the terms of a settlement. In addition to appointing a diplomatic point person to serve as a counterpart to the new U.S. and EU representatives, Moscow could suspend strikes on Ukrainian cities, indicate a willingness to enact an all-for-all prisoner-of-war swap, and cease its inflammatory rhetoric about the Ukrainian leadership.

Kyiv, in turn, could soften the September 2022 presidential decree that established “the impossibility of conducting negotiations with the President of the Russian Federation, V. Putin.” Kyiv could clarify that the decree applies only to the Russian president and not to other representatives of the Russian government. And if Moscow stopped striking nonmilitary targets in Ukraine, Kyiv could reciprocate by ceasing strikes it has been conducting in Russia.

These proposed efforts—talking about talking among allies and with Kyiv, and signaling to Moscow—would not represent a change in policy. They do not even represent a move to start negotiations. Rather, they would merely begin what is likely to be a long process of moving toward eventual talks. Getting to the table will not be easy, but the alternative is an endless, grinding war that no side claims to want and both sides lose by continuing to fight.

• SAMUEL CHARAP is a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation.
• JEREMY SHAPIRO is the Research Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Foreign Affairs · by Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro · March 5, 2024

21. A Self-Absorbed America Means Disorder for the World

A Self-Absorbed America Means Disorder for the World

The dam holding back chaos in U.S. foreign policy is cracking.

Article by Edward Alden, Author

Originally published at Foreign Policy

March 4, 2024 11:47 am (EST)

cfr.org · by Edward Alden

Whatever the next year holds, the world owes U.S. President Joe Biden a debt of gratitude for the past three. Against rather long odds, he has managed to hold back the chaos that has long been flooding into U.S. politics. But the Biden dam is cracking, and the next year—and likely the years beyond—promises to be a maelstrom for U.S. foreign policy.

Last week, the U.S. Senate ended its well-intentioned charade of trying to pass a double-barreled bill that would tackle the crisis at the border with Mexico while also approving some $60 billion in critically needed support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Despite unprecedented concessions from Democrats to permit much harsher measures against asylum-seekers, the bill was dead on arrival the moment that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump denounced it as a “great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for the Republican Party.” The bill’s defeat means that chaos on the border will certainly continue, likely boosting Trump election prospects in November.

The bill’s failure was also the clearest sign yet that Biden is losing his grip over the direction of U.S. foreign policy, and other countries are taking notice. George Haynal, the veteran Canadian diplomat, wrote last week that “the hard new reality is that the U.S. political system is rapidly mutating into a far less benevolent partner.” The choice of words is instructive: The problem is not just a particularly pernicious leader like Trump, but a “political system” that is churning out similar figures by the dozen. It is wishful thinking to believe that U.S. extremism is some passing fad.

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The consequences are difficult to predict, and the future may lurch back and forth between reassuringly normal and shockingly radical. A government shutdown due to Congress’s inability to pass simple spending bills looms again in early March. The Senate is trying to regroup to pass stand-alone support for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan without the border provisions, but the prospects in the shambolic House are highly uncertain. Even military support for Israel, a perennially bipartisan issue, has gotten sucked into the dysfunction and is now in doubt. It has become impossible for other countries to make decisions based on expectations about what the world’s most powerful country will do.

In many respects, we are living in the most unpredictable international political order in a century. In the 1920s, the United States had the capacity to provide global leadership, but the Congress refused; the ensuing chaos in Europe and East Asia produced another world war. Today, the United States still has the capacity to lead, but it is oscillating between constructive engagement and destructive withdrawal. Meanwhile, other countries, such as Russia and China, actively work to push the United States aside.

For Europe, the best outcome over the next several years may be a United States that, while not actively isolationist, is less and less willing or able to play a global leadership role. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago next week, Europe has moved faster than many had anticipated to become a more coherent and united actor. Earlier this month, the European Union passed its own $54 billion aid package for Ukraine that should at least maintain the current stalemate with Russia. At the annual Munich Security Conference this week, expect to hear a lot of talk about how Europe needs to do more, especially on defense, to make up for U.S. fecklessness.

A Trump victory in November would be more destructive. J.D. Vance, the Trump acolyte and Republican senator from Ohio, plans to use his first visit to the Munich conference to accuse the Europeans of “turning NATO effectively into a welfare client of the United States.” He will warn that, even if the Senate can pass another military aid bill, “there is clearly not an appetite for more blank checks for Ukraine.” Many believe Trump will abandon the alliance entirely if he returns to the White House. Trump himself over the weekend said that he would refuse to defend European NATO allies from Russia if they fail to raise defense spending sufficiently. “In fact, I would encourage [the Russians] to do whatever the hell they want,” he warned—a barely veiled invitation for Russia to attack another European country. Veteran European observer Anne Applebaum said such threats will reverberate far beyond Europe: “Once Trump has made clear that he no longer supports NATO, all of America’s other security alliances would be in jeopardy as well. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and even Israel would figure they can no longer count on automatic American support.”

