Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:


“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better."
- Abraham Lincoln

It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.
- John le Carre 

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." 
- William James




1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 3 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (03.10.22) CDS comments on key events

3. Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: October

4. AUKUS Special Operations Forces in Strategic Competition, Integrated Deterrence, and Campaigning: Resistance to Malign Activities

5. The Marine Corps Is Dangerously Close to Losing Its Customs, Traditions, and Warfighting Ethos

6. How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan

7. Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good?

8. U.S. to Send Mobile Rocket Launchers to Ukraine in $625 Million Aid Package -Officials

9. Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska: The 60 Minutes Interview Transcript

10. US may establish new command in Germany to arm Ukraine: report

11. U.S. military kills wanted Shabaab leader in airstrike in Somalia

12. In bid for new long-range rockets, Ukraine offers US targeting oversight

13. Why Ukraine Is the Only Country Using the Soviet Union’s Secret T-64 Tank

14. ‘Lots of heavy fighting ahead’: U.S. officials urge caution after Ukrainian gains

15.  TYFYS? Lawmaker files bill to thank troops ‘for our freedom’ instead

16. FDD | Islamist cleric who called for fighting America, suicide bombings, dies in Qatar

17. Turns out that Russian recruiting video loved by critics of the 'woke' US military was total BS

18. How Marines Can Fight the Stifling of Independent Thought

19. Is Our Competitor ‘China’ or the Chinese Communist Party?

20. From HIMARS to helos: What the US has given Ukraine [GRAPHIC]

21. The U.S. Has a Microchip Problem. Safeguarding Taiwan Is the Solution.

22. Taiwan’s first English TV channel to tell its side of China story

23. Ukraine war 'could end with Putin deposed and Russia broken up'




1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 3 (Putin's War)


Maps/graphicshttps://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-3


Key Takeaways

  • Ukrainian forces have made substantial gains around Lyman and in northern Kherson Oblast over the last 24 hours. The Russian units defeated on these fronts were previously considered to be among Russia’s premier conventional fighting forces.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin may use the appointment of Lieutenant-General Roman Berdnikov to the command of the Western Military District to redirect blame for recent or future Russian military failures in Kharkiv Oblast.
  • Russian officials released the director of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, whom they had illegally detained, and are likely continuing to undermine Ukrainian control of the plant.
  • Ukrainian forces made advances on the Oskil River-Kreminna line towards the Luhansk oblast border.
  • Ukrainian forces advanced in northern Kherson Oblast.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin is introducing punitive measures to target the Russian bureaucratic institutions responsible for the execution of partial mobilization.
  • Russian officials acknowledged that the Kremlin intends to invade, occupy, and illegally annex additional Ukrainian territory in the south and east and may alter the claimed borders of its occupied territories.
  • The Russian State Duma approved the Kremlin’s illegal accession treaties on October 3 and laid out the administrative timeline for integrating illegally annexed Ukrainian territory into the Russian Federation.


RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 3

Oct 3, 2022 - Press ISW


understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Katherine Lawlor, and Frederick W. Kagan

October 3, 9 pm 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.

Ukrainian forces continued to make substantial gains around Lyman and in Kherson Oblast in the last 48 hours. Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that Ukrainian troops made significant breakthroughs in northern Kherson Oblast between October 2 and 3.[1] Geolocated footage corroborates Russian claims that Ukrainian troops are continuing to push east of Lyman and may have broken through the Luhansk Oblast border in the direction of Kreminna.[2] As ISW has previously reported, the Russian groupings in northern Kherson Oblast and on the Lyman front were largely comprised of units that had been regarded as among Russia’s premier conventional fighting forces before the war.[3] Elements of the 144th Motorized Rifle Division of the 20th Combined Arms Army reportedly withdrew from Lyman to rear positions near Kreminna before October 2.[4] Russian sources previously reported that elements of the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV), especially the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, are active in Kherson Oblast.[5] Both the 144th Motorized Rifle Division and the 76th Guards Air Assault Division were previously lauded as some of Russia’s most elite forces, and their apparent failures to hold territory against major Ukrainian counter-offensive actions is consistent with ISW’s previous assessment that even the most elite Russian military forces are becoming increasingly degraded as the war continues. This phenomenon was also visible in the collapse of the 4th Tank Division of the 1st Guards Tank Army earlier in the Kharkiv counter-offensive.[6]

Russian President Vladimir Putin may be continuing efforts to redirect blame for recent Russian military failures in Kharkiv Oblast. Russian outlet РБК (RBK), citing sources within the Russian regime, reported on October 3 that Lieutenant-General Roman Berdnikov has replaced Colonel-General Alexander Zhuravlev as commander of the Western Military District (WMD).[7] As ISW previously assessed, WMD units have been largely operating in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast over the last few months but without a clear commander. Zhuravlev has not been seen for some time, and Putin cycled through two commanders of the “western grouping of forces" in two weeks. Putin may be attempting to redirect the growing anger for Russian losses in Kharkiv Oblast and Lyman by assigning a new face prominently to the WMD.[8] This announcement may also be an effort to shield Colonel General Alexander Lapin, commander of the Central Military District (CMD), from widespread criticism for recent Russian failures around Lyman.[9] Putin may seek to shift the blame for future Russian losses in Kharkiv and possibly Luhansk Oblasts to Berdnikov. Criticism of Lapin in recent days has served as a catalyst for wider breakdown within the Russian nationalist information space, and Berdnikov’s appointment may be intended to distract and redirect that growing dissatisfaction.

Russian officials released Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) director Ihor Murashov from detention and are likely continuing to undermine Ukrainian control of the plant. Energoatom reported that the Russian military detained Director General of the ZNPP Ihor Murashov on September 30 and released him into Ukrainian-controlled territory on October 3 following talks with International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Raphael Grossi.[10] Russian officials will likely not allow Murashov to return to his position at the ZNPP. Russian officials will likely attempt to use their physical removal of Murashov to assert further control over the nuclear power plant.

Key Takeaways

  • Ukrainian forces have made substantial gains around Lyman and in northern Kherson Oblast over the last 24 hours. The Russian units defeated on these fronts were previously considered to be among Russia’s premier conventional fighting forces.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin may use the appointment of Lieutenant-General Roman Berdnikov to the command of the Western Military District to redirect blame for recent or future Russian military failures in Kharkiv Oblast.
  • Russian officials released the director of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, whom they had illegally detained, and are likely continuing to undermine Ukrainian control of the plant.
  • Ukrainian forces made advances on the Oskil River-Kreminna line towards the Luhansk oblast border.
  • Ukrainian forces advanced in northern Kherson Oblast.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin is introducing punitive measures to target the Russian bureaucratic institutions responsible for the execution of partial mobilization.
  • Russian officials acknowledged that the Kremlin intends to invade, occupy, and illegally annex additional Ukrainian territory in the south and east and may alter the claimed borders of its occupied territories.
  • The Russian State Duma approved the Kremlin’s illegal accession treaties on October 3 and laid out the administrative timeline for integrating illegally annexed Ukrainian territory into the Russian Federation.


We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those 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 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.

  • Ukrainian Counter-offensives—Southern and Eastern Ukraine
  • Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts)
  • Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
  • Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
  • Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
  • Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Ukrainian Counter-offensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)

Eastern Ukraine: (Oskil River-Kreminna Line)

Ukrainian forces continued to make gains in eastern Kharkiv Oblast in the direction of the Luhansk Oblast border on October 2 and 3. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) inadvertently confirmed that Ukrainian troops advanced east of Kupyansk on October 2 and claimed that Russian forces struck Ukrainian positions in Petropavlivka (8km east of Kupyansk) and Synkivka (10km northeast of Kupyansk).[11] A Russian milblogger reported on October 2 that Ukrainian forces are preparing for further eastward advances from the Kupyansk-Petropavlivka area and claimed on October 3 that Ukrainian troops conducted reconnaissance-in-force near Zahorukivka, 16km east of Kupyansk.[12]

Ukrainian forces additionally made gains near the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border west of Svatove on October 3. Geolocated footage shows Ukrainian troops in Borova and Shyikivka, both within 35km west of Svatove, which was later confirmed by the Borova City Council and various Russian milbloggers.[13] Ukrainian sources additionally reported that Ukrainian troops retook Izyumske and Druzhelyubivka, about 25km southwest of Svatove.[14]

Ukrainian troops continued to consolidate gains around Lyman on October 2 and 3 and likely made gains in the direction of the Luhansk Oblast border. The Russian MoD stated that Russian troops struck Ukrainian positions in Yampolivka on October 2, confirming that Ukrainian troops control territory about 15km northeast of Lyman and within 10km west of the Luhansk Oblast border.[15] Russian sources also stated that Ukrainian troops took control of Terny and Torske, 15km northeast and 13km east of Lyman, respectively.[16] Ukrainian troops reportedly advanced to a segment of highway near Chervonopopivka and Pishchane, both of which lie along the Svatove-Kreminna road within 5km north of Kreminna.[17] Russian sources discussed these Ukrainian advances east of Lyman with great concern and suggested that Ukrainian troops will likely move towards the Luhansk Oblast border and attack Kreminna, 30km east of Lyman.[18] Russian troops, including elements of the BARS-13 detachment and the 20th Combined Arms Army withdrew from the Lyman area before October 2 and re-established themselves in Kreminna, where Russian sources claim the new frontline lies.[19]

Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) militia representative Andrei Marochko confirmed that Ukrainian troops have crossed the Luhansk Oblast border in an unspecified area on October 3 and gained a foothold somewhere in the direction of Lysychansk.[20] Marochko claimed that Russian forces destroyed the Ukrainian column that crossed the administrative border.[21] Russian sources are seemingly increasingly concerned that Ukrainian troops will continue pushing eastward to attack vulnerable settlements in Luhansk Oblast.


Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Ukrainian forces continued to advance in northwestern and northeastern Kherson Oblast between October 2 and 3. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukrainian forces liberated Myrolyubivka (23km northwest of Kherson City) and Arkhanhelske on the Inhulets River south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border.[22] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) acknowledged that Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian defenses in the direction of Zolota Balka (approximately 82km northeast of Nova Kakhovka), and Russian troops withdrew to prepared defensive positions.[23] Social media footage published on October 1 also showed Ukrainian forces operating in the northern part of the T0403 highway.[24] Russian milbloggers claimed that the Russians first retreated to defensive positions in Mykhailivka (about 8km south of Zolota Balka) on October 1 but likely fell further back to Dudchany (about 24km south of Zolota Balka) on October 2.[25] Ukrainian forces continued to advance south in the direction of Nova Kakhovka, and geolocated footage showed that they liberated Mykhailivka, Havrylivka, and Novooleksandrivka along the T0403.[26] Social media footage and Russian milblogger discourse also indicated that Ukrainian forces made advances west of the T0403 highway, liberating Khreschenivka on October 1.[27] Russian sources also reported that Ukrainian forces liberated settlements on the Lyubomyrivka-Bilaivka-Novoolesandrivka line.[28]

Ukrainian military officials maintained their operational silence regarding the progress of Ukrainian troops elsewhere in Kherson Oblast. The Russian MoD claimed to have twice repelled Ukrainian counterattacks on Davydiv Brid on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River about 53km northwest of Nova Kakhovka between October 2 and October 3.[29] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces have secured positions in the forest belt between Bilohirka and Davydiv Brid, however.[30] The Russian MoD also claimed that Ukrainian forces have entered Russian positions in Oleksandrivka (about 35km west of Kherson City) but claimed that Russian forces are continuing to fire artillery at advancing Ukrainian forces.[31]

Ukrainian forces continued their interdiction campaign to assist the Ukrainian ground counter-offensive. Ukrainian military officials confirmed destroying a Russian ammunition depot in Tavriiske but did not specify if they were referring to the Tavriiske 28km southwest or the Tavriiske 53km northeast of Kherson City.[32] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command also reported that Ukrainian forces targeted Russian ammunition depots in Kherson Raion and shot down a Russian Su-25 jet in Beryslav Raion.[33] Social media and local reports indicated that Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian positions in Dariivka, Beryslav Raion, and Nova Kakhovka in central Kherson Oblast.[34] Ukrainian officials in exile also reported that Ukrainian forces destroyed Russian ammunition depots in Skadovsk in southwestern Kherson Oblast.[35]

Ukrainian successes in Kherson Oblast are triggering the already vulnerable Russian information space. Russian occupation officials are increasingly blaming NATO intelligence for exposing weaknesses in Russian defenses in Kherson Oblast and are calling for Russian forces to prepare for urban battles and develop new defensive positions.[36] Russian-appointed Kherson Oblast Occupation Administration Head Kirill Stremeousov claimed that Russian forces are in control of the situation and downplayed the scale of the Ukrainian breakthrough in northern Kherson Oblast.[37]


Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued to conduct unsuccessful ground assaults in Donetsk Oblast on October 2 and 3. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 2 and 3 that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground assaults on Bakhmut, to the northeast of Bakhmut near Bakhmutske (10km northeast of Bakhmut), and south of Bakhmut near Zaitseve (8km southeast of Bakhmut), Odradivka (9km south of Bakhmut), Mayorsk (20km south of Bakhmut), and Vesela Dolyna (6km southeast of Bakhmut).[38] Several Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops have been withdrawing from their positions near Bakhmut and that Wagner Group fighters have entrenched themselves on the outskirts of the city, although ISW cannot confirm claims of Ukrainian withdrawal.[39] The Ukrainian General Staff also noted that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground assaults southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske (13km southwest of Avdiivka), Nevelske (15km southwest of Avdiivka), and Pobieda (30km southwest of Avdiivka) on October 2 and 3.[40] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to break through Russian positions between Optyne and the Donetsk Airport on the night of October 1-2.[41] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces continued routine artillery, air, and missile strikes throughout the line of contact in Donetsk Oblast on October 2 and 3.[42]


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

Russian forces continued to conduct artillery, air, and missile strikes west of Hulyaipole and in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts on October 2 and 3.[43] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck Mykolaiv City, Ochakiv, Zaporizhia City, and Nikopol on October 2 and 3.[44] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces also struck Dnipro City and critical energy infrastructure in the vicinity of Kryvyi Rih on October 3 and struck Odesa City on October 2.[45] Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces struck multiple Russian positions in Zaporizhia Oblast on October 2 and 3.[46]

Russian forces continued to use Iranian-made drones to attack Ukrainian positions and settlements in southern Ukraine on October 2. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted more than 70 UAV sorties on October 2.[47] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces conducted Shahed-136 kamikaze drone attacks in Mykolaiv Oblast and Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on October 2.[48] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command also reported that Ukrainian forces destroyed five Russian drones involved in attack operations in Mykolaiv Oblast on October 2.[49]

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin is introducing punitive measures against Russian bureaucratic institutions responsible for the improper execution of partial mobilization, likely in an effort to appear to be addressing mobilization problems and to punish enlistment officials who have not met his mobilization quotas. Putin increased the total staffing of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office by almost 150 people, including 100 more military prosecutors, on October 3.[50] Putin had previously tasked the Russian Federation Attorney General with handling all complaints regarding mobilization during Putin’s meeting with the Russian Security Council on September 29 at which Putin acknowledged that Russian officials are not conducting mobilization according to his decree for the first time.[51] The increase in the prosecutorial staff suggests that Putin may intend to prosecute officials at military recruitment centers throughout the country, which Putin and his mouthpieces have identified as the sole cause of the poor execution of mobilization and of the illegal mobilization of men not liable for this call up. Russian federal subjects have already begun to target head of military recruitment centers as of October 3, with Khabarovsk Krai Governor Mikhail Degtyarev firing the region’s head military enlistment official (commissar) for wrongfully mobilizing several thousand residents.[52] A Belgorod Oblast outlet reported that the oblast administration fired the regional military commissar for alleged connections with Kyiv and wrongful mobilization.[53] The report added that the Belgorod military commissar may face “serious and harsh criminal punishment.”[54]

The Russian mobilization system is suffering from severe bureaucratic challenges and limitations that could undermine Putin’s efforts to generate the number of troops he needs to continue fighting in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) cited one Russian military commissar’s complaints about the challenges he and his colleagues are encountering in trying to administer draft notices to men who are hiding in their apartments.[55] The commissar noted that he could only deliver 16 of the required 170 mobilization notices on September 28. Former Russian Southern Military District (SMD) Deputy Commander Andrey Gurulev stated on a state-media broadcast on October 1 that Russian forces are unlikely to generate 300,000 combat-ready reservists, which, he claimed, is why Russian military recruitment centers are expanding their criteria.[56] Gurulev added that the Kremlin should simply redefine its mobilization criteria to enforce transparency throughout the process. Putin’s persecution of military enlistment officers suggests that he remains determined to maintain the façade that he has ordered only a limited reserve mobilization, possibly while nevertheless covertly expanding mobilization criteria.

The partial mobilization continues to increase strains in Russian society in the short-term. Ukrainian-intercepted calls between Russian servicemen and their loved ones show a growing distrust in the correct execution of the mobilization processes.[57] The GUR noted that the Russian government is already failing in its promises to properly equip mobilized men and to pay salaries for both mobilized and contract servicemen.[58] The Russian State Duma also withdrew a draft law that offered a one-time bonus of 300,000 rubles (about $4,970) to mobilized men alongside mortgage interest rate exemptions and other social benefits.[59] The Kremlin’s failures to follow its legal guidelines for partial mobilization, combined with its systematic failures to keep other promises, will likely continue to generate resentment and alienation among Russians. The GUR claimed that the Kremlin is preparing for increasing distrust and dissatisfaction among Russians by training new units of riot police.

