Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"There is no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom."

- Paulo Freire

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning they distract themselves with pleasure.”

- Viktor Frankl

“The argument for liberty is an argument against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.”

- F.A. Hayek

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 16, 2023

2. Putin and Xi are the Laurel and Hardy of statesmen – but it’s no laughing matter

3. VIDEOS: Russia shows off purported war trophies — prized Western weapons captured in Ukraine — at a new military theme park exhibit

4. Russia’s War-Torn Economy Hits Its Speed Limit

5. Most say US needs to increase preparations for military threats from China: survey

6. Ukrainian ship carrying grain sails from Odessa, testing Russian threat

7. Russia’s ‘General Armageddon’ removed from military leadership, under house arrest: Reports

8. Renewed Tensions in the Persian Gulf: Further War Powers Lessons from the Tanker War

9. How Marines could prevent Iranian harassment of commercial ships

10. Why new tech hasn’t revolutionized warfare in Ukraine

11. Inside the Russian effort to build 6,000 attack drones with Iran’s help

12. French mistakes helped create Africa’s coup belt

13. Secretive Taiwanese Cruise Missile Able To Strike Deep In China May Have Broken Cover

14. China's Xi calls for patience as Communist Party tries to reverse economic slump

15. Coup in Niger Upends U.S. Terrorism Fight and Could Open a Door for Russia

16. Perpetual Disruption is not Victory, or is It?

17. Overcoming the Data Neophyte Problem

18. How the US Can Get Its Chips’ Worth With China

19. Underground helps defense forces decimate another group of invaders

20. Plasma breakthrough could enable better hypersonic weapons, spacecraft

21. We Must Return to and Maintain the Two Theater Defense Planning Construct

22. China's ambitious defence modernisation sets course for dominance

23. Raid on Makin Island and 2nd Raider Battalion (WW II) | SOF News

24. Is the Army Ready to Think Like a Tech Company? Why the Service Needs to Value Coding the Same Way as Shooting

25. Wargaming for Peace in Asia

26. A 13-Year-Old Girl Is Apparently The New Leader Of the JFK-QAnon Cult

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 16, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-16-2023

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 16 and advanced in western Zaporizhia Oblast and on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border.
Ukrainian reports and video released by Ukrainian troops confirm that Ukrainian forces liberated Urozhaine, on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border, on August 16.
Russian sources are prematurely asserting that Ukrainian forces have committed their entire “main reserves” to counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast based on scattered observations of western-equipped Ukrainian units.
Russian forces conducted a series of drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of August 15 to 16, primarily targeting grain and port infrastructure in Odesa Oblast.
The first civilian vessel traveled through a Ukrainian-created temporary corridor for civilian vessels in the Black Sea on August 16 as part of Ukrainian efforts to circumvent Russian attempts to further curtail maritime traffic.
Russian ultranationalists are increasingly criticizing Russian military command for failing to recruit and train effective middle-level military officers to lead Russian forces on the frontlines in Ukraine.
Russian senators proposed an amendment to ban the distribution of photos and videos containing information about Russian military activities and locations on August 16, amplifying a recent trend of cracking down on public imagery of the war.
The Russian MoD may be using the Army-2023 Forum in Moscow to coerce countries into refusing to cooperate with the Wagner Group and to advertise Russian MoD-controlled private military companies (PMCs).
Russian sources claimed that the Russian military command placed nominal Russian deputy theater commander in Ukraine and notable Wagner-affiliated Army General Sergei Surovikin under house arrest as of early August.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and did not make any confirmed advances.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 16, 2023

Aug 16, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 16, 2023

Angelica Evans, Nicole Wolkov, Riley Bailey, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Mason Clark

August 16, 2023, 6:45pm 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 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 August 16. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the August 17 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 16 and advanced in western Zaporizhia Oblast and on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border, including liberating the village of Urozhaine. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Bakhmut, Berdyansk (Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border area), and Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) directions.[1] Geolocated footage published on August 16 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced northeast of Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv) in western Zaporizhia Oblast and have likely made wider gains in the surrounding areas given weeks of consistent Ukrainian activity in the forested areas northeast of the settlement.[2] Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces liberated Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) in the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border area, and the Ukrainian 35th Marine Brigade published footage of their personnel raising the Ukrainian flag in the center of the settlement.[3] Ukrainian reporting on the liberation of Urozhaine is in line with previous statements by Ukrainian officials about the liberation of other settlements in the area and recent reports by Russian forces that Russian units in the area were withdrawing.[4] Russian claims about Ukrainian assaults further south and east of the limits of the settlement further indicate that Ukrainian forces likely control the majority of the settlement.[5]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces have committed their “main reserves” to counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast, although continued Russian claims of small Ukrainian infantry assaults in the area do not correspond with the alleged commitment of major elements of Ukraine’s mechanized reserves.[6] Russian sources appear to be incorrectly portraying Ukrainian reserves as one large unitary contingent that Ukraine would commit to fighting as a whole and prematurely claiming that Ukraine has committed all of its reserves based on scattered observations of western-equipped Ukrainian units.[7]

Russian forces conducted a series of drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of August 15 to 16, primarily targeting grain and port infrastructure in Odesa Oblast. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces targeted port infrastructure in Odesa Oblast with an unspecified number of Shahed-131/136 drones and reported that Ukrainian forces shot down 13 of the drones over Odesa and Mykolaiv oblasts.[8] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that an unspecified number of Russian drones struck Ukrainian port infrastructure and residential buildings and destroyed a grain silo and elevator in Reni, Izmail Raion, Odesa Oblast.[9]

The first civilian vessel travelled through a Ukrainian-created temporary corridor for civilian vessels in the Black Sea on August 16 as part of Ukrainian efforts to circumvent Russian attempts to further curtail maritime traffic. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration and Minister for Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development Oleksandr Kubrakov reported on August 16 that the container ship Joseph Schulte left the Odesa port through one of the temporary corridors.[10] Ukrainian Monitoring Group on Sanctions and Freedom of Navigation of the Institute of Black Sea Strategic Studies Head Andriy Klymenko stated on August 16 that Ukraine is implementing strategies to create a “grain corridor” without Russia and had submitted a map of possible routes for the “grain corridor” to the International Maritime Organization in mid-July.[11] The Ukrainian Navy announced the creation of temporary traffic routes for civilian ships going to and from Ukrainian Black Sea ports beginning on August 8.[12] Russian Ambassador to Turkey Alexei Yerkhov announced on August 16 that Russia is working with unnamed partners on alternatives to the Black Sea Grain Deal so that Russia can deliver food to countries in need.[13] The Kremlin likely seeks to curtail maritime traffic to Ukrainian ports without fully enforcing a blockade through escalatory posturing in the Black Sea, including the recent forcible stop and inspection of a civilian cargo ship on August 13.[14] Russia’s naval posturing in the Black Sea may not yet be having this desired effect, and Russia is likely trying to promote its own initiatives to export Russian and stolen Ukrainian grain to further undermine the potential success of a Ukrainian-established “grain corridor.”

Russian ultranationalists are increasingly criticizing Russian military command for failing to recruit and train effective middle-level military officers to lead Russian forces on the frontlines in Ukraine. Some Russian milbloggers recently expressed their frustrations with middle-level military officers and accused them of introducing unnecessary bureaucratic measures, mistreating wounded and deceased Russian military personnel, issuing commands that lead to military losses, and misinforming the Russian higher military command.[15] One Russian milblogger claimed that a middle-level military officer ordered his unit to introduce additional bureaucratic measures following a visit from the head of the Russian Air and Missile Defense Troops — likely Lieutenant General Andrey Demin — who originally advised against such bureaucratic practices.[16] Some milbloggers claimed that anger in the Russian information space directed at mid-level military officers should instead target the senior officials who appointed poor commanders.[17] Some milbloggers noted that the senior military leadership is supporting a system that fails to recruit and train a new generation of middle-level officers, instead appointing old and ineffective commanders to the frontlines.[18] One milblogger noted that the Russian military command and Russian leadership, in general, prefer officers that are loyal rather than competent and are incapable of training new officers, while another milblogger claimed that Russia will not eliminate this detrimental culture within its military without making significant changes to the Russian military leadership.[19]

Russian senators proposed an amendment to ban the distribution of photos and videos containing information about Russian military activities and locations on August 16, amplifying a recent trend of cracking down on public imagery of the war. Russian Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Construction Head Senator Andrey Klishas stated on August 16 that a group of Russian senators has proposed an amendment to the laws “On Mass Media” and “On Information, Information Technology and Information Protection” prohibiting the distribution of photos or videos of Russian troop deployments and redeployments, military infrastructure, the location of critical facilities, and videos or photos that could be used to confirm the defeat of an element of the Russian military.[20] The amendment also reportedly bans the distribution of photos or videos that: show the location of shelling and strikes on Russian territory; explain how Russian forces use specific weapons, air defense systems, drones, and other weapons; or reveal information that could help identify a Russian weapon’s type, location, launch patterns, or flight path.[21] Klishas noted that official Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) content will be exempt from punishment.[22] Russian authorities will reportedly fine violators up to 500,000 rubles ($5,290) or imprison them for up to three years.[23]

Crimean occupation authorities announced their intention to propose a similar amendment on August 14 following Ukrainian strikes targeting the Kerch Strait bridge.[24] These efforts are consistent with ISW’s prior assessments that the Kremlin and Russian MoD intend to gain greater control over the Russian information space and the narratives surrounding the war in Ukraine, particularly through attempts to court or control Russian milbloggers.[25] Russian milbloggers notably did not comment on the Ukrainian strikes on the Chonhar bridge on August 7, suggesting that Russian officials may have directed Russian correspondents to not offer commentary on Ukrainian strikes on Russian logistic nodes.[26] It remains unclear exactly how this amendment or prior guidance issued by Russian authorities to Russian milbloggers shapes their coverage of the war in Ukraine. Any significant censorship or self-censorship among milbloggers will affect ISW’s ability to cover Russian operations, and ISW will continue to track changes in the Russian information space that could affect open-source reporting on the war in Ukraine.

The Russian MoD may be using the Army-2023 Forum in Moscow to coerce countries into refusing to cooperate with the Wagner Group and to advertise Russian MoD-controlled private military companies (PMCs). Wagner-affiliated sources amplified claims on August 16 that the Russian MoD is using the Army-2023 Forum to request that countries refuse all cooperation with Wagner and is offering the services of Russian MoD-controlled PMCs instead.[27] The Russian MoD is also reportedly threatening to end military-technical support and support at the United Nations if countries continue to leverage existing ties with Wagner.[28] Wagner-affiliated sources claimed that the Russian MoD already issued Burkina Faso an ultimatum by threatening to end Russian support if Burkina Faso continues to use Wagner forces.[29] These claims are unconfirmed and primarily come from Wagner-affiliated sources, but track with ISW’s previous assessments that the Kremlin seeks to destroy or restructure Wagner in favor of Russian MoD-controlled PMCs.[30]

Russian sources claimed that the Russian military command placed nominal Russian deputy theater commander in Ukraine and notable Wagner-affiliated Army General Sergei Surovikin under house arrest as of early August. Russian State Duma Deputy Viktor Sobolev claimed on August 9 that the Russian military leadership suspended Surovikin from his involvement in the war in Ukraine but did not comment on the reason for the suspension.[31] Sobolev added that Surovikin may return to the Russian military command if he does not “have any serious violations,” but his reinstalment depends on a decision from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Politico Europe reported that a Russian insider source claimed on August 13 that Surovikin is under some kind of house arrest but has been able to meet with subordinates.[32] The insider source claimed that there is no official investigation into Surovikin but suggested that Putin has instructed the military leadership to silence and isolate Surovikin.[33] Surovikin’s position in the Russian military and legal status remains unclear. ISW previously assessed that the Russian veteran community may be attempting to rehabilitate Surovikin following intense scrutiny over his affiliations with the Wagner Group in the wake of Wagner’s June 24 rebellion.[34] Putin’s reported decision to isolate Surovikin may indicate that he has not decided on Surovikin’s fate at this time, consistent with Putin’s observed policy of allowing disgraced or ineffective commanders to return to his favor rather than removing them completely.[35]

Former Eastern Military District Commander Army General Gennady Zhidko died on August 16, reportedly from cancer.[36] Zhidko reportedly served as overall theater commander in Ukraine during the Russian offensive operation to capture Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast, in the summer of 2022, before being dismissed from both positions following Ukraine’s rapid liberation of territory during the Kharkiv counteroffensive.[37]

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on August 16 and advanced in western Zaporizhia Oblast and on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border.
Ukrainian reports and video released by Ukrainian troops confirm that Ukrainian forces liberated Urozhaine, on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border, on August 16.
Russian sources are prematurely asserting that Ukrainian forces have committed their entire “main reserves” to counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast based on scattered observations of western-equipped Ukrainian units.
Russian forces conducted a series of drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of August 15 to 16, primarily targeting grain and port infrastructure in Odesa Oblast.
The first civilian vessel traveled through a Ukrainian-created temporary corridor for civilian vessels in the Black Sea on August 16 as part of Ukrainian efforts to circumvent Russian attempts to further curtail maritime traffic.
Russian ultranationalists are increasingly criticizing Russian military command for failing to recruit and train effective middle-level military officers to lead Russian forces on the frontlines in Ukraine.
Russian senators proposed an amendment to ban the distribution of photos and videos containing information about Russian military activities and locations on August 16, amplifying a recent trend of cracking down on public imagery of the war.
The Russian MoD may be using the Army-2023 Forum in Moscow to coerce countries into refusing to cooperate with the Wagner Group and to advertise Russian MoD-controlled private military companies (PMCs).
Russian sources claimed that the Russian military command placed nominal Russian deputy theater commander in Ukraine and notable Wagner-affiliated Army General Sergei Surovikin under house arrest as of early August.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and did not make any confirmed advances.

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 these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and 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 western 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 Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied areas

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)

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line on August 16 but did not make any confirmed advances. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk) from the north, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[38] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations southeast of Vilshana (15km northeast of Kupyansk), near Synkivka, and east of Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk).[39] A Russian milblogger claimed on August 15 that positional battles are ongoing near Karmazynivka (13km southwest of Svatove).[40]

The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on August 16. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Vilshana, Synkivka, the “Usa forest” (likely between Synkivka and Lyman Pershyi), Mankivka tract (roughly 15km east of Kupyansk), Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove), Novoselivske (14km northwest of Svatove), and Kuzmyne (3km southwest of Kreminna).[41]

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

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on August 16 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations south of Bakhmut and that heavy fighting continues in the area.[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that fighting in the Bakhmut area was significantly less intense on August 16 than it has been in recent months.[43] Another Russian milblogger claimed on August 15 that Ukrainian assault groups conducted unsuccessful counterattacks on an unspecified area of the road between Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[44]

Russian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut on August 16 and reportedly advanced. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Bohdanivka (8km northwest of Bakhmut).[45] A Russian news aggregator claimed on August 15 that Russian forces attacked near Vesele (20km northeast of Bakhmut) and counterattacked south of Klishchiivka on the evening of August 15.[46] Russian sources claimed on August 16 that Russian forces counterattacked near Klishchiivka on August 15 and 16 and have reportedly established complete control over the settlement.[47] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also advanced near Yahidne (3km northwest of Bakhmut).[48] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims, however. The Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) People’s Militia posted footage claiming to show elements of the Russian 4th Brigade (2nd LNR Army Corps) striking Ukrainian positions in the Bakhmut direction.[49]

Ukrainian forces reportedly continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on August 16 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian advances near Avdiivka, Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City), and Krasnohorivka (directly west of Donetsk City).[50] The Russian MoD claimed that elements of the Russian Southern Grouping of Forces repelled five Ukrainian attacks near Krasnohorivka and Nevelske (14km southwest of Avdiivka) in Donetsk Oblast.[51]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on August 16 and did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations south of Avdiivka.[52] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks in Marinka and on the outskirts of Krasnohorivka.[53] Another Russian milblogger amplified footage on August 14 claiming to show elements of the Russian 110th Brigade (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps) striking Ukrainian positions near Marinka.[54]

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

Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces liberated the village of Urozhaine and continued counteroffensive operations along the administrative border between Zaporizhia and Donetsk oblasts on August 16.[55] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar and the Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces liberated Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka), and the Ukrainian 35th Marine Brigade published footage of their personnel raising the Ukrainian flag in the center of the settlement.[56] Ukrainian reporting on the liberation of Urozhaine is in line with previous reporting from Ukrainian officials about the liberation of other settlements in the area.[57] Russian sources widely ignored Ukrainian reports about the liberation of Urozhaine after expressing concerns about tenuous Russian positions in the settlement and claims of Russian withdrawals over the past several days.[58] The “Vostok” volunteer battalion, which is defending near Urozhaine, claimed that Ukrainian forces are currently attacking east of Urozhaine in the direction of Kermenchyk (15km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), and “Vostok” battalion commander Alexander Khodakovsky claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to advance towards Zavitne Bazhannya (12km south of Velyka Novosilka) on August 15.[59] Russian claims of Ukrainian attacks south and east of Urozhaine support Ukrainian reporting that Ukrainian forces control the settlement. Russian milbloggers claimed that heavy fighting continued near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and Urozhaine, with one milblogger maintaining that Russian forces control positions in the southern part of Urozhaine.[60]

Russian forces conducted limited unsuccessful counterattacks in the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border area on August 16. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful counterattacks near Urozhaine.[61] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces conducted assaults near Staromayorske on August 15 and that fighting continued in the area into the morning of August 16.[62]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 16 and have advanced east of Robotyne. Geolocated footage published on August 16 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced northeast of Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv) and have likely made wider gains in the surrounding areas given prior consistent Ukrainian activity in forested areas northeast of the settlement.[63] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction.[64] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled two Ukrainian assault detachments near Robotyne and Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[65] Russian milbloggers claimed that small Ukrainian infantry groups with armored vehicle support continued assaults north and northeast of Robotyne, and in the direction of Verbove.[66] Russian milbloggers claimed that the northern part of Robotyne is currently contested and that Ukrainian vehicles can move more freely in the area due to Ukrainian forces clearing minefields.[67] A milblogger claimed that recent Ukrainian advances allow Ukrainian forces to exert constant pressure on Russian forces in areas where there are no longer any mines.[68]

Russian sources claimed on August 15 that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces from limited positions on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed on August 15 that Russian forces successfully counterattacked Ukrainian forces that established positions west of Kozachi Laherii (27km east of Kherson City) on August 14 and that Ukrainian forces are no longer present in the area.[69] Another milblogger claimed on August 15 that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces out of the positions near Kozachi Laherii as early as August 12.[70] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces have completely cleared the left bank of Ukrainian forces.[71] The Russian Dnepr Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Roman Kodryan claimed that Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian group maneuvering on boats in the Dnipro River delta on August 16.[72]

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

Kremlin officials are continuing to use Russian citizenship to incentivize military service among migrants. Head of the Russian Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, Valery Fadeev, stated that Russia should require male migrants to register for military service to obtain Russian passports.[73] Fadeev claimed that migrants often forget to register with Russian military recruitment centers after obtaining Russian passports. Russian opposition outlets reported that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained and brought migrants who recently received Russian passports to Russian military recruitment centers after these men failed to register for military service.[74]

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin claimed on August 16 that nearly 45,000 Moscow residents are fighting in Ukraine, of which 20,000 are volunteers and 5,000 professional servicemen (kontraktniki), likely implying the remaining 20,000 are mobilized reservists or conscripts.[75] A Russian milblogger noted that Sobyanin left out several tens of thousands of Moscow residents from his estimates and that servicemen from Moscow and Moscow Oblast have been fighting for the last two months as part of the 58th Combined Arms Army (Southern Military District) near Robotyne, western Zaporizhia Oblast.[76]

Georgian-based OSINT group Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) reported that the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) likely formed the 52nd Artillery Brigade in January 2023 and based it out of Reyevskya village, Novorossiysk Raion, Krasnodar Krai.[77] CIT observed that neither Soviet nor Russian VDV units traditionally have artillery brigades – only artillery regiments.

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

A Kremlin official proposed to ban children who do not speak Russian language from attending Russian schools in Russia, demonstrating that Russian officials are intolerant to non-Russian languages among migrant communities and in occupied Ukrainian schools. Head of the Russian Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, Valery Fadeev, proposed to amend the legislation that allows children that do not speak the Russian language to attend Russian schools.[78] Fadeev claimed that Russia needs to create special centers in which migrant children will learn the Russian language as a foreign language. Fadeev’s proposal clearly seeks to isolate migrant children from Russian children and promote intolerant Russian language policies. ISW previously reported that Russian occupation officials have been introducing new provisions that would discourage and restrict the use of the Ukrainian language in educational facilities in occupied Ukraine.[79] The Kremlin continues its oppressive language policies to alienate migrants and ethnic minority communities in Russia, while simultaneously attempting to erode the Ukrainian language in occupied Ukraine.

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).

The Wagner Group appears to be maintaining its organizational presence in Belarus, though the status of its rumored personnel withdrawal remains unclear. Russian and Belarusian opposition sources posted a picture of a purported document for the registration of “Wagner Group LLC” dated August 4, 2023. The document states that the company provides “other types of education” and is located in Tsel, Asipovichy Raion, Mogilev Oblast – the same location as Wagner’s main field camp in Belarus.[80] Wagner-linked sources previously posted documents for the registration of a new Concord Management and Consulting LLC subsidiary in Belarus dated July 22, 2023.[81]

Belarusian Defense Minister Lieutenant General Viktor Khrenin and Chinese Defense Minister Colonel General Li Shangfu met on August 16 in Belarus. Khrenin stated that Belarusian cooperation with China is one of Belarus’ most important foreign policy priorities and expressed the desire to expand Belarusian-Chinese bilateral military and military technical cooperation.[82]

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarussian military activity in Belarus, as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

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.

Excerpts:

How does this end? Xi is doing a good job of ruining, or at least derailing, China’s smooth development as a major economy and influential world power. All those anxious western politicians and thinktankers should calm down. Xi is China’s worst enemy. Let him get on with it. Danger is, as he sinks into ever greater difficulty, Xi (like Putin) may lash out – over Taiwan, a disputed reef, the succession to the Dalai Lama, a Himalayan hill or some other symbolic cause. China was “a ticking time bomb”, Biden warned last week. “They have got some problems. That’s not good, because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things.”

How ironic is the prospect of China resorting to 19th-century imperialist-nationalist, western-style jingoism to distract attention from Xi’s domestic blundering. In the Indo-Pacific, gunboat diplomacy is back. But it’s not Lord Palmerston to blame this time. It’s Lord Xi.

Putin and Xi are the Laurel and Hardy of statesmen – but it’s no laughing matter |

Simon Tisdall

China’s paramount leader, like his Russian counterpart, is making a fine mess of his country’s economy and world standing

The Guardian · by Simon Tisdall · August 13, 2023

It must be tough, being a dictator, when your diktats are ignored, thwarted and scorned. Vladimir Putin is a sad case in point. He ordered the glorious reintegration of Ukraine into his imaginary Russian empire. What he got was an existential crisis that he couldn’t control.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, is another paramount leader with dictatorship issues. Xi presumes to exercise supreme control, channelling Mao Zedong like a card-carrying Communist party Zeus – yet repeatedly messes up. Xi’s signature tune could be the chorus to Moby’s Extreme Ways: “Then it fell apart ... Like it always does.”

One example: Xi’s misjudged “no limits” pre-Ukraine invasion pact with Putin has turned out to be an embarrassing, friends-without-benefits own goal. Another example: his unleashing of confrontational “wolf warrior” diplomacy against the west, which has produced a huge anti-China backlash.

Putin and Xi: a Laurel and Hardy duo for the modern age – except it’s no joke. Both have much to answer for, or would in any open society. If either man were subject to genuine democratic scrutiny or free elections, he’d be booted out without a second thought – then put on trial.

Putin has remade Russia in his image: lawless, vilified, distrusted. Flailing Xi’s offence, if anything, is worse. He’s endangering the Chinese “miracle” – decades of big post-Deng Xiaoping, post-Tiananmen economic and social advances – in a messianic drive to wield unchecked personal power.

Xi hopelessly mishandled the Covid pandemic, ordered draconian lockdowns, then U-turned without a blush. That hasn’t rescued China’s damaged economy, its private tech companies already hobbled by Xi’s control-freak insistence on party oversight and direction.

Despite trying to build a China-led world order, Xi has blithely alienated friends, neighbours and key trading partners

Xi demands oversight everywhere. His chronic disregard for basic human rights and freedoms is not confined to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet. Does he really not understand how such egregious abuses scar China’s international reputation and inhibit citizens’ aspirations?