The United States’ neighbors, Canada and Mexico, would be no better off. Trump is reported to be considering a 10 percent “universal” tariff on all imports; Mexico and Canada, which send around three-quarters of their exports to the United States, would be the hardest hit. They may hope for special treatment under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiated by the first Trump administration, but there are no hints of such an exemption; Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum, for example, targeted both Canada and Mexico. The latter also faces credible threats that the border will again be closed, as it was during the COVID pandemic. And Trump has made no secret of his loathing for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In other parts of the world, chaos in the U.S. political system could lead to policies that are far more belligerent and aggressive. Take China, for example. The Biden administration’s most notable bipartisan successes—the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act to restore domestic semiconductor production and the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to boost U.S. competitiveness—were motivated by a shared fear of China. The Biden administration is trying to find a balance; U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said last month that while the United States will continue to compete vigorously with China, “we’re also keenly aware that the United States and [China] are economically interdependent and share interests in addressing transnational problems and reducing the risk of conflict.”

Many Republicans, however, are calling for far more aggressive action. Trump is floating a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, which would be close to an act of economic warfare. A bipartisan Senate committee has proposed a broader range of measures to cut economic ties with China. Expect as well more vocal U.S. support for an independent Taiwan and a more assertive military posture in Asia. Whereas the United States is likely to pull back from Europe, those in Beijing hoping for a quiet U.S. withdrawal from Asia are likely to be disappointed.

A Biden victory in November would forestall the worst of these outcomes, though it is likely to be accompanied by a loss of the Senate that would leave the administration even weaker than it is today. And it would bring little certainty that the threat of Trump-style extremism had passed once and for all. Barring a landslide electoral defeat—which seems impossible, really, given the current close divide in the U.S. electorate—the Republican Party seems poised to double down on Trumpism for many years to come.

For the rest of the world, the fallout of U.S. foreign-policy chaos is unpalatable: expensive and provocative rearmament in Europe and Japan, acceptance of expanding Russian and Chinese spheres of influence, and a global economy that will continue to fracture. Other countries will have no choice but to hedge their bets and start preparing for a world in which the United States no longer has their back. Perhaps if Biden is reelected, the pieces of the old order can be stitched together long enough for the fever to break in the United States body politic. But such a benign outcome is facing longer and longer odds.

cfr.org · by Edward Alden

22. Ukraine military official: half of all North Korean shells are duds

Ukraine military official: half of all North Korean shells are duds

North Korean artillery shells cannot be accurately aimed, South Korean military expert says.

By Cho Jinwoo for RFA Korean

2024.03.04

rfa.org

Russia has imported more than 1.5 million artillery shells from North Korea to cover its insufficient arms production as the war with Ukraine rages on, but about half of the shells are duds, a Ukrainian military official said.

South Korean military analysts also told Radio Free Asia that the shells that do fire cannot be aimed precisely, and sometimes even cause casualties among the Russian ranks.

“As of today, based on available statistical data, the Russians have already imported one and a half million shells from North Korea,” Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, told news outlet Interfax-Ukraine.

“But these munitions are from the 1970s and 1980s,” he said. “Half of them do not function, and the rest require refurbishment or verification before use.”

South Korea said last week that the number of artillery shells North Korea has sent to Russia could be as high as 3 million.

Kyiv has also alleged that North Korea has sent missiles to Russia and these have been used against Ukraine, which Pyongyang and Moscow deny. The transfer of North Korean arms to Russia has been condemned by the U.S. and almost 40 other countries.

Skibitskyi said that in exchange for the dated Soviet-era ammunition, North Korea is getting missile and submarine tech from Moscow.

“And the most important thing here for the international community is that North Korea is definitely asking for technologies related to nuclear weapons,” he said.

“It is necessary to call Russia to responsibility, because the whole world is fighting for non-proliferation, and Russia is openly starting to work in this direction in exchange for receiving additional ammunition, missiles and other types of weapons.”

The poor quality of North Korean ammunition used by Russia in Ukraine has been widely discussed.

In December, the Ukrainian Armed Forces Chief of Staff said on Facebook that the shells were so shoddy that often they exploded in the barrels of Russian cannons and mortars.

Lee Il-woo, secretary-general of the Seoul-based Korea Defense Network, told RFA Korean that the North Korean shells cannot be fired accurately.

If you look at the craters where the shells [fired by the Russian military] landed, they are spread out in a circular pattern with no consistent impact group,” Lee said.

“The fact that the shells are spread out like this means that the accuracy of the shells is very low,” he said. “Low precision means that when the shells are fired, they may even fall on the heads of their allies.”

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

rfa.org

23. North Korea Helped Turn Iran Into a Missile Powerhouse

Dr. Bruce Bechtol can say I told you so. Just read his books over the past decade plus.

North Korea Helped Turn Iran Into a Missile Powerhouse

The military cooperation between North Korea and Iran, detailed in a recent UN Security Council report, highlights a concerning trend in the exchange of long-range missile technologies and weaponry.