Some Russians continued to resist the Kremlin’s mobilization practices. A Russian outlet reported that an 11th grade schoolgirl set a military recruitment center on fire in Kazan in opposition to partial mobilization and war in Ukraine.[60] An unidentified suspect also tried to commit arson at a military recruitment center in Krasnoyarsk Krai.[61] Social media users claimed that mobilized men in Alabino, Moscow Oblast prevented mobilization officials from taking their personal belongings, resulting in a brawl.[62] There are also reported cases of deaths among newly mobilized men, with some men committing suicide.[63]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian officials acknowledged that the Kremlin intends to invade, occupy, and illegally annex additional Ukrainian territory in the south and east and may alter the claimed borders of its occupied territories. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on October 3 that the Kremlin annexed the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) to their “2014 borders.”[64] It remains unclear whether Peskov is referring to the territory that the Russian proxy DNR and LNR were able to hold in 2014, or the territory they claimed in 2014 (the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts). Peskov announced that the borders of Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts have not yet been decided, but that Russian officials “will continue to consult with people who live in [Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts]” to determine Russia’s new claimed borders. Peskov’s claims seem to contradict the language of the accession bills passed by the Russian State Duma, which use similar language for each of the four illegally annexed territories: "The borders of the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic [e.g.] shall be defined as the borders of the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic that existed on the day of its formation and the day of its admission to the Russian Federation and formation as a new subject [constituent entity] within the Russian Federation."[65] Those borders are not the same, and Peskov declined to clarify them.

Senior Zaporizhia Occupation Administration official Vladimir Rogov was more explicit: he claimed on October 2 that the Soviet administrative boundaries of Zaporizhia Oblast now belong to Russia and will be administered from the regional capital, Zaporizhzhia City, which is still under Ukrainian control.[66] Rogov acknowledged that about a quarter of Zaporizhia remains ”temporarily occupied” by Ukrainian forces but that “control over the entire administrative border of Zaporizhia Oblast will be returned.”[67] Rogov claimed October 3 that “after liberation, a referendum will also be held [in Zaporizhzhia City] so that all residents of Zaporizhia oblast can be involved in the reunification of our region with Russia.”

The Russian State Duma approved the Kremlin’s illegal accession treaties on October 3 and laid out the administrative timeline for integrating illegally annexed Ukrainian territory into the Russian Federation. The draft legislation backdated all requirements to September 30, the date Putin announced Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory. The Duma mandated the use of the Russian ruble rather than the Ukrainian hryvnia beginning on January 1, 2023, laid out a timeline to integrate the territories into the Russian budget, and declared all persons residing within Russian-annexed territory to be Russian citizens.[68] Residents must file for renunciation of Russian citizenship within 30 days if they wish to refuse it—the Kremlin likely intends that process to identify potential Ukrainian dissidents and partisans. The draft legislation also mandated the integration of the DNR and LNR’s “people’s militias” into the Russian military. The draft did not clarify whether civilians in newly annexed territories will be eligible for the Kremlin’s “partial mobilization” order or for usual semi-annual conscription, which is set to begin on November 1. Russian officials will almost certainly forcibly conscript Ukrainian civilians between 18 and 27 years of age in that cycle. Putin will reportedly appoint heads of the new Russian oblasts within 10 days.

The Federation Council and Putin must each ratify the draft treaties before they become Russian law. However, Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled on October 2 that the draft treaties will be retroactively and de facto in effect from September 30 until the legislature and the executive branch formally approve them.[69] The Kremlin has preordained the legislative approval of the illegal accession treaties: Two Russian language opposition outlets noted that more State Duma parliamentarians voted for the “unanimous” approval of the treaties than attended the vote.[70] The Duma reported zero abstentions or no votes, but four different total approval counts ranging between 409 and 413 votes. Only 408 parliamentarians attended the session. Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin explained the discrepancy as a result of a “technical failure” but claimed that the Duma expressed “unanimous” and “unambiguous” approval.

Russian occupation authorities also implemented a new temporary “travel permit” system on October 1, likely to prevent Ukrainian civilians from fleeing to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on October 2 that residents of Vasylivka, Zaporizhia Oblast had to provide occupation officials with passport data, a birth certificate, and a military ID as well as a questionnaire detailing their itinerary, the purpose of the trip, and their mode of transportation.[71] Occupation officials will take up to 10 days to reject or approve travel requests. A Ukrainian Kherson official reported that only 11 residents were able to travel from occupied Kherson Oblast to Ukrainian territory on October 1.[72] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported on October 2 that Russian officials in Kherson require an “endless list” of documents, arrange long vehicle inspections, seize property at checkpoints, purposefully prolong wait times for the review of documents, and outright turn away residents in order to prevent them from leaving occupied territories.[73] Russian authorities have also likely retained border controls between Russian-occupied and -annexed Kherson and Russian-occupied and -annexed Crimea.[74] Russian occupation officials will likely continue to collect data on Ukrainian civilians, especially Ukrainian men, in occupied territories to set conditions to eliminate dissident speech and partisan activity and to forcibly mobilize or conscript Ukrainian civilians or both.

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.

[7] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/03/10/2022/63398ef39a794781bd17a8ec?from=from_main_3 ; https://t.me/milinfolive/91263

[14] https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1576966644437438464?s=20&t=u_zkY... ua/regiony/zsu-vyzvolyly-iziumske-ta-druzheliubivku-na-kharkivshchyni-deepstate-289147.html

https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0naZjXNb6yexsdphooog...

[50] https://tass dot ru/obschestvo/15938737?utm_source=google.com&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google.com&utm_referrer=google.com

[51] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69459

[55] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/mobilizovanym-v-rf-ne-vystachaie-spalnykh-mists-izhi-formy-ta-hroshei-a-politsiia-hotuietsia-do-prydushennia-maibutnikh-protestiv.html

[56] https://rutube dot ru/video/77145f16c0922abfa2caddae758cbc25/

[57] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/dedushek-prosto-voobshche-zabyraiut-kotorym-pod-6065-let.htmlhttps://gur dot gov.ua/content/tak-ony-sky-krym-obstrelyvaiut-y-uzhe-blyzlezhashchye-oblasty-rossyy-y-putyn-molchyt-nakhi.html

[58] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/mobilizovanym-v-rf-ne-vystachaie-spalnykh-mists-izhi-formy-ta-hroshei-a-politsiia-hotuietsia-do-prydushennia-maibutnikh-protestiv.html

[64] https://tass dot ru/politika/15938465?utm_source=kp.ru&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=kp.ru&utm_referrer=kp.ru

[65] https://www.pravda dot com.ua/eng/news/2022/10/2/7370061/https://t.me/readovkanews/43105; ttps://t.me/vladlentatarsky/16558; ht...

[67] https://ria dot ru/20221003/zaporozhskaya-1821066872.html

[68] https://tass dot ru/politika/15941873; https://t.me/stranaua/67329 ; https://t.me/stranaua/67332; https://t....

[69] https://tass dot ru/politika/15932643

[70] https://t.me/agentstvonews/1465; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/10/03/v-gosdume-za-prisoedinenie-novyh-territoriy-progolosovalo-bolshe-deputatov-chem-bylo-na-zasedanii-vyacheslav-volodin-zayavil-o-tehnicheskom-sboe

[71] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/10/02/okupanty-zaprovadyly-perepustky-dlya-vyyizdu-z-tot/

understandingwar.org



2. Ukraine:  CDS Daily brief (03.10.22) CDS comments on key events


 

CDS Daily brief (03.10.22) CDS comments on key events

 

As of the morning of October 3, 2022, more than 1,200 Ukrainian children are victims of full- scale armed aggression by the Russian Federation, Prosecutor General's Office reports. The official number of children who have died and been wounded in the course of the Russian aggression is 416, and more than 784 children, respectively. However, the data is not conclusive since data collection continues in the areas of active hostilities, temporarily occupied areas, and liberated territories.

 

According to the children's search portal "Children of War" as of October 3, 2022: 239 Ukrainian children considered missing, 7,894 - deported, 6,252 - found, and 59 - returned.

 

2,562 educational institutions were damaged due to bombing and shelling by the armed forces of the Russian Federation. Of them, 295 were completely destroyed.

 

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, 24 medical workers have died, and another 61 have been injured, according to the information provided by the Ministry of Health.

 

Daryna Marchak, First Deputy Minister of Social Policy of Ukraine, stated at a briefing that the number of internally displaced persons in Ukraine has increased from 1.5 million to 4.6 million since the beginning of the war. "And these are only those citizens who applied for registration. We understand that there are many more such people in reality," Marchak said.

 

More than 500 episodes of Russian war crimes against cultural heritage have been recorded in Ukraine, reported by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy on Telegram.

 

Energoatom announced that Ihor Murashov, General Director of ZNPP, kidnapped by the Russian military on September 30, has been released from captivity and is in the Ukraine- controlled territory. The release took place thanks to the wide publicity and the extraordinary efforts of the Director General of the IAEA, Raphael Grossi.

 

In the morning, the Russians shelled Zaporizhzhia and two villages of the Zaporizhzhia district with ten rockets. One injured civilian was reported. The city's infrastructure facilities were destroyed, including a rehabilitation center where children with special needs studied.

 

In Mykolayiv Oblast, during October 2-3, the enemy shelled the Mykolaiv and Bashtan districts, hitting the object of civil infrastructure and open areas.

 

Over the past day, Russian troops shelled 11 towns and villages in Donetsk Oblast, according to the National Police information. Law enforcement officers documented 18 violations of the laws and customs of war by the Russian military. Enemy shells killed and injured civilians. Among the victims is a child in the village of Prechystivka. 13 civilian objects were destroyed and damaged -


8 residential buildings, a temple, industrial plants, and a livestock enterprise. During the past day, police helped to evacuate 196 civilians. Since the beginning of the mandatory evacuation, more than 20,900 people, including 3,406 children and 1,017 people with disabilities, were evacuated.

 

Today Russian military hit the hostel in Chasiv Yar. At least one person is under the rubble. The rescue operation is underway, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk Oblast Military Administration.

 

In the morning, the Russians struck the Dnipro district of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. All night, the enemy shelled Nikopol and Kryvyi Rih districts. In Nikopol, more than a dozen multi-story and private residential buildings and power lines were damaged. In the Kryvyi Rih district, private homes, a solar power plant, warehouses of agricultural enterprises, gas pipelines and electricity networks were damaged.

 

Russians shelled a hospital in the Kupyansk district of Kharkiv Oblast, said Oleg Synehubov, the head of Oblast Military Administration. An anesthesiologist was killed, and one nurse was injured. The building is almost completely destroyed from the 1st to the 4th floor.

 

In the village of Pisky-Radkivski (Kharkiv Oblast), liberated from the Russian forces, Ukrainian law enforcement officers discovered another torture chamber, which the Russians had set up in a cellar, the National Police of Ukraine reported on its Telegram.

 

In the Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts liberated from the Russian invaders, Ukraine restored the payment of pensions for October, said the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine.

 

Occupied territories

In the Skadovsk district of the Kherson Oblast, the Russian military kidnapped a couple for the second time for their pro-Ukrainian position. In Kakhovka, they kidnapped a husband and wife for refusing to vote in the so-called "referendum", reports Ukrinform with reference to the police of the Kherson Oblast.

 

In temporarily occupied territories of Kherson Oblast, Russian [occupation athorities] blocked civilians from exiting the captured territory through Vasylivka, deputy of the Kherson Regional Council Serhii Khlan wrote. He noted that new rules were enacted on October 1, and a pass is required. But since the Russian aggressors did not give a clear explanation in advance, and even those already standing in line were not released on the weekend, the influx of people was huge. As a result, people spend the night on the road for several days.


Operational situation

It is the 222nd day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy continues to concentrate its efforts on establishing full control over the


territory of Donetsk Oblast, maintaining control over the captured territories, and disrupting the intensive actions of the Ukrainian troops.

 

The enemy is shelling the positions of Ukrainian troops along the contact line and conducting aerial reconnaissance. It inflicts strikes on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure and residential buildings, violating the norms of international humanitarian law and the laws and customs of war. The threat of the enemy launching air and missile strikes on the entire territory of Ukraine persists.

 

Over the past day, the Russian military has launched 11 missile and 10 air strikes, and carried out more than 65 MLRS shellings. Over 35 Ukrainian towns and villages were affected by enemy strikes, including Ridkodub, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Bilohorivka, Bakhmut, Netaylove, Vodyane, Maryinka, Vremivka, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia, Zaliznychne, and Mykolaiv. Near the state border, Ukrainske village in Chernihiv Oblast and Basivka, Pysarivka and Kyyanytsia villages of Sumy Oblast were shelled.

 

Ukraine's Defense Forces aviation made seven strikes. It was confirmed that the enemy command and control post, five places of concentration of weapons and military equipment, and the enemy's anti-aircraft missile complex were hit. In addition, Ukrainian Air defense units shot down one Ka-52 helicopter, one Su-25 attack aircraft and eight UAVs.

 

Ukrainian rocket troops and artillery hit two enemy command posts, fourteen areas of concentration of manpower, weapons and military equipment, three warehouses with ammunition and fuel, and eight other important objects.

The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remains low. Kharkiv direction

 Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the

RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

 Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.

 

The enemy took measures to prevent the further de-occupation of Kharkiv Oblast, provide logistical support for its units, and mobilized troops arriving in military units of the 6th Army of the Western Military District to replenish losses.


The enemy used UAVs in the Dvorichne area to detect the position of Ukrainian troops and carried out remote mining of the terrain in the Gatyshche area.

 

Due to the threat of fire damage, the enemy closed the field airfield in the Valuyky area and moved part of the helicopters (at least five Mi-8s) to the site in the Rovenky area.

 

Up to 200 servicemen arrived in Nyzhnia Duvanka to man the units of the 21st separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd Army of the Central Military District.

 

Kramatorsk direction

 Balakleya - Siversk section: approximate length of the combat line - 184 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17-20, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;

  252nd and 752nd motorized rifle regiments of the 3rd motorized rifle division, 1st, 13th, and 12th tank regiments, 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 4th tank division, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Combined Arms Army, 35th, 55th and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs.

 

The enemy fired tanks and artillery of various types in the areas of Novosadove, Terny, Yampil, Siversk, Verkhniokamianske and Spirne.

 

Donetsk direction

 Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 235 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 17 km;

  Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments, 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th tank regiment of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines brigade, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

 

The enemy fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Fedorivka, Rozdolivka, Vesele, Bilohorivka, Yakovlivka, Soledar, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Odradivka, Zaitseve, Toretsk, Mayorsk, Nelipivka, Yuryivka, Avdiivka, Pervomaiske, Vodyane, Karlivka, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka and Novomykhailivka.

 

Over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled enemy attacks in the areas of Zaitseve, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Odradivka, Vyimka, Spirne, Nevelske and Pervomaiske.


Mercenaries of the "Wagner" PMC units tried to advance in the direction of Kodema, Zaitseve, and units of the 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps - in the direction of Pisky, Nevelske. The enemy was stopped and pushed back in all directions.

 

Zaporizhzhia direction

  Maryinka – Vasylivka section: approximate length of the line of combat - 200 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 11.7 km;

  Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

 

The enemy shelled the areas of Vremivka, Velyka Novosilka, Neskuchne, Novoukrainka, Prechystivka, Vuhledar, Pavlivka, Mykilske, Rivnopillia, Olhivske, Zaliznychne, and Mala Tokmachka with mortars, tanks, barrel and rocket artillery.

 

In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, it has been confirmed the damage to the enemy personnel and military equipment during previous days: the personnel concentration area, three warehouses with ammunition, more than twenty pieces of weapons and military equipment, one S-300 air defense system, and more than 250 Russsian troops' personnel were injured.

 

Kherson direction

 Vasylivka–Nova Zburyivka and Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line - 252 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 27, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.3 km;

 Deployed BTGs: 114th, 143rd, and 394th motorized rifle regiments, 218th tank regiment of the 127th motorized rifle division of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 57th and 60th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division, 51st and 137th parachute airborne regiments of the 106th parachute airborne division, 7th military base of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 16th and 346th separate SOF brigades.

 

The enemy continued to strengthen its grouping of troops, including with mobilized personnel arriving from Crimea, to restrain the Ukrainian Defense Forces' counteroffensive actions. In addition, the enemy restored the functioning of the crossing through the shipping lock of the Kakhovka HPP.


Units of the 90th tank division of the Central Military District were partially moved from the Belgorod region to Crimea via the Taman-Passazhyrskaya railway station (an echelon with the weapons of the 80th tank regiment, including nine support combat vehicles for the Terminator tanks). Considering the 90th tank division mission areas, it is likely that the [the 80th] regiment units will be transferred to the Kherson region in the future.

 

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

  Velyka Lepetikha – Oleksandrivka section: approximate length of the battle line – 250 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces – 22, the average width of the combat area of one BTG –

11.8 km;

 Deployed BTGs: 108th Air assault regiment, 171st separate airborne assault brigade of the 7th Air assault division, 4th military base of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 429th motorized rifle regiment of the 19th motorized rifle division, 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th motorized rifle division, 34th, and 205th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 224th, 237th and 239th Air assault regiments of the 76th Air assault division, 217th and 331 Air assault regiments of the 98th Air assault division, 126th separate coastal defense brigade, 127th separate ranger brigade, 11th separate airborne assault brigade, 10th separate SOF brigade, PMC.