In 10 years, he has turned public and private life in China’s cities into an oppressive, 24-hour surveillance nightmare where the state, a new Leviathan with Chinese characteristics, preys on individuals. Why? Ostensibly to make China great again. In reality, to keep himself and the party in power. Rule by fear has consequences. China’s exports and imports, domestic retail sales, private and foreign investment, youth employment and GDP are all cratering. China’s property market is a destabilising, bottomless hole of debt. Consumer and business confidence is shot.

“Financial markets, and probably even the Chinese government itself, have overlooked the severity of these weaknesses, which will likely drag down growth for several years. Call it a case of ‘economic long Covid’,” wrote the American economist Adam Posen. “The condition is systemic, and the only reliable cure – credibly assuring ordinary Chinese people and companies that there are limits on the government’s intrusion into economic life – cannot be delivered.”

The reason why, as diagnosed by Posen, is Xi’s plunge into authoritarianism.

Not all these problems can be laid at Xi’s door, but perhaps they should be. Being in charge of everything means being blamed for everything. Like hardline communists through history, Xi does not trust the people. Like purged party cadres, they must be coerced and controlled. So it’s on him.

When senior generals, appointed by Xi, are suddenly fired for no stated reason – as happened last month – and his loudmouthed protege Qin Gang is sacked as foreign minister amid a murky scandal, doubts about Xi’s overall authority and judgment intensify.

Despite his declared intention to build a new China-led world order, Xi has blithely alienated friends, neighbours and key trading partners. Last week’s naval clash with the Philippines was but the latest of many instances of Chinese bullying in and around the South China Sea.

It was reckless because it needlessly antagonised an important regional country. It was dangerous because it sucked in Manila’s main ally, the US, thereby threatening larger-scale confrontation. Beijing’s unceasing provocations of Taiwan could be similarly consequential.

Yet it’s unclear whether supposedly all-powerful Xi authorised or even knew in advance about his coastguards’ action in confronting Philippine forces. Similar questions surround the aggressive actions of the Chinese military on the Indian border. Is this deliberate policy? Who’s actually in charge?

Xi’s mania for conformity and uniformity at home, plus his hostile outward stance – espionage plots, intellectual property theft, exploitative debt diplomacy, hollow “peacemaking” in Israel-Palestine (while ignoring Myanmar and North Korea), tacit support for Putin’s war – all contributes to the west’s perception of China as menace and threat as well as legitimate competitor.

The US, the EU, Britain, Germany – all have recently hardened their defence and security doctrines and commercial postures. Latest example: US president Joe Biden’s new raft of measures to prohibit private investment in China in security-sensitive new tech such as AI.

Beijing says it’s all part of a US-led anti China campaign. But such measures hurt the west, too. Nobody wins. Truth is, a surprisingly insecure, misguided but apparently unchallengeable Xi has brought all this down on China’s head through his dictator’s determination to dominate.

How does this end? Xi is doing a good job of ruining, or at least derailing, China’s smooth development as a major economy and influential world power. All those anxious western politicians and thinktankers should calm down. Xi is China’s worst enemy. Let him get on with it. Danger is, as he sinks into ever greater difficulty, Xi (like Putin) may lash out – over Taiwan, a disputed reef, the succession to the Dalai Lama, a Himalayan hill or some other symbolic cause. China was “a ticking time bomb”, Biden warned last week. “They have got some problems. That’s not good, because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things.”

How ironic is the prospect of China resorting to 19th-century imperialist-nationalist, western-style jingoism to distract attention from Xi’s domestic blundering. In the Indo-Pacific, gunboat diplomacy is back. But it’s not Lord Palmerston to blame this time. It’s Lord Xi.

The Guardian · by Simon Tisdall · August 13, 2023

3. VIDEOS: Russia shows off purported war trophies — prized Western weapons captured in Ukraine — at a new military theme park exhibit

VIDEOS: Russia shows off purported war trophies — prized Western weapons captured in Ukraine — at a new military theme park exhibit

ca.finance.yahoo.com · by Chris PanellaAugust 16, 2023 at 8:49 a.m.·3 min read

A general view of a propaganda exhibition of captured Ukrainian weapons, August 15, 2023 in Kubinka, Russia.Contributor/Getty Images

New photos and videos show a Russian exhibit of captured Western tanks and artillery from Ukraine.
The trophies supposedly include US M777 Howitzers, Swedish combat vehicles, and French AMX-10RCR fighting vehicles.
Ukraine has its own display of wrecked Russian tanks and weapons in Kyiv.

A new exhibit at a Russian military theme park displays what are said to be pieces of Western military equipment captured on the battlefield in Ukraine. Videos and photos from the opening of the exhibit show what appear to be NATO tanks, artillery and armored vehicles.

The display at Patriot Park near Moscow opened August 15, RIA Novosti reported, and includes a variety of military equipment and weaponry. Each system includes the flag of the country that produced the asset and describes where and how the equipment was captured.

The new exhibit was opened for the Moscow Conference on International Security attended by Russian officers and defense companies.

This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.

Update your settings here to see it.

Although Russia claims that the weapons were captured, it's not entirely clear if all the assets are real or if some may be replicas.

Some of the military vehicles on display, like what has been identified as an American-made M113 armored personnel carrier or a UK-provided International MXT-MV (Military Extreme Truck - Military Version) infantry mobile vehicle, are riddled with apparent bullet holes, seemingly indicating the vehicles were raked by Russian fire before their capture and hinting at authenticity.

A Russian army colonel smiles near a Vehicle M-113, made in USA and captured in Ukraine in 2023, during a propaganda exhibition of captured Ukrainian weapons, on August 15, 2023 in Kubinka, Russia.

A Russian army colonel smiles near a Vehicle M113, made in USA and captured in Ukraine in 2023, during a propaganda exhibition of captured Ukrainian weapons, on August 15, 2023 in Kubinka, Russia.Contributor/Getty ImagesOther items, like what was identified as a fully intact French-made SCALP (Storm Shadow) cruise missile, may be more questionable, though Russia has gotten its hands on a partially intact Storm Shadow missile.

A visitor takes a selfie photo in front of an Armored Vehicle Husky (International MXT-MV by Navistar, Inc), captured in Ukraine in 2023, during a propaganda exhibition of captured Ukrainian weapons, on August 15, 2023.Contributor/Getty Images

One video shared by RIA Novosti shows more of the items on display, including a US-made M777 Howitzer, artillery that's helped Ukraine in its artillery fight with the Russians.

Various guns, rifles, and rocket launchers were also put on display.

Russian assets were also shown at the exhibit, including a Granat 4E unmanned aerial vehicle, a reconnaissance drone capable of monitoring and relaying radio signals.

A Russian officer stands in front of a Russian unmanned aerial vehicle Granat 4E made by Russian weapons manufacturer Kalashnikov at the exposition field in Kubinka Patriot Park outside Moscow on August 15, 2023.ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images

And destroyed Ukrainian weapons were also included. The display included what Russia claimed was the wreckage of a tactical Tochka-U missile. Prior to this new display of Western assets, Patriot Park had exhibits of captured Ukrainian armored vehicles and patrol boats, as well as T-72 tanks.

People inspect the wreckage of a Ukrainian operational-tactical missile Tochka-U at the exposition field in Kubinka Patriot Park outside Moscow on August 15, 2023.ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images

Ukraine has their own exhibit of wrecked Russian military equipment, which opened last June. At the time of opening, it included mostly weapons that were captured during Russia's botched Kyiv offensive, including a T-72 tank, anti-aircraft artillery systems, and a BMD-4 turret. And last August, as Kyiv marked the country's Independence Day, the Ukrainians displayed burnt, damaged, and destroyed Russian tanks in the Ukrainian capital.

Ukraine has also managed to capture functional Russian weapons, which has put back in service to help fuel combat actions, including the ongoing counteroffensive.

Read the original article on Business Insider

ca.finance.yahoo.com · by Chris PanellaAugust 16, 2023 at 8:49 a.m.·3 min read

4. Russia’s War-Torn Economy Hits Its Speed Limit

Excerpts:

“The devaluation of the ruble shows that the economic fireworks of booming public spending are not sustainable,” said Janis Kluge, an expert on the Russian economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “The speed limit is not what the government can finance, but what the economy can produce.”

Russia’s ability to increase production at its own factories is already stretched to the limit. In sectors supplying the military, plants are working multiple shifts to cope with orders. Statistical categories associated with military output, such as metal goods, optical products and special clothing, boomed in the first half of the year.

Nonmilitary industrial sectors, meanwhile, have languished, weighed down by the lack of access to Western parts, inefficiency and a history of weak investment in upkeep of machines and equipment. Auto output is down more than 10% year-over-year. As a result, Russia’s economy has become increasingly centered on its vast natural resources, with profits from energy and metals filling the government’s coffers.

...

Russia’s growing technological isolation is expected to reduce its long-term growth prospects, which were bleak even before the war. The country’s labor force has been shrinking for more than a decade as its population ages. Productivity has been weak owing to a lack of investment and a business climate rife with corruption and bureaucracy.

Those trends have only worsened over the past year. Russia is facing its worst labor shortage since the 1990s as hundreds of thousands are mobilized for the front or have fled the country.

“There’s almost no supply left in Russia’s economy, and the inevitable result of that is going to be inflation,” said Liam Peach, senior emerging-market economist at Capital Economics.

Russia’s War-Torn Economy Hits Its Speed Limit

Economists see this week’s currency gyrations not as the beginning of a financial crisis but rather as a symptom of the Kremlin’s sclerotic economic prospects

By Chelsey Dulaney and Georgi Kantchev

Updated Aug. 17, 2023 5:08 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russias-war-torn-economy-hits-its-speed-limit-3c807f26?mod=hp_lead_pos1

The Russian central bank’s jumbo interest-rate increase to halt a tumbling ruble this week points to a new reality for the Kremlin: Russia’s economy has reached its speed limit.

The government has flooded the Russian economy with money to keep its troops in Ukraine supplied and insulate its businesses and citizens from the war. Thanks to the state’s largess, demand in the economy is rising, helping it recover from last year’s sanctions-induced recession. Supply—increasingly constrained by Russia’s isolation and widespread labor shortages—isn’t.

That growing imbalance of Russia’s wartime economy was thrust into focus this week as the ruble fell to its lowest level since the early days of the war. A senior Kremlin official blamed the currency drop on loose monetary policy. A day later, Russia’s central bank hiked interest rates by 3.5 percentage points at an emergency meeting, citing the need to stabilize the currency and bring down inflation, which it said has been growing at an annualized rate of 7.6% over the last three months.

The ruble has staged a rebound, with $1 now buying roughly 94 rubles compared with as much as 102 on Monday. Economists see this week’s volatility not as the beginning of an imminent financial crisis but rather as a symptom of Russia’s sclerotic economic prospects.

In another bid to support the currency, the Russian government struck an informal agreement with exporters to convert more of their foreign earnings back into rubles, according to Russian business newspaper Vedomosti. The central bank implemented a stricter version of that policy shortly after the war began to help prop up the battered ruble

One step Russia’s central bank is now considering to boost the currency would reimpose requirements—used earlier in the war—on exporters to convert foreign earnings back into rubles, according to media reports.

“Russia is one of the few countries that could sustain for the longest. I don’t think they’re necessarily going to run out of money or whatnot,” said Erik Meyersson, chief emerging-market strategist at Swedish bank SEB.

But the level at which the Russian economy can grow without stoking inflation is now much lower than before Western sanctions. The decline of this so-called potential growth rate sets up a dilemma for President Vladimir Putin as he needs to both boost military production and placate the domestic population ahead of the coming presidential elections in March.

Government spending as part of gross domestic product has jumped by 13.5% in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the highest growth rate in data going back to 1996.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that Russia’s potential growth rate was around 3.5% before 2014, the year it seized Crimea from Ukraine.

Analysts at Raiffeisenbank Russia estimate the long-term potential growth of the economy now stands at 0.9%. In the years running up to the 2008 financial crisis, Russia’s economy averaged growth of more than 7% a year.

A clothing factory worker labors over military uniforms in Grozny, Russia. PHOTO: YELENA AFONINA/ZUMA PRESS

“The devaluation of the ruble shows that the economic fireworks of booming public spending are not sustainable,” said Janis Kluge, an expert on the Russian economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “The speed limit is not what the government can finance, but what the economy can produce.”

Russia’s ability to increase production at its own factories is already stretched to the limit. In sectors supplying the military, plants are working multiple shifts to cope with orders. Statistical categories associated with military output, such as metal goods, optical products and special clothing, boomed in the first half of the year.

Nonmilitary industrial sectors, meanwhile, have languished, weighed down by the lack of access to Western parts, inefficiency and a history of weak investment in upkeep of machines and equipment. Auto output is down more than 10% year-over-year. As a result, Russia’s economy has become increasingly centered on its vast natural resources, with profits from energy and metals filling the government’s coffers.

Most say US needs to increase preparations for military threats from China: survey

BY JULIA SHAPERO - 08/16/23 12:44 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4155194-most-say-us-needs-to-increase-preparations-for-military-threats-from-china-survey/

The American and Chinese flags wave at Genting Snow Park ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 2, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China.(AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

A majority of Americans surveyed in a poll released Wednesday said the U.S. needs to increase preparations for potential military threats from China, amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.

The Reuters-Ipsos poll found 66 percent of respondents believe America “needs to do more to prepare for military threats from China.”

Republican respondents were more likely than their Democratic counterparts to call for additional military preparations, a split often mirrored by their parties’ respective lawmakers. While 58 percent of Democrats in the poll said the U.S. should boost preparations, 81 percent of Republicans said the same.

Blinken: 1943 Bialystok ghetto uprising in Poland an act of ‘bravery’

US issues sanctions targeting North Korea-Russia arms trade

However, less than half of Americans in the poll — 38 percent — said they would support deploying U.S. troops to Taiwan in the case of a Chinese attack. Another 42 percent said they would oppose sending troops to Taiwan, while 20 percent said they were unsure, the poll found.

The self-governing island off the eastern coast of China has often been a flashpoint between Washington and Beijing. China lays claim to Taiwan, while the U.S. acknowledges that claim without accepting it and opposes any unilateral change to the status quo under its ambiguous “one China” policy.

The Reuters-Ipsos poll was conducted Aug. 14-15 with 1,005 adults, including 443 Democrats and 346 Republicans, and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

6. Ukrainian ship carrying grain sails from Odessa, testing Russian threat

Excerpts:

Last month, Russia withdrew from the U.N.-brokered agreement to allow Ukrainian grain shipments safe passage, and warned that all ships traveling in the Black Sea from Ukrainian ports would be considered to be potentially carrying military cargo.

Kyiv responded with its own announcement that all ships traveling to Russian Black Sea ports would also be regarded as potentially transporting military arms and equipment.

Last week, Ukraine’s navy announced on its Facebook page that “temporary corridors” had been established for “merchant vessels going to and from Ukrainian ports.”

“At the same time, it is reported that there is a military threat and mine danger from the Russian Federation along all routes,” the statement said, without providing any details about the corridors’ locations.

Ukrainian ship carrying grain sails from Odessa, testing Russian threat

By David L. Stern

Updated August 16, 2023 at 1:43 p.m. EDT|Published August 16, 2023 at 11:13 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by David L. Stern · August 16, 2023

KYIV — Kyiv officials said a first ship carrying Ukrainian agricultural cargo set sail Wednesday from the southern port of Odessa — despite threats by Russia to forcibly stop vessels in the Black Sea after Moscow unilaterally terminated a U.N.-sponsored agreement allowing safe passage of Ukrainian grain shipments.

Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Alexander Kubrakov said the container ship Joseph Schulte, flying a Hong Kong flag, left the port “and is proceeding through a temporary corridor established for civilian vessels” on its way to the Bosporus Strait.

Kubrakov, posting on Facebook, said the ship was “carrying more than 30,000 tons of cargo, including food products” and had been in the Odessa port since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, nearly 18 months ago.

The announcement came as Russian forces continued their ferocious barrage of Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure, apparently intent on destroying the country’s ability to ship to global markets and crippling a key sector of its economy.

On Wednesday, the head of the Odessa regional administration, Oleh Kiper, said two waves of self-destructing drones damaged “warehouses and granaries” in a port on the Danube River, which Ukraine established as an alternative route to shipping from ports directly on the Black Sea.

“The main goal [of the attacks] is port and grain infrastructure in the south of the region,” Kiper wrote on Telegram.

Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, said the assault hit the Danube port of Reni, and he posted photos of destroyed storage facilities. There were no casualties, Yermak said.

Last month, Russia withdrew from the U.N.-brokered agreement to allow Ukrainian grain shipments safe passage, and warned that all ships traveling in the Black Sea from Ukrainian ports would be considered to be potentially carrying military cargo.

Kyiv responded with its own announcement that all ships traveling to Russian Black Sea ports would also be regarded as potentially transporting military arms and equipment.

Last week, Ukraine’s navy announced on its Facebook page that “temporary corridors” had been established for “merchant vessels going to and from Ukrainian ports.”

“At the same time, it is reported that there is a military threat and mine danger from the Russian Federation along all routes,” the statement said, without providing any details about the corridors’ locations.

Ukraine’s military said Wednesday that it had liberated the village of Urozhaine, a small settlement in the eastern Donetsk region.

Alexander Khodakovsky, commander of the Moscow-aligned Vostok Battalion in Russian-occupied Donetsk, said on Telegram that Ukrainian forces captured the village, claiming that the Ukrainians paid a high price in casualties.

“Not a single house surrendered to us without a fight,” Khodakovsky wrote, adding that his troops did not wait for “promised reinforcements, which were supposed to arrive any day.”

The reports could not be independently confirmed, but if they are accurate, the recapture of Urozhaine would highlight the incremental pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Urozhaine is adjacent to Staromaiorske, which Ukrainian forces retook at the end of July.

On Wednesday, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chief of its security council, said the Kremlin should gain control of Kyiv, after a top NATO official made controversial remarks that Ukraine could cede territory to Russia in exchange for membership in the alliance.

Stian Jenssen, chief of staff to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, said during a panel discussion Tuesday in Norway that such a trade-off could be part of a solution to end the war, though he added that it was up to Kyiv officials “to decide when and on what terms they want to negotiate.”

Medvedev called the idea “curious” and suggested that Ukraine would have to give up most of its territory, with the exception of western Ukraine.

“To enter the bloc, the Kyiv authorities will have to give up even Kyiv itself, the capital of Ancient Rus,” Medvedev said, referring to a political entity that existed about a thousand years ago and covered portions of today’s Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. “They will have to move the capital to Lviv,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top officials claim that Rus was the predecessor to today’s Russia and have used this as one of their justifications for their invasion of Ukraine and attempts to seize its territory.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak rejected Jenssen’s remarks, calling the suggestion “ridiculous.”

“That means deliberately choosing the defeat of democracy, encouraging a global criminal, preserving the Russian regime, destroying international law, and passing the war on to other generations,” Podolyak wrote on social media.

“Attempts to preserve the world order and establish a ‘bad peace’ through, let’s be honest, Putin’s triumph will not bring peace to the world, but will bring both dishonor and war,” Podolyak said.

On Wednesday, Jenssen clarified his statements, saying in an interview that what he said was “a mistake” and that he “shouldn’t have said it that way.”

“If, and I emphasize if, you get to the point where you can negotiate,” Jenssen said, the military situation on the ground “will be absolutely central.” He did not mention the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, however.

The Washington Post · by David L. Stern · August 16, 2023

7.Russia’s ‘General Armageddon’ removed from military leadership, under house arrest: Reports

Excerpt:

The Kremlin has not yet made an official public statement about Surovikin’s whereabouts or the reports about his foreknowledge of the Wagner mutiny, only referring to “speculations, allegations” when probed by reporters on his disappearance.

Russia’s ‘General Armageddon’ removed from military leadership, under house arrest: Reports

Politico · by Veronika Melkozerova · August 15, 2023

Sergei Surovikin can’t leave his apartment and has been told to stay silent until he’s forgotten, local media says.

Surovikin has not been seen in public since Wagner’s march on Moscow in June | Mikhail Metzel/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images

August 15, 2023 12:23 pm CET

2 minutes read

Russia’s General Sergei Surovikin, believed to be an ally of exiled Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been removed from his leadership role in Moscow’s war on Ukraine and is under house arrest, according to reports circulating among Russian military bloggers and media.

The VChK-OGPU blog, which is considered close to Russia’s security forces, reported late Sunday that Surovikin is now “under a kind of house arrest” where he can’t leave the apartment he is being kept in, but has been permitted visitors, including several of his subordinates.

Surovikin, known as “General Armageddon” for his aggressive military strategies in Chechnya and Syria, has not been seen in public since Wagner’s march on Moscow in June, after reports circulated that he had known about Prigozhin’s planned mutiny.

“There is no official investigation, but Surovikin spent a long time in limbo answering uncomfortable questions,” VChK-OGPU reported, adding that the general has been advised to stay under the radar so that he is “forgotten.” Quoting a person with knowledge of the situation, the blog said a decision on Surovikin’s ultimate fate “must be taken by one person, and the longer this takes, the more this person will cool down” — referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The report came just a few days after Viktor Sobolev, a former Russian lieutenant general who now sits as an MP in the state Duma, told News.ru that Surovikin had been removed from his role as commander of the Kremlin’s forces in Ukraine.

Sobolev also hinted that Surovikin could ultimately make a comeback, telling the Russian news site that the general could be useful to the army at a later point, if he isn’t found to have committed serious violations.

The Kremlin has not yet made an official public statement about Surovikin’s whereabouts or the reports about his foreknowledge of the Wagner mutiny, only referring to “speculations, allegations” when probed by reporters on his disappearance.

More from ... Elisa Braun and Zoya Sheftalovich

8. Renewed Tensions in the Persian Gulf: Further War Powers Lessons from the Tanker War

Excerpts:

The Tanker War also illustrates how the shortcomings of the War Powers Resolution combined with the machinations of an obdurate executive branch and the legislature’s own dysfunctions, hobble Congress’s ability to exercise its constitutional prerogatives and restrain the president from taking provocative unilateral military action. Recognizing the inadequacies of the Resolution, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee formed a special subcommittee on War Powers chaired by then-Senator Joe Biden. Although the subcommittee held a number of hearings and Senator Biden elaborated on the Resolution’s shortcomings and proposed his own replacement in a law review article, Congress did not ultimately fix the flaws in the law.

As the United States faces renewed military tensions in the Persian Gulf, bipartisan coalitions in Congress are once again attempting to reinforce the weak guardrails of the War Powers Resolution. In the House, these efforts take the form of the National Security Reform and Accountability Act (NSRAA) recently reintroduced by Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Nancy Mace (R-SC). Amongst other things, this bill would define key terms like “hostilities” in the War Powers Resolution and give that law teeth by imposing an automatic funding cutoff for conflict not authorized by Congress within 20 days of the introduction of U.S. forces into “hostilities or a situation where there is a serious risk of hostilities.” Along with a companion piece of legislation, the National Security Powers Act (NSPA), introduced in the Senate during the last Congress, these measures would implement recommendations originally proposed by the late legal scholar John Hart Ely following the Tanker War. Although the short-term prospects for the enactment of this legislation either in whole or in part are uncertain, the possibility of the White House unilaterally introducing U.S. armed forces into yet another potential conflict in the Middle East should generate a sense of urgency on Capitol Hill for finally tackling the long overdue project of war powers reform.

Renewed Tensions in the Persian Gulf: Further War Powers Lessons from the Tanker War

justsecurity.org · by Brian Finucane · August 16, 2023

August 16, 2023

For years, Iran has been attacking and seizing commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf, in some cases seemingly in retaliation for U.S. efforts to interdict Iranian oil exports as a sanctions enforcement measure. These moves have raised fears about regional maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that remains critical to the global oil supply. The United States has responded to recent Iranian action by deploying F-16, F-35, and A-10 warplanes to the region, along with additional warships, and U.S. forces, including the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. According to press reports, the Biden administration is now also deliberating over whether to station U.S. Marines on commercial tankers, whether to expand “collective self-defense” to vessels based on ownership of the ship or cargo (rather than solely based on U.S. registration), as well as potentially delegating further down the chain of command the authority of military commanders to use force.

The intent behind the proposal to station Marines aboard commercial vessels appears to be to use U.S. armed forces as a tripwire, whereby any Iranian attack on these commercial vessels would amount to an attack on U.S. armed forces. The apparent logic is that such a tripwire would deter Iran from further attacks or attempts to seize tankers or other commercial vessels.