The National Interest · by Maya Carlin · March 4, 2024

Summary - North Korea's Role in Fueling Iran's Missile Ambitions: The military cooperation between North Korea and Iran, detailed in a recent UN Security Council report, highlights a concerning trend in the exchange of long-range missile technologies and weaponry. This partnership, rooted in a mutual opposition to the United States, has strengthened since the 1980s, particularly after North Korea became a significant arms supplier to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. North Korea's contributions have extended beyond sovereign states, supplying rogue proxy groups in the Middle East with weapons and missile technology. The cooperation includes the transfer of North Korean-made projectiles to Iran and its proxies, with evidence of North Korean weapons used in attacks against Israel. Notably, North Korea has supplied Iran with critical missile components, enabling the development of ballistic missiles capable of striking targets far beyond their borders. This alliance not only facilitates the evasion of international sanctions but also poses a significant threat to regional and global security, as it enhances the military capabilities of both nations and their affiliated proxy groups.

Amidst Sanctions, North Korea and Iran Forge Stronger Military Links

Earlier this month, an annual report submitted to the UN Security Council outlined the growing military cooperation between North Korea and Iran in 2023. While the two rogue allies have exchanged weapons and military systems in the past, resumed cooperation on the development of long-range missiles is concerning. According to the report, “This resumed cooperation is said to have included the transfer of critical parts, with the most recent shipment associated with this relationship taking place in 2020.” In 2024, Iran and its region-wide proxy groups are expected to deploy more North Korean-made projectiles. Following Hamas’ horrific October 7 attack against Israel last year, evidence that North Korean-made weapons were used surfaced. Specifically, images of Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenades used against the Israel Defense Forces circulated online, confirmed by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

The history of the North Korean-Iran partnership

Following the fall of the Shah in the late 1970s, the transactional relationship between Tehran and Pyongyang strengthened considerably. Both countries share a mutual disdain for the United States and external forces generally, cementing their strong bond. Since the international community largely sanctions both rogue states, Iran and North Korea turn to each other to evade trade restrictions and maintain strong networks of trade.

North Korea first became a major weapons supplier to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, supplying the regime with Soviet-designed T-54 and T-55 main battle tanks (MBTs), ammunition, and other essential military equipment. Additionally, Pyongyang sent military and technical advisers to Tehran to support the regime’s war effort. The first missiles provided by the hermit kingdom to Iran were also delivered among these transfers. Pyongyang provided Scud-C missiles equipped with a 500-km range to Tehran, followed by the Hwasong-7 medium-range ballistic missile, which Iranian engineers were able to reverse engineer into the Shahab-3 single-stage, liquid-fuel ballistic missile.

North Korea’s military contributions were not just limited to sovereign nations. Following the dissolution of the USSR and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, Pyongyang began delivering supplies to rogue proxy groups, including non-state actors in Syria, Iran, Yemen, and Lebanon. As detailed by Brookings, North Korea was able to supply weapons and their components to Hezbollah by smuggling them through Iran and assembling them in Syria before being shipped to their final destination in Lebanon. Other instances of Pyongyang’s outreach to Iran’s proxy groups have been well documented: “In another example from 2015, Houthi militants fired 20 Scud-C missiles into Saudi Arabia that were identical to North Korea’s Hwasong-6 missile. As Samuel Ramani of the Royal United Services Institute argues, the Houthis likely captured the Scuds during battle against the Yemeni Armed Forces, which had purchased them from North Korea in 2002.”

How North Korea supports Iran’s ballistic missile programs

Around this time period, the U.S. intelligence community grew concerned that Tehran would become one of the first client states for North Korea’s 1,000 km Nodong missile. Pyongyang carried out its first successful test launch of the Nodong in 1993, a moment witnessed by a twenty-one-member Iranian delegation. To make matters worse, North Korea even increased the weapons’ range at Iran’s urging to 1,300 km, bringing Israel within Tehran’s striking distance if launched from inside the country. Into the late 2000s, Pyongyang’s cooperation with Tehran’s ballistic missile programs was ongoing. According to United Against Nuclear Iran, Tehran and its proxy groups still rely on Pyongyang for components to construct ballistic missiles. In 2014, a U.S. district court even ruled that both North Korea and Iran were liable for damages inflicted by Hezbollah in the 2006 war in Israel since they provided “material support and assistance” to the terror group.

The Tehran-Pyongyang military partnership extends beyond missiles

North Korea’s military contributions to Iran also extend to its naval fleet. Tehran’s Ghair-class submarines are licensed copies of Pyongyang’s Yono-class vessels. The submarines were first purchased by Iran in the 2000s and have remained a mainstay in its navy ever since. These miniature vessels give Tehran the capability to stage anti-access/area denial operations in the region. Notably, if Tehran is ever given the technology to test missiles using its Ghair submarines, the Strait of Hormuz would be severely threatened.

As the Israel-Hamas war continues and Iranian proxies press on with their barrages targeting Western warships in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in addition to assets throughout the region, more North-Korean-originated weapons will likely surface.

About the Author: Maya Carlin

Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

The National Interest · by Maya Carlin · March 4, 2024

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