 

The enemy fired at the positions of Ukrainian troops with BMPs, tanks, mortars, barrel and rocket artillery in the areas of Ukrainka, Pravdyne, Oleksandrivka, Luch, Novohryhorivka, Myrne, Lyubomirivka, Pervomaiske, Shyroke, Kobzartsi, Kyselivka, Blahodatne, Andriivka, Berezneguvate, Sukhy Stavok, Biloghirka, Osokorivka, Olgyne, and Khreshchenivka. Russian military used UAVs (up to 10 sorties) to the tactical depth of defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to clarify the position of Ukrainian troops and adjust artillery fire, and "Mohajer-6" UAVs to conduct aerial reconnaissance in the area of the Dnipro Bay.

 

The enemy retreated from Khreshchenivka and Zolota Balka and took units of the 126th separate coastal defence brigade of the 22nd Army Corps to the new defense line in Shevchenkivka - Mykhailivka.

 

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the sea and connect unrecognized Transnistria with the Russian Federation by land through the coast of the Black and Azov seas.

 

On October 3, 8 enemy warships and boats are in the Black Sea conducting reconnaissance and control of navigation. Up to 32 Kalibr missiles are ready for a volley on one 1135.6 frigate, two Buyan-M missile corvettes and two submarines of project 636.3. In general, the current activity of the Russian Federation at sea is characterized by low intensity.

 

The enemy missile threat against Ukraine remains high.


Enemy aviation continues to fly from Crimean airfields Belbek and Gvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 13 Su-27, Su-30 and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

 

Enemy landing ships are located at the Novorossiysk and Sevastopol bases. At the base of the 810th marines brigade, training and combat adjustment of about 2,000 mobilized personnel continue. The deadline is the end of October. After that, a group of marines can be formed from some of them and embarked on amphibious ships for training and, later, for an amphibious operation.

 

"Grain initiative": today, October 3, 4 ships with 77.4 thousand tons of grain for the countries of Africa, Asia and Europe left the ports of Great Odesa. Bulk carriers FPMC B 201 and MICHALIS departed from Odesa port, and SPRING, SAFFET AGA from Chornomorsk port. In particular, bulk carrier SPRING will deliver 8 thousand tons of corn to Egypt. Since the first ship carrying Ukrainian food, taking into account today's ships, 5.9 million tons of agricultural products have been exported. A total of 261 ships with food for the countries of Asia, Europe and Africa left Ukrainian ports.

 

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 03.10

Personnel - almost 60,430 people (+320);

Tanks - 2,380 (+3);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,991 (+16);

Artillery systems – 1,405 (0);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 338 (+1); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 176 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,811 (+15); Aircraft - 265 (+1);

Helicopters – 228 (+1);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,026 (+11); Intercepted cruise missiles - 246 (0);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).


 

Ukraine, general news

Corvette "Hetman Ivan Mazepa" for the Ukrainian Navy Forces was launched in Turkey. This is the first such ship in service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and will be adapted to all types of anti-ship missiles.

 

Ukraine's tax revenues for three quarters [of 2022] exceed last year's indicator by more than 15%, according to Ukraine's Tax Service. In January-September 2022, the consolidated budget received UAH 811.7 billion, which is 15.3% more than the previous year's figure.


Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian cyber specialists have neutralized almost 3,500 cyber attacks on the central authorities' electronic systems and Ukraine's critical infrastructure facilities, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). SBU reported that out of the specified 3,500 cyber threats, 1,650 were detected in the "real-time" mode with the help of the Information Security Event Management System. It was established that the vast majority of Russian attacks aimed to destroy digital services or destabilize critical enterprises in the energy and transport industries.

 

International diplomatic aspect

The Russian Parliament has ratified accession "agreements" with Russian proxy entities that "represent" the occupied Ukrainian territories. Donetsk and Luhansk are "integrated" into Russia in territorial shape as of 2014. And regarding Kherson and Zaporizhzhia temporarily occupied territories, "We will continue to consult with the population of these regions on the borders," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained the new "borders" of the Russian Federation. Moreover, Russia defines the territories it wants to annexe illegally but which are not de facto under Russian control as "occupied" by Ukraine.

 

Russia's blatant violation of norms and principles of international law, war of aggression, numerous war crimes, and illegal land grabs raise the status quo ante issue not just about Ukraine. After Russia's defeat, it should release not only illegally occupied territories of Ukraine (Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions) but also of Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Moldova (Transnistria) and Japan (the Northern territories). Also, it makes sense either to solve the Königsberg issue or make it a non- nuclear and demilitarized zone.

 

The EU Military Assistance Mission (EUMAM) is reported to be announced at the next official meeting of the EU Council on October 17. The EUMAM aims to train up to 15,000 Ukrainian military personnel, including some 3,000 soldiers that would undergo special training, such as tactical combat training for commanders or courses for engineers.

 

"A gift for Putin" [sracastic naming], a Czech non-governmental initiative, has collected €1.2 million within a month to procure a modernized T-72 tank to be donated to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. France is about to hand over 20 modern Bastion APCs to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Denmark contributes military aid worth €145 million. Together with Germany and Norway, they will procure 16 Zuzana II Howitzers for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

 

Ukraine and the EU signed a memorandum on microfinancing of up to €5 billion. Bloomberg reports that the US plans to provide $1.5 billion in financial assistance monthly and calls on the Europeans to follow suit. The Ukrainian President has been calling international partners for a $5 billion monthly aid. Financial assistance is crucial for Ukraine's survival and ability to fight back against Russia.

 

Elon Musk, who provided Ukraine with StarLink equipment, launched a Twitter opinion poll on the Ukraine-Russia Peace accord. He put forward four points: "1. Redo elections of annexed


regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is the will of the people. 2. Crimea is formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev's mistake). 3. Water supply to Crimea assured. 4. Ukraine remains neutral." 61.1 percent rejected the idea, while 38.9 percent supported it, with more than 813K votes cast.

 

Though it's a private initiative with no legal or political consequences, it's ill-formulated and might be damaging.

 

There was no referendum in 2014 but a combined special intelligence and military operation. The sham vote violated Ukrainian and Russian constitutions and related legislations, the UN Charter, OSCE Helsinki Final Act, and several bilateral agreements, including the so-called Budapest MOU that guaranteed Russia's non-interference into Ukrainian domestic affairs, let alone military aggression, annexation, and nuclear threats. Russia has violated international law by annexing Crimea, forcing Ukrainian citizens out, and bringing Russian ones in. For eight years, Crimeans have been heavily brainwashed.

 

According to international law and Ukrainian legislation, only three indigenous peoples (Crimean Tatars, Crimean Karaites, and Krymchaks) have the right to self-determination. Therefore "re-do elections" would secure impunity and injustice and greenlight further annexations across the globe.

 

The argument about Crimea being "a part of Russia since 1783" is ridiculous. Crimea was a part of Ukraine for twice longer (60 years, 1954-2014) than the Russian Federation (29 years, 1922- 1941, 1944-1954). From 1941-1944 the Peninsula was occupied by Nazi Germany. When Crimea was a part of the Russian Empire (1796 till 1917), the ethnic composition of the Peninsula was as such: Ukrainians (42.2%), Russians (27.9%), Crimean Tatars (13%), Germans (5.4%), and Greeks (1.3%). During the imperial and then the Soviet times, there were numerous deportations of various ethnic groups from Crimea and transfers of ethnic Russians to Crimea. More than Russians or Ukrainians, Crimea was owned by Crimean Tatars (1441-1783) and Greeks who settled there in 5 BC. Both ethnic groups (Crimean Tatars and Greeks) were brutally suppressed by Russian neocolonial and genocidal policies in Crimea and in the Russia-occupied Donetsk Oblast. Mariupol, Ukrainian Greeks' unofficial capital, was leveled, and it's impossible to estimate the human cost of the seizure.

 

Ukraine was a non-block country in 2014, and this status didn't save it from the illegal annexation of Crimea and Russia's military aggression in Donbas. In fact, Russia tried to annex Crimea back in 1993-1994 when Ukraine was not even thinking of becoming a NATO member.

 

Eighty-three percent of Ukrainians are for membership in NATO, according to the most recent poll by the Rating group. So, after the illegal annexations, genocidal war, and destruction Russia brought to its neighbor, Ukraine can't be secure and at peace without being a member of NATO and the EU.



It is in the interest of the whole world to have Crimea returned to Ukraine. Annexation of Crimea allowed to threaten all Black Sea nations and to deny Freedom of Navigation, causing starvation across the globe. Moreover, the Russian Black Sea Fleet is within the ability to hit any territory of Europe, including the British Isles, with Kalibr missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, off the coast of Crimea.

 

Centre for Defence Strategies (CDS) is a Ukrainian security think tank. We operate since 2020 and are involved in security studies, defence policy research and advocacy. Currently all our activity is focused on stopping the ongoing war.

 

We publish this brief daily. If you would like to subscribe, please send us an email to cds.dailybrief@gmail.com

Please note, that we subscribe only verified persons and can decline or cancel the subscription at our own discretion

We are independent, non-government, non-partisan and non-profit organisation. More at www.defence.org.ua

Our Twitter (in English) - https://twitter.com/defence_centre

 

Our Facebook (in Ukrainian) - https://www.facebook.com/cds.UA

Our brief is for information only and we verify our information to the best possible extent



3. Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: October



Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: October

October 3, 2022 | FDD Tracker: September 1, 2022-October 3, 2022


David Adesnik

Senior Fellow and Director of Research

John Hardie

Russia Program Deputy Director


https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2022/10/03/biden-administration-foreign-policy-tracker-october/

   

Trend Overview

Edited by David Adesnik and John Hardie

Welcome back to the Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker. Once a month, we ask FDD’s experts and scholars to assess the administration’s foreign policy. They provide trendlines of very positive, positive, neutral, negative, or very negative for the areas they watch.

Iran has erupted in protest after morality police inflicted fatal injuries on 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest for alleged violation of dress code laws. At the United Nations, President Joe Biden said he stands with “the brave women of Iran,” yet his administration continues to pursue a nuclear deal that would offer hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief to the clerical regime in Tehran. Neither the regime’s deceptive response to Amini’s death nor Tehran’s stonewalling of nuclear inspectors seems to have led the White House to the realization that trusting the clerical regime only increases instability and oppression.

By contrast, the administration is siding firmly with the victims of Moscow’s invasion and atrocities. In September, a Ukrainian counteroffensive — enabled in part by U.S. military assistance — stunned both Moscow and foreign observers with its rapid liberation of Russian-held territory. Washington’s support for Kyiv remained steadfast even as Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun to rattle his nuclear saber. Regarding China, Biden’s impulse is apparently to guarantee the security of Taiwan amid Beijing’s intimidation, yet the White House staff once again walked back his comments in support of Taipei.

Please check back next month to see if the administration has moved toward a more consistent policy of aligning with democratic partners against authoritarian aggression.

Trending Positive

CYBER

By RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Annie Fixler

EUROPE

By John Hardie

RUSSIA

By John Hardie

TURKEY

By Sinan Ciddi

Trending Neutral

CHINA

By Craig Singleton

DEFENSE

By Bradley Bowman

INDO-PACIFIC

By Craig Singleton

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

By Richard Goldberg

ISRAEL

By David May

KOREA

By David Maxwell

SUNNI JIHADISM

By Bill Roggio

SYRIA

By David Adesnik

Trending Negative

GULF

By Hussain Abdul-Hussain

LATIN AMERICA

By Carrie Filipetti and Emanuele Ottolenghi

NONPROLIFERATION AND BIODEFENSE

By Anthony Ruggiero and Andrea Stricker

Trending Very Negative

IRAN

By Richard Goldberg and Behnam Ben Taleblu

LEBANON

By Tony Badran

China

By Craig Singleton


Previous Trend: Negative



4. AUKUS Special Operations Forces in Strategic Competition, Integrated Deterrence, and Campaigning: Resistance to Malign Activities



My latest article on the new AUKUS website:https://securityanddefenceplus.plusalliance.org/


AUKUS Special Operations Forces in Strategic Competition, Integrated Deterrence, and Campaigning: Resistance to Malign Activities - Security & Defence PLuS Alliance

securityanddefenceplus.plusalliance.org · by David Maxwell

On September 15, 2021, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States formed AUKUS, which is described as a trilateral security partnership designed to make it easier to share information “to better meet the threats of today and tomorrow” in the Indo-Pacific. It is initially focusing on two lines of efforts: submarines and advanced technology. Since the announcement, the trio has held multiple high-level meetings (Senior Officials Groups, Joint Steering Groups, and Working Groups) to advance concepts to support the partnership.

While this appears to be a very technologically focused initiative, there is an opportunity to employ other capabilities of the three nations to counter malign activities in the human domain and the so-called “gray zone.” A Special Operations Forces (SOF) working group should be added to develop concepts to expand the AUKUS concept beyond technology.

Although never specified in the official statements on AUKUS, one of the intentions of the partnership is to counter the threat from China. This involves a focus on mutual development of advanced technologies to support large-scale combat operations (LSCO). While LSCO is the most dangerous threat for AUKUS and the region, the dominant conditions of the security environment are strategic competition and activities in the gray zone. Two of the most disruptive and troublesome activities are China’s One Belt One Road initiative and its practice of the “Three Warfares”—psychological warfare, legal warfare (or lawfare), and media (or public opinion) warfare—to expand its regional and global influence.

China is a threat to the Indo-Pacific, democratic nations around the world, and the rules-based international order. It seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions. 

China leads with influence. For its leaders, politics is war by other means. George Kennan and Paul Smith provided the intellectual foundations of political warfare, including what is clearly the Chinese method: “the use of political means to compel an opponent to do one’s will, based on hostile intent.” This must be resisted, and friends, partners, and allies need a sufficient amount of resilience to protect themselves from Chinese influence and malign activities. The United States tends to want to lead with kinetic operations and, in the traditional Clausewitzian view, considers war an extension of politics. AUKUS needs the ability to lead with proactive influence, and AUKUS SOF can support the diplomatic and informational instruments of power.

The U.S. National Defense Strategy fact sheet summarizes the three key concepts for preparing for LSCO and operating in strategic competition: integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building enduring advantages. Clearly, a major intent of AUKUS is to build enduring advantages, and the combined strength of the three militaries will support the diplomatic, informational, and economic instruments of national power. However, in strategic competition and operations in the the gray zone, campaigning is also required to create resistance to and resilience against malign activities being conducted by not only China, but also Russia and North Korea. AUKUS SOF could be used to advise and assist friends, partners, and allies to develop resilience.

An AUKUS SOF working group could examine the feasibility of developing a combined campaign plan for SOF support to strategic competition. One of the considerations will be whether to establish a campaign headquarters for planning and possibly for command and control and support to operations. Ideal logical locations would be Australia or Guam, but if strategic messaging is a consideration, a headquarters in the South Pacific Islands, Singapore, or Thailand might be advantageous. The location will depend on the political considerations of the host nation(s), the desired strategic effects, as well as the ability to plan, conduct, and support operations from the chosen location(s).

All three nations’ SOF have been decisively engaged for the past two decades in support of the global war on terrorism. Each has developed very high-end capabilities to capture/kill high-value targets. This capability is necessary to support national security and must be sustained. However, while all three nations invest heavily in SOF, the forces remain relatively small and the have been spread rather thin. Approaching the Indo-Pacific from a combined SOF perspective may allow forces to share the wealth and spread the pain of continuous long-term deployments. It may also allow the nations to continue to sustain high-end SOF, train for support to LSCO, and be prepared to execute contingency operations in support of national emergencies.

AUKUS SOF could be employed in ways that might be described as the “two SOF trinities.” The first are the three overarching missions of SOF in relation to the high-end capabilities required for counterterrorism:

  • Irregular Warfare
  • Unconventional Warfare
  • Support to Political Warfare

The second trinity is the comparative advantage of SOF:

  • Influence
  • Governance
  • Support to indigenous forces and populations

These missions and comparative advantages lay out the focus for the types of activities and support AUKUS SOF could provide. A campaign headquarters would determine the ways and means that SOF could achieve strategic objectives through these efforts.

The SOF of the three nations are not fungible. They are not “one size fits all.” A campaign approach is required to ensure the right forces are employed for the right missions to achieve strategic effects. In addition to capabilities, SOF have developed unique and often strong and enduring relationships with various countries throughout the Indo-Pacific. For example, U.S. SOF has a long relationship with the Philippines, Australian Special Air Service (SAS) with Indonesia, and UK SAS with Malaysia. These relationships provide the foundation for effective employment of AUKUS SOF when tasked with the right capabilities from each nation.

U.S. and NATO SOF have pioneered a resistance operating concept in Europe. Its effectiveness has been borne out by the Ukrainian resistance forces as well as other frontline NATO countries that are developing resilience among the population and the ability to resist Russian “Little Green Men.” Although its employment for unconventional deterrence did not prevent Russia’s attack, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance may give others pause and strengthen the concept of unconventional deterrence in other situations and regions.

However, there is not a cookie-cutter template for resistance. While a case can and should be made that there are potential similarities between Ukraine and Taiwan, China is conducting other malign or subversive activities against other countries via One Belt, One Road that might allow them to achieve their strategic objectives without kinetic operations, particularly by employing the “Three Warfares.” AUKUS SOF could develop country-specific resistance operating concepts to address these threats.

AustralianUK, and U.S. SOF have unique capabilities; some are overlapping and others mutually supporting and reinforcing. A campaign headquarters is necessary to uniquely task-organize the forces for each specific country to support the AUKUS strategic objectives. A model for consideration might be the 1st Special Forces Command’s cross-functional teams. However, rather than relying solely on U.S. capabilities, the right capabilities can be drawn from each country. This includes operators who have developed effective relationships with the right people in the host nation that will contribute to achieving AUKUS SOF campaign objectives–the right people with the right relationships.