The extension of the United States’ defensive umbrella over commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf has historic precedent, most prominently during the so-called Tanker War. In response to Iranian attacks on neutral oil tankers, the United States agreed to reflag Kuwaiti vessels as American and accompany them with U.S. naval convoys as part of Operation Earnest Will. As the Legal Adviser to the State Department argued at the time, “U.S. protection of the vessels is intended to deter rather than provoke military action by Iran.” In the event, this operation led to repeated hostilities between U.S. and Iranian forces in 1987-1988.

The Reagan administration’s military operations in the Gulf in 1987-1988 raised important legal issues under the War Powers Resolution that may bear both on contemplated operations in the region today as well as Congress’s efforts to reform and reinforce that 1973 law. (My former State Department colleague Todd Buchwald previously discussed some of the legal issues implicated by the Tanker Wars in this Just Security piece.) The Tanker War also illustrates how measures taken ostensibly for deterrence can lead to escalation and draw the United States deeper into conflict. Despite a recently announced U.S.-Iran prisoner release arrangement, in the context of continued tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and tit-for-tat hostilities in the region, concerns that history may repeat itself are more than theoretical.

Legal Background: The 1973 War Powers Resolution

The statutory framework intended to govern the unilateral use of force by the president, both in the Tanker War and in the event U.S. armed forces again interpose themselves between attacking Iranian ships and commercial vessels, is the War Powers Resolution. Congress enacted this law over President Nixon’s veto in 1973 to reassert its constitutional prerogatives with respect to war and peace in the final stages of the Vietnam War. Specifically, Congress sought to forestall any president from taking the country to war without congressional authorization or even without congressional awareness (as had allegedly been the case for aspects of the war in Indochina, such as the incursion into Cambodia).

To this end, Section 4(a) of the Resolution establishes reporting requirements to prevent the president from taking the country to war in secret. In the absence of a declaration of war or other statutory authorization, the president is subject to multi-tiered obligations to report on certain triggering activities of U.S. armed forces within 48 hours to Congress. First, under subsection 4(a)(1) she must report when U.S. military forces are introduced into “hostilities” or introduced into “situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” Such hostilities reports are the focus of this essay. Second, even if U.S. forces are not engaging in hostilities, subsection 4(a)(2) requires the president to report the introduction of “combat equipped” forces into a country (which the executive branch reads as forces equipped with crew-served weapons such as machine guns requiring more than one person to operate and mortars). Third, pursuant to subsection 4(a)(3) the president must also report a substantial enlargement of such combat equipped forces in a country where such forces are already present.

Notably, under Section 5(b) of the 1973 Resolution, the submission of a report under the first of these scenarios — introduction of U.S. forces into hostilities or situations of imminent hostilities — also starts a 60-day clock for the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from such hostilities unless Congress declares war or otherwise enacts specific statutory authorization for the use of force. Further, the War Powers Resolution provided a mechanism in section 5(c) for Congress to order the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities through a concurrent resolution—that is, a resolution passed by both houses of Congress but not presented to the president for his or her signature or veto. (Particularly following the Supreme Court’s 1983 decision in INS v. Chadha that ruled unconstitutional the legislative veto, section 5(c) is widely viewed as unconstitutional. In the wake of Chadha Congress enacted expedited procedures for joint resolutions requiring the removal of U.S. armed forces from hostilities, which does require presentment to the president.)

Although Congress did not define “hostilities” or “imminent involvement in hostilities,” in the text of the statute, the legislative history indicates that Congress intended those terms to be construed broadly in order to establish a low threshold for both the reporting and withdrawal provisions of the War Powers Resolution. The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s report on the Resolution explains:

The word hostilities was substituted for the phrase armed conflict during the subcommittee drafting process because it was considered to be somewhat broader in scope. In addition to a situation in which fighting actually has begun, hostilities also encompasses a state of confrontation in which no shots have been fired but where there is a clear and present danger of armed conflict. “Imminent hostilities” denotes a situation in which there is a clear potential either for such a state of confrontation or for actual armed conflict.

Unsurprisingly, the executive branch has espoused different, narrower interpretations of these terms that are less likely to constrain the president’s ability to use military force without congressional authorization. In the most oft-repeated formulation, the State Department’s Legal Adviser informed Congress in a 1975 letter that its working definition of “hostilities” meant “a situation in which units of the U.S. armed forces are actively engaged in exchanges of fire with opposing units of hostile forces.” “Imminent hostilities” means “a situation in which there is a serious risk from hostile fire to the safety of United States forces.” As a matter of statutory interpretation, it is questionable how much weight the post-enactment views of the executive branch should be accorded as opposed to the pre-enactment interpretation of the legislature that enacted the statute over the president’s veto.

The Failure of Deterrence: Active Conflict and Tragedy

The Tanker War was waged in the context of the broader 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. In 1984, Iraq began to attack tankers carrying Iranian oil through the Persian Gulf in an attempt to make up at sea the military momentum it was losing on land. Iran reciprocated, though by targeting vessels carrying the oil of Arab states it viewed as supporting Iraq in the conflict. By 1987, Iran and Iraq had attacked 259 oil tankers/product carriers in the Gulf.

In late 1986, Iran began stepping up attacks on Kuwaiti-flagged vessels as well as vessels bound to or from Kuwait. In response, Kuwait approached the United States and other states (including the Soviet Union) about protecting vessels carrying its oils. The United States and Kuwait agreed on a plan to reflag 11 vessels as American. The Reagan administration announced that it would “provide the same type of protection for Kuwaiti reflagged vessels as that accorded other U.S.- flagged vessels operating in the gulf.” The stated rationale for the move was both to deter Iran from further attacks but also to limit the influence of the Soviet Union in the Gulf. In July 1987, the United States initiated naval convoys under the moniker Operation Earnest Will.

Even prior to the launch of Operation Earnest Will, U.S. forces in the Gulf had come under fire. On May 17, 1987, an Iraqi fighter jet mistakenly attacked the U.S.S. Stark killing 37 U.S. sailors.

During the ten-month course of the operation—the largest naval convoy operation since the Second World War— U.S. forces and the commercial vessels they were escorting were repeatedly involved in fighting, beginning with the very first convoy when the SS Bridgeton struck an Iranian mine on July 24. Following this incident, the U.S. posture shifted from one of more passive deterrence, including for example by pursuing the Iranian minelayers. Moreover, U.S. forces respond to an October 16 Iranian missile attack on the reflagged SS Sea Isle City by destroying an Iranian oil platform. Fighting between U.S. and Iranian forces intensified in particular after the USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine on April 14, 1988 and almost sank. In a retaliatory attack on April 18, dubbed Operation Praying Mantis, U.S. forces destroyed two Iranian oil platforms, several speedboats, damaged the frigate Saban, and destroyed the frigate Joshan. In addition to attacks on Iranian military assets, during the course of these U.S. operations in the Gulf, the USS Vincennes also mistakenly shot down Iran Air Flight 655 killing 290 civilians. In all, the Reagan administration reported six incidents to Congress occurring between September 21, 1987 and July 12, 1988.

Avoiding the 60-day Clock

The Reagan administration employed several techniques to avoid the 60-day deadline imposed by the War Powers Resolution for terminating hostilities during the U.S. engagement in the Tanker War. In addition to contending that the termination provision of Section 5 was unconstitutional (a reversal from the position taken by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel under President Carter), the Reagan administration interpreted key provisions of the War Powers Resolution narrowly and exploited loopholes in the law to continue hostilities against Iran beyond 60 days.

Narrow Interpretation of “Hostilities”

Both in the lead up and during the implementation of the reflagging and escort operation, the Reagan administration construed the terms “hostilities” and “imminent hostilities” extremely narrowly to avoid triggering either the reporting or withdrawal provisions of the Resolution. For example, following the Iraqi missile attack on the U.S.S. Stark on May 17, 1987 prior to the escort operation, the executive branch did not report the incident to Congress under the War Powers Resolution as seemingly required. Instead, Secretary of State Schultz sent the Speaker of the House what might be termed an “anti-War Powers” report—a letter that, though it did not mention the law itself, explicitly denied that U.S. armed forces were in hostilities or situation of imminent hostilities:

Our forces are not in a situation of actual hostilities, nor does their continued presence in the area place them in a situation in which imminent involvement in hostilities is indicated, although we are mindful of recent Iranian statements threatening U.S. and other ships under protection.

Similarly, when on August 10 a U.S. F-14 fighter fired two missiles at an unidentified target it deemed a threat, even though the missiles missed, Congress asked why the event did not constitute “involvement in imminent hostilities” and thus trigger the War Powers Resolution. In a letter to the Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, the State Department took the position that “[i]solated incidents involving defensive reactions by U.S. forces do not necessarily indicate that imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances… In this particular case, it is not clear that an attack on U.S. forces was imminent, and in fact no such attack occurred.”

When the Pentagon announced the U.S. military personnel in the Persian Gulf would be eligible to receive “imminent danger” pay, Congress pressed the administration as to why the conditions justifying such pay did not also trigger the application of the War Powers Resolution. The administration sought to distinguish the standard for “imminent danger” pay from “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution, claiming that the former was much broader than the latter. These narrow interpretations of the terms “hostilities” and “imminent hostilities” were nothing new for the Reagan administration, as it had previously resisted notifying U.S. military operations in El Salvador—despite multiple U.S. servicemembers being killed by hostile fire and a lawsuit brought by members of Congress.

Slippery Reports and Salami Slicing

When the Reagan administration eventually did submit reports to Congress that referenced the War Powers Resolution, the framing and content of the documents were designed to avoid either triggering or running out the Resolution’s 60-day clock.

In the first place, the reports (all of which can be found at War Powers Resolution Reporting Project of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law) emphasized that the administration challenged the constitutionality of certain unspecified provisions of the Resolution. Second, the reports were generally submitted “consistent with” the Resolution (the now-standard formulation used by the executive branch) rather than pursuant to, even though no administration has seriously challenged the constitutionality or binding nature of the reporting requirements of the law.

Further, even though the events described in these reports clearly involved “hostilities” even under the executive branch’s narrow interpretation, the Reagan administration (as had already become typical) did not specify under which provision of the Resolution it was reporting these incidents. In doing so, it could claim that it had never triggered the 60-day clock for withdrawing from hostilities that would be activated by a report submitted under Section 4(a)(1) of the law. The Reagan administration was candid about exploiting a loophole in the law, as the Resolution did not require the president to identify the reason he or she was submitting a report. As Abe Sofaer, the State Department’s Legal Adviser, later explained:

[Section 4] does not require the President to state the particular subsection under which reports are made no President has felt compelled to do so. A definitive judgment at the outset of a deployment as to whether hostilities will result is often difficult to make, and this practices is a useful way…for the Executive to avoid unnecessary constitutional confrontations over whether section 4(a)(1) is applicable or whether, even if its conditions are met, it can properly be deemed to trigger an automatic termination under section 5.

Finally, the Reagan administration treated ongoing hostilities between U.S. and Iranian forces as a series of discrete events. Its reports to Congress on these hostilities sometimes noted that the administration “considered the matter closed.” Filing multiple reports for what was in fact a single, continuing conflict over the course of at least ten months, allowed the executive branch to stop and reset the 60-day clock for withdrawing from hostilities. (The Obama administration would later adopt a similar “salami-slicing” approach during the early months of the counter-ISIS campaign by filing multiple War Powers reports for that conflict.) As Todd Buchwald noted, there is tension between the Reagan administration treating these incidents as discrete for the purposes of the War Powers Resolution and the United States aggregating them for the purposes of its international law arguments before the International Court of Justice in the Oil Platforms case. In its arguments for the International Court of Justice, the United States contended that the proportionality of measures the U.S. took in self-defense should not be assessed based merely on the immediately preceding Iranian attack, but by the overall threat posed by Iran—including by looking at the “recurring pattern of attacks.”

Inconclusive Congressional Action

Given the Reagan administration’s efforts to avoid triggering subsection 4(a)(1) of the Resolution, members of Congress – principally in the Senate – sought to force the application of the Resolution through legislation. For example, one measure in the Senate would have legislatively determined that subsection 4(a)(1) had been triggered thus forcing the start of the 60-day clock, which would require the subsequent removal of U.S. forces from hostilities unless Congress passed a use of force authorization. There was recent precedent for such action as Congress had retroactively determined by a joint resolution in 1983 that “the requirements of section 4(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution became operative on August 29, 1983” with respect to U.S. miliary operations in Lebanon but also provided limited authority for continued U.S. operations in that country for 18 months. However, unlike in 1983, such measures, including a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1988, did not pass the Senate much less both houses of Congress. Moreover, they were opposed by the Reagan administration.

Rather than enact substantive restrictions on the use of force, Congress settled for passing a requirement for a report from the Pentagon prior to the implementation of any reflagging agreement with Kuwait. The episode illustrates the difficulty Congress faces in pushing back in the moment against a unilateral use of force by a president, including the hurdle of marshalling a congressional majority, much less a supermajority to block a war in progress, when the White House skirts the strictures imposed by the War Powers Resolution.

Ineffective Litigation

Members of Congress also sought to enforce the War Powers Resolution through recourse to the courts. In Lowry v. Reagan, 110 members of the House of Representative joined a suit against President Reagan seeking to compel him to file report under section 4(a)(1) of the Resolution and thus started the 60-day clock for withdrawal from hostilities. The district court judge dismissed the suit, including on the basis of the political question doctrine. (The court also noted in dicta that in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Chadha, the concurrent resolution mechanism of the War Powers Resolution for forcing the withdrawal of U.S. forces did not have the “force and effect of law,” a point apparently conceded by the plaintiffs.) The court’s avoidance of the merits of the suit is typical of the response by judiciary to attempts by Congress to resolve disputes over war powers in the courts.

Conclusion

Although the context of the Tanker War was very different than the current situation in the Persian Gulf, the conflict nonetheless demonstrates how measures taken in the name of defense can lead to escalation. The episode highlights how the threat of the use of force against Iran for the ostensible purpose of deterrence can instead result in an unpredictable and spiraling conflict.

The Tanker War also illustrates how the shortcomings of the War Powers Resolution combined with the machinations of an obdurate executive branch and the legislature’s own dysfunctions, hobble Congress’s ability to exercise its constitutional prerogatives and restrain the president from taking provocative unilateral military action. Recognizing the inadequacies of the Resolution, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee formed a special subcommittee on War Powers chaired by then-Senator Joe Biden. Although the subcommittee held a number of hearings and Senator Biden elaborated on the Resolution’s shortcomings and proposed his own replacement in a law review article, Congress did not ultimately fix the flaws in the law.

As the United States faces renewed military tensions in the Persian Gulf, bipartisan coalitions in Congress are once again attempting to reinforce the weak guardrails of the War Powers Resolution. In the House, these efforts take the form of the National Security Reform and Accountability Act (NSRAA) recently reintroduced by Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Nancy Mace (R-SC). Amongst other things, this bill would define key terms like “hostilities” in the War Powers Resolution and give that law teeth by imposing an automatic funding cutoff for conflict not authorized by Congress within 20 days of the introduction of U.S. forces into “hostilities or a situation where there is a serious risk of hostilities.” Along with a companion piece of legislation, the National Security Powers Act (NSPA), introduced in the Senate during the last Congress, these measures would implement recommendations originally proposed by the late legal scholar John Hart Ely following the Tanker War. Although the short-term prospects for the enactment of this legislation either in whole or in part are uncertain, the possibility of the White House unilaterally introducing U.S. armed forces into yet another potential conflict in the Middle East should generate a sense of urgency on Capitol Hill for finally tackling the long overdue project of war powers reform.

IMAGE: An L3 Harris Arabian Fox MAST-13 unmanned surface vessel, front, the U.S. Coast Guard fast response cutter USCGC Charles Moulthrope (WPC 1141), the dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE 6) and the guided-missile destroyer USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116) transit the Strait of Hormuz, Aug. 6, 2023. (U.S. Navy photo)

justsecurity.org · by Brian Finucane · August 16, 2023

9. How Marines could prevent Iranian harassment of commercial ships

Excerpts:

The U.S. Navy says Iran has seized at least five commercial vessels in the past two years and has harassed more than a dozen others. Many of the incidents have occurred in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all crude oil passes.

“Achieving deterrence is one of those mission outcomes that’s tough to define at times,” Beydler said. “How do you know that you’re being successful in deterring big events, small events and so forth?”

Beydler noted that placing Marines on the ships could bring a potential for escalation.

“It’s a region that’s fraught with potential miscalculation,” retired Navy Vice Adm. Mark Fox, former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, said in the webinar Tuesday.

How Marines could prevent Iranian harassment of commercial ships

marinecorpstimes.com · by Irene Loewenson · August 16, 2023

Although it’s unclear exactly what Marines would do if placed on commercial ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, retired military leaders say they could deter Iranian forces from harassing or seizing the vessels — and quickly loop in the Navy if issues arise.

More than 100 Marines already have gotten training from the Navy and are prepared to be put on commercial vessels transiting the strategically important passage ― which links the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman ― if ordered, the U.S. Naval Institute reported Friday, citing an anonymous U.S. official.

The security teams are made up of between 15 Marines and 19 Marines, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. Training began before the Navy ships carrying them arrived in Bahrain on Aug. 6, the Institute reported.

The teams could prevent Iranian forces from coming aboard the ships, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Dave Beydler said in a webinar Tuesday moderated by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a pro-Israel think tank.

More Marines, sailors operating in Red Sea amid tensions with Iran

The increased presence of sailors and Marines aims to de-escalate tensions caused by Iran’s harassment and seizures of merchant vessels.

“You will not get on a commercial vessel that has a contingent of Marines on board,” said Beydler, the former commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command.

The Marines could protect against threatening close passes by other ships, Beydler said. They can fend off attacks with their counter-drone and counter-air capabilities. And with their communications capabilities, they could quickly alert the Navy if threats emerge from Iran, Beydler said.

Retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, wrote in a Bloomberg op-ed Friday that the Marines’ “jam-proof communications” would be their most important asset.

Stavridis noted that having U.S. Marines protect commercial vessels would mark a return to a historical role and a beginning as “a powerful fighting force on sailing ships, often protecting convoys of commercial craft.”

Experts told the U.S. Naval Institute the potential peacetime deployment of Marines onto commercial ships would be unprecedented in modern history.

The last known time the military put armed troops on commercial ships, according to the pro-restraint think tank the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, was World War II. To protect logistics from attack, service members from the Navy’s Armed Guard operated the guns aboard merchant vessels.

The Defense Department declined to confirm or deny plans to place Marines on commercial ships.

In response to a query, a spokesman for the Marine Corps directed Marine Corps Times to query U.S. Central Command.

“CENTCOM remains committed to supporting our partners and collective efforts to protect the freedom of maritime navigation and the free flow of commerce throughout the region,” U.S. Central Command said in a Tuesday emailed statement to Marine Corps Times. “We do not discuss future/on-going operations.”

The DoD has, however, made clear that the recent Middle East deployment of approximately 3,000 Marines and sailors on the amphibious assault ship Bataan and dock landing ship Carter Hall was meant to prevent Iran from meddling with commercial shipping.

The Marines who would go on commercial vessels are part of the special-operations-capable 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is spread across those ships plus the amphibious landing dock Mesa Verde, the U.S. Naval Institute reported.

The possible deployment of armed U.S. troops onto commercial ships, first reported by The Associated Press, comes after a spate of Iranian interference with ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

On July 5, the Iranian navy attempted to seize two oil tankers moving through the strait and fired shots at one of them, the U.S. Navy said.

The U.S. Navy says Iran has seized at least five commercial vessels in the past two years and has harassed more than a dozen others. Many of the incidents have occurred in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all crude oil passes.

“Achieving deterrence is one of those mission outcomes that’s tough to define at times,” Beydler said. “How do you know that you’re being successful in deterring big events, small events and so forth?”

Beydler noted that placing Marines on the ships could bring a potential for escalation.

“It’s a region that’s fraught with potential miscalculation,” retired Navy Vice Adm. Mark Fox, former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, said in the webinar Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

About Irene Loewenson

Irene Loewenson is a staff reporter for Marine Corps Times. She joined Military Times as an editorial fellow in August 2022. She is a graduate of Williams College, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper.

10. Why new tech hasn’t revolutionized warfare in Ukraine

This is a summarized version of Professor Biddle's recent Foreign Affairs article.

Why new tech hasn’t revolutionized warfare in Ukraine

militarytimes.com · by Stephen Biddle · August 17, 2023

The Ukraine war is being waged with a host of advanced technologies. Many believe this is transforming warfare, with omnipresent surveillance combining with newly lethal weapons to make legacy systems such as the tank obsolete and to make traditional methods such as large-scale offensive action impractical.

But in other ways this war seems very old. It features foot soldiers slogging through muddy trenches in scenes that look more like World War I than Star Wars. Its battlefields are littered with mine fields that resemble World War II. Artillery has fired millions of unguided shells, straining the production capacity of industrial bases in Russia and the West. Accounts of code-writers developing military software coexist with scenes of factory floors turning out mass conventional munitions lacking only Rosie the Riveter to pass for 1943.

So how different is this war, actually? How can such cutting-edge technology coexist with such echoes of the distant past?

The answer is that while the tools in Ukraine are sometimes new, the results they produce are mostly not. Armies adapt to new threats, and the countermeasures that both sides have adopted in Ukraine have dramatically reduced the net effects of new technology, resulting in a war that in many ways looks more like the past than like an imagined high-tech future.

Ukrainian soldiers run towards a mortar position on the frontline in the outskirts of Kreminna, Ukraine, Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023. (Bram Janssen/AP)

As evidence, consider, for example, tank losses. Many revolutionists see heavy tank casualties in Ukraine as the key indicator for their looming obsolescence. And tank losses in Ukraine have certainly been heavy: in a year and a half, Russia and Ukraine have each lost more than half the tanks they entered the war with. Yet these are actually not unusually heavy loss rates.

In 1943, the loss rate for German tanks was 113% — the Germans lost more tanks than they owned at the beginning of the year. In 1944, Germany lost 122% of the tanks they entered the year with. The Soviet Union’s loss rates for tanks in 1943 and 1944 were nearly as high, at 109% and 80%, respectively. And in a single battle, Operation Goodwood in July 1944, Britain lost more than one-third of all the British armor on the continent in just three days of fighting. In the Battle of Amiens in 1918, in just four days Britain lost 98% of the tanks it opened the battle with. Few, however, argued that the tank was obsolete in 1943 or 1918.

Or consider artillery. Historically, more casualties are inflicted by artillery than any other weapon; some now believe that artillery causes as many as 80-90% of Ukrainian casualties. Among the war’s most prominent stories have been accounts of the two sides using drones to find targets then using networked communications to quickly relay the information for precision engagement by guided artillery. Not all artillery in Ukraine is precision-guided; most rounds fired by either side are traditional ballistically-aimed shells. But the teaming of these unguided rounds with new drone reconnaissance and rapid targeting is often described as a new and profound development in Ukraine.

If we assume that 85% of Russian casualties are caused by Ukrainian artillery, and if we use the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s estimate of Russian casualties, then drones and the mix of guided and unguided artillery in the Ukrainian army have on average inflicted about eight Russian casualties per hundred rounds fired since February 2022. This is higher than in the World Wars, but not by much.

In World War II, artillery inflicted about three casualties per hundred rounds fired. In World War I, the figure was about two. Casualties per hundred rounds has thus grown since 1914 but at a steady, almost linear annual rate of around an additional 0.05 casualties per hundred rounds. Artillery in Ukraine looks more like an incremental extension of long-standing trends than a revolutionary departure from the past.

This is because armies adapt to new technology. As in past warfare, both sides in Ukraine have already cycled through multiple rounds of countermeasures and counter-countermeasures to drones and precision weapons. For example, the long-range guided HIMARS – high-mobility artillery rocket systems — that the United States provided Ukraine in June 2022 use GPS signals for guidance; the Russians now routinely jam the signals, dramatically reducing the accuracy of the missiles.

But the most important adaptations are often behavioral: increased dispersion, cover, and concealment. Taken together, these measures can dramatically reduce the theoretical lethality of new weapons in real warfare. And the net result in Ukraine has been closer to evolution than revolution.

Even evolutionary change is still change — the U.S. military will need to continue to adapt, as it always has. But the revolution argument calls for dramatic, discontinuous change rather than business-as-usual updating of doctrine and equipment. The war in Ukraine as actually fought, however, offers a weaker case for such transformation than many assume.

Stephen Biddle is a CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow, a professor at Columbia University, and author of Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton University Press, 2004). His most recent book is Nonstate Warfare: the Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias (Princeton University Press, 2021). Read the full piece in Foreign Affairs, “Back in the Trenches: Why New Technology Hasn’t Revolutionized Warfare in Ukraine.”

11. Inside the Russian effort to build 6,000 attack drones with Iran’s help

Please go to the link for better formatting and to view all the graphics and photos.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/08/17/russia-iran-drone-shahed-alabuga/?utm

Inside the Russian effort to build 6,000 attack drones with Iran’s help

Leaked documents show that Moscow is progressing toward its goal of mass-producing UAVs it could use to pummel Ukrainian cities

By Dalton Bennett and Mary Ilyushina

August 17, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

An industrial site several hundred miles east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region where U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia, with Iran’s help, is building a factory to produce attack drones for use in the war in Ukraine. (Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies)

Listen

19 min

Comment

Add to your saved stories

Save

The engineers at a once-bustling industrial hub deep inside Russia were busy planning. The team had been secretly tasked with building a production line that would operate around-the-clock churning out self-detonating drones, weapons that President Vladimir Putin’s forces could use to bombard Ukrainian cities.

A retired official of Russia’s Federal Security Service was put in charge of security for the program. The passports of highly skilled employees were seized so they could not leave the country. In correspondence and other documents, engineers used coded language: Drones were “boats,” their explosives were “bumpers,” and Iran — the country covertly providing technical assistance — was “Ireland” or “Belarus.”

This was Russia’s billion-dollar weapons deal with Iran coming to life in November, 500 miles east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region. Its aim is to domestically build 6,000 drones by summer 2025 — enough to reverse the Russian army’s chronic shortages of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, on the front line. If it succeeds, the sprawling new drone factory could help Russia preserve its dwindling supply of precision munitions, thwart Ukraine’s effort to retake occupied territory and dramatically advance Moscow’s position in the drone arms race that is remaking modern warfare.

Although Western officials have revealed the existence of the facility and Moscow’s partnership with Tehran, documents leaked from the program and obtained by The Washington Post provide new information about the effort by two self-proclaimed enemies of the United States — under some of the world’s heaviest sanctions — to expand the Kremlin’s drone program. Altogether, the documents indicate that, despite delays and a production process that is deeply reliant on foreign-produced electronic components, Moscow has made steady progress toward its goal of manufacturing a variant of the Iranian Shahed-136, an attack drone capable of traveling more than 1,000 miles.

The documents show that the facility’s engineers are trying to improve on Iran’s dated manufacturing techniques, using Russian industrial expertise to produce the drones on a larger scale than Tehran has achieved and with greater quality control. The engineers also are exploring improvements to the drone itself, including making it capable of swarm attacks in which the UAVs autonomously coordinate a strike on a target.

JUNE 20, 2021

Moscow

Alabuga

facility

Alabuga

facility

OCT. 5, 2021

APRIL 4, 2023

Construction of facilities Alabuga later used to establish a drone production line.

Preliminary floor plan for part of the drone assembly line.

Researchers at the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, who reviewed the documents pertaining to the production process at the request of The Post, estimated that work at the facility in the Republic of Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone is at least a month behind schedule. The facility has reassembled drones provided by Iran but has itself manufactured only drone bodies, and probably for not more than 300 of the UAVs, the researchers concluded. Alabuga is unlikely to meet its target date for the 6,000 drones, they said.

Even so, David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who helped lead the research team that studied the documents, said: “Alabuga looks to be seeking a drone developmental capability that exceeds Iran’s.”

The Post obtained the documents from an individual involved in the work at Alabuga but opposes Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The individual decided to expose details of the effort in the hope that international attention might lead to additional sanctions, potentially disrupting production and bringing the war to an end more quickly, the person told The Post.

“This was the only thing I could do to at least stop and maybe create some obstacles to the implementation of this project,” the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns. “It has gone too far.”

The documents, dating from winter 2022 to spring 2023, include factory-floor blueprints, technical schematics, personnel records, memorandums provided to Iranian counterparts and presentations given to representatives of Russia’s Defense Ministry on the status of the effort code-named “Project Boat.” The Russian-language news outlet Protokol reported on some of the documents in July.

Source: Correspondence in January from Alabuga to Iranian officials

The team led by Albright and senior researcher Sarah Burkhard said the documents “appear authentic” and “go to great length to describe supply-chain procurement, production capabilities, manufacturing plans and processes, as well as plans to disguise and hide the production of Shahed drones.”

The research team found that the project faces challenges — including “doubt about its ability to reach its desired staffing levels” — but cautioned that Russia might be able to overcome those difficulties.

“Russia has a credible way of building over the next year or so a capability to go from periodically launching tens of imported Shahed-136 kamikaze drones against Ukrainian targets to more regularly attacking with hundreds of them,” Albright told The Post.

Albright said the disclosure of the records makes it difficult for Iran — which has publicly declared it is neutral in the war — to claim that it is not helping Moscow develop the ability to manufacture drones at Alabuga.

The Russian government and Alabuga did not respond to requests for comment from The Post. The Kremlin has dismissed reports that it is receiving assistance from Tehran on drones, saying that Russia relies on its own research and development.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations also did not respond to a request for comment.

‘The flying moped’

While Russia has made breakthroughs in air defense and hypersonic missiles, its military was late to prioritize drone technology. To catch up, Moscow has had to turn to Iran, one of the few nations willing to sell it military hardware.

Last summer, Russia began receiving secret shipments of Iranian drones — many of them Shaheds — that were quickly deployed to prop up its flagging war effort, U.S. and other Western officials have said.

Iran’s Shahed-136 — Russia calls the drone the Geran-2 — can carry a 118-pound explosive payload toward a target that is programmed in before launch. Because the drone is powered by a noisy propeller engine, some Ukrainians have dubbed it “the flying moped.”

The Iranian Shahed-136

Russia is working toward manufacturing a variant of the Iranian drone, which it calls the Geran-2, to supplement its dwindling stockpile of precision weapons. The drone can deliver small payloads of explosives in self-detonating attacks.

Overhead view

SHAHED-136 (IRAN)

Length: 11 feet

Max. speed: 115 mph

Approx. weight: 440 pounds

Range: About 1,100 - 1,500 miles

Its nose contains a warhead and can be equipped with a camera.

Side view

Sources: Defense Express, AeroVironment

WILLIAM NEFF/THE WASHINGTON POST

Russia’s drones have struck targets deep inside Ukraine, degrading Kyiv’s precious air defenses and allowing Moscow to preserve its more expensive precision-guided missiles. The attacks, often targeting critical civilian infrastructure, have had a devastating impact on Ukraine’s war effort, knocking critical power grids offline and destroying grain stockpiles, according to Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Those drones are much cheaper to produce compared to the damage they cause, and this is the problem,” Vlasiuk told The Post.

In November, a Kyiv-based think tank became one of the first nongovernmental organization to examine the wreckage from a Russian Geran-2 drone downed in Ukraine. It found that key parts — the motor and warhead — were produced by Tehran. “We knew the drone was from Iran,” said Gleb Kanievskyi, the founder of the StateWatch think tank.

That month, Iran acknowledged it had provided drones to Russia but said it had done so only before the start of the war.

Ukrainian firefighters work atop a destroyed building after a drone attack in Kyiv on Oct. 17, 2022. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)

In the past three months, Russia has attacked Ukraine with more than 600 of the self-detonating Shahed-136 drones, according to an intelligence assessment produced by Kyiv in July and obtained by The Post.

Conflict Armament Research, a weapons-tracking group based in Britain, examined two drones downed last month and concluded based on components it found that the Kremlin has started producing “its own domestic version of the Shahed-136.”

The Post reported in November that Russian and Iranian officials had finalized a deal in which the self-detonating drones would be produced at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, a government-backed manufacturing hub designed to attract foreign investment. The cooperation included the transfer of designs, training of production staff and provision of increasingly hard-to-source electronic components.

“This is a full-scale defense partnership that is harmful to Ukraine, to Iran’s neighbors and to the international community,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in June as the Biden administration confirmed plans by the two countries to build a drone production facility. Kirby said the plant “could be fully operational next year.”

Under the deal, the new documents show, Tehran agreed to sell Moscow what is effectively a franchise, with Iranian specialists sharing project documentation, locally produced or reverse-engineered components, and know-how. A document created in February by the project’s chief manager details the parameters of the effort and estimates the cost for some aspects of the project to be 151 billion rubles, more than $2 billion at the exchange rate at the time. Under agreements reached earlier, more than half of that sum was to go to Iran, which insisted on being paid in dollars or gold because of the volatility of the ruble, the individual who provided the documents said.

The effort — at a facility larger than 14 football fields and set to be expanded — is to be separated into three stages, according to a planning document. The first envisioned Iran’s delivery of disassembled drones that would be reassembled at the facility. The second called for the facility to produce airframes — the hollow bodies of the drones — that would be combined with Iranian-supplied engines and electronics. In the final and most ambitious stage, more than 4,000 drones would be produced with little Iranian assistance and delivered to the Russian military by September 2025.

A three-stage plan

Below is a visualization of the production timeline, based on internal documents, that engineers set out late in 2022. Experts who reviewed the documents for The Post said work has probably been delayed.

Stage 1

100 units per month

600 total units

2023

Jan. 2

Iran was to deliver disassembled drones that would be reassembled at Alabuga.

100

April 1

Stage 2

June 30

Up to 170-180 units per month

1,332 total units

The facility is to produce airframes — the hollow bodies of the drones — that would be combined with Iranian supplied engines and electronics.

1,932

Dec. 28

2024

Jan. 2

Stage 3

226 units per month

4,068 total units

In the third stage, Alabuga is to independently produce drones built with materials and components sourced largely by Russia. Under the facility’s contract, the last of those drones must be delivered to the Russian Defense Ministry by September 2025.

4,418

2025

6,000

July 30

The analysis conducted for The Post by the Institute for Science and International Security found that the facility’s production plan “appears to be feasible” but has “vulnerabilities that could disrupt its ability to fulfill its contract … or at least delay the fulfillment.”

Scarce components

The documents identify the sourcing of components required to build the Shahed-136 as an immediate challenge, after Western restrictions disrupted Russian access to foreign-produced electronics.

A detailed inventory, based on data provided to the Russians by Tehran, shows that over 90 percent of the drone system’s computer chips and electrical components are manufactured in the West, primarily in the United States. Only four of the 130 electronic components needed to build the drone are made in Russia, according to the document.

The research team led by Albright and Burkhard noted that none of the required items appears to be exclusively for use in military drones, and none is listed as a sensitive technology that is subject to export controls by the U.S. Commerce Department. The components would, however, fall under a near-blanket ban the United States recently imposed on the export of electronics to Russia, the team said.

Share this article

No subscription required to read

The flight-control unit, used to pilot the drone, comprises 21 separate electronic components manufactured by the Dallas-based company Texas Instruments. At least 13 electronic components manufactured by the Massachusetts-based company Analog Devices are present in all of the drone’s major circuit boards, including an accelerometer critical for the craft’s operation that allows the UAV to navigate along a preprogramed route if the GPS signal is lost.

One document highlights the need to develop a supply channel for various American components, including a Kintex-7 FPGA, a processor used in the drone’s navigation and communication system, made by a company that was acquired last year by California-based AMD. Without elaborating, another spreadsheet notes the domestic availability of Western-made components inside Russia and lists U.S.-based electronics distributors Mouser and DigiKey as potential suppliers.

AMD, DigiKey, Texas Instruments and Analog Devices told The Post that they comply with all U.S. sanctions and global export regulations and work to ensure that the products they make or distribute are not diverted to prohibited users. Mouser did not respond to requests for comment.

The documents do not suggest that any Western company directly supplied Iran or Russia with components used in production of the drone.

In response to questions from The Post, the White House said U.S. officials have worked to prevent Moscow from obtaining technology that might be used in its war against Ukraine and have imposed sanctions against those involved in the transfer of Iranian military equipment to Russia.

“As Russia searches for ways to evade our actions, the U.S. government, alongside allies and partners, will continue to ramp up our own efforts to counter such evasion,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said in a statement.

According to a breakdown of material requirements along with the status of negotiations with suppliers, Alabuga specialists were able to promptly source the materials required for manufacturing the airframe. Most of those components are supplied by Russian or Belarusian companies, and the Chinese company Metastar provided a sample of a material used to make the wings, the breakdown shows.

Metastar did not respond to a request seeking comment.

A Ukrainian police officer holds a fragment of an Iranian Shahed-136, renamed the Geran-2 by Russia, in Kyiv on Oct. 17, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)

Other components proved harder to obtain. Documents highlighted a problem that perpetually plagues Russian military production: the lack of a capable domestic engine industry. The Shahed-136 is powered by a reverse-engineered German Limbach Flugmotoren L550E engine, which Iran illicitly obtained two decades ago.

To reach the final stage of the project, Russia would have to come up with its own version of the engine, which engineers described in internal documents as their most complex task. A spreadsheet created by a senior engineer on Nov. 5, titled “Questions asked to Iran at the very beginning of cooperation,” listed a request for a copy of the engine as “the most important point.”

“Better two: one to take apart, and after the chemical analysis it will not be functional; the second one is for comparative tests. The propeller is also needed for testing,” the engineer wrote. “We’ll copy it too.”

The questions — over 120 in total — were separated into thematic categories that include “policy” and “warhead,” and requested details on how Iran achieved mass production. They also asked “which countries are suppliers of electronic components.” The documents obtained by The Post do not show a response to that question.

The Alabuga team also requested a meeting with Mado, an Iranian company that produces engines and other components for UAVs with the help of illicitly obtained Western technology. Western governments imposed sanctions on the company late last year for its contribution to the war in Ukraine.

Subsequent documents include a detailed description of the re-engineered Limbach engine, known as the Mado MD550. The authors indicated that the description was compiled on the basis of the information “provided by Mado specialists.”

Efforts to reach Mado for comment were not successful.

Despite those challenges, Alabuga engineers have worked to improve the drones, the documents show. They have swapped out malfunctioning Chinese electronic components for more-reliable analogues, and they replaced a glue the Russians deemed defective and added waterproofing in a design overhaul of the airframe.

Struggling to staff up

Documents show that Alabuga has struggled to fill specialized positions at the facility, which was to have 810 employees for each of three shifts per day. The production team lacked experts in key and highly complex areas of drone development including electronic warfare systems.

Numerous Alabuga employees have traveled to drone manufacturing centers in Iran to gain expertise, according to personnel documents. Delegations included project managers and engineers, along with students and manual laborers.

While one group was visiting Tehran on Jan. 29, Israeli’s external intelligence service, the Mossad, carried out a strike on a weapons factory in the Iranian city of Isfahan, leaving flames billowing from a site believed to be a production hub for drones and missiles. Alabuga’s managers and engineers were forbidden to leave their hotel as Iranian officials worried that Israel might strike facilities the group was supposed to tour, according to the individual who provided the documents.

The documents also reveal that Central Asian workers who held low-level jobs at Alabuga were sent to Iran because they speak a language similar to Farsi. They were supposed to observe the assembly process on Iranian production sites, interpret for the rest of the delegation and undergo training that would allow them to build drones back in Russia.

By end of spring, an estimated 200 employees and 100 students had received training at the Iranian facilities, according to the documents and the individual.

Students from the local polytechnic university were required to work at the Alabuga factory as part of their curriculum, the Russian news outlet Razvorot reported in July.

Alabuga also has sought to recruit young people for menial assembly-line positions, with glitzy ads promising “a career of the future” and subsidized housing. One ad posted on Alabuga’s Telegram channels invites women ages 16 to 22 to relocate to the site and “build a promising career in the largest center for training specialists in the UAV production,” with a wage starting at $550 a month.

At the same time, the individual said, some workers have been uncomfortable with the idea of developing drones to pummel Ukraine and discontented by what they view as long work hours and poor management. To keep staffers and lure talent from rival manufacturers, Alabuga boosted salaries, budget documents show, with some key workers earning 10 times the median Russian salary. Management created obstacles to prevent employees from quitting, including seizing passports and requiring workers to seek sign-off before leaving their positions, according to the individual.

Damaged drones

The Russians had issues in dealing with the Iranian side. An estimated 25 percent of the drones shipped from Iran for Alabuga’s use and delivered by Russian Defense Ministry aircraft were damaged, according to the documents and the individual who provided them.

One document from February includes a log of damaged or faulty drones received in a second shipment of the UAVs from Iran — separated into the categories of “big boats” and “small boats,” which refer to the Shahed-136 and the Shahed-131, respectively, despite Alabuga’s mainly being interested in the former. The document indicates that 12 of the Iranian drones in the Feb. 15 delivery were inoperable, including one irreparably damaged when it was dropped on the ground.

“That was an interesting moment, because the initial agreement with Iran concerned only big Shahed drones, as the smaller 131 model is pretty useless — its payload is ten times lower compared to the 136 model, and it can maybe blow up a car,” the individual said. “But as you can see, Iran pressed its own conditions for the deal and supplied smaller models, many of them broken.”

The log shows that the Russian team lacked the expertise and replacement parts to repair the damaged or malfunctioning drones.

The team struggled to meet initial deadlines. A February memo shows that project managers warned their higher-ups about a 37-day delay in the schedule as communications with Iran were slowed by the Russian Defense Ministry’s bureaucracy and Iran’s failure to provide some technical documentation.

“Iranians aren’t used to working according to some high European standards, and I suspect they didn’t have a ready set of all documentation,” the person said.

A drone flies over Kyiv during an attack on Oct. 17, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)

Technicians suggested reverse-engineering a drone already in the possession of Russia’s Defense Ministry to create their own project documentation, but the request was denied as their managers feared it would be perceived as a failure on Alabuga’s part by military officials in Moscow, according to the individual.

“There was a political moment that if we say that we don’t have something, it would show our weakness and inability to implement such a complex project, so all problems were being swept under the rug,” the individual said.

Delivery of the drones and equipment to the production facility also was a challenge. The first Iranian shipments arrived at Begishevo Airport in Tatarstan with little advance notice. Staffers at Alabuga scrambled to sort out the basic logistics of transporting the cargo back to their warehouse, the individual said.

In one instance, after securing trucks to transport the shipment, the staffers realized they did not have a forklift to load the heavy wooden crates full of disassembled drones. An employee was dispatched to a nearby business to find an off-loader, only to realize after finding one that no one was qualified to operate it.

The individual related that boxes of drones were first stored in a nearly empty warehouse as the facility was not yet prepared even for simple tasks such as reattaching parts of the UAV body that had been disassembled for transportation.

“So they just unboxed them and tried to reassemble on the floor,” the individual added. “At the same time, they wanted to show the Defense Ministry that the process was ongoing, the facilities are being built, so they bought some tables and did a photo shoot to show how they are supposedly actively assembling these drones.”

High-ranking officials at Alabuga spent a week taking and retaking photos, according to the individual.

What to know about Ukraine’s counteroffensive

The latest: The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces, opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against Moscow.

The fight: Ukrainian troops have intensified their attacks on the front line in the southeast region, according to multiple individuals in the country’s armed forces, in a significant push toward Russian-occupied territory.

The front line: The Washington Post has mapped out the 600-mile front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

How you can help: Here are ways those in the United States can support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.

Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.

Comments

UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT

HAND CURATED

View 3 more stories

By Dalton Bennett

Dalton Bennett is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and researcher at The Washington Post, where he has worked since 2016 after five years covering conflict with the AP. Twitter

By Mary Ilyushina

Mary Ilyushina, a reporter on the Foreign Desk of The Washington Post, covers Russia and the region. She began her career in independent Russian media before joining CNN’s Moscow bureau as a field producer in 2017. She has been with The Post since 2021. She speaks Russian, English, Ukrainian and Arabic. Twitter

12. French mistakes helped create Africa’s coup belt

Excerpts:

France is undoubtedly on the back foot in the Sahel, but it can still get back in the game if it plays its remaining cards right. To return to the region as a top player, Paris will first need to win the hearts and minds of local people.

To do this, it would need to do some soul-searching and face the legacy of colonialism. It would also need to admit its most recent mistakes, learn from its military and political failures and, most importantly, start addressing the Sahel nations as equal and independent security partners rather than former colonies in need of French guidance. Part of this would be to recognise the power Nigeria holds as the Sahel’s leading economy and work with it, as equals, to achieve its political, economic and security objectives across the region. Such a partnership would also help bridge the trust gap between Anglophone and Francophone West Africa.

To win back the Sahel, France must also be willing and ready to enter a war of narratives with Russia. As it works to clean its own image, it should also embark on an evidence-based campaign to expose the many war crimes and human rights abuses committed by Wagner in Africa and beyond.

If France fails to take these steps and build new, stronger partnerships with Sahel nations, it will remain a largely inconsequential power and will serve no other purpose than providing easy legitimacy to putschists in the region.

French mistakes helped create Africa’s coup belt

From Mali to Niger, anti-French sentiment on the streets has helped putschists gain legitimacy and Russia expand its influence.

Folahanmi Aina
Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), London

Published On 17 Aug 2023

17 Aug 2023

Al Jazeera English · by Folahanmi Aina

Africa’s Sahel, home to some of the world’s poorest, most politically unstable and conflict-prone countries, is once again in crisis.

With the July 26 military takeover in Niger, the region has become a true “coup belt” across the girth of Africa, and many Sahel nations are now governed by unelected military rulers. In recent years, the Sahel has also become a leading playground for violent armed groups, from Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). According to the Global Terrorism Index produced by Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), the region now accounts for a whopping 43 percent of global terrorism deaths.

Across Sahel countries – from Niger and Mali to Burkina Faso and Chad – pervasive corruption, extreme poverty, widespread unemployment, and the perceived inability of Western partners and international institutions to bring stability to and ensure security in the region have turned local populations against their Western-allied governments, fuelling public support for coups and increasing recruitment capabilities of armed groups.

But there has been one factor, beyond chronic insecurity and economic instability, that significantly helped carry military governments to power across the region: growing anti-French sentiment.

The memory of French colonialism, defined by brutal military campaigns, forced labour, widespread repression, cultural erasure, racial segregation and forced displacement, is still very much alive in the Sahel region.

Coupled with suspicions rooted in colonial history, France’s more recent misadventures, disappointments and outright failures in Africa have led Sahel populations to grow wary of the former colonial power and everything it does in the region. Putschists in many countries took advantage of this ever-deepening hostility and managed to present themselves to the public as anti-colonial heroes resisting a neocolonial France and its corrupt pawns in local governments. This is why the masses welcomed military rule with anti-French chants in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and most recently Niger.

It all began back in 2012, when the Malian government invited France to help it resolve the rapidly deteriorating security crisis in the country’s restive north, where Tuareg rebels and fighters allied to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had captured large swaths of territory. France sent in thousands of troops and routed the fighters away from the capital, Bamako, with some help from neighbouring Chad.

In 2014, with the support of the Malian government, France moved to broaden its counterterrorism operation in the region. It deployed 5,100 soldiers in five Sahel countries in what came to be known as Operation Barkhane – its largest and most expensive operation abroad in modern history.

Despite its high economic and human cost, however, Operation Barkhane failed to deliver the desired results. Mali and the wider region’s problems did not come to an end. Instead, armed groups started to increase their power and reach. Attacks on civilians became routine and the security situation deteriorated across Sahel countries. As a result, local populations started to blame France for their chronic problems and grew more and more suspicious of the former colonial power’s intentions in the region.

In 2020, months of street protests over worsening security and alleged corruption resulted in a military coup and the overthrow of the pro-France government. Mali’s relations with Paris deteriorated rapidly and Mali’s new rulers turned to Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group for help with the ongoing security crisis.

After two years of increasing tensions, the relationship between the “interim” government in Mali, which refused to hold elections as it promised to do so after the coup, and France reached a breaking point. On January 31, 2022, Mali expelled the French ambassador from the country. By then, up to 1000 Russian mercenaries were on the ground in Mali. A few days later, thousands of anti-French protesters took to the streets waving Russian flags and burning cardboard cut-outs of French President Emmanuel Macron in celebration of the expulsion.

The same year, France announced its decision to withdraw its troops from Mali and move some of them to neighbouring Niger as part of a new Africa strategy.

As we now know, this did little to improve France’s standing in the region. Niger soon experienced its own coup, and with the public opinion firmly against France, the putschists did not lose much time to blame France for the country’s many problems and accused it of “destabilising the country”.

The primary reason behind France’s rapid loss of influence and respect in the Sahel, where it is now widely seen as nothing but a neocolonial villain, was its faulty approach to the region’s ever-deepening security crisis.

Rather than trying to identify and address the root causes of conflict by strengthening state institutions and encouraging good governance, Paris tried to resolve the Sahel countries’ security problems solely through military force. This military focus, which did not even translate into decisive victories on the ground, added fuel to the conflict and swiftly turned public opinion against France.