An AUKUS campaign headquarters could consider how to employ specially task-organized combined teams. They could be deployed on a rotating basis of four- to six-month deployments. However, this type of rapid turnover disrupts continuity and can hinder the development of strong, long-term relationships. Another option is to establish long-duration permanent task forces that would remain in place with staggered individual rotations so that continuity is sustained and the focus remains on long-term effects.

Permanently deployed task forces of sufficient scale could be problematic from a personnel management standpoint. However, an AUKUS SOF campaign headquarters could consider a hybrid concept. This could entail establishing small but self-sufficient detachments that would remain in place, develop relationships, conduct assessments, and establish requirements for rotating SOF to deploy and accomplish specific missions. The United States has long experience establishing permanent detachments uniquely organized and suited for specific missions in specific countries. These include DET-A or the Berlin Detachment, the 46th Company in Thailand, The Special Forces Taiwan Resident Detachment, and Special Forces Detachment Korea (SFD-K now DET 39), which remains operational to this day. Each of these are unique organizations tailored for the mission. Some of these detachments were responsible for extensive unilateral operations, others advisory operations, and some of them for supporting the temporary deployment of other SOF to conduct specific missions.

Other historical examples might be useful for an AUKUS SOF working group to consider. For strategy and campaign development, the U.S. Overseas Internal Defense Policy (OIDP) could provide a framework for developing concepts adapted to counter certain malign activities. A template for assessing the conditions throughout the Indo-Pacific might be the report by Brig. Gen. Richard G. Stilwell called Army Activities in Underdeveloped Areas Short of Armed Conflict in 1962. This provides an in-depth assessment that supports campaign plan development based on the guidance of the OIDP. After the OIDP was issued, the U.S. Army created the Special Action Force in doctrine and established two organizations, the 8th SAF in Panama and SAFASIA in Okinawa, Japan. These were self-contained organizations that, although focused on counterinsurgency operations, may offer lessons for today, especially with regard to establishing an AUKUS campaign headquarters.

An AUKUS SOF working group would also consider if developing a concept for resistance and resilience in Asia is feasible and desirable. It would need to assess whether there is potential for friends, partners, and allies to resist Chinese political warfare and if that resistance can be channeled to achieve strategic effects to counter such malign activities. China. This would be best done by a campaign headquarters that could conduct a thorough and continuous analysis by appreciating the context, developing deep understanding of the problem, and then developing multiple country-specific approaches that would create dilemmas for China and other revisionist or rogue powers and make them question their ability to achieve their objectives.

One consideration might be to reprise the U.S. Special Forces Taiwan Resident Detachment as a combined AUKUS organization. AUKUS could permanently station a small combined detachment to advise and assist the Taiwanese military and civil defense forces in implementing a porcupine defense, which would include creating the conditions needed to make it impossible for China to pacify the population if it invaded. This organization would assess the need for training and advanced capabilities, which could be provided by rotational SOF elements from each country. The decision to establish an AUKUS SOF detachment in Taiwan would have to be made by the national political leaders of each country due to the political sensitivity, but this is an option an AUKUS SOF working group might consider.

AUKUS is a modern security partnership well suited to meet the interests of the three nations. Although it is currently focused on information sharing and advanced technology, it provides the framework and opportunity to expand the scope to look at the security challenges of the gray zone and Chinese malign activities. AUKUS SOF can play a part in strategic competition and help mitigate the damage done to the region and international community by China and others. The SOF capabilities could be effectively employed to maximize their contributions to integrated deterrence. A joint SOF campaign could also contribute to the trilateral security interests of AUKUS. Establishing an AUKUS SOF working group is necessary to explore the capabilities and possibilities.

About the Author

David Maxwell

David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel who has spent more than 30 years in Asia and specializes in East Asia Security Affairs and irregular, unconventional, and political warfare. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Small Wars Journal and a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Global Peace Foundation and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy.



5.  The Marine Corps Is Dangerously Close to Losing Its Customs, Traditions, and Warfighting Ethos


Conclusion:


In closing, we want to be perfectly clear. We believe the warfighting dominance and those intangibles that make Marines unique are under attack and at risk of being overrun. The unwise jettisoning of too many tools in the Marine Corps’s toolbox of capabilities and the wholesale gutting of others have virtually destroyed its utility for major combat operations. Operating forces have been hollowed out under the illusion of returning the Marine Corps to its naval roots. While reductions in force structure and equipment can be added back at the cost of great time and expense, culture and ethos, once lost, are gone forever. Force Design 2030 and Talent Management 2030, no matter how well intended, are blueprints for disaster.

The Marine Corps Is Dangerously Close to Losing Its Customs, Traditions, and Warfighting Ethos

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/the-marine-corps-is-dangerously-close-to-losing-its-customs-traditions-and-warfighting-ethos/



By JAMES E. LIVINGSTON

&

JAY VARGAS

&

HARVEY BARNUM

&

ROBERT MODRZEJEWSKI

October 3, 2022 6:30 AM

Marines with Battalion Landing Team, First Battalion, Fourth Marines, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, take part in Exercise Alligator Dagger at Arta Beach, Djibouti, December 2016.(Corporal Devan K. Gowans/USMCBy 

As Marines and Medal of Honor recipients, we believe the intangibles that make the Marine Corps exceptional are under attack and at risk of being overrun.


There is nothing particularly glorious about sweaty fellows, laden with killing tools, going along to fight. And yet — such a column represents a great deal more than 28,000 individuals mustered into a division. All that is behind those men is in that column, too: the old battles, long forgotten, that secured our nation . . . traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such as regiments hand down forever. 

— Colonel John W. Thomason, Fix Bayonets (1926)


C

olonel Thomason knew that Marines are not defined solely by their weapons and equipment, but more broadly by their history, culture, traditions, and warrior ethos. These intangibles make United States Marines unique. These almost mystical attributes are fragile, only ever one generation away from extinction. Traditions of things endured and things accomplished are the foundation of Marine Corps combat effectiveness. Without close attention to and nurturing of these qualities, the Corps will lose its identity.  


Sadly, we believe the Marine Corps is on that path. Why? The current senior leadership did away with many weapons in order to procure anti-ship missiles. This new warfighting concept consisted of small packets of Marines landing on atolls in the South China Sea with the mission of sinking Chinese warships. This defensive strategy was sold as innovative and necessary to transform the Marine Corps for 21st-century warfighting. It is more likely to relegate the Marine Corps to irrelevance. The history, traditions, culture, and ethos of the Marine Corps are being dangerously and needlessly eroded. Unless this trend is reversed, the Marine Corps we knew and loved will cease to exist.

Many, arguably most, former Marines, ourselves included, find it increasingly difficult to recognize our Marine Corps. The organization in which we served is being radically altered with little or no apparent appreciation for unforeseen consequences. The unnecessary cutting of force structure, coupled with the ill-advised jettisoning of combat multipliers such as tanks, cannon artillery, assault amphibious vehicles, heavy engineers, aviation, and logistics before replacement capabilities have been procured, will perilously weaken the flexibility and lethality of forward-deployed Marine Air Ground Task Forces and the ability of the Marine Expeditionary Forces to task organize for combat across the spectrum of conflict. We fear that soon Marines will no longer be able to pride themselves on being “most ready when the nation is least ready.” 


The Marine Corps is being undermined by a corporate approach to personnel management where civilian “best practices” are replacing our traditional values of the “needs of the service” and by a narrowly defined focus on long-range rockets and missiles to win future battles. Some of the changes have been directed by elected and appointed officials. However, most of the injuries to our glorious Corps have been self-inflicted, such as the unnecessary discarding of tanks and the deep and harmful cuts in cannon artillery.

We’re not opposed to change. The Marine Corps has always changed to remain relevant in a changing world. But so many of the changes planned or already made have been poorly thought out. In some cases, the manner of implementation has done almost as much damage as the changes themselves. In our opinion, the rush to radically transform the institution has altered the very fabric of the Corps by shredding combat capabilities and trampling history, tradition, culture, and ethos.  


Marine Corps history is embodied in its regiments. Marines have always taken immense pride in their regimental histories, at times even defining themselves by the regiments in which they served. With a cavalier disregard for this special bond, Marine Corps leadership recently discarded the name of one of the Corps’s most storied regiments, the Third Marines. The Third Marines we knew no longer exists. Its name has been indifferently changed to the Third Marine Littoral Regiment; this experimental, one-dimensional unit lacks the flexibility, lethality, and supporting arms required to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver. The same humiliation awaits the Fourth Marines (an infantry regiment) and Twelfth Marines (an artillery regiment), legendary regiments whose names have been immortalized defending our nation and are etched in blood. Regimental designations are Marine Corps history, sources of pride for all Marines. And casing the colors of the Eighth Marines (an infantry regiment in the Second Marine Division) for the sole purpose of offsetting the costs of current and future force developments was as poorly thought out as the naming protocols and restructuring of the infantry and artillery regiments in the Third Marine Division. 

Marine Corps tradition is “we take care of our own.” Leaders have always looked out for their Marines and their families. The harried rush to toss aside tanks took priority over the well-being of many Marines and their families. The tankers, mechanics, and their families were simply sidelined and forced to make the best they could of what was left of their careers. To a lesser degree, others similarly affected had the rug pulled from underneath them. With few options available, many tankers and other comparably unfortunate Marines joined the Army or another service.  

Marine Corps culture is built on the primacy of infantry.  Marines have always taken pride in the motto “Every Marine a rifleman.” Force Design 2030, Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, Stand-in Forces, and Talent Management 2030 — the planning documents that have laid the foundation for the corps’s new doctrine — deemphasize infantry skills. Specialists are the new coin of the realm. The deactivation of three infantry battalions and reductions in the number of Marines in the remaining infantry battalions are the best indicators that Marine infantry is no longer seen as the point of the warfighting spear. Long-range precision rockets and missiles and new organizations in which Marines watch computer screens and push buttons to engage the enemy have replaced the rifle and the infantryman as the ultimate arbiters of future battles. To support these new warfighting concepts, Marine infantry has been stripped of the support needed to close with and destroy the enemy. You have to experience, as we have, a life and death struggle against overwhelming numbers of a determined enemy to know the compelling impact of a wall of close and continuous artillery fire, immediately available close air support, and, at times, tanks. We know first-hand that combined arms win battles that would otherwise be lost. We also believe that close combat, where winners and losers are ultimately decided, is being virtually, but mistakenly, ignored as a relic of the Industrial Age. 

Marine Corps warfighting ethos is exemplified by “First to Fight” and “In Every Clime and Place,” rallying calls rapidly becoming empty words. The Marines will soon be little more than a regionally focused afterthought. The misguided divestiture of proven and necessary warfighting capacity has seriously (and, unless corrected, fatally) emasculated the Marine Corps’s capabilities to fight and win across the spectrum of conflict. The narrow tailoring of forces for a backwater role (Stand-in Forces) in the Western Pacific, a concept devoid of rigorous experimentation and validation, comes at great cost. Simply stated, the Marine Corps is no longer the nation’s premier 911 force, ingloriously ceding that distinction to the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps.  

In closing, we want to be perfectly clear. We believe the warfighting dominance and those intangibles that make Marines unique are under attack and at risk of being overrun. The unwise jettisoning of too many tools in the Marine Corps’s toolbox of capabilities and the wholesale gutting of others have virtually destroyed its utility for major combat operations. Operating forces have been hollowed out under the illusion of returning the Marine Corps to its naval roots. While reductions in force structure and equipment can be added back at the cost of great time and expense, culture and ethos, once lost, are gone forever. Force Design 2030 and Talent Management 2030, no matter how well intended, are blueprints for disaster.

James “Jim” Livingston is a Major General, USMC (Retired). He was awarded the Medal of Honor while serving as the Commanding Officer, Company E, Second Battalion, Fourth Marines during the Battle of Dai Do; Jay Vargas is a Colonel, USMC (Retired). He was awarded the Medal of Honor while serving as the Commanding Officer, Company G, Second Battalion, Fourth Marines during the Battle of Dai Do; Harvey “Barney” Barnum is a Colonel, USMC (Retired). He was awarded the Medal of Honor while serving as the Commanding Officer, Company H, Second Battalion, Ninth Marines during the Battle of Ky Phu on Operation HARVEST MOON; Robert “Bob” Modrzejewski is a Colonel, USMC (Retired). He was awarded the Medal of Honor while serving as the Commanding Officer, Company K, Third Battalion, Fourth Marines during Operation HASTINGS.



6. How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan


But all warfare is based on deception.


Conclusion:


If China decides to fight a war of choice over Taiwan, strategic surprise would be a casualty of the sheer scale of the undertaking. Even if Xi were tempted to launch a quick campaign and hope that Taiwan’s will to fight would quickly collapse, Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine probably has induced more caution in Beijing. Such a roll of the dice on China’s part would be far riskier than Russia’s land invasion, not only because the PLA would have to conduct the largest and farthest amphibious invasion in modern history, but also because—unlike in Ukraine—cautious PLA war planners would have to assume that the United States and some of its regional allies would quickly commit combat forces to the island’s defense. Any invasion of Taiwan will not be secret for months prior to Beijing’s initiation of hostilities. It would be a national, all-of-regime undertaking for a war potentially lasting years.


How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan


JOHN CULVER

OCTOBER 03, 2022

COMMENTARY

Source: Getty


Summary: If war is Beijing’s plan, there would be reliable indications that it is coming.

carnegieendowment.org · by John Culver

As tensions between China, Taiwan, and the United States have increased over the past year, numerous articles and pundits have posited that war could come sooner rather than later. These speculations were prompted by comments from senior U.S. military officers that Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be prepared to invade the island by 2027, although the basis for this claim is not given. A new report claims some in the U.S. intelligence community now assess that China could attack as soon as 2024 (presumably around Taiwan’s January 2024 elections).

But if war is Beijing’s plan, there ought to be reliable indications that it is coming. So it seems like an appropriate time to consider precisely what Chinese full mobilization for major conflict might entail. Although China last fought a major war against Vietnam in 1979, it is possible to frame how Beijing might prepare for an invasion and what specific indicators we could expect to see. Such a military conflict would reflect four assumptions underpinning Chinese leaders’ decisionmaking.

John Culver

John Culver retired from CIA in 2020 after thirty-five years as an analyst and manager of East Asian security, economic, and foreign policy issues. He has written extensively on China, Taiwan, and regional issues and serves as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

First, reports indicate that Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) understand that an outright invasion of Taiwan would be a daunting strategic task and would end any putative return to the status quo ante. Such a war could last years to a decade, and China would be subjected to American and possibly multilateral sanctions and perhaps even a U.S. blockade. The basis for the CCP’s domestic legitimacy would shift from the emphasis on generating economic growth that has prevailed since 1978 to a near-exclusive focus on nationalism in the cause of Taiwan’s “reunification” with China.

Second, China’s political goal since U.S.-China diplomatic normalization in 1979 has been to preserve the possibility of political unification with Taiwan at some undefined point in the future. Beijing has been pursuing that goal by promoting rapid economic integration with Taiwan, and until the coronavirus pandemic, it enabled greatly expanded travel across the strait, with millions of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan annually and millions of Taiwanese working in China. But since 2020, travel bans and quarantines in China and Taiwan have drastically curtailed travel. And China’s 2019 crackdown on democracy advocates in Hong Kong further tarnished Beijing’s “one country, two systems” model for eventual political settlement and negatively influenced perceptions among many Taiwanese of Beijing’s motives, intentions, and goals. These trends have undermined Beijing’s apparent hope that people-to-people contacts and economic interchange would promote unity across the Taiwan Strait. This rapid erosion of ties has made a peaceful unification even more doubtful.

Third, China’s political strategy for unification has always had a military component, as well as economic, informational, legal, and diplomatic components. Most U.S. analysis frames China’s options as a binary of peace or war and ignores these other elements. At the same time, many in Washington believe that if Beijing resorts to the use of force, the only military option it would consider is invasion. This is a dangerous oversimplification. China has many options to increase pressure on Taiwan, including military options short of invasion—limited campaigns to seize Taiwan-held islands just off China’s coast, blockades of Taiwan’s ports, and economic quarantines to choke off the island’s trade. Lesser options probably could not compel Taiwan’s capitulation but could further isolate it economically and politically in an effort to raise pressure on the government in Taipei and induce it to enter into political negotiations on terms amenable to Beijing.

Finally, many of the understandings, military factors, and ambiguous positions that enabled decades of peace, prosperity, and democracy on Taiwan are now eroding due to China’s burgeoning economic and military power, Taiwan’s consolidating democracy led by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, and burgeoning U.S. determination to play the “Taiwan card” in its strategic rivalry with China.

If China has actually decided to go to war with Taiwan—and, per President Joe Biden’s recent gaffes, with the United States—in eighteen or twenty-four months, how would we know? For one, it almost certainly would not be subtle, at least to the U.S. intelligence community and probably not to Taiwan and other Western observers. Modern war between great powers (and even not-so-great powers) consumes huge stocks of key munitions, especially precision-guided ones for high-intensity naval, air, and amphibious warfare. So China would have already started surging production of ballistic and cruise missiles; anti-air, air-to-air, and large rockets for long-range beach bombardment; and numerous other items, at least a year before D-Day. Commercial imagery used by nongovernment analysts has identified new military facilities and weapons in China, including what appears to be new silo fields for its expanding nuclear-armed force of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Major production by China of key munitions would be noticed by international government and nongovernment observers alike.