The greatest beneficiary of France’s many mistakes in the Sahel, other than the putschists in Mali, Niger and beyond, has been Russia. Moscow has long been looking to improve its relations with Africa and eliminate Western dominance over the continent. And France’s recent mishaps there gave it the opening it had long been waiting for.

As it became clear that France won’t be able to bring an end to terror in the Sahel with its extensive military operation, Russia unleashed its well-oiled propaganda machine on Francophone Africa and did everything it could to add fuel to growing anti-French sentiments in the region. Meanwhile, Wagner entered the Sahel with a promise to complete the important job France, and with it the rest of the West, failed to do: end the reign of armed groups and ensure the security of local populations.

Now Russia is fighting armed groups through Wagner, building relationships with military governments and overall working hard to establish itself as the dominant outside force in this highly strategic region. This is bad news for both the West, which cannot afford to lose the Sahel to Russia, and the peoples of the region, who are already suffering from the senseless brutality of Wagner and starting to see the downsides of accepting Russian “help”.

France is undoubtedly on the back foot in the Sahel, but it can still get back in the game if it plays its remaining cards right. To return to the region as a top player, Paris will first need to win the hearts and minds of local people.

To do this, it would need to do some soul-searching and face the legacy of colonialism. It would also need to admit its most recent mistakes, learn from its military and political failures and, most importantly, start addressing the Sahel nations as equal and independent security partners rather than former colonies in need of French guidance. Part of this would be to recognise the power Nigeria holds as the Sahel’s leading economy and work with it, as equals, to achieve its political, economic and security objectives across the region. Such a partnership would also help bridge the trust gap between Anglophone and Francophone West Africa.

To win back the Sahel, France must also be willing and ready to enter a war of narratives with Russia. As it works to clean its own image, it should also embark on an evidence-based campaign to expose the many war crimes and human rights abuses committed by Wagner in Africa and beyond.

If France fails to take these steps and build new, stronger partnerships with Sahel nations, it will remain a largely inconsequential power and will serve no other purpose than providing easy legitimacy to putschists in the region.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Al Jazeera English · by Folahanmi Aina

13. Secretive Taiwanese Cruise Missile Able To Strike Deep In China May Have Broken Cover

Excerpts:

At the same time, it is important to note that the PLA is a massive force distributed across a very large area and a significant number of total facilities, including numerous hardened command and control nodes. Taiwan's arsenal of counterstrike weapons like the HF-2E would not be sufficient to outright stop an actual invasion from the mainland.

These realities of the threats that Taiwan faces have prompted calls, especially in the United States, to significantly bolster the Taiwanese military's capabilities and overall capacity to resist any future intervention. Last month, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he had authorized up to $345 million in so-called "drawdown" military aid for Taiwan. This refers to a mechanism through which materiel already in U.S. military stocks can be transferred to American allies and partners under certain circumstances. Though the U.S. government does not officially recognize Taiwan as an independent country, it reserves the right to support authorities on the island and regularly approves more traditional arms sales for its armed forces.

In light of the geopolitical situation in recent years, Taiwan itself is known to be pushing ahead with the development and/or acquisition of a variety of key capabilities, including new submarines and other naval vessels, drones, loitering munitions, counter-drone and other air and missile defense systems, and more. As highlighted by reports about the HF-2E, other work is also going on in the classified realm. U.S. defense contractors have a long history of assisting with Taiwanese military efforts, as well.

Altogether, whether or not the imagery that UDN captured does indeed show an HF-2E, today's report has shone new light on Taiwan's counterstrike arsenal, though what role it might really play in a future crisis is uncertain.

Secretive Taiwanese Cruise Missile Able To Strike Deep In China May Have Broken Cover

Taiwan’s HF-2E land-attack cruise missile has reportedly been in service for more than a decade, but has never been seen publicly.

JOSEPH TREVITHICK

PUBLISHED AUG 16, 2023 2:15 PM EDT

thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick · August 16, 2023

A newspaper in Taiwan has published pictures and video clips that it says offer the first-ever look at the Hsiung Feng IIE land-attack cruise missile. This missile has reportedly been in Taiwanese military service for more than a decade, but has never been seen publicly in that time. It is one of a number of secretive counter-strike capabilities Taiwan's armed forces are understood to possess to try to help deter or respond to a Chinese military intervention by holding targets on the mainland at risk.

The report from Taiwan's United Daily News (UDN) says the imagery was captured during a recent nighttime launch from the Jiupeng military base in Pingtung County at the southern end of the island. The Hsiung Feng IIE (HF-2E) missile was "understood" to have subsequently flown for "many hours," according to UDN's report.

A separate report today from Taiwan's semi-official Central News Agency (CNA) says an unnamed "military" source told the outlet that "the Air Force did fire a classified missile on Wednesday, as part of an ongoing three-day live-fire drill" being held at Jiupeng. CNA said the source would not confirm or deny whether the missile in question was an HF-2E.

Though it remains unconfirmed whether an HF-2E was indeed launched from Jiupeng, the base is a known missile test facility. It is also a hub for the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), a top Taiwanese military research and test organization that is understood to have been responsible for the development of HF-2E. The base has already been in the news twice this month. On August 3, four people were injured there in an explosion as they were "disposing of missile propellant chemicals," according to a statement from NCSIST. Then, just yesterday, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense confirmed an unspecified missile exploded unexpectedly in mid-air during a test earlier in the day.

UDN story today does not otherwise offer any significant new details about the HF-2E, official information about which is scant. This missile is understood to be a ground-launched land-attack cruise missile with a design broadly reminiscent of the U.S. Tomahawk in form and function.

According to UDN's report, the booster rocket used to initially launch the HF-2E was seen falling away in the overnight launch. A small jet engine kicked in to power the weapon through the rest of its flight. By all indications, the HF-2E is a subsonic missile.

The imagery UDN captured otherwise shows a long cylindrical missile with what looks to be a relatively blunt nose, fins at the tail end, and what should be pop-out wings toward the rear of its body. This shows some outward similarities to the Tomahawk, but also to the U.S. AGM-84H/K Stand-off Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) derivatives of the Harpoon anti-ship missile.

A rendering of a SLAM-ER missile as it appears after launch with its pop-out wings deployed. Boeing

This is certainly all in line with what has previously been reported about the design and capabilities of the HF-2E, the development of which is understood to date back at least to the early 2000s. Full-rate production reportedly began in 2011, but it is unknown exactly when the missile officially entered service.

There are now reportedly at least two different HF-2E variants, a baseline version and an extended-range variant, the latter of which is also known as the Hsiung Sheng. Sources vary widely on the maximum ranges of both types. The baseline design is said to be able to able to reach targets anywhere from 300 to 600 kilometers (186 to 372 miles) away, while the improved version can reportedly hit its mark out to distances between 1,000 and 1,500 kilometers (621 to 932 miles).

A table from an unclassified 2017 U.S. Air Force report on foreign missile capabilities. HF-2E's range here is listed as 300 kilometers (186 miles). It also says it is "undetermined" when it entered service. USAF

The variations in range may be a product, in part, of different warhead options for the HF-2E, as well as smaller design tweaks. These warheads reportedly include 1,000 and 440-pound class unitary high-explosive types, at least one of which is understood to be a hard target penetrator/bunker buster type. Reports in the past that say a cluster munitions warhead may also have been developed.

HF-2E variants reportedly use GPS-assisted inertial navigation system guidance with an additional terrain contour matching (TERCOM) capability. TERCOM functionality, which is also found on versions of the Tomahawk, as well as other land-attack cruise missiles, can help improve precision navigation and allows the weapon to fly lower and therefore be less vulnerable to enemy defenses. Some reports say that it also has an imaging infrared seeker to further increase its accuracy, another feature found on other land attack cruise missiles like the U.S. AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and Storm Shadow, as well as newer Tomahawks.

A very general visual representation, using the U.S. Tomahawk as an example, of how TERCOM and digital scene-matching area correlation (DSMAC) systems scan the terrain below to help determine a missile's position and make sure it is on course. via the Federation of American Scientists

In addition, the HF-2E's designation is reportedly a cover and there is no indication that there is any actual relationship between it and the Hsiung Feng II (HF-2) anti-ship cruise missile.

A Taiwanese Coast Guard Anping class catamaran patrol ship fires an HF-2 anti-ship cruise missile, which is unrelated to the HF-2E land-attack cruise missile. Taiwan Military

Whatever the missile's exact capabilities may or may not be, this possible first public look at the HF-2E comes at a time when concerns are growing about the potential for Chinese military intervention across the Taiwan Strait sometime in the next few years. U.S. military officials, in particular, have said that China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) could be in a position where it would feel confident in its ability to successfully execute a cross-strait intervention by 2027, if not earlier.

Taiwan's long-range land-attack strike capabilities are an important factor in trying to deter the PLA from undertaking such an operation. In addition to the HF-2E, Taiwan's armed forces have a supersonic land-attack cruise missile called the Yun Feng with enough range to reach Beijing, which is also believed to be ground-launched.

There is also the air-launched Wan Chien land-attack cruise missile, but this is understood to have a shorter maximum range than either the HF-2E or the Yun Feng.

A Taiwanese single-seat F-CK-1C fighter armed with a pair of Wan Chien missiles under the wings. O8447 via Wikimedia

It is not clear how many of any of these missiles the Taiwanese armed forces have in their inventory. Those stocks would be vastly smaller than the total number of air, sea, and ground-launched land-attack cruise missiles, as well as conventionally-armed ballistic and now hypersonic missiles, that the PLA could bring to bear in any future major conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Chinese forces have increasingly demonstrated the capability and capacity to encircle the island with air and naval forces, allowing them to readily strike from multiple vectors at once, as well.

Still, the existence of Taiwanese weapons like the HF-2E does provide a certain degree of deterrence given that they would impose costs on the Chinese mainland in response to any intervention. Employing them against key targets could cause some degradation in actual operations. Strikes against high-profile strategic-level targets, including high-level seats of government, possibly even in the capital Beijing, and critical infrastructure, could have major psychological effects for both sides, as well as other impacts.

At the same time, it is important to note that the PLA is a massive force distributed across a very large area and a significant number of total facilities, including numerous hardened command and control nodes. Taiwan's arsenal of counterstrike weapons like the HF-2E would not be sufficient to outright stop an actual invasion from the mainland.

These realities of the threats that Taiwan faces have prompted calls, especially in the United States, to significantly bolster the Taiwanese military's capabilities and overall capacity to resist any future intervention. Last month, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he had authorized up to $345 million in so-called "drawdown" military aid for Taiwan. This refers to a mechanism through which materiel already in U.S. military stocks can be transferred to American allies and partners under certain circumstances. Though the U.S. government does not officially recognize Taiwan as an independent country, it reserves the right to support authorities on the island and regularly approves more traditional arms sales for its armed forces.

In light of the geopolitical situation in recent years, Taiwan itself is known to be pushing ahead with the development and/or acquisition of a variety of key capabilities, including new submarines and other naval vessels, drones, loitering munitions, counter-drone and other air and missile defense systems, and more. As highlighted by reports about the HF-2E, other work is also going on in the classified realm. U.S. defense contractors have a long history of assisting with Taiwanese military efforts, as well.

Altogether, whether or not the imagery that UDN captured does indeed show an HF-2E, today's report has shone new light on Taiwan's counterstrike arsenal, though what role it might really play in a future crisis is uncertain.

Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com

thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick · August 16, 2023

14. China's Xi calls for patience as Communist Party tries to reverse economic slump

The overly simplistic equation I learned long ago for the PRC/CCP: energy security = economic growth = domestic political stability = the CCP remaining in power.

China's Xi calls for patience as Communist Party tries to reverse economic slump

AP · August 17, 2023

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called for patience in a speech released as the ruling Communist Party tries to reverse a deepening economic slump and said Western countries are “increasingly in trouble” because of their materialism and “spiritual poverty.”

Xi’s speech was published by Qiushi, the party’s top theoretical journal, hours after data Tuesday showed consumer and factory activity weakened further in July despite official promises to support struggling entrepreneurs. The government skipped giving an update on a politically sensitive spike in unemployment among young people.

Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, called for China to “build a socialist ideology with strong cohesion” and to focus on long-term goals of improving education, health care and food supplies for China’s 1.4 billion people instead of only pursuing short-term material wealth.

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has called for restoring the ruling party’s role as an economic and social leader and has tightened control over business and society since taking power in 2012. Some changes come at a rising cost as successful Chinese companies are pressured to divert money into political initiatives including processor chip development. The party tightened control over tech industries by launching data security and anti-monopoly crackdowns that wiped out billions of dollars of their stock market value.

“We must maintain historic patience and insist on making steady, step-by-step progress,” Xi said in the speech. Qiushi said it was delivered in February in the southwestern city of Chongqing. It is common for Qiushi journal to publish speeches months after they are delivered.

Economic growth slid to 0.8% in the three months ending in June compared with the previous month, down from 2.2% in January-March. That is equivalent to a 3.2% annual rate, which would be among China’s weakest in decades.

A survey in June found unemployment among urban workers aged 16 to 24 spiked to a record 21.3%. The statistics bureau said this week it would withhold updates while it refined its measurement.

The government is trying to reassure uneasy homebuyers and investors about the deeply indebted real estate industry after one of China’s biggest developers, Country Garden, failed to make a payment to bondholders and suspended trading of its bonds. A government spokesperson said Tuesday regulators are getting debt under control and risks are “expected to be gradually resolved.”

Beijing also has expanded anti-spying rules and tightened controls on information, leaving foreign and private companies uncertain about what activities might be allowed.

Xi stressed “common prosperity,” a 1950s party slogan he has revived. He called for narrowing China’s yawning wealth gap between a tiny elite and the poor majority and to “regulate the healthy development of capital” but announced no new initiatives.

“Common prosperity for all people” is an “essential feature of Chinese-style modernization and distinguishes it from Western modernization,” Xi said.

Western-style modernization “pursues the maximization of capital interests instead of serving the interests of the vast majority of people,” Xi said.

“Today, Western countries are increasingly in trouble,” Xi said. “They cannot curb the greedy nature of capital and cannot solve chronic diseases such as materialism and spiritual poverty.”

AP · August 17, 2023

15. Coup in Niger Upends U.S. Terrorism Fight and Could Open a Door for Russia

Sigh, (in exasperation...). Why does it have to be either/or? Why aren't we focusing on good governance and other non-military efforts along with our security training? WHo is in charge? What is the strategy and who is orchestrating the strategy to ensure the right effects are achieved to support US interests? How many times have we heard these arguments. What are we doing about them? Where is the rest of the interagency/US government during these efforts?

Excerpts:

One small comfort for the Biden administration, as it attempts to balance its rejection of coups with its desire to maintain a security presence in Niger, is that the latest takeover seems to be driven more by personal or factional differences rather than any ideology.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has said that American security ties would be at risk if the putsch were not reversed, but prospects for restoring President Mohamed Bazoum to power appear dim.Credit...Pool photo by Boureima Hama

The stunning collapse of the Western-backed, democratic government in Niger has also revived a debate about whether the security-heavy U.S. approach was flawed in the first place.

“We have an over-militarized approach to counterterrorism,” said Alexander Noyes, a political scientist at the nonprofit RAND Corporation. “And that’s hurting us.”

American aid to countries like Niger would be more effective if it prioritized support for good governance — stronger, more democratic institutions with less corruption — over the provision of lethal assistance, like drones and Special Forces, Mr. Noyes said.

Coup in Niger Upends U.S. Terrorism Fight and Could Open a Door for Russia

By Eric Schmitt, Declan Walsh and Elian Peltier

Eric Schmitt reported from Washington; Declan Walsh from Nairobi, Kenya; and Elian Peltier from Dakar, Senegal

Aug. 16, 2023

The New York Times · by Elian Peltier · August 16, 2023

The military takeover could force the Pentagon to withdraw hundreds of American troops and close drone bases in the West African country.

Supporters of the military coup celebrating in Niamey, Niger, in July. The impoverished nation has in recent years slowed a wave of extremists pushing south to coastal states.Credit...Fatahoulaye Hassane Midou/Associated Press

Aug. 16, 2023, 2:14 p.m. ET

The military takeover in Niger has upended years of Western counterterrorism efforts in West Africa and now poses wrenching new challenges for the Biden administration’s fight against Islamist militants on the continent.

American-led efforts to degrade terrorist networks around the world have largely succeeded in longtime jihadist hot spots like Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Not so in Africa, especially in the Sahel, the vast, semiarid region south of the Sahara where groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are gaining ground at an alarming pace.

Niger, an impoverished nation of 25 million people that is nearly twice the size of Texas, has recently been the exception to that trend.

Terrorist attacks against civilians there decreased by 49 percent this year, largely because of the 2,600 French and American troops training and assisting Nigerien forces and a multipronged counterinsurgency strategy by the deposed president, Mohamed Bazoum, analysts say. Niger has slowed, but not stopped, a wave of extremists pushing south to coastal states.

Now all that could be in jeopardy if a regional conflict breaks out or the junta orders the Western forcesincluding 1,100 American troops, to leave and three U.S. drone bases — including one operated by the C.I.A. — to be shuttered.

Western-led military operations offer no silver bullet against Islamist militancy in the Sahel, now the epicenter of global militancy. The past decade of French-led operations in the region, involving thousands of troops, failed to stop thousands of attacks.

Even so, a security vacuum in Niger could embolden the militants to ramp up propaganda, increase recruitment of local and even foreign fighters, establish mini-states in remote areas, and plot attacks against Western countries. Removing the relatively small American presence would make it harder for military analysts to identify and quickly disrupt threats as they emerge, U.S. officials said.

It could also open the door to Russian influence in Niger in the form of the Kremlin-backed Wagner private military company, which already has a presence in neighboring Mali, U.S. officials say.

“The U.S. pulling out of Niger and closing its drone bases would be a devastating blow to Western counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York.

The stakes in the fight are rising fast. Tens of thousands of people have died violently, and 3.3 million have fled their homes, over the past decade in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, which adjoin each other in West Africa. In two of them, the situation is rapidly worsening. The death toll in Mali doubled last year to about 5,000, while in Burkina Faso it rose 80 percent to 4,000, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. On Tuesday, 17 Nigerien soldiers were killed and 20 wounded in an ambush by armed insurgents in southwestern Niger.

Members of the junta that has taken power in Niger being greeted by supporters at a stadium in Niamey on Aug. 6.

The violence is spreading from those three landlocked nations toward wealthier ones along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. Militants from Burkina Faso have carried out attacks in northern Togo and Benin.

Niger is also battling a separate Islamic State affiliate in the Lake Chad Basin, in the country’s southeast.

“Niger has been this barrier against terrorist groups for coastal countries,” said Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou, who was Niger’s prime minister until the coup and remains one of the government officials recognized by the United States and most African nations. “With a weakened Niger, there’s little chance that this role will hold.”

The International Crisis Group has warned that the violence could also spread into Ivory Coast, one of the region’s economic powerhouses.

“All the Gulf of Guinea countries are very worried,” said Pauline Bax, deputy director of the Africa program at the International Crisis Group. Amid the furor over the coup in Niger, and the potential for Wagner to find a perch there, the regions’ Islamist groups are likely celebrating a chance to expand their hold, she said.

Niger has been a centerpiece of American efforts to combat surging Islamist militancy in the Sahel region for a decade, and has taken on greater importance since the coup in Mali.

President Barack Obama ordered the first 100 American troops to Niger in February 2013 to help set up unarmed surveillance drone operations in Niamey, the capital, to support a French-led operation combating Al Qaeda and affiliated fighters in Mali.

By 2018, the U.S. military presence had grown to 800 troops and the Pentagon was putting the finishing touches on a $110 million drone base in Agadez, in northern Niger, a major expansion of American military firepower in Africa. The risks of the growing mission were laid bare in October 2017 when a terrorist ambush killed four American soldiers, their interpreter and four Nigerien soldiers.

Niger, however, remained the main U.S. counterterrorism ally in the region under Mr. Bazoum, the country’s former interior and foreign minister, who was elected in 2021 in Niger’s first peaceful transfer of power between two democratically elected presidents since independence.

Niger has been a centerpiece of American efforts to combat surging Islamist militancy in the Sahel region for a decade.Credit...Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

American officials praised Mr. Bazoum’s strategy, which used counterterrorism raids by American-trained commandos and some level of dialogue with local groups to address their grievances. Fewer people were killed in Niger in the first six months of this year than in the first half of any year since 2018, according to the armed conflict project.

Since the uprising on July 26, France and the European Union have suspended some aid to Niger. The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, has said that American security ties, worth about $500 million since 2012, were also at risk if the putsch was not reversed. The United States has suspended training and drone flights, and restricted its troops to bases. France has also suspended all joint operations with Niger’s military.

With prospects for restoring Mr. Bazoum to power appearing dim, the Biden administration is weighing two main options, officials say. It could formally declare a coup in Niger, as the administration did when military forces staged recent takeovers in Mali and Burkina Faso, which would trigger broader cuts in American aid, including military assistance. Or Washington could stop short of that designation, as it did with a military takeover in Chad, and seek an arrangement with the junta to continue counterterrorism cooperation.

So far, the situation has been relatively peaceful and has not forced the administration’s hand. But the threat of military intervention by the Economic Community of West African States, the regional bloc known as ECOWAS, and dwindling hopes of a diplomatic resolution present the Biden administration with tough choices in the coming days.

U.S. alternatives in the region are limited, officials said. The United States has conducted training exercises in Mauritania, Ghana, Chad and elsewhere in the area. But none of those countries are as centrally located as Niger, or appear likely to accept such a large American military presence. “Niger is quite a critical partner to us in the region,” Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said on Tuesday.

The United States has mainly played a supporting military role in the Sahel to France, a former colonial power. But the junta has severed military ties with France, and the recent events have highlighted the failure of France’s counterterrorism partnerships, observers say.

The military takeover is an especially hard blow for Western interests in Niger because democracy appeared to be taking root in the country despite a history of coups and attempted coups since independence from France in 1960.

One small comfort for the Biden administration, as it attempts to balance its rejection of coups with its desire to maintain a security presence in Niger, is that the latest takeover seems to be driven more by personal or factional differences rather than any ideology.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has said that American security ties would be at risk if the putsch were not reversed, but prospects for restoring President Mohamed Bazoum to power appear dim.Credit...Pool photo by Boureima Hama

The stunning collapse of the Western-backed, democratic government in Niger has also revived a debate about whether the security-heavy U.S. approach was flawed in the first place.

“We have an over-militarized approach to counterterrorism,” said Alexander Noyes, a political scientist at the nonprofit RAND Corporation. “And that’s hurting us.”

American aid to countries like Niger would be more effective if it prioritized support for good governance — stronger, more democratic institutions with less corruption — over the provision of lethal assistance, like drones and Special Forces, Mr. Noyes said.

West African officials have warned that the Wagner mercenary group may move to fill the void if French troops depart, amid rumors that a Nigerien junta official met recently with representatives from the paramilitary group in Mali, which has hosted about 1,500 Wagner operatives to fight off an Islamist insurgency.

Attacks against civilians in Mali have surged since the group’s arrival, as have the number of Malian refugees in neighboring countries.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that Wagner helped instigate the military takeover in Niger, but the group is clearly trying to exploit it. “Feel free to call us anytime,” Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said in an audio message aimed at Niger’s junta that was shared last week on Telegram channels associated with the group.

“Niger was the last bastion of hope and security in the Sahel,” said J. Marcus Hicks, a retired two-star Air Force general who headed American Special Operations forces in Africa from 2017 to 2019. “The idea that we’d leave a vacuum for further malign Russian influence would be a real tragedy.”

Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also the Pentagon correspondent. A member of the Times staff since 1983, he has shared four Pulitzer Prizes. More about Eric Schmitt

Declan Walsh is the chief Africa correspondent for The Times. He was previously based in Egypt, covering the Middle East, and in Pakistan. He previously worked at The Guardian and is the author of “The Nine Lives of Pakistan.” More about Declan Walsh

Elian Peltier is the West Africa correspondent. He joined The Times in 2017 and was previously based in Paris and London. He now lives in Dakar, Senegal. More about Elian Peltier

The New York Times · by Elian Peltier · August 16, 2023

16. Irregular Warfare Strategy Policy Friction: Perpetual Disruption is not Victory, or is It?

Wed, 08/16/2023 - 10:06pm

Irregular Warfare Strategy Policy Friction:

Perpetual Disruption is not Victory, or is It?

By Paul Burton

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/irregular-warfare-strategy-policy-friction-perpetual-disruption-not-victory-or-it

Policy, in its relation to traditional warfare, is arguably most influential at the beginning of and near the end of the conflict, but what about an Irregular War (IW) that is protracted? Policy and its relationship to IW, sometimes called Political Warfare, blurs the lines, both in its relationship to strategy and its weight during campaign execution. Options for Irregular Warfare policy present challenges as well as opportunities, and framing the problem properly is vital. Military planners are successful when they can match means to objective, and end states are clearly defined. In this current peer conflict, the policy of containment will not be sufficient, and that is why a policy of flexible “constrainment” is needed. Flexible “constrainment” is defined as a multi-country or regional policy to disrupt peer competitors in multiple areas across the instruments of national power, simultaneously imposing a calculated cost for a long duration. In the Cold War, the conflict was viewed in terms of East versus West and the delineation of the Iron Curtain created a bifurcation of ideology. Today, there are ethnic diasporas, super interdependent economies, and other influencers that make that simple bifurcation impossible. Additionally, with the ascension of China in some areas and signs of decline in others, the world has transitioned from a unipolar world to a complex multipolar construct, causing all the associated friction that comes from macro level power re-distribution.

Policymakers present a grave danger to current IW policy when they reduce strategy framing down to weapons, information dominance, and technology, negating the importance of sustained campaigns, the human domain, and the relationship of supporting strategy to policy. The Global War on Terror was conducted by linking small tactical actions together across a country or region; peer competition cannot be conducted that way. As stated in the first article, “This is not your Father’s Cold War,” Special Operations Forces (SOF) have three options [ways] to approach the re-emerging challenge of peer competition below the level of armed conflict therefore supporting strategic policy. First, SOF can set the conditions to enable the General-Purpose Force (GPF) to be successful in high-intensity traditional war. This is largely accomplished through engagement with partner nations and supporting groups. Second, they can resist and disrupt peer competitors by conducting activities that would be considered strategic and operational-level disruption, including proxy wars. Finally, they can use a combination of approaches that apply the degree of emphasis on Unconventional Warfare or Foreign Internal Defense depending on the regional and trans-regional friction points that can be applied. Simply put, SOF seeks to create pockets of stability or instability. Policy and policy decisions should dominate strategy, but if the policy is disruption of a peer competitor, what is the level of disruption to be achieved, and are there actually termination or success criteria that has been developed or do we need to be comfortable with disruption as the end state?

In the first option, pre-conflict small SOF deployments build relationships, provide forward presence, build irregular capacity, and provide operational-level situational awareness. Once the conflict has started, SOF essential roles in the deep battle and stay behind to continue to set conditions for the larger GPF. In this strategy, SOF are the supporting force. The level and location of SOF engagements become a critical part of this role; in order to support broader objectives that support pre-conflict GPF preparations. Until the recent high-end proxy war in Ukraine, few people entertained the idea of high-intensity, conventional war in Europe. One of the reasons that Ukraine is still competitive in the present war is because of the pre-crisis engagements and changes, that were generated because of the 2014 conflict, that helped set the conditions for effective defense.

The second option consists of purposely creating areas or pockets of disruption, instability, or conflict to deny access to key markets and materials, thus slowing or denying expansion, or “imposing costs” for a purpose. Disruption is an important activity in competition, but a strategy of perpetual disruption against a peer does not relinquish policymakers from establishing clear, attainable political objectives and effectively articulating them to other agencies for execution. Additionally, in some instances, competition and disruption are being used as a synonym and that is not the case in irregular warfare. The problem should be articulated using the construct of ways, means, ends, and now also risks and costs; the delineation of these categories should not cross over. Too often, political leadership poorly defines the objectives for IW campaigns and then changes the objectives without sufficiently resourcing the means to achieve them. This challenge is further exacerbated by many senior military leaders who don’t understand the problem or who have poorly defined the military’s contribution to political objectives. How many times have we heard a senior leader say, “I don’t know what I want, but I will know it when I see it,” which I find professionally negligent. The military’s role and understanding of the art of Political Warfare, or IW, and its ability to clearly define intermediate objectives or conditions to be achieved in the campaign’s end state have atrophied. The skill level of policymakers and executors to understand and clearly identify IW objectives is like planning a mission to Mars. Recent examples of atrophied skills and changing objectives can be found in strategy framing of Afghanistan and Iraq. Not only are some leaders struggling with what to do, but slow campaign timelines, two-year political cycles, and short command tours further complicate the long IW campaign. Our adversaries are not hindered by these constraints. Strategic policies that are not effectively transmitted to the theaters for operational-level execution are empty concepts on paper. Traditionally, the United States (U.S.) has traded space and/or time to build capacity, which I will refer to as “scale.” The Joint Planning JP 5-0 uses the term “Forces,” but in IW, it is about achieving multi-domain effects, so “scale” is more appropriate, thus the application of art to the science. Lastly, layering the first two options onto a balanced approach that manages the threshold of success in the disruption action, so as not to trigger an escalation of response by the peer, until it is in our interest is one of the campaign challenges.

In the context of a flexible “constrainment” strategy, winning a short campaign might not be the goal but rather a strategy of continued theater disruption to impose costs. The U.S. sponsored support against the USSR in Afghanistan is a successful example of correct application of this strategy. Operational-level art is just that-art and understanding the science to support the art, there must be an appropriate level of professional intellectual understanding for application. IW education is foundational, but without the tools to apply it to the theater campaign, it is just education. Phasing these regional campaigns with conditions that lead to decisive points is a key portion. The mission or activity conducted should be viewed as the short-term contract between the policymaker and executor, whereas the intent should be viewed as the long-term contract in the campaign. If the political intent is not properly conveyed or understood, there is danger in the execution of campaigns that thresholds of success could lead to conventional conflict. If the transition to conventional conflict is a branch or sequel in the campaign plan, it should be executed in a sequence that is advantageous to the U.S. or the regional partners that work with us.

Whatever the timeline of our peer competitors’ accession or regional disruption campaign, there is an urgent need for political leadership to understand the nature of the policy that should be dictated for implementation. Simultaneously conducting an irregular warfare campaign that has well-defined intermediate objectives that set conditions for long-term goals or end states is critical. If the definition of victory is disruption for denial of resources or access to markets that must be clearly articulated. In reading recent national-level documents, you could draw the conclusion that we are at the beginning of a long competition, or phase one, and policy should set the foundational context for the campaign. Our peers are in phase three of their campaign, and there is no time to lose in the engagement and education of policymakers. As mentioned in the second article, IW Education a Lifelong Process, The Irregular Warfare Center engages audiences daily to influence minds to think in the realm of IW by developing select senior U.S. government leaders from across departments and agencies to collectively understand and apply IW as a tool of U.S. policy. Their task is monolithic and unachievable with the present resources. The Department of Defense needs a more robust mechanism that can engage policymakers to educate them on the strategy of IW, which might require the placement of personnel in these agencies as liaisons. Unfortunately, it too often takes a failure like 911 or Pearl Harbor to energize policymakers and, by that time the cost in blood and treasure could be great.

This the third in a series of articles on Irregular warfare.

The opinions expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not reflect any organizations viewpoint.

About the Author(s)

Paul Burton

Paul Burton is a retired Special Forces Colonel and is still active in the community.

17. Overcoming the Data Neophyte Problem

Conclusion:

Nearly every warfighting function has a toolset for assisting in task execution. In fact, there are hundreds of systems and applications in the Army inventory. These tools may sense (input layer), apply algorithms (hidden layer), or produce deductions (output layer). Sometimes toolsets do all three at once. To conduct data-centric operations effectively, however, systems need to be open standard and interoperable. Proprietary systems that do not interact with other systems are sub-optimal. To avoid these conflicts, contracting processes should mandate interoperability in statements of work. Whenever it is possible, organizations should seek to purchase the data used on its systems because the data is more important than the system. This is a challenge given that many dataset owners are often reluctant to work with DoD entities. Still, when it is possible, DoD organizations should prioritize dataset ownership over dataset consumption. Set convergence is “a way” in which to start thinking in new ways about data-centric operations. Using tools developed Exercise Scarlett Dragon, the XVIII Airborne Corps merged skillset, mindset, dataset, and toolset in the summer of 2022 to successfully advise and assist allies and partners. Lessons learned from this deployment are being disseminated throughout the force to prepare for future conflicts. Given China’s embrace of data-enabled operations, it is imperative that leaders receive these lessons, and set convergence is a model that might help convert data neophytes into data-centric operators.

OVERCOMING THE DATA NEOPHYTE PROBLEM

JERRY LANDRUM AUGUST 17, 2023 8 MIN READ

https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/data-neophyte/

A cynic might declare that data-centric operations are nothing more than an old concept made new.

In a May 2021 memorandum to senior leaders, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks declared that data was a strategic asset, and she issued a clarion call to transform the Department of Defense into a “data-centric organization.” Her memorandum directed the DoD to seek ways to make data more accessible and easier to integrate. To this end, the Army subsequently issued its Data Plan as an outline for moving forward, and this plan describes no less than ten strategic objectives to become “data-centric.” The intent is to use data to make decisions that will “outpace an adversary” and win future conflicts.

A cynic might declare that data-centric operations are nothing more than an old concept made new. As early as 1993, the Army embraced the post-Cold War Force XXI transformation model, which acknowledged that information technology would revolutionize warfare. The revolution was ostensibly the introduction of networked information technology systems that enabled commanders to make decisions faster, dominate the battlespace, and win throughout the full spectrum of operations. TRADOC Pam 525-5 Force XXI Operations was even ahead of its time in 1994 when it identified in one paragraph a trend toward “brilliant systems” that used AI to improve operations, intelligence, and logistics capabilities. The pamphlet even predicted that the health of individual soldiers might be monitored. However, the latest call for transformation is different in that it recognizes that information systems (e.g., Maneuver Control System, All Source Analyst System, Command Post of the Future, etc.) are important but not as important as the data itself.

To fully embrace data-centric operations, however, one must grapple with complex data science terms such as biomes, labeling, big data, clustering, decision trees, neural networks, and the list goes on seemingly ad infinitum. Thus, the complexity of data terms can become overwhelming and make data neophytes of the most seasoned military officers. Indeed, discomfort with data analytics is not only confined to military professionals. In his book Be Data Literate: The Data Literacy Skills Everyone Needs to Succeed, James Morrow cites a 2019 study indicating that a mere 32 percent of civilian business executives were “able to create measurable value from data” and only “27 percent said their data and analytics projects produce actionable insights.” Frustration over data integration, according to Morrow, often leads civilian counterparts to give up data-driven operations in favor of doing things the “old way.” However, this is not an option for military professionals. China is investing heavily in data to create AI-enabled autonomous vehicles, ISR platforms, and predictive logistics capabilities that will enable it to leverage swarm technology, sense U.S. military maneuvers, and sustain operations over long distances more effectively.

Given these emerging threats, commanders and their staff officers are seeking to understand and implement data into operational platforms. Thus, a straightforward and natural question often emerges in the mind of these military professionals: “I need to become data literate, but where do I start?” The good news is that becoming a data scientist is not a requirement, but having a mental model to navigate through the concepts is useful. Daniel Jones discusses in his book Data Analytics: A Comprehensive Guide to Learn and Understand Data Analytics and Its Functions the importance of skillset, mindset, dataset, and toolset in data analytics. Thus, I propose set convergence as an approach that might help data neophytes begin their journey. Convergence is a term borrowed from design thinking in which various ideas are filtered to generate new perspectives and features prominently Joint Operational Design and Army Design Methodology. Set convergence is simply the suggestion that data-centric operations are the convergence of skillset, mindset, dataset, and toolset. If a neophyte approaches data-centric operations with this model, he or she will have a good foundation for sorting through the complexities surrounding data thinking. The model itself does not hold all the answers to the data puzzle, but it helps to begin asking the right questions.

Skillset is arguably the easiest part of the model to obtain. The Army is full of trained and educated specialists who routinely generate data. Logisticians order supplies. Doctors treat the wounded. Intelligence officers analyze information and so on. However, a challenge often arises when practitioners do not understand that they are also Data Generators and the relevance their data has in operational decision-making. Thus, you are not just an Infantryman; you are an Infantryman who is a Data Generator. This might sound like a trivial distinction, but it is an important adjustment in self-perception that is necessary for data-centric operations. It also requires the practitioner to understand that her data is important to the overall operation. Too often skilled practitioners mistakenly perceive their data as specialized and unrelated to the larger operational approach, but all data sets are worthy of examination. Once a practitioner fully understands the significance of being a Data Generator, he or she can develop a mindset that looks at data differently.

Dataset identification might be the most difficult challenge, but data neophytes often need only to explain and provide information to professionals who assist units in the development of data capabilities.

Mindset is the ability to identify and read data that might describe, diagnose, predict, and/or prescribe. Is the data categorical, quantitative, temporal, or spatial? Is your data structured in an Army system of record, or is it unstructured data residing on an obscure and inaccessible file server? Is it semi-structured within a spreadsheet or database? Once data neophytes ask these types of questions, they are demonstrating an ability to “read data.” The Center for Data Analysis and Statistics at the United States Military Academy is leading the way in developing introductory training in data literacy, and the Army should continue to invest in such programs in tactical, operational, and strategic level formations. Obtaining a basic level of data literacy helps data neophytes identify datasets.

Dataset identification might be the most difficult challenge, but data neophytes often need only to explain and provide information to professionals who assist units in the development of data capabilities. In some cases, these professionals are vendor representatives who are fielding new equipment, but the Army is also investing in the hiring of civilian employees who are data scientists and help organizations with data requirements. For example, the XVIII Airborne Corps has two government employees who serve as Chief Data Officer (CDO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). To effectively communicate with these professionals, one should be able to converse around some basic questions:

Is the data transparent? Where is the data coming from, and is it trustworthy? This might seem an easy question to answer but imagine working with a partner force in a deployed environment. For a plethora of reasons ranging from time available to language barriers, the data you are ingesting might be flawed and lead to faulty analysis.
Is the data precise? In other words, does the data answer a specific operational question? The only reason to consider data is if it helps the commander make decisions. It is important to understand that the data you generate might not prima facie have direct operational implications; however, your data might intersect with other data in a way that leads to precise deductions. Again, the mindset that all data is important and worthy of examination is important.
Is the dataset large enough? Distinguishing between reoccurring patterns and anomalous events is extremely challenging, especially given that anomalous cases occasionally have outsized effects. Data sets should ultimately be representative of trends in the operational environment and not overly influenced by anomalous cases.
Is the data timely? Live data should be the gold standard for data-centric operations, and the ability to effectively integrate live data into operational decisions will determine the outcome of future conflicts. Because all data is important and relevant beyond the scope of a particular warfighting function, data should, if possible, reside in cloud-based environment. If it is cloistered on computer hard drives or buried deep in a file server, it becomes useless.

These are rudimentary questions to help the data neophyte begin conversations with data scientists; and as data literacy increases, the sophistication of interactions will also increase. Pairing up practitioners, software engineers, and data scientists in exercises such as the XVIII Airborne Corps’ Scarlett Dragon has enabled the development of cutting edge data-centric capabilities to significantly improve the speed of targeting capabilities.

Nearly every warfighting function has a toolset for assisting in task execution. In fact, there are hundreds of systems and applications in the Army inventory. These tools may sense (input layer), apply algorithms (hidden layer), or produce deductions (output layer). Sometimes toolsets do all three at once. To conduct data-centric operations effectively, however, systems need to be open standard and interoperable. Proprietary systems that do not interact with other systems are sub-optimal. To avoid these conflicts, contracting processes should mandate interoperability in statements of work. Whenever it is possible, organizations should seek to purchase the data used on its systems because the data is more important than the system. This is a challenge given that many dataset owners are often reluctant to work with DoD entities. Still, when it is possible, DoD organizations should prioritize dataset ownership over dataset consumption. Set convergence is “a way” in which to start thinking in new ways about data-centric operations. Using tools developed Exercise Scarlett Dragon, the XVIII Airborne Corps merged skillset, mindset, dataset, and toolset in the summer of 2022 to successfully advise and assist allies and partners. Lessons learned from this deployment are being disseminated throughout the force to prepare for future conflicts. Given China’s embrace of data-enabled operations, it is imperative that leaders receive these lessons, and set convergence is a model that might help convert data neophytes into data-centric operators.

Jerry Landrum is a 2000 graduate of the University of North Georgia and a colonel in the U.S. Army. His last assignment was with the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty where he was introduced to data-centric operations and observed the practical implementation of JADC2. Colonel Landrum attended Kansas State University where he earned a PhD in Security Studies. He is currently serving as a Faculty Instructor at the United States Army War College. COL Landrum was a member of the Carlisle Scholars Program and a graduate of the AY22 Resident Course at the U.S. Army War College.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

18. How the US Can Get Its Chips’ Worth With China

Excerpts:

Congress can increase pressure on China’s core semiconductor nodes with moves like expanding Section 889 enforcement to more Chinese champions. Both inbound and outbound investment screening need high-fidelity intelligence to cue expansions of reviews of potentially relevant covered transactions.

And the U.S. and allied private sectors need to be motivated to build. That, too, will require additional regulatory prods. Domestic content requirements and prohibitions against Chinese and Chinese-dependent goods should be expanded. Capital markets need more clarity in assessing China risks across the semiconductor value chain and the downstream markets that depend upon it. The allure of the Chinese market, for cost reductions and for revenue gains, may be a short-term boon for a wide variety of publicly listed companies. It’s also clearly a long-term losing proposition. Transparency should be required in capital markets to make this reality, and related exposure, clear to investors all along the capital stack. With added transparency, capital markets can be expected to impose costs on those players who elect to play both sides in this strategic showdown.

The chips are on the table. The only way to win is with smarter offense and defense that target the core of China’s strategy.

How the US Can Get Its Chips’ Worth With China

Published 08/16/23 09:30 AM ET

Nathan Picarsic and Emily de La Bruyère

themessenger.com · August 16, 2023

The passage of the CHIPS and Science Act one year ago this month was heralded as a monumental step in U.S. efforts to compete with China in the tech domain. “We need our government and our economy to rely on chips made right here in America,” proclaimed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) last fall. The CHIPS Act was the way to do so. A corresponding White House news release declared that the “CHIPS and Science Act will lower costs, create jobs, strengthen supply chains, and counter China.”

There has been much ballyhoo since. Proposals have been floated by Intel, TSMC and others. But real progress has been stymied. Several weeks ago, for example, TSMC announced a delay in its plans to get a new facility in Arizona up and running.

And as the U.S. effort stalls, China is building. Over the past year, SMIC, a Chinese semiconductor foundry company, has increased its market share of the global legacy chip marketplace, including with growth in sales to U.S.-based customers. The importance of the U.S. market to SMIC — and the company’s confidence that it will continue to take advantage of that market — is reflected in its May 2023 opening of a new office in Irvine, Calif. (For context: the CHIPS Act had passed nine months earlier and SMIC is on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List.)

YMTC, China’s flash memory chip champion, is on the Entity List, too. It is expanding operations thanks to a flush of cash from China’s Big Fund and successfully increasing prices for its 128-layer NAND flash chip. CXMT, China’s DRAM chip champion, is ramping up for an IPO on the mainland. Chinese tech companies, intent to keep pace in processing and data demands from the current wave of artificial intelligence excitement, have been increasing their orders for Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips, which are seen as core to the tech stack for current and next-generation AI applications.

Even Huawei, the Chinese tech champion most severely targeted by U.S. regulatory action, has expanded its role in new semiconductor materials and production. Huawei’s HiSilicon subsidiary, for example, is preparing to put into operation a more than 2 million-square-foot optical chip factory in Wuhan. And Huawei is actively investing to operationalize China’s strategy of controlling the global market for key next-generation semiconductor materials, such as gallium and indium phosphide.

Examples abound; their point is clear: China is further along in competing for semiconductor dominance than the West and the U.S. collectively have recognized — and current, defensive policies are not keeping pace. None of this is because China is out-innovating American enterprises or researchers. It’s because China is building. China has enduring strengths in market share of legacy segments and supply chain control; Beijing is willing to apply those for commercial and geopolitical leverage. And Chinese and global capital markets value that.

American promises are just promises until they’re built. American defenses are hollow until they’re enforced.

The corollary of this dynamic: A tit-for-tat of escalating, incremental Whac-A-Mole moves does not favor the United States. China holds significant points of leverage all along the semiconductor value chain. Those range from dominance of upstream semiconductor materials to downstream pressures derived from control of packaging and testing steps in the chip value chain. Moreover, China remains the world’s workshop. That means Chinese sub-component and component manufacturers are key customers for even the most cutting-edge and innovative U.S. and allied companies. Our crown jewels lack value if they don’t have use cases and markets outside of China in which to grow.

U.S. strategy and policy — ranging from CHIPS Act funding to export restrictions — need to recognize that the U.S.-China tech competition is all-encompassing, that it’s an industrial competition first, and that both of those realities lend China an under-appreciated advantage.

U.S. policy needs to continue to defend against China’s semiconductor champions and value chain control — and to do so more effectively. At the same time, U.S. policy needs to incentivize real, proactive investment by industry.

What does this mean?

The U.S. needs more strategically to target its defensive tools. China’s semiconductor ecosystem is a latticed web of financial and operating entities buttressed by Chinese Communist Party industrial policy. The core forces behind that web can be identified and, political will willing, restricted from accessing U.S. markets, technology and capital. But those core forces need to be identified and targeted. The Commerce Department needs to develop and enforce broad-based restrictions of technology flows to this web — and limit waivers and exemptions from existing restrictions.

Congress can increase pressure on China’s core semiconductor nodes with moves like expanding Section 889 enforcement to more Chinese champions. Both inbound and outbound investment screening need high-fidelity intelligence to cue expansions of reviews of potentially relevant covered transactions.

And the U.S. and allied private sectors need to be motivated to build. That, too, will require additional regulatory prods. Domestic content requirements and prohibitions against Chinese and Chinese-dependent goods should be expanded. Capital markets need more clarity in assessing China risks across the semiconductor value chain and the downstream markets that depend upon it. The allure of the Chinese market, for cost reductions and for revenue gains, may be a short-term boon for a wide variety of publicly listed companies. It’s also clearly a long-term losing proposition. Transparency should be required in capital markets to make this reality, and related exposure, clear to investors all along the capital stack. With added transparency, capital markets can be expected to impose costs on those players who elect to play both sides in this strategic showdown.

The chips are on the table. The only way to win is with smarter offense and defense that target the core of China’s strategy.

Nathan Picarsic and Emily de La Bruyère are senior fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and co-founders of Horizon Advisory.

themessenger.com · August 16, 2023

19. Underground helps defense forces decimate another group of invaders

Video at the link: https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3749229-underground-helps-defense-forces-decimate-another-group-of-invaders.html?utm

This is quite a message:

The National Resistance Center thanks the residents of the temporarily occupied territories for the information and urges to continue to inform about enemy movements and positions.

Does it put all Ukrainians in occupied areas at more risk? Or do the Russians already suspect everyone and treat Ukrianians harshly regardless of their actions (and not in accordance with the Geneva Conventions)?

And yes I know the legal arguments that people providing this information are not afforded protections under the Geneva Conventions because they are acting as combatants. (they would rather suffer or die on their feet rather than live on their knees - hyperbole sure, but if your country was occupied by a brutal regime and military how would you react? Would you live on your knees?)

For the Ukrainian this is existential, life or death – wouldn't you do whatever is necessary to defend your country regardless of the risk? I am reminded of Patrick Henry's last words. I bet there are many Ukrainian who have uttered similar words.

Underground helps defense forces decimate another group of invaders

ukrinform.net

Thanks to information from the underground, dozens of invaders, Russian equipment, and an enemy military object were destroyed in the territory temporarily captured by the Russians.

"The defense forces launched targeted strikes at the enemy units which decided to conduct training on captured Ukrainian lands. The exact personnel losses of the Russian occupying forces are being specified," the National Resistance Center posted on Telegram.

The video released shows how HIMARS is used to decimate the personnel of the enemy's training center, the premises where training was held, and a large vehicle that came to pick up Russian fighters.

The National Resistance Center thanks the residents of the temporarily occupied territories for the information and urges to continue to inform about enemy movements and positions.

Video: National Resistance Center

ukrinform.net

20. Plasma breakthrough could enable better hypersonic weapons, spacecraft

But not the same plasma we used to sell to raise beer money in college.

Excerpts:

If the plasma cooling effect can be reproduced and converted in new electronics cooling solution it could also help to cloak the thermal signature of some power-hungry electronic systems, like radars or high-powered radio devices.

“We don't have the picture completely figured out. This is an ongoing program. I don't want to claim that I know everything that is happening during this process, but we are studying that in detail,” he said.