China also would take visible steps to insulate its economy, military, and key industries from disruptions and sanctions. This would go beyond its current industrial policies and dual circulation strategy, which collectively aim to achieve technological and material self-sufficiency, or even its limited measures against increasing U.S. use of export controls, sanctions, and economic and financial pressure. As CSIS Senior Fellow Gerard DiPippo recently noted, near-term indicators of approaching conflict would include financial elements such as imposition of stronger cross-border capital controls, a freeze on foreign financial assets within China, and rapid liquidation and repatriation of Chinese assets held abroad. It would also include a surge in stockpiling emergency supplies, such as medicine or key technology inputs; a suspension of key exports, such as critical minerals, refined petroleum products, or food; measures to reduce demand or ration key goods, especially imports such as oil and gas; and prioritization or redirection of key inputs for military production. Chinese elites and high-priority workers would also face international travel restrictions.

And China’s leaders probably would be preparing their people psychologically for the costs of war: austerity, tens of thousands of combat deaths, and civilian deaths from U.S.- and Taiwan-launched strikes. For a conflict that would begin in 2024, as some observers in the United States have predicted, such measures likely would be happening now—and they are not, despite recent heightened tensions and U.S. choices and actions that Beijing views as provocations.

It seems plausible, therefore, that if the American intelligence community saw some of that happening, they would right now be releasing that information publicly, just as they did almost four months before Russia invaded Ukraine. They would not just be leaking it to one news outlet.

Preparations within the PLA would also alert U.S. intelligence that preparations for war were underway. Six or twelve months before a prospective invasion, China probably would implement a PLA-wide stop loss, halting demobilizations of enlisted personnel and officers, just as it did in 2007 when it ratcheted up pressure as Taiwan prepared to hold elections. (Chinese officials would have already announced these moves if they truly planned to use force as soon as early 2024.) Three to six months out, the PLA would also halt most regular training and perform maintenance on virtually all major equipment. It would expand the capacity of the Navy and Air Force to rearm, resupply, and repair ships, submarines, and aircraft away from military facilities that the United States or Taiwan would likely bomb, including naval bases and military airfields near the Taiwan Strait. The PLA Navy would replace electric batteries on its non-nuclear submarines and intensify training in loading missiles, torpedoes, and ammunition on all vessels.

In its Eastern and Southern Theater Commands opposite Taiwan, the PLA would take preparation steps rarely seen in mere exercises. Field hospitals would be established close to embarkation points and airfields. There likely would be public blood drives. Mobile command posts would depart garrisons and move to hidden locations. Units responsible for managing petroleum, oil, and lubricants would deploy with field pipeline convoys to support vehicle preparation at civilian ports being used to load transport ships embarking on an invasion.

The PLA would place forces, including those far from the Taiwan Strait, on alert. Beijing has long feared chain-reaction warfare, either by the United States or encouraged by it, on China's other borders. Across the PLA, leave would be canceled and service members would be recalled to duty and restricted to their garrisons or ships. Hundreds of military air and chartered flights would carry key material and senior officers to inspect preparations in the Eastern Theater Command. Normal passenger and cargo flights would be disrupted. This would be noted even by amateur airline flight tracking enthusiasts, who weighed in last month to debunk claims that flights in and out of Beijing had been halted amid unsubstantiated rumors of a coup.

And the CCP would order national mobilization at least three or four months in advance of planned combat—a very public step that has not been taken since 1979. Provincial military-civilization mobilization committees would commandeer commercial ships, roll-on/roll-off vehicle transport ships, large car ferries, aircraft, trains, trucks—everything relevant to a war effort, for preparation prior to conflict, and then throughout. They'd mobilize an enormous number of people, including reservists to guard key civilian infrastructure, be prepared to repair U.S. bomb damage, and prevent riots and sabotage. Western manufacturers operating in China would experience supply chain disruptions as key transportation and some component manufacturers shifted to war preparation. These would all be public actions, reported in Chinese national and provincial media and quickly detected by Western government and private analysts.

Recently, a recording and transcript of an April war mobilization exercise in the southern province of Guangdong leaked to Western sources. It is unclear how often such drills are conducted, but they are probably an annual event to ensure preparedness for natural disasters and potential military conflict. The transcript provides a wealth of details on the massive joint military-civilian mobilization effort of one province: hundreds of thousands of people; almost 1,000 ships; twenty airports; six shipyards and ship repair yards; and medical, food storage, and energy facilities. Although Guangdong is wealthy, populous, industrialized, and strategically located for a Taiwan conflict, similar actions likely would be undertaken in every province, especially coastal ones.

If China decides to fight a war of choice over Taiwan, strategic surprise would be a casualty of the sheer scale of the undertaking. Even if Xi were tempted to launch a quick campaign and hope that Taiwan’s will to fight would quickly collapse, Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine probably has induced more caution in Beijing. Such a roll of the dice on China’s part would be far riskier than Russia’s land invasion, not only because the PLA would have to conduct the largest and farthest amphibious invasion in modern history, but also because—unlike in Ukraine—cautious PLA war planners would have to assume that the United States and some of its regional allies would quickly commit combat forces to the island’s defense. Any invasion of Taiwan will not be secret for months prior to Beijing’s initiation of hostilities. It would be a national, all-of-regime undertaking for a war potentially lasting years.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect those of the U.S. government.

carnegieendowment.org · by John Culver


7. Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good?



The reviewer and authors do not have much good to say about the OSS (and the CIA). Where you stand depends on where you sit.  But there are a lot of haters out there.


I would just add that some of the most ethical people I have worked with were in the CIA.


I would argue the opposite of this excerpt:


He gave a diagnosis for what had gone wrong. “Secrecy keeps mistakes secret,” he said. “Secrecy is a disease. It causes a hardening of the arteries of the mind.” 


Mistakes are more likely to be exposed than successes.


That said I do believe in open source and all source information. I strongly disagree that the State Department would or could "pick up the intelligence work." INR does conduct great analysis but it is not capable of providing the intelligence support necessary across the entire US government.


He quoted John le Carré on that point, adding that the best information actually came from the likes of area specialists, diplomats, historians, and journalists. If the C.I.A. was disbanded, he said, the State Department could pick up the intelligence work, and do a better job.


I think this critique of Donpvan is a littel disingenous:

In the end, though, the O.S.S. made real contributions, including through its contacts with the French Resistance. But Donovan’s complaint about D Day was that there was “too much planning.” Counterintelligence and strategic thinking bored him, and the O.S.S.’s analysis division was seen as secondary to its operations.

I am pretty sure Donovan was a stragegic thinker. I think this quote underscores that he understood the importance of intelligence to support strategy.


"Strategy, without information upon which it can rely, is helpless."
William J. Donovan 


Speaking of the OSS and not having an intelligence service. This is what ad hoc intelligence gathering looks like and surely provides an indication of why DOnovan sought to establish the OSS.


"The door for intelligence work opened for me when I undertook my first secret mission while on my honeymoon in Japan in 1919. The United States Government asked me to take a two-month trip to Siberia to report on the anti-Bolshevik movement in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Well, it wasn't your usual honeymoon, but Mrs. Donovan was very understanding. The mission was successful and opened doors to many more missions for the government. I was heading down the intelligence path ...” Wild Bill Donovan 



Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good?

In the agency’s seventy-five years of existence, a lack of accountability has sustained dysfunction, ineptitude, and lawlessness.

By 

October 3, 2022

The New Yorker · by Amy Davidson Sorkin · October 3, 2022

On January 4, 1995, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, of New York, introduced a bill called the Abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency Act. It had been a rough stretch for the C.I.A. The year before, Aldrich Ames, a longtime officer, had been convicted of being a longtime mole for Soviet (and then Russian) intelligence. Despite having a reputation among his colleagues as a problem drinker who appeared to live far beyond his means, Ames had been given high-level assignments with access to the names of American sources in the U.S.S.R. When the F.B.I. finally arrested him, he was in the Jaguar he used for commuting to work at Langley; by then, he was responsible for the death of at least ten agents. Moynihan said that the case was such a flamboyant display of incompetence that it might actually be a distraction from “the most fundamental defects of the C.I.A.” He meant that the agency—in what he considered to be its “defining failure”—had both missed the fact that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse and done little to hasten its end.

He gave a diagnosis for what had gone wrong. “Secrecy keeps mistakes secret,” he said. “Secrecy is a disease. It causes a hardening of the arteries of the mind.” He quoted John le Carré on that point, adding that the best information actually came from the likes of area specialists, diplomats, historians, and journalists. If the C.I.A. was disbanded, he said, the State Department could pick up the intelligence work, and do a better job.

Moynihan was, in some respects, being disingenuous. As he well knew, even if his bill had passed, spies and spying wouldn’t have gone away. The State Department already had its own mini agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The Departments of Energy and Treasury each had one, too. The Defense Intelligence Agency conducted clandestine operations; U.S. Army Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the Office of Naval Intelligence kept themselves busy as well. The National Security Agency was nearly two decades away from the revelation, by Edward Snowden, a contractor and a former C.I.A. employee, that it had collected information about the phone calls of most Americans, but it was a behemoth even in Moynihan’s time. So was the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There were about a dozen agencies then; now, after reforms that were supposed to streamline things, there are eighteen, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (O.D.N.I.), a sort of meta-C.I.A. that has a couple of thousand employees, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. The Drug Enforcement Administration (which currently has foreign offices in sixty-nine countries) has an Office of National Security Intelligence. Four million people in the United States now have security clearances.

It can be hard to sort out which agencies do what; players in the espionage business aren’t always good with boundaries. Both the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. make use of satellite resources, including commercial ones, but there is a separate agency in charge of a spy-satellite fleet, the National Reconnaissance Office—not to be confused with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which deals with both space-based and ground-level imaging, or with Space Delta 6, the nation’s newest intelligence agency, which is attached to the Space Force. Abolishing the C.I.A. might do nothing more than reconfigure the turf wars.

As the senator from New York also knew, a large proportion of the C.I.A.’s resources are devoted not to intelligence gathering but to covert operations, some of which look like military operations. In “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence” (Princeton)—one of several recent books that coincide with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the agency’s founding—Amy B. Zegart, a political scientist at Stanford, writes that it’s “getting harder to know just where the CIA’s role ends and the military’s role begins.” Yet the agency’s paramilitary pursuits and related covert activities go back decades. They include the botched Bay of Pigs landing, the brutal Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and a long list of assassination attempts, coup plots, the mining of a harbor (with explosive devices the agency built itself), and drone strikes. These operations have very seldom ended well.

Moynihan’s bill had no more luck than another that he introduced the same day, aimed at ending Major League Baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws. In each case, people understood that there was a problem, but both institutions were protected by the sense that there was something essential, and perhaps authentically American, about them, including their very brokenness. A sudden turn of events can convince even the C.I.A.’s most sober critics that the agency will save us all, whether from terrorists or from Donald Trump. But, seventy-five years in, it’s far from clear whether the C.I.A. is good at its job, or what that job is or should be, or how we could get rid of the agency if we wanted to.

How did we end up with the C.I.A.? A familiar explanation is that the shock of Pearl Harbor made the United States realize it needed more spies; the Office of Strategic Services was formed and jumped into action; and, when the war ended, the O.S.S. evolved seamlessly into the C.I.A., ready to go out and win the Cold War. But that narrative isn’t quite right, particularly regarding the relationship between the O.S.S. and the C.I.A.

The United States has always used spies of some sort. George Washington had a discretionary espionage budget for which he didn’t have to turn in receipts. In the early part of the twentieth century, the State Department had an intelligence-analysis unit, along with a cryptography group called the Black Chamber, which operated out of a brownstone in New York’s Murray Hill until it was shut down, in 1929. The Army and the Navy had cryptography and reconnaissance units, too. When the Second World War began, their operations ramped up dramatically, and, as Nicholas Reynolds recounts in “Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence” (Mariner), these units, not the O.S.S., handled most of the code-breaking. The problem became the volume of raw intelligence. The task of making sense of it and of turning it into something that policymakers could use went to an office within the Army’s military-intelligence division (or G-2), which, Reynolds says, produced “the country’s best strategic intelligence” during the war. That office’s work was directed by Alfred McCormack, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone and a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Many of the people he brought in were young corporate lawyers; the theory was that their training in plowing through mountains of documents made them ideal intelligence analysts.

William J. Donovan, who led and largely conceived of the O.S.S., was also a Wall Street lawyer, but one with an aversion to the “legalistic.” What Donovan envisioned was essentially an array of commando units that would operate stealthily and behind enemy lines. In practice, what he tried to build, according to a colleague, was a “private army.” His escapades often risked too much and gained too little. In late 1943, one of his own officers wrote to him that “the set-up has been incredibly wasteful in manpower and, except for a few spotty accomplishments, has been a national failure.” And it had produced “chaos in the field.” Donovan’s nickname was Wild Bill, but his staff called him Seabiscuit, after the thoroughbred, because of his tendency to race around, engaging in what was basically war tourism. In the end, though, the O.S.S. made real contributions, including through its contacts with the French Resistance. But Donovan’s complaint about D Day was that there was “too much planning.” Counterintelligence and strategic thinking bored him, and the O.S.S.’s analysis division was seen as secondary to its operations.

When Harry Truman became President, in April, 1945, he took a look at the O.S.S. and, in September, 1945, abolished it. About two years later, he signed the National Security Act, which established the C.I.A. (and the Department of Defense), but he didn’t want the new agency to be like the group Donovan had run. Instead, it was supposed to do what its name suggested: centralize the intelligence that various agencies gathered, analyze it, and turn it into something the President could use. “It was not intended as a ‘Cloak and Dagger’ Outfit!,” Truman later wrote. He also had to deal with public apprehensions that he might create what a Chicago Tribune headline called a “Super Gestapo Agency”—which is why, in its charter, the C.I.A. was banned from domestic spying.

Reynolds’s book is the best of the recent batch, and the most readable. It does not retrofit the history of the O.S.S. around the assumption that the C.I.A. was the inevitable lead postwar intelligence agency. There were other contenders, including a version of McCormack’s office in the State Department—something like what Moynihan wanted. J. Edgar Hoover argued that “World Wide Intelligence” should be turned over to the F.B.I., with military intelligence subservient to him. In some alternative history, he might have pulled that off; by 1943, he was running undercover operations in twenty Latin American countries. And so things could have been worse.

Donovan was an adept publicist, but what mattered most, in the end, was that he was good, or lucky, when it came to hiring people. Despite the “pale, male, and Yale” stereotype, the O.S.S. was somewhat more diverse than other units, and certainly more eclectic. Among its ranks were Ralph Bunche, Herbert Marcuse, and Julia Child. Many of its officers moved straight to the new C.I.A. Most consequentially, perhaps, four future directors of the C.I.A. were O.S.S. veterans: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Each seems to have had glory-day memories of the O.S.S., which is to say that each, in various ways, was afflicted with what a general in Army intelligence called “the screwball Donovan effect.” Casey, who put a picture of Donovan on his wall, said of his old boss, “We all glowed in his presence.” Wild Bill lost the bureaucratic fight but won the personnel and mythology wars.

And, of course, the agency found customers and collaborators in the White House. There was no mention of covert action in the law that chartered the C.I.A., but Presidents—starting with Truman—began using it that way. One of the agency’s first operations involved meddling in the 1948 Italian election, to insure the victory of the Christian Democrats. The subsidies and outright bribery of Italian politicians, some of them on the far, far right, continued into the nineteen-seventies.

Almost from its creation, though, there was a sense that something about the C.I.A. was off. The split between covert action and intelligence gathering and analysis was part of it. The director of the agency was also supposed to be the leader of U.S. intelligence as a whole, but, invariably, the person in the job seemed more invested in preëminence than in coördination. That setup remained in place until the establishment of the O.D.N.I., in 2004, a move that thus far has mostly continued a tradition of trying to deal with the C.I.A.’s dysfunction by setting up ever more agencies, offices, and centers. (The N.S.A. was established, in 1952, in response to a series of cryptography-related failures.) “Legacy of Ashes,” Tim Weiner’s 2008 history of the C.I.A.—and still an invaluable overview—takes its title from a lament by Eisenhower about what he’d be leaving his successors if the “faulty” structure of American intelligence wasn’t changed. Since Weiner’s book was published, the ashes, and the agencies, have only been piling up.

Zegart’s “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms” aims to bring that history to the present. Zegart has served as an adviser to intelligence agencies, and she provides a decent guide to our current bureaucracy. Throughout, her book is clear and well organized—maybe a little too well organized, one feels, after taking in the “Seven Deadly Biases” of intelligence analysis, the “Four Main Adversaries” and the “Five Types of Attack” in the crypto area, and the “Three Words, Four Types” that define covert action. (The covert-action words, incidentally, are “influence,” “acknowledged,” and “abroad.”) Not a few paragraphs read like PowerPoint charts; contradictions are displayed without really being reckoned with. She observes that the balance between “hunting” and “gathering” seems off, but, in her telling, the fact that Presidents of both parties regularly turn to the C.I.A. for paramilitary and other covert tasks constitutes proof that doing so is part of the order of things. The impression she leaves is that if it all goes wrong, it’s because some checklist has been missed. One of the top priorities of U.S. intelligence today, she thinks, should be persuading tech companies to get with the program and help out. She moots the creation of yet another agency, to deal with OSINT—open-source intelligence.

In one chapter, Zegart provides a list of scandals involving spying within the U.S. by various intelligence agencies—notably the N.S.A., the F.B.I., and the C.I.A. “All of these activities violated American law,” she writes. “But that’s the point: domestic laws forbid this kind of surveillance of Americans.” How is that the point, exactly? She depicts the Senate’s 2014 Torture Report, which detailed profound abuses in the C.I.A.’s so-called black sites, as a they-said, the-agency-said, who-knows case. She turns it into a parable about the problems with Congress—suggesting that, although the committee structure may have needed rejiggering, the moral compass of those involved in the program of torture was just fine.

Another new volume, “A Question of Standing: A History of the CIA” (Oxford), by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Edinburgh, offers the insights of a more distant observer. He can be astute about how “false memories” of the O.S.S.’s accomplishments have led the C.I.A. astray. Part of his argument is that the agency has acted as if its influence depended on its standing with whoever is in the White House, thus motivating it to offer Presidents quick fixes that fix nothing. The net effect is to reduce its standing, and that of the U.S., with the public at home and abroad. But Jeffreys-Jones is prone to rash generalizations and pronouncements. He theorizes that, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush’s national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, may have been susceptible to “war mongering” due to her status as “a descendant of slaves,” and that the working-class background of the C.I.A.’s director, George Tenet, made him more likely to vouch for the faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war. “Social mobility so often leads to conformity,” warns Jeffreys-Jones, himself the son of an academic historian.

During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. had discouraging intelligence to offer, and, when successive Administrations didn’t want to hear it, focussed on being helpful by providing those supposedly quick fixes. That meant abetting a coup in 1963, spying on antiwar protesters, and launching the Phoenix Program, an anti-Vietcong campaign marked by torture and by arbitrary executions; in total, more than twenty thousand people were killed under Phoenix’s auspices.

Phoenix was run by William Colby, the O.S.S. alum, who was soon promoted to C.I.A. director. At lower levels, discontent about Vietnam fuelled leaks. In December, 1974, the journalist Seymour Hersh told the agency that he was about to publish a story in the Times exposing its domestic spying. Whether in a miscalculation or (as Jeffreys-Jones somewhat breathlessly speculates) as an act of personal expiation, Colby gave Hersh partial confirmation. Amid the scandals and the Congressional hearings that followed, Colby angered some of his colleagues, and Henry Kissinger, by laying bare even more. It emerged that, in 1973, Colby’s predecessor had asked senior agency officials to produce a list of things the C.I.A. had done that might have been unlawful. The resulting document, covering just the prior fifteen years, was known in-house as “The Family Jewels,” and was almost seven hundred pages long.

The question of how much it matters who works at the C.I.A. is a perennial one. The influence of Donovan’s acolytes shows that decisions about whom you recruit can, in a formative period or at a critical juncture, make a big difference. But, once an institutional culture has become entrenched, it can be easier to see how the institution shapes the people within it than vice versa.

“Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage” (Putnam), by Nathalia Holt, comes at the question from a different angle. It’s about five women who worked for the early C.I.A.; three also worked at the O.S.S., and one, Eloise Page, began her career as Bill Donovan’s secretary. Holt is also the author of “Rise of the Rocket Girls,” about women in the early years of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and “The Queens of Animation,” about women at the Walt Disney Company. Her book contains fine material for a beautifully art-directed streaming series, with set pieces in postwar Paris, nineteen-fifties Baghdad, and nineteen-seventies Greece, where Page was the C.I.A.’s first woman station chief. It even has a framing device in the form of the “Petticoat Panel,” a working group of C.I.A. women that convened in 1953 to document their unequal pay and treatment. Holt quotes the transcript of the meeting at which the leadership of the agency summarily rejected their findings. Helms, the future director, says, “It is just nonsense for these gals to come on here and think that the government is going to fall apart because their brains aren’t going to be used to the maximum.” (In 1977, Helms was convicted of lying to Congress about the C.I.A.’s machinations in Chile.) What the book is not, unfortunately, is a coherent history of the C.I.A., of the era it depicts, or even of these women’s work.

Holt’s research does turn up evidence that Jane Burrell, one of her subjects, was the first C.I.A. officer to die in the line of duty, in a plane crash in France, in 1948, a fact that the agency itself apparently missed. Holt ends her book with a call for a star honoring Burrell to be added to the C.I.A.’s memorial wall. Of the hundred and thirty-seven officers represented there, she writes, forty-five died accidentally, the majority in plane crashes, meaning that Burrell’s case would be fairly typical. Burrell was on the return leg of a trip to Brussels, where she’d been sent to talk to war-crimes investigators about a mess the C.I.A. had created by relying on an agent who turned out to have worked with the S.S. and was now in custody. In that respect, too, Burrell, who had personally handled the agent, was typical of the C.I.A. (After Burrell vouched for him, the man was released.) The subject of the C.I.A.’s postwar relations with former Nazis—some of whom, like Reinhard Gehlen, it helped to install in West Germany’s new intelligence service—and with collaborationist émigré groups is, no doubt, a morass. Holt, alas, manages to make the story even more garbled than it has to be. In the end, she basically treats the whole sordid episode as a learning experience for the Gals.

The problem is that the agency doesn’t seem to learn much. Holt credits Mary Hutchison with helping to build a network of émigré Ukrainian nationalists. Beginning in 1949, the agency parachuted some of them (including one whom Hutchison apparently distrusted) behind the Soviet border, where they were quickly captured—and repeated the same procedure for a number of years. “Despite the catastrophe, the Ukraine operation would serve as a template moving forward,” Holt writes. “The C.I.A. had more success with back-to-back operations in Iran and Guatemala, where covert action was able to deftly oust leaders considered undesirable.” It’s odd to describe these coups as deft. One of Zegart’s handy lists is of the “unintended consequences” in Iran: “religious extremism, a revolutionary overthrow, the American hostage crisis, severed ties, regional instability, and today’s rising nuclear dangers.” Guatemala is still dealing with the violent legacy of the coup that the C.I.A. visited upon it. Then there’s the question of the intended consequences, which were, respectively, to elevate a shah and a military regime. Secret wars tend not to be so secret in the country where they take place.

It was, no doubt, frustrating for Hutchison when, a few years later, her colleagues on the Bay of Pigs task force failed to make use of her Spanish-language skills. But are we supposed to think that the whole misconceived enterprise would have gone off without a hitch were it not for the C.I.A.’s misogyny? One of Holt’s minor themes is that women in the C.I.A. were seen as more natural analysts than operatives—with analysis, in turn, seen as less manly, and less valuable, to everybody’s detriment. But she is more intent on showing that these women were also daring. The main point of “Wise Gals” is that it’s cool that women were in the early C.I.A., and therefore that the C.I.A. itself was cooler than we’d realized. Holt celebrates a big promotion Page got that afforded her access to the secret of a safe containing shellfish-derived poison. You don’t have to be pale, male, and Yale to be complicit in a bungled assassination plot, or, for that matter, a program of rendition and torture.

Why do so many books about the C.I.A. have trouble getting their story straight? It can’t just be the secrecy of the work itself, at least with regard to the earlier years, about which much has been declassified. (Much remains under wraps: Moynihan complained that classification created more than six million supposed secrets in 1993; Zegart writes that the number in 2016 was fifty-five million—not all of which can possibly have been critical.) The aura of secrecy, by contrast, probably does distort the judgment of its chroniclers. And the scope of the agency’s work is a challenge: it’s hard to write expertly on places as far-ranging as the Democratic Republic of Congo (where the agency initially planned to poison President Patrice Lumumba’s toothpaste, and instead ended up handing a quarter of a million dollars to Joseph Mobutu, the country’s future dictator, who facilitated the assassination) and Afghanistan (where the C.I.A. has had forty years of illusory gains and worse losses). But the biggest problem may be the agency’s own pattern of self-deception. Holt, for example, sometimes seems to go wrong when, rummaging through the archives, she gives too much credit to contemporaneous internal assessments of an agent’s or an operation’s worth.

In truth, the C.I.A. has had a “defining failure” for every decade of its existence—sometimes more than one. For Moynihan, in the nineteen-nineties, it was the lack of foresight about the Soviet Union; in the two-thousands, it was the phantom weapons of mass destruction, followed by torture and, in still evolving ways, by the drone-based program of targeted killings, with its high toll of civilian deaths. Barack Obama’s rapport with John Brennan, the C.I.A.’s director from 2013 to 2017, seems to have brought him to accept the view that the killing of American citizens abroad was acceptable, if managed prudently. The overuse of the agency on the battlefield is due not to a military-manpower shortage but to wishful thinking about the benefits of secrecy and of a lack of accountability.

It’s difficult to know, at this point, what the C.I.A.’s next defining failure—or, if one tries to be optimistic, its stabilizing success—will be. Donald Trump has had a complicated relationship with the intelligence community—increasingly capitalized and abbreviated to I.C.—which is presently conducting a damage assessment regarding documents with classified markings that he kept at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. He might, of course, be reëlected, and have the C.I.A.’s tools at his disposal again. If the C.I.A. isn’t the place to turn for an expedient solution to foreign-policy problems, neither is it bound to be the place to turn for a solution to our democracy’s political problems.

“If you ask intelligence officers what misperceptions bother them most, odds are they’ll mention ethics,” Zegart writes. She quotes an official who complains that “people think we’re lawbreakers, we’re human rights violators.” She insists that “officers think about ethics a lot.” She portrays the agency as being filled with hardworking moms and dads who do a great deal of “agonizing.” No doubt she’s right. But if the C.I.A. keeps falling down all the same, something must be tragically amiss in the agency’s structure or culture, or both. All the talk of coups and assassination plots, Zegart worries, distracts people from understanding the C.I.A.’s more basic intelligence mission. In fact, the party most distracted by such activities—and by the military role it has taken on—seems to be the agency itself. 

The New Yorker · by Amy Davidson Sorkin · October 3, 2022


8. U.S. to Send Mobile Rocket Launchers to Ukraine in $625 Million Aid Package -Officials



U.S. to Send Mobile Rocket Launchers to Ukraine in $625 Million Aid Package -Officials

By U.S. News Staff U.S. News & World Report2 min

View Original


WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration's next security assistance package for Ukraine is expected to include four High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, munitions, mines and mine-resistant vehicles, two sources briefed on the $625 million package told Reuters on Monday.

The package, expected to be announced as soon as Tuesday, is the first aid package since Russia's most recent declared annexation of Ukrainian territory and the second Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) since Ukraine made large battlefield gains in mid-September.

Russia's declared annexations followed what it called referendums in occupied areas of Ukraine. Western governments and Kyiv said the votes breached international law and were coercive and non-representative.

By using drawdown authority, the four HIMARS launchers and associated rockets, some 200 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, ammunition for Howitzers and mines, can be sent to Ukraine in the coming days.


Presidential Drawdown Authority allows the U.S. to transfer articles and services from stocks quickly without congressional approval in response to an emergency.

This is the first package of the U.S. government's 2023 fiscal year which is currently functioning under a stop gap-funding measure and allows President Joe Biden to drawdown up to $3.7 billion in surplus weapons for transfer to Ukraine through mid-December.

Last week, the United States unveiled a $1.1 billion arms package for Ukraine which included 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launcher systems, accompanying munitions, various types of counter drone systems and radar systems.

But last week's aid package was funded by the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) meaning the government has to procure the weapons from industry, rather than pulling them from existing U.S. weapons stocks.

Made by Lockheed Martin Corp the HIMARS launchers' accuracy and longer range have allowed Kyiv to reduce Russia's artillery advantage.

The U.S. has thus far pledged 16 HIMARS launchers to Ukraine using PDA.

The White House declined to comment on the package.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the weapons package can change in value and content until the last minute.

This announcement would mark more than $16.8 billion worth of U.S. security assistance since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Mary Milliken and Chizu Nomiyama)

Copyright 2022 Thomson Reuters.

Tags: UkraineUnited StatesEurope




9. Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska: The 60 Minutes Interview Transcript


An impressive performance by the First Lady. She and her husband continue to provide a master class in strategic communications (of course suited to their unique situation but I think there are lessons to be learned for broader application).


Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska: The 60 Minutes Interview Transcript

CBS News · by Scott Pelley

In a major escalation of the war in Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Friday he is annexing about 20% of Ukraine.

The region, in the east and in the south, is only partly controlled by Russia because of a Ukrainian counteroffensive. In a belligerent speech, Putin referred to nuclear weapons, and accused the west of satanism. He vowed that the territory will be Russian "forever." President Biden responded that the U.S. will never recognize the annexation and will support Ukraine's military as long as it takes.

Seven months of war have been catastrophic for Ukrainian families, many of whom turn for hope to Olena Zelenska. The first lady of Ukraine was trained as an architect, made a living as a comedy writer, but awoke last February to a tragedy. Overnight, she became an ambassador, a mourner, and the healer of a nation fighting for its life.

We met in the capital, Kyiv, at a location we agreed not to disclose the day of our interview. Ukraine was forcing a Russian retreat, and exposing the horrors of the invasion.

Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska

Scott Pelley: What have the families of Ukraine lost?

Olena Zelenska (translated): Half [our] families are separated, [Because] someone is at the front, someone went abroad to save their children, someone is under [Russian] occupation. People are afraid to leave their [homes] because of shelling. They're afraid to even try to evacuate. We have thousands of dead. Hundreds of children are dead.

Scott Pelley: We were just in Chernihiv, we saw the soccer stadium had been bombed. The library, a hospital, Public School Number 18, Public School Number 21. What are the Russians trying to do?

Olena Zelenska (translated): They try to frighten people to make them run, to have towns and villages empty so they can occupy these territories.

Scott Pelley: Is it warfare or is it terrorism?

Olena Zelenska (translated): Definitely, terrorism. The war is being waged using modern means, but from the moral and ethical point of view, [it's] the Middle Ages.

Olena Zelenska is 44 years old, married 19 years to her husband, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Their names differ because in Slavic languages, surnames are often modified by gender.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and First Lady Olena Zelenska

When we spoke to her husband in early April, he told us his wife and two children were in hiding. But weeks later, he deployed his wife like a weapon. In May, she showed First Lady Jill Biden the war's homeless in western Ukraine. In July, she came to Washington and became the first, first lady to address the U.S. Congress.

"I'm asking for weapons," she said then, "weapons that would not be used to wage war on somebody's else's land, but to protect one's home and the right to wake up alive in that home."

When we met, we noticed what seemed like a weariness she was determined to ignore. It was the price of the path she'd chosen—to meet her people, know their pain and bear the weight of empathy.

Scott Pelley: We met a man in Bucha yesterday. He and his family were fleeing the Russian invasion. The Russians opened fire on his car. His leg was destroyed, the car caught fire and he watched his wife and children burn to death. I find it hard to express the enormity of what's happening, and I wonder how you express the suffering of your people.

Olena Zelenska (translated): I feel like a part of these people. I feel as if this is my pain. [The] stories are terrifying and we try to somehow help the survivors. You just told me this man in Bucha had lost his leg. Well, a girl Sasha, lost her arm. Now she's in the United States. [I started a program with] the Ukraine House in Washington and [with] many American philanthropists and American doctors and hospitals. We found an opportunity to give the girl an artificial prosthesis. But every time she looks at her hands, she will see what she has lost. Sasha will always see what she lost in this war.

Destruction in Ukraine

The world has watched, as Ukraine has lost entire cities. Nearly 500 hospitals and clinics have been hit. Schools are devastated, Mrs. Zelenska told us.

Olena Zelenska (translated): About 150 schools simply do not exist. About 900 schools have been damaged.

We saw what she means in Chernihiv, about three hours north of Kyiv. Public school 21 was used as a shelter when a Russian bomb struck. We asked some of those who were there to join us.

Scott Pelley: Why would the Russians bomb a school?

Inna Levchenko the school principal told us, "I thought it was a safe place for all of us. We even wrote the word 'Children' on the windows."

Principal Levchenko lost vision in one eye.

Nataliia Horbach was sheltering with her two boys.

Nataliia Horbach (translated): My face and my ear were injured, my head and my right arm were cut with some fragments. A man came over and helped me up and took me to a car that drove us to the hospital. When he helped me stand up, I asked him about the…

She couldn't quite say the word "children."

Survivors who were in Chernihiv speak with correspondent Scott Pelley

Children were wounded, but seven adults were killed. Another bomb hit Valentyna Vasylchenko's home.

Valentyna Vasylchenko (translated): My grandson's heart was still beating. They were giving him medical assistance, but a lot of time was lost and he died in the ambulance near the house. My granddaughter, her fiancé, my daughter's husband, and my mother were found dead in the rubble.

Scott Pelley: Public School 21 in Chernihiv had 850 students. How are you educating the children of Ukraine today?

Olena Zelenska (translated): Around 3,500 schools will operate online only, because schools cannot receive students and because their parents are afraid to send their children to school. [Ukraine's] children went to school this year… and the first thing they learned [is] where the bomb shelter is, how to get there and what to do in case a missile strikes. We will fight. We will not give our children up. I don't know how we can forgive this. I don't think we will.

After the Russians severed communications with the occupied territories Ukrainians dropped messages in the Dnipro River – with the current and against the chance they would reach those behind the new iron curtain.

Olena Zelenska (translated): We really hope that our love letters were received by someone there and that they hear us. I truly hope [our people] will endure. We will never give [up our people]. And by the way, [there is this idea of giving up territory in some kind of negotiation.] Our people are there. We will never betray them.

Scott Pelley: That is not negotiable in the view of your government.

Olena Zelenska (translated): I really don't want to express political opinions. That's not my role. But imagine a situation where you've been attacked by bandits. They are threatening you, killing your children. And someone [suggests] maybe, it would be better to negotiate? [That] is impossible now. This is just my opinion as a citizen of Ukraine.

Olena Zelenska dated her future husband in college she became a writer on Zelenskyy's comedy shows. In a sitcom called "Servant of the People," he played a teacher who is elected president of Ukraine. He turned parody into power in 2019 when he actually ran and won 73% of the vote. The Zelenskyy's have an 18-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.