Plasma breakthrough could enable better hypersonic weapons, spacecraft

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

3D Illustration visualizing how the Scramjet hypersonic weapon creates thrust. U.S. Air Force / Travis Burcham

Hot electronics are a big problem for next-generation missiles. The fourth state of matter could be the solution.

August 16, 2023 08:06 PM ET

By Patrick Tucker

Science & Technology Editor, Defense One

A potential new way to protect sensitive electronics from the extreme heat generated by flying at high speed could give the United States an edge in the race to deploy hypersonic missiles and new spacecraft.

A July research paper in the American Chemical Society’s journal ACS Nano describes one potential solution that uses focused plasma, the photons and highly charged particles that make up the so-called fourth state of matter. If the method bears out in further research, it could usher in hypersonic weapons with much more advanced electronic guidance and could even enable on-the-ground weapons to evade heat sensors.

The breakthrough grew out of efforts to use a laser to measure the temperature of electronics in plasma-facing environments, work the Air Force is supporting through a grant at the University of Virginia, said professor Patrick Hopkins, one of the researchers on the paper.

“What we started to develop was a laser to probe the temperature of the sample surface within a microsecond resolution…And we could see that while the plasma was hitting the surface, we could measure how the temperature of the surface changed” Hopkins said in an interview. “We started to see something that didn't make sense at first, while we were developing this laser probe: we were seeing the surface was cooling first, then it would heat back up from the rest of the energetic species from the plasma.”

The reason for the temperature drop is the same reason focused plasma can be used to clean electronics.

“When you expose the surface of the material to a plasma, it can remove atoms from the sample surface. Effectively it can be conceptualized as evaporation of the material from the surface,” Hopkins said.

The effect is akin to the way sweat evaporating off our skin reduces our body temperature.

Hopkins said he has Air Force support to continue to investigate the phenomenon, which could have big consequences for the future of hypersonic missiles, space craft, or other vehicles where high heat could hurt electronics. Additionally, Hopkins’ start up company, Laser Thermal, is working on commercializing this laser-based temperature measurement through a Small Business Innovation Research program grant through the Air Force.

“If you want to cool something, the traditional way to cool it is you have a big massive heatsink or you have some refrigeration cycle with liquid and coolant. That's really heavy. That's going to weigh down your vehicle. What this enables is: through a plasma, there could be novel, lightweight ways that you could have a directed cooling solution that could now help to cool electronics on airplanes, on satellites, on hypersonic vehicles, that would not compromise size, weight and power.”

That’s of particular importance to the United States, which, unlike China and Russia, isn’t developing nuclear-armed hypersonic weapons, meaning that the weapons it does create will need to be much more precise and thus carry more advanced electronics aboard, as a February CRS report to Congress indicates.

If the plasma cooling effect can be reproduced and converted in new electronics cooling solution it could also help to cloak the thermal signature of some power-hungry electronic systems, like radars or high-powered radio devices.

“We don't have the picture completely figured out. This is an ongoing program. I don't want to claim that I know everything that is happening during this process, but we are studying that in detail,” he said.

21. We Must Return to and Maintain the Two Theater Defense Planning Construct

Two simultaneous major theater wars? 1 MTW and 1 LRC? Win–Hold–Win?

Is there anyone on active duty who remembers all the illustrative planning scenarios that were developed in the 1990s?

But here is what is different from the 1990s and it is the key point we must understand today. I think this contributes an important insight to support the authors' argument.

Any War With Russia or China Will Be Global, Not Regional

We Must Return to and Maintain the Two Theater Defense Planning Construct

By Eric S. Edelman & Franklin C. Miller

August 17, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/08/17/we_must_return_to_and_maintain_the_two_theater_defense_planning_construct_973522.html?mc_cid=4e57280aff&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Overview

It has become fashionable lately in some quarters to assert that the deterrence of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and, indeed, the island’s defense if deterrence fails, is the United States’ principal national security priority virtually to the exclusion of all other U.S. alliance obligations or partnerships. Proponents of this theory also assert that the United States is so bereft of the economic sinews of power and military capability that we must abandon our European allies, as well as long-time Middle Eastern security partners, and concentrate America’s military power solely on deterring a cross-strait invasion and defending Taiwan. From the standpoints of U.S. grand strategy and military analysis both assertions, however, are without merit. Supporting the security guarantees provided to American allies and partners is essential as long as U.S. political leaders and the public understand how these ties provide major defense and economic benefits to the United States.

Alliance Fundamentals

The United States remains the leader of the free world. Despite recurrent predictions of American decline the U.S. remains the world’s most resilient, vibrant, innovative economy with record low levels of unemployment, declining inflation, and very promising levels of private and public investment in manufacturing. Unlike the early 20^th Century when Great Britain increasingly sought to shed some of the responsibilities for maintaining global order to the U.S, this is a path we cannot afford to take. No other nation is willing to or able to take our place. A major strength we possess, which our potential enemies do not, is our globe-girdling system of alliance relationships. Credibility among allies and potential enemies alike depends on our perceived will to maintain our longstanding commitments to support and defend like-minded democratic states. Foreswearing our pledge to help defend NATO Europe against a revanchist and aggressive Russia, bent on re-establishing an imperium on the geographical space of the old Soviet Union, will cause all of our other allies and friends (including Taiwan) to question whether we would at some point abandon them too. Questions about how long the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine in its valiant defensive struggle with Russia are already reverberating in Taiwan. Because American security commitments are not severable, such a loss of confidence would cause longtime allies to drift away, to be more accommodating of our potential enemies to our detriment, all leading, therefore, to a weakening of our own ability to shape world events. A good example is the failure of the Obama Administration to follow through on its supposed “red line” in Syria over the use of chemical weapons. Failure to live up to that self-designated commitment, combined with that Administration’s poorly developed and badly rolled out “pivot to Asia” had reverberations in both Europe and Asia where allies began to worry about U.S. willingness to honor its treaty obligations. Thus, the foundational argument for disengaging from NATO in order to bolster our position in the Pacific is deeply flawed. Although NATO allies must clearly do more to provide for their own defense, the U.S. maintains a vital role in providing an alliance framework for and critical enablers for the common defense.

Any War With Russia or China Will Be Global, Not Regional

The National Defense Strategies of both the Trump and Biden Administrations have been predicated on a force sizing construct that calls for prevailing in one theater while relying on our nuclear deterrent to prevent opportunistic aggression in other theaters. That approach is no longer sufficient in the two nuclear peer world in which we now find ourselves. The U.S. military must be prepared to deter and defend conventionally as well as with nuclear forces in multiple places. Any campaign against either Russia or China will be global from the beginning. Those analysts who describe the Russian threat solely in European terms overlook its Pacific fleet and air forces, both of which pose a threat to our own Pacific forces as well as to our Asian allies. Russian aggression will inevitably include attacks in space and cyberspace as well, while Russia’s nuclear capabilities have a global reach. While China’s conventional forces lack the global reach of Moscow’s, Beijing’s military campaigns too will feature offensive operations in space and cyberspace, while their nuclear and conventional forces will threaten not only Taiwan but also Japan, South Korea, Australia and perhaps others. As a result, any discussion about confining a conflict with either Moscow or Beijing to a particular geographic theater is illusory.

Because the wars would be different, the U.S. can defend simultaneously against both Russia and China

Any suggestion that the U.S. military is too weak to engage in two theaters simultaneously – and therefore to deter in two theaters simultaneously – fundamentally misunderstands the nature of potential wars in NATO and in the Pacific.

To the degree that Vladimir Putin is able to reconstitute the hollow shell which once was the Red Army, any war in Europe will be the result of Russia moving to seize territory from NATO. The recently completed NATO Summit in Vilnius has codified a new Alliance planning construct to defeat such a threat. U.S. ground forces will play a major role in such a defense, augmented by considerable allied forces. Where those allied forces are under-strength and under-resourced, it will be necessary to return them to full capability – and we should make this point forcefully. Ukraine’s stout defense against the Russian invaders demonstrates however that defeating a ground threat should be well within NATO’s capability given sufficient political will to increase the necessary investments in defense. Russian naval forces, particularly their submarines, would still pose a significant wartime threat; that said, NATO navies are highly proficient at anti-submarine warfare, and the addition of Sweden and Finland to the Alliance will further complicate Russian naval operations and increase Russian naval vulnerabilities. The same applies to defeating the Russian air force, whose pilots are skilled at breaking international norms but not at intense air-to-air combat. Although an ongoing U.S. role in NATO will continue to be essential the edge in Europe again goes to the Alliance forces. U.S. naval and air forces in the Pacific should be more than capable of dealing with Russian conventional forces in that theater.

A campaign against Chinese aggression, whether it involves the defense of Taiwan or Japan, should not require major American ground forces (although there may well be a useful role for the U.S. Army to play in providing air defense for vulnerable U.S. bases and long-range fires). The Pacific war would be primarily a maritime and air war. China’s growing capabilities in both domains are certainly worrisome and long-term trends are currently not in our favor. In the short to medium run, U.S. naval and air forces in the Pacific, augmented by highly capable Japanese naval forces, should be able to establish air and naval superiority, key to a successful defense of Taiwan, early in any campaign against China’s largely untested force if we urgently remedy several crucial deficiencies which the Biden Administration has, heretofore, either insufficiently addressed or discounted.

To be sure, the U.S. faces serious challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Years of budget cuts during the Obama years and the frequent resort by Congress to funding the Department of Defense through continuing resolutions and inertia in the military services have allowed the PRC to construct formidable capabilities for denying U.S. forces access to the Western Pacific. The buildup of Chinese nuclear forces, both its theater and strategic nuclear capabilities provide, a powerful tool for the PRC to contest any U.S. counter-intervention to defend Taiwan. And Chinese investments in space, cyber capabilities as well as the difficult logistics of sustaining U.S. forces that must contend with the tyranny of distance and a contested environment to reach the theater are symptomatic of adverse trends which the U.S. must take steps to mitigate.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command currently lacks sufficient long-range strike (to destroy Chinese anti-access area-defense [A2AD] forces) and sufficient airlift and air tankers to flow U.S. air force assets to the region. Although a joint Army-Navy program has produced a long-range hypersonic missile system, both services are planning to deploy it at an extremely leisurely pace – and certainly one inconsistent with the projected threat of Chinese attacks in the latter part of this decade. Neither service’s leadership seems to have a sense of urgency, leading to a serious “rhetoric-action gap.” The Air Force, for its part, has settled on a limited stop-gap approach to tankers by procuring a small number of the still troubled KC-46A, although the limited quantity and slow pace of deployment is similarly inconsistent with the possibility of a serious threat to deterrence late in this decade. Deferring consideration of augmenting the tanker force to a future competition which might produce a “stealth tanker” sometime well into the next decade similarly reveals a rhetoric-action gap which is inconsistent with the intelligence concerns of Xi conducting aggression possibly as soon as 2027.

In light of China’s and Russia’s significant deployment of short-and-medium range nuclear forces, the U.S. needs to augment its regional nuclear deterrent capabilities. A nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, supported by many in Congress but spurned by the Administration, would be an important addition to our ability to prevent escalation.

Finally, in both theaters, the U.S. must improve its capability to deter and defend against Russian and Chinese gray zone operations. This involves coordinating activities between the various branches of the U.S. government in a manner akin to what we used to do in the Cold War but have allowed to lapse since the collapse of the USSR. Allies, too, have considerable anti-gray zone capabilities (indeed, all this occurs in their backyards so to speak) which we should encourage and draw upon to augment American efforts.

NATO Forces in the Pacific

The peacetime deployment of NATO forces to the Pacific region sends a powerful signal of political solidarity both to our Asian allies and to our potential enemies. In the event Chinese aggression was not accompanied by supporting Russian military activity, the addition of NATO units to the U.S.-led Asian coalition would be beneficial. In the event of simultaneous aggression involving both Russia and China, or a situation in which Russian supporting activities against NATO Europe could reasonably be anticipated in the case of Chinese aggression, a prudent approach would be to keep NATO units in their home waters where they have long experience protecting against Russian forces. This would free the U.S. to swing additional naval units to the Pacific to join in the fight against Beijing.

The Bottom Line

U.S. ability to defend its vital interests in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific is a matter of political will and leadership capable of overcoming the divisive partisan bickering that has now reached a level that jeopardizes national security. Addressing the short falls and meeting the challenge of China’s increased conventional and nuclear capabilities will undoubtedly require additional resources for national defense but also will require spending those resources on new capabilities that offset the PRC’s current and looming advantages. That said, very few things can injure our ability to deter two acknowledged hostile powers more than a flawed political and military analysis that produces defeatist policies. We are today still capable of deterring and defending in both NATO and the Pacific . . . and it is essential that we continue to do so. The flaws in our posture are correctable but that requires political and military leaders, notably the Chiefs of our armed services, who are willing to commit energy and resources to rectifying our known weaknesses with an appropriate level of urgency. Time is of the essence.

Eric S. Edelman is counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and is a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Finland, and undersecretary of defense for policy.

Franklin C. Miller served for three decades as a senior nuclear policy and arms control official in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council staff. He is a principal at the Scowcroft Group.

22. China's ambitious defence modernisation sets course for dominance

China's ambitious defence modernisation sets course for dominance

China's drive to boost its military prowess reflects its comprehensive modernisation blueprint.

army-technology.com · by Harry McNeil · August 17, 2023

Harry McNeil

A platoon of soldiers of the Chinese army with the flag of the people’s Republic of China marching in a parade. Source: SemikArt/Shutterstock

China’s relentless pursuit of global dominance is mirrored in its grand defence modernisation plan spanning 2023-2028.

Free Buyers Guide

China’s ambitious defence modernisation sets course for dominance

The document includes detailed information on the manufacturers and suppliers and their products, along with contact details, to inform your purchasing decision.

Thank you.Your download email will arrive shortly

By downloading this case study, you acknowledge that GlobalData may share your information with and that your personal data will be used as described in their Visit our Privacy Policy for more information about our services, how GlobalData may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. Our services are intended for corporate subscribers and you warrant that the email address submitted is your corporate email address.

With a concerted focus on its navy, air force, and army, China aims to solidify its status as a military powerhouse, driven by evolving security landscapes and regional influence. GlobalData’s recent report, “China Defense Market 2023-2028,” delves into the intricate details of this multifaceted strategy that underpins China’s quest for technological supremacy and territorial ascendancy.

Strategic modernisation drives defence expenditure surge

China’s defence expenditure leaps forward, propelled by a multifaceted strategic vision. President Xi Jinping’s two-stage plan aims to position China as a global leader in terms of national strength and international influence. This ambitious blueprint, bolstered by a decade of robust economic growth, is the cornerstone of China’s defence industry expansion.

Modernisation unveiled: Navy, Air Force, and Army powerhouses

China’s modernisation journey traverses the navy, air force, and army, each increasing its capabilities.

China’s maritime strategy unfolds in three phases, culminating in a blue water navy beyond the second island chain. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is powering into its third phase, enhancing anti-access and area denial capabilities while procuring advanced destroyers, submarines, and missiles.

The skies are the limit for China’s air force, with advancements in fifth-generation aircraft, UAVs, and early warning systems. The indigenously developed J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighter and ongoing FC-31 Gyrfalcon programme spotlight China’s aeronautical aspirations.

Ground forces are reinforced through advanced tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, missile systems, and support capabilities, establishing a formidable land-sea-air deterrent.

Navigating geopolitical challenges and alliances

China’s defence modernisation path navigates intricate geopolitical waters. Escalating military expenditures stem from border tensions with India and South China Sea territorial disputes. China’s expanding influence via the Belt and Road Initiative draws international scrutiny, fostering strategic alliances to counterbalance its growing presence.

Digital ramparts: Bolstering cybersecurity and technological resilience

China’s cyber defence is fortified as the Strategic Support Force (SSF) reinforces space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities. Safeguarding critical infrastructure and sensitive information is paramount in China’s drive to ensure technological resilience.

Forward march toward a transformed future

China’s all-encompassing defence modernisation strategy charts a course towards global influence and national security. As the nation’s navy, air force, and army surge ahead, the global geopolitical landscape is poised for a paradigm shift, reverberating with the resounding impact of China’s transformative military advancements.

23. Raid on Makin Island and 2nd Raider Battalion (WW II) | SOF News

Raid on Makin Island and 2nd Raider Battalion (WW II) | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · August 17, 2023

On August 17-18, 1942, members of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion made an attack on a small island in the central Pacific Ocean held by Japanese forces during World War II. The raid had several objectives – destroy Japanese installations, gather intelligence of the Gilbert Islands area (map by Wikipedia), capture prisoners, and divert Japanese attention away from planned allied landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi. The raid also was an initial test of the raiding tactics and capabilities of the Marine Raider units.

Makin Island. The small island was the home of a Japanese seaplane base and had a garrison of less than 100 men. The island was a strategic atoll in the Marshalls as it afforded the Japanese a location from which to conduct air patrols along the eastern flank of the Japanese perimeter. The island is known as Butaritari Island, however, during World War II, the military referred to it as Makin Island. It had a large lagoon surrounded by the island that could accomodate fairly large ships; although the entrances to the lagoon were narrow. The island would later be taken by American forces in the fall of 1943.

Image. Astronaut photo, U.S. government. Government of Kiribati mapping information. (2012) Makin Island (Butaritari Island, Wikepedia).

Image. Gilbert Islands, Makin Island is the top island of the archilago. By Pitichinaccio – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1350215

Submarine Infiltration. The Marine Raiders were transported to the island aboard two large submarines that had been converted to troop transports – the Nautilus and the The subs departed Pearl Harbor on August 8, 1942. Each of the submarines carried a company of raiders – for a total of 211 men. The two companies were Companies A and B. During the Makin Island battle the submarines would provide fire support for the raiding party; firing against enemy positions on land, aircraft, and boats.

Landing Difficulties. The raiding force was to depart the subs in inflatable boats with motors and make a predawn landing on two locations on Butaritari Island beginning a 03:00 of the 17th. Once ashore it would destroy the garrison and then withdraw that evening. Things went badly from the outset while boarding the rubber boats from the subs. When the subs surfaced there were high seas and heavy rain. Many of the rubber boats were swamped and the engines had difficulty starting due to flooding with water. Due to the weather, it was decided to utilize only one landing site on the island; instead of two. However, one element didn’t get the word and was separated from the main force. Some of the boat motors malfunctioned, slowing the landing process and causing confusion amongst the raiders.

Battle with the Garrison Force. The Marines were soon in contact with the Japanese force, estimated at 85 personnel, upon landing upon the island. Enemy snipers and machine guns halted the Marines advance towards the garrison. The Japanese then launched two banzai attacks which were defeated by the Americans. At that point, although not known to the Marines, the Japanese force was greatly diminished. Later in the day the Japanese attacked with air attacks and attempted to land troops in the lagoon with seaplanes – but unsuccessfully. Evenutually, over the course of the next two days the surviving Japanese forces were dispersed and scattered around the island. The Japanese garrison was destroyed; to include the radio station, fuel, and other supplies.

Leaving the Island – More Difficulties. The departure from the island was a disaster. The heavy surf and barrier reef caused a lot of problems. Many of the outboard engines of the 18 rubber boats did not work. It was difficult to paddle against the heavy breakers and some boats capsized with the loss of equipment. Around seven or eight boats and less than 100 men did make it to the submarines on the evening of the 17th; but more than 100 men were still stranded on the island and were to remain overnight on the island. Almost all of the remainder of the raiding force would make it to the submarines the night of the 18th. Nine men were inadvertently left behind once the submarines set off for Pearl Harbor, arriving on August 25th..

Casualties. The Marine unit suffered losses in the raid. The official tally states that 18 were dead and 12 missing; among those missing were nine that had been left alive on the island. They were later captured and beheaded by the Japanese later in August at Kwajalein.

Marine Raiders. The Marine Corps had established four Raider battalions during World War II to conduct the capability of small light units that could strike deep into enemy territory during the Pacific campaign. The Second Marine Raider Battalion was formed up on February 19, 1942. On February 1, 1944, the 1st Raider Regiment was redesignated the 4th Marine Regiment. Memers of the Raider Training Center were transferred to the newly formed 5th Marine Division. In 2014, the Marine Special Operations Regiment, a subordinate unit of the United States Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), ws redesignated the Marine Raider Regiment.

Achievements of the Raid. The Makin Island raid was a learning moment for the Marines and the training of the Marine Raider battalions. The commander of the raiding party, Lt Col Evan Carlson, received the Navy Cross for his efforts in the battle. He would retire as a Brigadier General. Although the mission did not achieve all of its objectives it did prove to be a morale booster for the Marines and Navy and was a public relations success for the war effort. In 1943, the film Gung Ho! was released (see movie trailer, 1943). It depicted the 2nd Raider Battalion’s raid on Makin Island. Two U.S. Navy ships would bear the name of

*********

Image of Nautilus: U.S. Marines arrive at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 26 August 1942 on board the U.S. submarine Nautilus following their raid on Makin Island on 17-18 August, 1942.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1388486

References:

Video – The Echoes of Makin Island. This video has clips of the 1943 movie Gung Ho!. Defense Media Activity – Marines, August 15, 2023, DVIDS, 3 minutes.

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/893859/echoes-makin-island

Video – 1942 Raid on Makin Raid. The History Guy, 2020, 17 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvE03k7t2d4

sof.news · by SOF News · August 17, 2023

24. Is the Army Ready to Think Like a Tech Company? Why the Service Needs to Value Coding the Same Way as Shooting

How many tech companies have the mission to close with and destroy the enemy? To kill people and break things? Just saying.

Snarkiness aside, there is some important food for thought in this essay.

Conclusion:

With all this momentum in place, it seems silly to wait for something so overdue and obvious. Let’s all advocate for the Army to codify this first step of digital transformation and to create a permanent career field for soldiers as software developers.

Is the Army Ready to Think Like a Tech Company? Why the Service Needs to Value Coding the Same Way as Shooting - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Abdul Subhani · August 17, 2023

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

This week, thousands of soldiers, technologists, and vendors descended on Augusta, Georgia for an annual technology conference known affectionately as “TechNet.” The conference has always been an opportunity for Army leaders to make technology‐related announcements and to better understand the latest technologies, and for companies to demonstrate the value of their products to the defense sector. But this year’s TechNet event comes at a historically high-leverage moment for the US Army. Against the backdrop of an unrelenting buildup of Chinese digital capabilities and lessons learned in Ukraine, the Army must confront a combination of complex strategic disadvantages—to include a smaller force due to an unprecedented recruiting crisis, the search for a new identity in the wake of the post-9/11 wars, and an ever‐sprawling approach to digital transformation and innovation.

The elephant in the room will be how to sew it all together in a meaningful way—something a conventionally minded, battle‐tested heavyweight organization has struggled to do despite the proper strategic emphasis from visionary, bipartisan leaders like Ryan McCarthy, Dr. Kathleen Hicks, and Christine Wormuth. The answer is counterintuitive for an industrial‐minded organization that often fixates on hardware or a fancy technology. It’s hidden in plain sight. It’s finally incentivizing the value that the American tech sector demonstrates every day. It’s creating and formalizing a clear career path in software development for soldiers—immediately—so we can start catching up where we’ve fallen behind.

The Writing is on The Wall

The US Army is an organization of such size that only Fortune 500 America can serve as a ballpark analogue for what may work well. Study of such large companies is littered with leaders failing to embrace the opportunity in enterprise‐level disruption despite clear warning. Fifteen years ago, former Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes famously declared, “Neither Redbox nor Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition. It’s more [like] Wal‐Mart and Apple.” A few years later, in 2011, Marc Andreessen published his now famous Wall Street Journal op‐ed, “Why Software Is Eating The World,” warning that every company will be a software company. In a landmark 2022 review of Marc’s assertion, leading global consulting firm McKinsey and Company took it further. McKinsey found that “nearly 70 percent of the top economic performers, compared with just half of their peers, are using their own software to differentiate themselves from their competitors.” Revisiting his 2011 comments, Marc told McKinsey in 2022 that companies must “find the smartest technologist in the company and make them CEO.”

McKinsey used the quote to emphasize the need for all organizations to invest in a software culture, develop large communities of practice, and keep talent by focusing on mission and workplace. Simultaneously, two former senior Department of Defense technologists published the oft‐cited Center for Strategic and International Studies report “Software‐Defined Warfare: Architecting the DOD’s Transition to the Digital Age” and emphasized the need for a well‐informed, enterprise‐wide “tech refresh.” Even more recently, Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar wrote a Wall Street Journal op‐ed, “Ukraine’s Software Warrior Brigade,” extolling the asymmetric value of technically literate (if not dominant) Ukrainian soldiers as they rapidly incorporated the best technologies to hold off a far more conventionally capable Russian army. Ten years of cross‐industry warnings and case studies should be enough to provoke decisive action from an Army actively looking to digitally transform.

How Do We Do It?

What we need now is a unifying thread to bring all the elements of digital transformation together‐‐‐a simple solution that catalyzes an unprecedented large‐scale transformation, connecting the brass to the outcomes new technologies are supposed to bring. We need to formalize the practice like a combat commander would organize tanks, helicopters, and soldiers on a battlefield. This starts with creating the first career field in software for soldiers and to allow people to enlist in the Army to be software engineers, designers, commercially minded product managers, and cybersecurity experts. And we need to show them the Army will value their service and contributions just as much as we value those conventional combat roles.

So What’s Stopping Us?

It’s hard to point to just one reason why the Army has not already embraced such wholesale change. For several years now, consecutive administrations and leadership have prioritized Army modernization and transformation. However, this was largely hardware focused. Academic study and analysis of large, industrial‐minded companies attempting digital transformations always yields the same findings: it’s just difficult to execute and the size of the organization intensifies the degree of difficulty. Furthermore, public sector digital transformations are far tougher than those in the private sector due to the obvious statutory constraints. The Army’s culture also plays a role. For over two hundred years, a fiercely codified hierarchical model and a deep institutional value on combat experience has ironically held it back from accelerating a digital transformation that requires empowering unconventional, lower-level leaders to ignite a seemingly nontraditional ecosystem approach in fields that are just not understood by the higher brass. The traditional leadership can feel uncomfortable with the speed, flexibility, and autonomy needed at the lower levels to create an institutional competency that not only McKinsey but other major consulting firms like Gartner and Deloitte all recommend. To this point, it’s been perceived as too different or too risky in an inherently risk‐averse culture. Finally, the recruiting crisis calls for tough decisions about what roles are employable and necessary in the Army. Do we have room for software soldiers if it comes at a cost of spots for infantry soldiers? It’s clear what the Blockbuster CEO would have thought. . . .

Why Now?

The political, economic, and institutional stars are finally aligned to take the first real step toward solidifying digital transformation and creating the first career fields in software development operations in the United States Army. For one, we have the right leaders in place, who prioritize the long view and have the wherewithal to see through the traditionalists. From the recent announcement of former Apple executive Doug Beck as the new Defense Innovation Unit director (and direct report to the secretary of defense) to the confirmation of renowned Rand Corporation personnel policy expert Dr. Agnes Schaefer as the Army’s top personnel official, the political leadership team clearly understands the need. Furthermore, from years of National Defense Authorization Act draft language requiring DoD leadership to build this new competency and similar recommendations in the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence final report, the pump is primed in Congress too. Furthermore, even the Army’s staunchest traditionalists now see that conventionally minded recruiting strategies have failed. The workforce is different and what they expect from employers is a portability and autonomy characteristic of the private sector, which must be matched by the Army. The Army must start targeting untapped demographics. This all readies the situation for the first career field and promotion system for uniformed software developers and operators.

Moreover, the Army already placed a small but smart bet on this value three years ago when it green‐lit the first ever Army Software Factory in Austin, Texas as a brainchild of the newly minted Army Futures Command. In an act of unusual self‐awareness, Army leaders’ goal was to prove the value of this bold concept before scaling something that would not work if fielded to the broader Army. But in less than three years, the results are both stunning and compelling. With no formal training and working hand in hand with nontraditional tech sector partners, the Army Software Factory has both embodied the recommendations of thought‐leading technologists and proven that Army soldiers will stay in uniform if employed in this capacity. And in doing so, they’ve become experts in the community-of-practice approach to agile software operations, cloud engineering, and lean problem-solving while also addressing complex Army problems. The experiment has gone so well that earlier this year, the United States Marine Corps announced at Austin’s global tech conference SXSW that it would be building its own new software unit, using the same model as the Army and placing it under the same roof in Austin, as part of the service’s Force Design 2030 initiative. It marks the first time two services are partnered under the same roof to employ service members in unmapped roles in emerging technology and it was all built at minimal cost to the taxpayer with close connections to the tech sector and community partners.

With all this momentum in place, it seems silly to wait for something so overdue and obvious. Let’s all advocate for the Army to codify this first step of digital transformation and to create a permanent career field for soldiers as software developers.

Abdul Subhani is a career technologist and entrepreneur. He balances his role as the president and CEO of a tech company with several service‐oriented roles, such as the civilian aide to the secretary of the Army for the Texas capitol region and the distinguished innovation chair at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also serves on the board of advisors for the Center for a New American Security as well as in several advisory roles across the country.

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

Image credit: Mr. Luke J. Allen, US Army

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Abdul Subhani · August 17, 2023

25. Wargaming for Peace in Asia

Wargaming for peace? Oxymoron? I am reminded of one of George Carlin's monologues about words that do not belong together or should not be useful together. like Juuummmbbbbooo Shrimp. Or hand me that piano or please saw my legs off.

Excerpt:

In light of these trends, we argue that US decision-makers should broaden their understanding of the Sino-US security dilemma as well as adopt the use of “peace games” to help manage crisis escalation. Similar to Project Solarium, commissioned by President Dwight Eisenhower to manage competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, peace games are differentiated from wargames by allowing participants to explore how to use all elements of national power, especially diplomacy, to minimize the potential for conflict. Indeed, policymakers’ ability to synchronize the various instruments of US power is decisive to the durability of stable relations with other countries, especially during periods of heightened competition. Recently, Cornell University’s Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, in partnership with the Carnegie Corporation and United States Institute of Peace, commissioned such a peace game to explore how members of Congress understand the potential for Sino-US conflict escalation surrounding the long-standing Sino-Japanese territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Our peace game showed that members of Congress adopt conflicting beliefs about this territorial dispute’s bearing on the likelihood of a wider Sino-US war.

Wargaming for Peace in Asia - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Paul Lushenko, Keith L. Carter, Steve Israel · August 16, 2023

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

Following the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, political and military leaders have been gripped by the prospect of war with China. As China continues to militarize the South China Sea and expand its presence near Taiwan, the administration of President Joe Biden now identifies the Asian giant as America’s “pacing” threat, aligning US policies, strategies, and military modernization to deter China.

Many senior US officials applaud this approach, claiming that a war with China is inevitable. According to Thomas Friedman, this perspective is shaped by heightened mistrust between leaders in both countries. Though Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley has cautioned that war with China is not a forgone conclusion, the new Joint Warfighting Concept is designed to overcome China’s antiaccess and area-denial strategy in Asia. The apparent intractability of the Sino-US security dilemma, wherein China’s military modernization and expanding regional posture alarms US officials, is also acknowledged by some international relations scholars. Graham Allison cautions that China and the United States may be “destined for war,” drawing a similarity to the way Athens’s rise instilled fear in Sparta, leading to the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC).

This narrative has encouraged a renaissance of simulations among political scientists and military educators. Indeed, countless simulations have studied the possibility of a Sino-US war and the potential outcomes. Though commissioned by different agencies, departments, and institutes, these simulations share two key features. First, simulations have largely focused on the disputes over the South China Sea and Taiwan. This is perhaps expected, given these two flashpoints are so closely watched by the media, think tanks, and policymakers. China’s ongoing militarization of the South China Sea threatens the integrity of an important sea line of communication, according analysts. And the political status of Taiwan is the starkest reminder for Chinese leaders of what they describe as the century of humiliation (1839–1949), in which China lost control over large areas of its territory, including Taiwan, to foreign invaders. Yet other tensions in Asia could also escalate into conflict, including in the East China Sea. Second, simulations mostly explore the potential for war rather than the prospects for peaceful conflict resolution. These wargames are explicitly designed to study how one country can use its military power to deter another country’s behavior. Analysts largely agree, however, that the costs of a Sino-US war would be high for both countries.

In light of these trends, we argue that US decision-makers should broaden their understanding of the Sino-US security dilemma as well as adopt the use of “peace games” to help manage crisis escalation. Similar to Project Solarium, commissioned by President Dwight Eisenhower to manage competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, peace games are differentiated from wargames by allowing participants to explore how to use all elements of national power, especially diplomacy, to minimize the potential for conflict. Indeed, policymakers’ ability to synchronize the various instruments of US power is decisive to the durability of stable relations with other countries, especially during periods of heightened competition. Recently, Cornell University’s Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, in partnership with the Carnegie Corporation and United States Institute of Peace, commissioned such a peace game to explore how members of Congress understand the potential for Sino-US conflict escalation surrounding the long-standing Sino-Japanese territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Our peace game showed that members of Congress adopt conflicting beliefs about this territorial dispute’s bearing on the likelihood of a wider Sino-US war.

On one hand, members of Congress do not want a war with China, and do not believe that conflict is inevitable. They contend that Chinese leaders’ hostile rhetoric is designed to appease their citizens, and that many off-ramps to conflict exist. On the other hand, members of Congress are concerned that several dynamics could push both countries to conflict. These include the evolving Sino-US relationship, US treaty obligations to Japan, and a social media ecosystem riddled with misinformation that shapes mutual suspicion and animosity. While these findings reflect the difficulties of managing Sino-US competition, they also show the merits of our innovative approach to help US policymakers protect against war. Among other policy options, our recent peace game reflects that members of Congress favor allowing China to save face in certain situations, including by repurposing US military capabilities that could unnecessarily escalate tensions, while not appearing to accommodate China’s recalcitrance across the region. Going forward, members of Congress, as well as other political and military decision-makers, should continue to participate in peace games to generate policy options that help to balance the United States’ security commitments while de-escalating its security dilemma with China.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute

Since World War II, China and Japan have lodged competing claims over five islands in the East China Sea, referred to as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. These islands, though uninhabited, are strategically important for several reasons. They sit astride a crucial regional shipping lane. They are also positioned on top of massive petroleum reserves. Finally, sovereignty over the islands allows leaders in both countries to satisfy unresolved war memories that breed heightened nationalism and shape foreign policies.

Despite diplomatic efforts, and in light of ambiguous international law, China and Japan have failed to establish a mechanism to manage conflicting sovereignty claims over the islands. In September 2010, for instance, a Chinese fishing trawler collided with a Japan Coast Guard ship near the islands. The Japan Coast Guard detained the trawler’s captain, which prompted a sharp response from Chinese officials. Though Japan eventually released the trawler’s captain to de-escalate the conflict, China attempted to punish its behavior by disrupting rare earth metal exports to Japan. Two years later, the Japanese government nationalized three of the largest islands by purchasing them from private owners. Chinese officials responded by declaring an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea that included the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, extending the escalation.

This event encouraged President Barack Obama to clarify that mutual defense under Article 5 of the US-Japan defense treaty covers Japan’s claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden reconfirmed. Such reassurance is exceptional in the region, which is characterized by multiple US defense treaties. For example, US officials were ambiguous about America’s security commitments to the Philippines during its 2012 standoff with China over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. The United States’ reassurance of Japan comes at a price, however. It has exacerbated the Sino-US security dilemma, implying that US intervention in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, while measured, could take on new meaning given the evolving Sino-US relationship. Liselotte Odgaard, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, warns of “the risk of miscalculation or error that could draw China, Japan, and the US into conflict.”

Using a Peace Game to Explore Attitudes in the US Congress

To observe strategic-level decision-making in the context of a territorial dispute in the East China Sea, and enabled by support from the Carnegie Corporation, we conducted a peace game among fifteen members of Congress from both political parties at the United States Institute of Peace in mid-July 2023. Our simulation largely replicated the 2010 crisis, adopting an “action,” “reaction,” and “counteraction” move sequence. This consisted of the initial crisis simulation—in this case a mid-air collision between Chinese and Japanese jets over the disputed islands—followed by a US response and China’s subsequent reaction.

We paired these iterative moves with periodic injects and challenged members of Congress to clarify assumptions, identity limitations and constraints, and discuss information requirements that enabled whole-of-government approaches to help de-escalate the crisis. The injects were calibrated to reflect either vertical (within crisis) or horizontal (beyond crisis) escalation. While the former could consist of Chinese and Japanese demands for an apology following the incident, the latter could consist of reports of Chinese naval exercises in the South China Sea or near Taiwan. We also incorporated misinformation on social media about the unfolding crisis to further stimulate uncertainty, thus modelling how the information environment can shape policy and strategy, escalate a crisis, and constrain leaders during conflict escalation.

This design provided for a dynamic, flexible, and responsive peace game refereed by experts from Cornell University and the United States Institute of Peace. Though our sample was bipartisan, reflecting all corners of the United States and a broad cross section of ideological beliefs, it was not representative of Congress. Members volunteered to participate in the peace game, introducing selection bias that prevents us from drawing sweeping generalizations from our observations. Yet our sample is extremely rare, offering a unique glimpse into the attitudes of policymaking elites that are informed by domain-specific expertise and experience. We further managed the potential for bias, especially priming—wherein experts inadvertently shape participants’ beliefs—by adopting free play. Following a short in-brief, expert facilitators managed discussion among congressional officials, asking questions during different moves, to maximize critical thinking. Facilitators captured observations in several ways, including move sheets, rapporteurs, and questionnaires.

Members of Congress Do Not Want War with China but Think It Is Possible

Our observations suggest that members of Congress adopt countervailing perspectives when assessing the implications of a Sino-Japanese dispute for US policy, as well as the possibility of a Sino-US war. On one hand, they do not believe a Sino-US war is inevitable given the flashpoint we studied, despite concerns from some corners of Washington and the Pentagon. Rather, participants echoed commentary from Jessica Chen Weiss, a sinologist at Cornell University, that Chinese leaders’ strident statements about US regional policy belie insecurity due to the costs that they may incur from their citizens for not exercising greater regional and global leadership. Indeed, research reflects that China’s approach to maritime disputes is often shaped by a calculation to balance domestic opinion, or what political scientists refer to as “audience costs,” with anticipated blowback globally.

Members of Congress also acknowledge the importance of public opinion, both in China and the United States, which studies show can moderate countries’ policies. Several participants cautioned that Americans, given two decades of conflict in Central Asia and the Middle East, are less likely to support military force against China unless it is clearly linked to a vital national security interest, such as the defense of Japan’s homeland from an attack. Several participants also noted that even Chinese citizens do not support a war with the United States, citing a recent study of public opinion in China. They also echoed a study conducted in China by Harvard University researchers suggesting de-escalation in the context of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute may be possible, should US officials seek third-party mediation through the United Nations and emphasize the costs of war.

Yet on the other hand, members of Congress believe that several factors could combine to spark a Sino-US war. First, the evolving Sino-US relationship, which appears to suggest a burgeoning shift in the global distribution of power for some participants, reinforces the need for US regional leadership during the crisis. Members of Congress involved in this game do not believe that the United States should accommodate China’s territorial claims in the East China Sea. Furthermore, by doing so, they believe that the United States risks undermining its status as a security guarantor of choice in the region. When the discussion focused on the risk and consequences of escalating this dispute to a broader conflict in support of Japan’s territorial claims over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, there was broad consensus among participants that China would be less likely to back down if confronted with a US ultimatum.

Second, Japan’s ongoing military modernization, while commended by some regional specialists including Jennifer Lind at Dartmouth College, further complicates US policy in the East China Sea. Discussions among members of Congress implied concerns over entrapment, wherein a “moral hazard” or escalatory behavior by Japan could unnecessarily result in a wider regional war between China and the United States. Japan’s heightened defense spending, coupled with Japanese citizens’ increasing concern about the possibility of US abandonment during conflict, could encourage officials in Tokyo to provoke tensions with China to the point that the United States is compelled to intervene to fulfill its treaty obligations. Indeed, the participants largely agreed that a threat of US military action could horizontally escalate the localized dispute into a Sino-US war in the South China Sea or over Taiwan.

Finally, members of Congress expressed concern about the way social media, enhanced by artificial intelligence, could potentially escalate a crisis to war. Following a key decision by participants to de-escalate the Sino-Japanese crisis by delaying a freedom-of-navigation operation through the South China Sea, thereby allowing China to save face, we incorporated an inject consisting of a “secretly recorded” audio message from a senior Japanese official. The official said that Japan “will prosecute the Chinese pilot under the full weight of Japanese law and correct the weakness Japan showed in 2010 by releasing the trawler captain.” Members of Congress further learned that US intelligence officials could not determine the veracity of the message and that it amassed 1.2 billion views globally in twenty-four hours, including more than five hundred million views in China. Although participants had previously decided to remove any perceived grounds for a Sino-US conflict given the crisis in the East China Sea, in this case by redirecting a US Navy destroyer away from the South China Sea, they agreed that the information environment further complicates US policy options and requires prudent judgment to manage. Hans Morgenthau once called prudence the “supreme virtue in global politics,” and our peace game reinforced his earlier observation.

Implications for US Policy in Asia

Our peace game shows that members of Congress are interested in learning more about the potential risks for a Sino-US war given existing flashpoints across the region, including in the East China Sea. If confronted with the scenario we explored, the participants are better prepared to de-escalate the crisis through multilateral engagement, including with global and regional institutions such as the United Nations and Association for Southeast Asian Nations. In addition to third-party mediation, members of Congress discussed the importance of bilateral engagements with both Japan and China, which would be designed to minimize the potential for a moral hazard and cultivate a shared responsibility for regional security. But members of Congress are also concerned that China’s revisionist behaviors, coupled with Japan’s remilitarization and deepfakes on the internet, could combine to spark a Sino-US war. Several participants even drew an analogy to the way political, military, and social forces came together to ignite World War I.

These observations suggest the importance of commissioning additional peace games to expose more US policymakers to the complex dynamics surrounding territorial disputes in Asia that could result in a Sino-US conflict. Future peace games should also incorporate representatives across US agencies, especially the Departments of State and Defense, as well as senior US military leaders deployed to the region. The intent of incorporating these representatives is not to militarize peace games, which would be counter to their purpose. Rather, including a broader, informed, and consequential audience will enable a far-reaching discussion for how US policymakers can combine all elements of national power to help de-escalate crises and reassure allies and partners while preventing war with China. Given US elected officials often perceive crisis response options generated by the military as “too little, too late”—implying they are slowly planned, irrelevant for achieving political aims, and likely to signal precisely the type of escalation that policymakers attempt to avoid—it will also help bridge a civil-military divide. Even so, some military practitioners may agree with Sir Michael Howard, a military historian, that peace is an “invention,” reflecting the prevalence of conflict across time. Yet the purpose of any conflict simulation, to paraphrase then US Secretary of War Elihu Root, is to preserve stability by exposing senior political and military officials to conditions that could escalate to war if not managed prudently.

Paul Lushenko is the director of special operations at the US Army War College and senior fellow at Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute.

Keith L. Carter is an associate professor at the US Naval War College and senior fellow at Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute.

Steve Israel is director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University and served as member of Congress for eight terms (2001–2017).

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: Al Jazeera English

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Paul Lushenko, Keith L. Carter, Steve Israel · August 16, 2023

26. A 13-Year-Old Girl Is Apparently The New Leader Of the JFK-QAnon Cult

With all due respect to anyone reading this who is a QAnon believer, I just cannot imagine how anyone could believe these conspiracy theories.

I would like to know from any QAnon supporter what is the rational argument about QAnon that causes a critical thinking educated person to sign on to the conspiracy theories and become a member of the QAnon cult.

A 13-Year-Old Girl Is Apparently The New Leader Of the JFK-QAnon Cult

“Tiny Teflon,” whose mother is also in the cult, has announced her plan to indoctrinate more children into it.

By David Gilbert

August 16, 2023, 12:08pm

Vice · August 16, 2023

When Michael Protzman, the leader of the QAnon cult that believes former President John F. Kennedy and his son JFK Jr. are still alive, died in June, people hoped the end was near for the group. The family members of those who joined the cult hoped it would disband so that their loved ones would finally return home.

But instead, a new leader has seemingly emerged: a 13-year-old girl known to her followers only as “Tiny Teflon,” the name of the Telegram channel she uses to communicate with her followers. According to multiple live chats on Telegram reviewed by VICE News, Protzman appears to have groomed the girl as his protege, hosting her on his live chats on Telegram, where he had tens of thousands of followers.

Many of Protzman’s followers have permanently broken family relationships, emptied their bank accounts, and destroyed their lives to follow his wild conspiracy theories. And now it seems they are ready to do the same for a child, whose real identity is not known.

Tiny Teflon has created her own channel, conducted live streams with followers, and most worrying of all, has announced her plan to indoctrinate more children into the cult by teaching them how to decode real word events using the movement’s bastardized form of Jewish numerology, gematria.

“I definitely think I’m gonna have more kids involved in this,” Tiny said during a live chat on her channel on August 6. “Maybe they could share more code, because I don’t want to be talking the entire time when I do this show in the future. So I’ll definitely think of having kids share codes and teach what they know too.”

“It’s worrying to see this young girl be put on a pedestal by a bunch of adults after the passing of Protzman,” an open-source researcher who uses the nickname “Karma” to avoid being targeted by the members of Protzman’s cult, which she has tracked closely since its inception, told VICE News.

When alive, Protzman used gematria to convince his followers that he could see into the future and communicate with everyone from former president Donald Trump to JFK Jr. Before becoming a cult leader, Protzman was a demolition expert in Washington state. He first gained attention in November 2021 when he convinced his followers that JFK and JFK Jr. were going to reappear in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Around a thousand people traveled from across the country to Dallas only to be disappointed by the Kennedys’ failure to appear.

Despite this, many of Protzman’s dedicated followers remained loyal, and followed him across the country for the next 18 months. Many of them destroyed their families and finances in the process. Protzman continued to claim JFK Jr. was alive and continually changed his predictions, at one point claiming Trump was just JFK Jr. in disguise, and finally, shortly before his death, claiming he was in fact the reincarnated JFK Jr.

Protzman died on June 30 in a Rochester hospital as a result of “multiple blunt force injuries” after he “lost control of his dirt bike” according to a report from the Southern Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, which was obtained by VICE News.

While Protzman was the leader of the group, he introduced Tiny Teflon in March 2022 by featuring her on a live chat in his Telegram channels. During the chat, and in subsequent appearances, the pair would use gematria to make links between everything from the 2011 movie The Smurfs and the timing of Trump’s appearance in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York to conclude that Q’s predictions about the mass execution of the child-trafficking cabal is about to come true. It’s not known if there was any familial connection between Protzman or Tiny Teflon, or how they knew each other.

As a sign of her growing position within the group, Tiny Teflon was made an administrator of Protzman’s main Telegram channel, though she posted very little over the last 6 months. However, since his death, the teenager has re-emerged as a leading voice in the group.

In late July, she showed up at a Trump rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she was photographed with multiple members of the JFK group.

Then she began to post again in the Negative 48 channel. As well as posting her “decodes,” on August 1 she shared a link to her new channel called ABC 123. The channel’s description says it will contain “Tiny Teflon’s Decodes, Research and Much More!” and in all caps, adds: “CHANNEL MONITORED BY ADULT.”

The description doesn’t mention who the adult is, but it is likely her mother, a Protzman devotee who has an account on Telegram as “Teflon Don.” Using this account she has promoted her daughter’s work as well as celebrating her birthday with a message posted in the main Negative 48 channel last year.

During one live chat, Tiny Teflon went into more detail about how she would use her position to recruit more children into the cult.

“I definitely want help out with kids and teaching gematria, it’d be so much fun,” she said. She added that she plans to create a beginners’ guide for children on how to use gematria to decode real world events.

At the end of the chat some of the listeners effusively praised Tiny Teflon: “I think you inspire many, many adults and children. So thank you so much. We appreciate you. Love you so much,” said one.

Another added, “It was a pleasure listening to you and I hope my little girl can start listening to you and go from there.”

One listener responded to Tiny’s plan about including more children by saying: “I think that’s awesome because my daughter will be watching you so I’m sure we’ll be following you.” Seconds later her daughter also spoke on the live chat: “Thank you, you did so good stuff [sic], and I definitely can’t wait to hear more of you,” the girl said.

A listener identified only as “Beverly” said she thought gematria could help children with their reading and math, adding: “Can I just say great job to your parents. I mean, my gosh, I can’t imagine how proud they must be.”

While there are others who are vying to replace Protzman as leader, close watchers of the group view Tiny Telfon’s assertion that she wants to use her position to bring more children into the fold as deeply worrying.

“I believe it’s too early to see where she will fit into the group dynamics right now, it’s definitely something I will be keeping a close eye on,” “Karma,” the open-source researcher, told VICE News. “For a group who have claimed to be all about ‘saving the children’ using a child to push your own beliefs is disgusting and disturbing.”

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.

Vice · August 16, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website