Scott Pelley: Are you stronger than you thought you were?

Olena Zelenska (translated): Everyone has become stronger. I'm not unique. You survive and going through trials you automatically become stronger. So yes, we are getting stronger, but will that help us? I hope so.

Scott Pelley: Madam First Lady, may I show you some photographs from the United States? This is a picture I took on Fifth Avenue in New York. This is San Francisco. This is a home in the state of Florida. This is a bumper sticker where I buy my groceries. I took this picture on the east side of Manhattan. This is a baseball game in Denver, Colorado. And this is from Florida as well. What do you say to the American people?

Olena Zelenska (translated): I can say I really feel the support. When I was in Washington, I was handed a short letter written by a guy, named Hector. He's a teenager, 14 years old. He wrote me a short letter with words of support. By the way, if possible, and Hector sees this program, I would like to tell him.

Olena Zelenska (in English): Dear Hector, I remember it, I took your letter with me to Ukraine. And it was charming and it was extremely touching.

Olena Zelenska (translated): So, it seems to me that normal people understand what evil is and that the attacker is evil. That it is normal to defend your country, your children, your homes. I am sure that Americans themselves are like that.

Scott Pelley: What does the future hold?

Olena Zelenska (translated): We are dreaming about this. Over these months we've seen the human being is the center of everything. This is what makes us different from the aggressor. They don't count their [dead]. We count every person who died and we want everyone still alive to feel confident and to have opportunities [to grow]. That's what we dream about. That's how we want to see our country in the future.

Produced by Kristin Steve and Nicole Young. Broadcast associates, Michelle Karim and Matthew Riley. Edited by Jorge J. García.


Correspondent, "60 Minutes"

CBS News · by Scott Pelley


10. US may establish new command in Germany to arm Ukraine: report




US may establish new command in Germany to arm Ukraine: report

militarytimes.com · by Rachel Nostrant · October 3, 2022

A new mission is being established at U.S. European Command’s headquarters in Germany to oversee how the U.S. trains and equips Ukrainian troops, according to a report by the New York Times.

The plan for a formal structure in Wiesbaden, Germany, for the U.S. efforts to aid Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February was presented by EUCOM commander Gen. Christopher Cavoli to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in late September, according to the Times.

Citing an unnamed source within the U.S. military and Biden administration, the Times reported that the new command would include approximately 300 personnel, and would likely report to Cavoli. While the command’s headquarters would be situated in Wiesbaden, training would likely take place at other U.S. bases in Germany, such as Grafenwoehr or Hohenfels, where the Army has large ranges.

A final decision on the command is expected within the next few weeks.

“In close coordination with our Allies and partners, we continue to take steps to align our support to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in a more unified manner in order to aid the Ukrainians with their most urgent needs on the battlefield against the Russian invading force,” EUCOM spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Day told Military Times in a statement. “At this time, any additional changes or moves to improve our ability to support the Ukrainians are pre-decisional, but as previously stated, we continue to take steps to better align our support.”

Signs of a potential re-structuring have been seen in recent weeks, as a multi-national logistics cell — the International Donor Coordination Center — moved from Stuttgart to Wiesbaden earlier this summer.

“The co-location with the U.S. Army Europe and Africa headquarters, as well as XVIII Airborne Corps increases the ability of the organization to rapidly support Ukraine operations,” EUCOM said in a statement regarding the Aug. 6 move.

The U.S. military began its mission to train Ukrainian troops well before Russia launched its full-scale war earlier this year. The initial efforts began in 2015, following the separation of Crimea from Ukraine.

U.S. troops, in addition to forces from Canada, Lithuania, Denmark, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, have been training Ukrainian forces through the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine. Initially stationed at the Combat Training Center-Yavoriv near Lviv, in western Ukraine, the troops were removed just before the invasion began.

“United States military units support the training to strengthen relationships and affirm the United States’ commitment to European partners,” a press release from the Army stated. “Army National Guard brigade combat teams provide the main support to the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine mission in nine-month rotations as part of the Army’s rotational model.”

The U.S. military also still has thousands of troops positioned across Europe in response to the invasion, including in Poland, Romania, Germany, Latvia and Lithuania. To date, the U.S. has committed more than $16 billion to Ukraine.

About Rachel Nostrant

Rachel is a Marine Corps veteran and a master's candidate at New York University's Business & Economic Reporting program.



11. U.S. military kills wanted Shabaab leader in airstrike in Somalia


Graphics at the link: https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2022/10/u-s-military-kills-wanted-shabaab-leader-in-airstrike-in-somalia.php



U.S. military kills wanted Shabaab leader in airstrike in Somalia | FDD's Long War Journal

longwarjournal.org · by Bill Roggio and Caleb Weiss · October 3, 2022

The U.S. military killed a senior Shabaab leader in an airstrike in a terrorist haven in southern Somalia on Oct. 1. Abdullahi Yare, the Shabaab commander who was killed, had a $3 million reward out for his capture, and is the first senior Shabaab leader killed in more than two years.

Somalia’s Ministry of Information stated that Yare, also known as Abdullahi Nadir, was killed in a joint operation with “international security partners in Haramka village in Middle Jubba region.” According to the Somali government, Yare was acting as the head of Shabaab’s da’wah, or proselytizing, department at the time of his death.

The Somali government also noted that Yare was a close ally of both Ahmad Abdi Godane (a.k.a Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr), Shabaab’s first emir, and its current emir, Abu Udaidah Ahmad Umar. Yare was also reportedly a co-founder of Shabaab, which emerged as the youth wing of the former Islamic Courts Union (ICU) around 2005.

Abdullahi Nadir, a top leader of #Alshabab terrorists, wanted by Somali government for long time has been killed in operation conducted by Somali National Army and international security partners in Haramka village in Middle Jubba region, on 01-10-2022.#Somalia //t.co/yJsfQL6Wts
— Ministry of Information, Culture & Tourism (@MOISOMALIA) October 2, 2022

U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) confirmed that it launched an airstrike on Oct. 1 “near Jilib.” Haramka, where Yare was killed, is approximately 50 miles from Jilib.

“The command’s initial assessment is that the strike killed a Shabaab leader and that no civilians were injured or killed,” AFRICOM noted in its press release that announced the strike. Shabaab is al Qaeda’s branch in East Africa.

The U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice program offered a $3 million reward for information leading to Yare’s capture and conviction in February 2022. Rewards for Justice noted that Yare, who is also known as Abdullahi Yarisow and Ubeyd, “plays a prominent religious role within Shabaab” and he “previously … served as Shabaab’s head of media.”

Shabaab has not yet commented on Yare’s reported death. Earlier this year, Ethiopia claimed it killed two other senior leaders of Shabaab, Fu’ad Mohamad Khalaf and Abdulaziz Abu Musab. However, the al Qaeda branch quickly disproved these allegations with photo or visual evidence from both leaders.

Yare is the first top tier Shabaab leader reported killed in U.S. counterterrorism operations in Somalia since Aug. 25, 2020, when the U.S. killed Abdulqadir Commandos. AFRICOM launched 19 other strikes since it killed Commandos, but the targets, with the exception of Yare, were a mix of low-level Shabaab fighters, explosive experts, and military compounds.

A majority of the strikes are what AFRICOM describes as “defensive,” meaning they were launched to support Somali forces as they were being attacked by Shabaab.

According to data compiled by FDD’s Long War Journal, the United States has launched at least 236 airstrikes killing at least 1069 people in Somalia since 2007. The United States maintains that the vast majority of those killed were affiliated with Shabaab.

The U.S. military continues to describe Shabaab as a significant threat to U.S. security. AFRICOM described Shabaab as “the largest and most kinetically active al-Qaeda network in the world and has proved both its will and capability to attack U.S. forces and threaten U.S. security interests.”

The reported killing of Yare comes as Shabaab faces severe military operations against it across central Somalia. Earlier today, the group launched a series of three suicide bombings in the city of Beledweyne as retaliation for the operations.

Despite some setbacks in recent years, Shabaab continues to be one of al Qaeda’s most effective branches. It maintains significant control over much of southern Somalia and retains the ability to strike in Mogadishu, Kenyawhere it also controls territory, and against heavily fortified bases in both Somalia and Kenya.

Note: the spelling of “Shabaab” has been changed to remain consistent throughout the article.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of The Long War Journal. Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.

Tags: AFRICOMShabaabSomalia

longwarjournal.org · by Bill Roggio and Caleb Weiss · October 3, 2022

12. In bid for new long-range rockets, Ukraine offers US targeting oversight


A double edged sword here for the US. An attempt to prevent escalation could backfire with the first missile that hits Russian territory. We should keep in mind that we allow some Russian sanctuary while Ukraine has none.


Ukraine must really want these systems and is willing to do whatever it thinks necessary to obtain them. They must really be effective.


In bid for new long-range rockets, Ukraine offers US targeting oversight | CNN Politics

CNN · by Alex Marquardt · October 3, 2022


A Ukrainian serviceman operating a HIMARS in July 2022 in Eastern Ukraine.

Anastasia Vlasova/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Washington CNN —

In an effort to overcome Biden administration resistance to providing it with a new set of powerful, long-range rocket systems, the Ukrainian government is now offering the US full and ongoing visibility into their list of intended Russian targets, multiple officials familiar with the discussions tell CNN.

The remarkable transparency essentially gives the US veto power over Ukrainian targeting of Russia and is meant to convince the administration that providing the critical weapons would not lead to strikes inside Russian territory, which the US fears would escalate the war and draw it directly into a conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At issue are the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, surface-to-surface missiles that can fly around 200 miles (300 kilometers), about four times the distance of the rockets used by the HIMARS mobile systems the US began sending to Ukraine four months ago.

Despite Ukraine’s proposal, the Biden administration still has not approved the new long-range ATACMS weapons, and argues that Ukraine is doing well with the HIMARS systems it currently has. In fact on Wednesday the administration announced funding for 18 more HIMARS for Ukraine, bringing the total to over 30 US systems.

There are also concerns inside the administration that providing the longer-range ATACMS weapons would cross a red line in the eyes of Moscow, which would see the US becoming “a direct party to the conflict.”

Video Ad Feedback

03:00 - Source: CNN

US defense secretary responds to Putin's nuclear threat

But that red line is becoming murkier with Friday’s annexation of four Ukraine territories by Russia. The US has stated that it will support the use of western weapons inside those zones even if Russia now considers it part of its official territory.

Still, the idea of taking a more active role in discussions over Ukrainian targeting raises American fears of being seen as more involved than it would like.

Striking deeper into Crimea

Ukrainian officials have kept the longer-range ATACMS at the top of their wish list, saying they are ready to be as “open as needed” to assuage American concerns and have already listed for the US precisely what they intend to go after.

“We essentially described exactly what specific targets we need to hit on our territory which are not reachable with what we have now,” said a senior Ukrainian official. “The categories of targets are clear and do not change.”


IZIUM, KHARKIV, UKRAINE - SEPTEMBER 14: Ukrainian soldiers are seen in a tank after Russian Forces withdrawal as Russia-Ukraine war continues in Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine on September 14, 2022. Russian forces left behind a large number of armored vehicles and military equipment while withdrawing.

Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

US sees the aid its given Ukraine as effective, likely won't provide longer-range systems for now

Among them would be more distant Russian logistical lines, air defense and bases, as well as ammunition depots in Ukraine’s east and south, including Crimea, which have become a regular target of the current US-provided rocket systems whose munitions have a maximum range of around 50 miles (80 kilometers).

The new rockets would also allow Ukraine to strike deeper into Crimea to target the launching points of Russia’s Iranian drones, something it cannot currently do, according to an American source familiar with the country’s requests.

In pressing the Americans for the longer-range rockets, Ukrainian officials have also dismissed concerns that they would strike Russian territory, arguing they have not done so with the HIMARS systems despite having the range to in some cases.

“We gave assurances that we will not do it [with the HIMARS] and we did not,” the Ukrainian official said. “I think the problem is for the US to get over the psychological threshold and approve the [ATACMS] capability.”

While the Biden administration has not ruled out sending the ATACAMS eventually, for now they are “low reward and high risk,” according to an official familiar with the discussions.


Ukrainian servicemen walk past a destroyed building in Kyrylivka, in the recently retaken area near Kharkiv, on September 30, 2022.

Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images

Winning with what it has

After much lobbying and discussion, Ukraine has made effective use of the HIMARS systems it began receiving in May, particularly in its recent counteroffensive in the east.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made specific mention of the HIMARS systems in discussing Ukraine’s recent battlefield success in the Kherson region of the country during an exclusive interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that aired Sunday on “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

Austin said Ukrainian forces have used “technology like HIMARS” and employed it in the “right way” to “conduct attacks on things like logistical stores and command and control, that’s taking away – taken away significant capability from the Russians.”

US officials have argued the current precision HIMARS munitions, called GMLRS, offer plenty of firepower and range for Ukraine’s current needs with the ability to strike the vast majority of Russian targets.

“We believe that we’re providing the Ukrainians with the range of capabilities that are commensurate with the fight that they’re executing based on the requirements that they’ve identified for us,” the Pentagon’s Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Sasha Baker said Friday. “We really believe that the most critical requirements for Ukraine right now is the GMLRS munition that can reach most of the targets that they have identified within Ukrainian territory,” said Baker.

Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian land and Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling has done little to deter western support for Ukraine’s attacks against them to re-claim territory and many officials point to Ukraine’s repeated strikes in Crimea – taken by Russia in 2014 – as evidence that Russia’s threats are bluster.

“Ukraine has the absolute right to defend itself throughout its territory, including to take back the territory that has been illegally seized in one way or another by Russia,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday in response to a question from CNN.

“Because there is no change at all in the territory that is being annexed by the Russians as a matter for us or for the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians will continue to do what they need to do to get back the land that has been taken from them. We will continue to support them in that effort.”

CNN’s Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

CNN · by Alex Marquardt · October 3, 2022


13. Why Ukraine Is the Only Country Using the Soviet Union’s Secret T-64 Tank



Why Ukraine Is the Only Country Using the Soviet Union’s Secret T-64 Tank

19fortyfive.com · by Sebastien Roblin · October 3, 2022

Since 2014, the formerly obscure T-64 tank has emerged as an icon of Ukrainian resistance against Russian invasion. Designed and manufactured exclusively in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv between 1962 and 1985, the secrecy-shrouded Soviet super tank pioneered numerous technologies and introduced a compact design philosophy now considered quintessentially Russian.

In battles raging across Ukraine today, Kyiv’s T-64s — many sporting armor and infrared sight upgrades — still hold the line against Russian tanks and fighting vehicles. This article explains the origins and revolutionary impact of the T-64. A companion article looks at how Ukraine modernized the T-64, as well as its record battling Russian invasion in 2014-2015, and again in 2022.

Soviet Tank Rivalry

During the 1950s, designer Alexander Morozov of the Kharkiv Design Bureau sought to develop a successor to the ubiquitous Soviet T-54/55 tank that might outmatch the forthcoming generation of NATO tanks.

Already, the Ural tank factory in Russia was preparing production of the T-62, which was essentially an enlarged T-55 with a powerful smoothbore 115 mm D-68 gun and slightly improved armor. Morozov instead built several Object 430 prototypes at Kharkiv’s Malyshev factory combining a 4TD opposed-piston engine and transmission system dramatically smaller than the T-54’s.

Pushing the weight-saving further, in 1961 Morozov moved onto Object 432, which combined an improved 5TDF diesel engine and the T-62’s 115-millimeter gun with an electro-hydraulic autoloader capable of shooting 8 rounds per minute. This wasn’t strictly faster than a human loader — what it meant was the design did not need a human loader at all, downsizing the tank’s crew to three. The resulting compact, lower-profile T-64 could achieve a higher degree of armor protection at lower weight.

Morozov further incorporated composite armor in which plates of hardened steel sandwiched layers of fiberglass, aluminum, and later corundum. Compared to the 275 millimeters of steel armor protecting the contemporary U.S. M60 Patton tank, the T-64’s expensive armor, known as K-formula, achieved 370-440 millimeters of protection on the front hull and turret. Moreover, it was effectively 33% thicker against the shaped-charge HEAT warheads used in portable anti-tank weapons.

The T-64’s ability to cram superior armor and firepower in a relatively light chassis brought an end to Soviet development of heavy tanks like the T-10. The lower weight mattered because the Red Army had ambitious plans for a trans-European road trip if World War III broke out. It needed optimal fuel economy and compatibility with bridges supporting lower weight limits if its tanks were to roll all the way to Paris.

Kharkiv built 600 original-model T-64s, which entered service in 1967, before moving on to the T-64A. This variant introduced the punchier, stabilized 125mm D-81T gun, which could penetrate around 250 millimeters at a range of 1.5 miles. NATO Patton and Centurion tanks at the time used 105 mm guns that would have struggled to pierce the T-64’s frontal armor at range until more advanced depleted-uranium shells were introduced in the 1980s.

The T-64A also introduced new night sights and a periscope coupled with an infrared spotlight, a more accurate coincidence rangefinder, tweaks to the armor, extra storage spaces, an external remote-control 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun, and suspension on the fourth road wheel. It also could operate fully sealed against contamination by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and it could ford rivers up to 5 meters deep with a field-installable snorkel. Many of these upgrades were retrofitted into the original T-64s under the designation T-64R.

Cold Warrior Kept in the Scabbard

Weapons combining multiple new technologies often suffer major teething issues until the bugs are ironed out, and the T-64 was no exception. Its autoloader initially failed to work once every three shots on average. The 5TDF engine failed every 89 hours of use on average, falling far short of the 500-hour target. While technical flaws were eventually corrected, their severity incurred the disfavor of Soviet officials.

Despite these problems, the T-64 was undoubtedly a premium tank, costing over twice as much as the T-62 (62,000 rubles versus 143,000 in 1973) and nearly four times as many factory hours to build (22,564 hours compared to 5,855), according to tank historian Steven Zaloga. And the T-64’s advanced systems and smaller 3-man crew required more extensive crew training.

A Soviet T-64 of the 21st Motor Rifle Division in Perleberg, East Germany, in the 1980s.

Model Combat Weight (US tons) Main Gun Secondary Weapons Frontal Armor (Kinetic) Frontal Armor (HEAT) Speed (mph) Range (internal /aux. tank) T-64 39.7 115mm D68 7.62mm coax MG 395 450 40 403 miles T-64A 41.9 125mm D81T 7.62mm coax MG 410 500 37.6 373/435 miles T-64B 43 125mm 2A46-2 12.7mm turret mg, 7.62mm coax MG, Kobra missile 410 500 37.6 373/435 miles T-64BV 46.7 125mm 2A46M-1 520 950 37.6 373/435 miles Numbers derived from T-64 Battle Tank: The Cold War’s Most Secret Tank by Steven Zaloga.

Thus the Soviet Union reserved T-64s for its own use, allocating them to forward-deployed armies in Eastern Germany and keeping them ready to roll into battle if needed against the Chieftain tanks of the British Army of the Rhine. Despite this, secrecy measures concealed the T-64’s existence from NATO until 1976.

As a result, none of the 13,000 T-64s built saw combat during the Cold War, save for a handful deployed to Afghanistan in 1980 and swiftly withdrawn due to engine troubles. However, technologies pioneered by the T-64 made their way to the more affordable T-72 designed at the Ural factory. (The T-72’s carousel autoloader was configured differently, however, as you can see here.) Furthermore, the Leningrad Kirov plant devised a newer premium tank based on the T-64: the nimble gas-turbine powered T-80.

Meanwhile in 1976, the final T-64B model entered production, incorporating the T-72’s newer 2A46M cannon and the 1A33 fire control system. This tank could shoot missilesnamely the supersonic 9K112 Kobra (AT-8 Songster), which could penetrate 600-700 millimeters of armor out to a maximum range of 2.5 miles.

9K112 Kobra. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The radio-command-guided Kobra was the world’s first operational gun-launched anti-tank missile. While a tank’s main gun is more effective at ordinary combat ranges (under 1.5 miles), guided missiles are far more likely to hit more distant targets.

Gun-fired missiles conveniently don’t require separate launchers, but they do necessitate expensive sights and fire control systems. Thus a much cheaper T-64B1 subvariant without missile capability was also built. A few years prior to production ending in 1987, the T-64BV was introduced, integrating Kontakt-1 explosive reactive armor bricks and nearly doubling effective frontal protection from HEAT munitions.

T-64 Spinoffs

Like other Soviet tanks, the T-64’s hull was adapted for a variety of combat support roles, starting with the MT-T artillery tractor. The MT-T in turn served as the basis for the powerful 2S7 Peony and 2S19 Msta-S long-range howitzers, and the S-300V long-range air/missile defense system. All have seen extensive combat use by Russia and Ukraine.

The MT-T also spawned the BAT-2 CEV, an armored engineering vehicle equipped with a dozer blade, soil-ripping spike, and a 2-ton crane that can also transport a five-man sapper squad into battle. It also inspired the 24-ton PTS-2, a large amphibious tractor that can carry 75 troops or a light APC. In fighting in 2022, Ukrainian PTS-2s helped the defenders of Severodonetsk retreat across the Siverski Donets river in July, while Russia is using PTS-2s to resupply its imperiled bridgehead at Kherson.

Ukrainian troops used amphibious PTS-2 vehicles in the retreat from Severodonetsk. https://t.co/beA5hIxTnz pic.twitter.com/H7wYtmQupn
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 5, 2022

The Post-Soviet T-64

At the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Ukraine held more than 2,300 T-64s in operational units. Kyiv decided to retire its T-72s and T-80s in favor of an all-T-64 fleet. Smaller numbers of T-64s were retained by Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, but these have all been retired. However, Russia is thought to have 2,000 T-64s in storage, though it has given some of those to pro-Russian separatists.

The T-64 saw its baptism of fire in June 1992 during the Moldovan civil war, when Russian separatists assaulted the Bender/Tighina bridge with six T-64BVs largely denuded of their reactive armor. These tanks were obtained from Russia’ 14th Army. Two were knocked out by Moldovan Rapira 100 mm anti-tank guns, and another by a rocket-propelled grenade. But they in turn knocked out several guns and APCs and overran Moldovan defenses.

Ukrainian troops used amphibious PTS-2 vehicles in the retreat from Severodonetsk. https://t.co/beA5hIxTnz pic.twitter.com/H7wYtmQupn
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 5, 2022

A handful of T-64s were also transferred to UNITA rebels during the Angolan civil war. Several of these were destroyed or captured.

Today, Transdniestria’s Russian separatists retain 18 to 20 T-64s, while Uzbekistan’s army still has roughly 100. Ukraine also refitted T-64B1Ms for export to Congo DRC, customized with improved air conditioners, turret ‘basket’ storage, and domestic Nozh reactive armor. In 2014 Ukraine diverted these for its own combat use in the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov battalion, but 25 were finally delivered to Congo between 2016 and 2020.

The T-64 introduced technologies and design features that were integrated into every subsequent Soviet and Russian tank design. Had Russia never invaded Ukraine, the T-64 would have remained a technical curiosity compared to the thousands of T-54, T-62, and T-72 tanks in service across the globe.

Putin’s invasion has instead thrust the Soviet super tank into the most intensive mechanized warfare of the 21st century to date — not the blitz of Western Europe it was built for, but a defensive war of national survival.

A companion piece describes the T-64’s record battling Russian invasion in 2014-2015 and 2022, and details the post-Soviet variants developed by Ukraine, including the T-64BVM and the T-64BM ‘Bulat.’

Sébastien Roblin writes on the technical, historical and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including The National InterestNBC NewsForbes.comWar is Boring, and 19FortyFive, where he is Defense-in-Depth editor. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China. You can follow his articles on Twitter.

19fortyfive.com · by Sebastien Roblin · October 3, 2022





14. ‘Lots of heavy fighting ahead’: U.S. officials urge caution after Ukrainian gains






‘Lots of heavy fighting ahead’: U.S. officials urge caution after Ukrainian gains

Politico

Kyiv’s forces over the weekend captured the city of Lyman, a strategic railway hub, and continued to push east into the Donetsk region.


By LARA SELIGMAN

10/03/2022 03:23 PM EDT

Updated: 10/03/2022 04:38 PM EDT


Ukrainian soldiers carry ammunition for a Ukrainian D-30 howitzer near Siversk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. | Inna Varenytsia/AP Photo

10/03/2022 03:23 PM EDT

Updated: 10/03/2022 04:38 PM EDT

The U.S. assesses that Ukraine’s battlefield gains on the eastern and southern fronts over the past three days are strategically important, but Kyiv is still far from a decisive victory, according to U.S. officials.

In the east, Kyiv’s forces over the weekend captured the city of Lyman, a strategic railway hub, and continued to push east into the Donetsk region. In the south, Ukrainian soldiers broke through Moscow’s defensive lines in the Kherson region, gateway to the port city of Odesa.


These gains are a significant blow to Vladimir Putin, coming just days after he declared that Russia is annexing those regions — Donetsk and Kherson — as well as Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk after a series of sham referendums last week. On the home front, Putin is also facing challenges in mobilizing new troops for the fight, with reservists showing up with little training or equipment.


Ukraine’s victory in Lyman undermines Putin’s foothold in the eastern Donetsk region and “could turn into a cascading series of defeats for the Russians,” retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, former national security adviser, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“What we might be here is really at the precipice of really the collapse of the Russian army in Ukraine,” McMaster said. “They must really be at a breaking point.”

But current officials cautioned that Kyiv’s most recent gains should not be overstated, and that Russian forces are holding steady in other areas such as nearby Bakhmut, in the Donetsk. In the north, Russian forces are shelling the town of Kupiansk, which Ukraine continues to defend, the senior military official said.

The fight in the Donbas will be particularly grueling, as Russian forces are fighting from existing trenches and shelters they’ve held for years.

“There’s lots of heavy fighting ahead,” said a Defense Department official, who like others quoted in this story asked for anonymity to discuss internal assessments. Another U.S. official added: “It’s important strategically, but they still have a long way to go.”

The Pentagon assesses that Russian forces have retreated east from Lyman to the city of Kreminna, consolidating there to rebuff any further Ukrainian advances, a senior military official said.

Moscow had been using Lyman as a logistics hub for resupplying forces along Russia’s forward line from Kharkiv to Kherson, so its liberation “is a significant operational accomplishment,” the military official said.

“Anytime that you remove any type of hub like that, it’s going to impact your ability to respond quickly,” the official said. “It’s going to impact your ability to essentially drive the pace of the operations.”

The advances in Kherson on Monday, meanwhile, represent a breakthrough after the incremental progress experienced by Ukrainian forces since they began their southern counteroffensive in September. Ukrainian troops burst through Russia’s defensive lines and advanced rapidly along the western bank of Dnipro River on Monday, recapturing a number of villages and threatening resupply lines for thousands of Russian troops.

In Kherson, Russian forces are essentially “in a defensive crouch,” the senior military official said.

“It shows the Ukrainians are capable of multiple operations,” said Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and retired CIA official. “It also will be key to follow-on operations to include potentially taking control of water supply for the Crimean peninsula.”

Looming over the battlefield gains is the simmering threat that the conflict could turn nuclear. Western officials are concerned Putin could use the annexations as an excuse to claim Ukrainian forces are attacking Russian territory and escalate the conflict, including potentially using a tactical nuclear weapon.

The U.S., however, has not received any indications that would prompt it to change its strategic posture, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on CNN Monday, adding “we’re watching this as closely as we can.”


POLITICO



Politico





15. TYFYS? Lawmaker files bill to thank troops ‘for our freedom’ instead


Give me a break. You cannot legislate patriotism. But as an aside the proper response to "thank you for your service" is "thank you for being an American worth fighting for."


But this kind of legislation is ludicris. Congress, please focus on getting substantive work done.



TYFYS? Lawmaker files bill to thank troops ‘for our freedom’ instead

militarytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · October 3, 2022

In a meaningless, performative, symbolic effort, a pair of lawmakers have asked their colleagues to endorse replacing the phrase “thank you for your service” — a phrase many troops and veterans already consider meaningless, performative and symbolic — with “thank you for our freedom,” which, to the authors’ credit, is somehow even more meaningless, performative and symbolic than the status quo.

Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., filed the non-binding legislation Thursday and promptly published a press release about it. The bill, which would do absolutely nothing outside of unraveling a yellow ribbon bumper sticker empire if passed, also has little chance of getting passed — the U.S. House is in recess while members run reelection campaigns, and the legislative session will end shortly after their return.

In a statement accompanying the bill’s announcement, Bergman, a retired Marine Reserve three-star general who oozes medically concerning amounts of motivation, said the “resolution will help ensure those of us blessed to call America home understand the personal importance of our servicemen and women’s sacrifice for our Nation.”

“All gave some and many made the ultimate sacrifice,” added the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., who did not serve in the military ... but is thankful for the freedom to run for reelection.

How many of Bergman’s campaign advertisements will mention the bill has not been specified, but we’re willing to place a $5 wager on that number being greater than zero. Our $5 pales in comparison, however, to the $106,702 the House Armed Services Committee member received from the defense industry during the current campaign, according to Open Secrets.

It remains unclear why the congressmen believe troops need to be continually thanked for “our freedom” after 20 years of near-fetishization of the military, be it in the form of trotting out service members at every professional sporting event, showering veterans in free food — just from the limited menu! — from Applebees, or guzzling Navy SEAL input on everything from bird house construction to slam poetry.

(Studies show “Get after it!” is the input 93.7% of the time.)

There has certainly been no shortage of thanks from Corporate America, hollow as much of it may be.

Meanwhile, it took years for the federal government to acknowledge the harm those who actually fought the wars endured from environmental hazards like burn pits. The long-overdue PACT Act to authorize and fund Global War on Terror-era toxic exposure benefits was reduced to a political football before it passed following massive outcry from veterans groups.

Inflation is currently crushing troops and their families as well, and pay and benefits increases meant to slow the bleeding simply aren’t able to keep pace.

Nothing a little “thank you for our freedom” from Congress can’t fix.

Observation Post is the Military Times one-stop shop for all things off-duty. Stories may reflect author observations.

About Davis Winkie and Jon Simkins

Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis about how the Cold War-era Defense Department influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.

Jon Simkins is a writer and editor for Military Times, and a USMC veteran.




16. FDD | Islamist cleric who called for fighting America, suicide bombings, dies in Qatar



Conclusion:


Perhaps Qaradawi did not have Iran’s ability to deploy militias, but he commanded a sophisticated soft power that Qatar had put at his disposal, one that has done a considerable amount of damage to the region and the world.

FDD | Islamist cleric who called for fighting America, suicide bombings, dies in Qatar

fdd.org · by Hussain Abdul-Hussain Research Fellow · October 3, 2022

An Egyptian cleric who, only five days after 9/11, called on Muslims to “fight the American military” and “fight the U.S. economically and politically,” has died at age 96. Yusuf al-Qaradawi had been living in Doha, where he enjoyed the sponsorship and largesse of gas-rich Qatar. He claimed to oppose autocracies and wanted them replaced by a special brand of “Islamist democracy,” leading many to mistakenly think of him as a moderate and a supporter of liberalization. Qaradawi also argued that Islam sanctioned suicide bombings.

Upon his death, Qatar used its Al-Jazeera network to eulogize Qaradawi, depicting the late cleric as a “scholar, and the founder of a school of moderation based on coupling the teaching of Sharia with the requirements of modern times.”

But, if modernization meant tolerating secular influence, especially from the West, there is no indication that Qaradawi ever supported it. On the contrary, Qaradawi wished to isolate the Muslim world from Western influence. Three days before he died, Qaradawi tweeted (in Arabic) that “a Muslim should not forget that Islam is complete, that we are not slaves of Western civilization, that we have our religion and the West has its religion.” Qaradawi viewed the world as monolithic blocs. He did not seem to imagine that Muslims lived in the West, or that native Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians had been living in Muslim countries long before Islam.

As a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 for signing a peace deal with Israel, Qaradawi was forced to live in Qatar, to which he had migrated in 1961. While in exile, he was vocal in his opposition to Egyptian autocracy, advocating for elections. Many Western scholars mistook Qaradawi’s instrumental use of democratic ideas for commitment to liberalism. After the cleric’s death, a UK-based professor of Middle Eastern studies praised Qaradawi for being a voice for “political liberalization of the Islamic world.”

But the democracy that Qaradawi called for was the one imagined by the Muslim Brotherhood and endorsed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Qaradawi argued that “democracy stipulated that the religion of the state is Islam, that Sharia is the source of legislation.” He also said that democracy mandated the creation of morality police that would “promote virtue and prevent vice.”

In the 1990s, the Muslim Brotherhood’s understanding of democracy as a “one man, one vote, one time,” led to a veritable civil war in Algeria. In Iran, Islamist “democracy” has resulted in at least two popular uprisings against the ruling clerics since 2009, which they put down with extreme violence. Over the past two weeks, Tehran has been busy suppressing a third one.

Qatar was not alone in expressing sadness for Qaradawi’s death. The “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the name the Taliban chooses for its ruling regime, issued a statement lamenting his passing. In Gaza, Hamas eulogized Qaradawi, saying “it had always been his wish to join [Palestinians] in their jihad,” and promising to continue the fight “until the liberation of Palestine,” that is, the destruction of Israel. Qaradawi endorsed Hamas’ suicide bombings against Israelis, even if they killed non-combatant women and children.

Unlike Qatar, the Taliban and Hamas, many Arabs on social media were not impressed by the late Egyptian cleric and accused him of “rejecting the pillars of Islam, as illustrated by his claim that the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, is not mandatory.”

Media outlets associated with Qatar’s Arab rivals — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt — such as the Saudi channel Al-Arabiya, succinctly reported Qaradawi’s death without much commentary. Given that Al-Arabiya had in the past described Qaradawi as “the top advocate of suicide bombings,” it seems that Qatar’s rivals decided to hold back on their criticism of Qaradawi, perhaps to avoid tension with Doha.

Qaradawi was controversial, radical, and an Islamist firebrand. In life, as in death, Muslims and Arabs have been divided over his legacy. What is certain is that the man left behind a vast archive of statements in which he called for violence and the establishment of a radical theology in the image of Iran’s Islamist republic, a troublemaking regime that has been destabilizing the Middle East and Gulf region for decades.

Perhaps Qaradawi did not have Iran’s ability to deploy militias, but he commanded a sophisticated soft power that Qatar had put at his disposal, one that has done a considerable amount of damage to the region and the world.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow Hussain on Twitter @hahussain.

fdd.org · by Hussain Abdul-Hussain Research Fellow · October 3, 2022



17. Turns out that Russian recruiting video loved by critics of the 'woke' US military was total BS


In their defense aren't most all recruiting videos less than accurate? (except for the Army commercial that said "We do more before nine o'clock than most people do all day." - "Good morning First Sergeant."


But you have to love who the critics who jumped on this so they could criticize their so called woke military.


Turns out that Russian recruiting video loved by critics of the 'woke' US military was total BS


It turns out that this Russian propaganda video was less than accurate.

BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED OCT 3, 2022 10:15 AM

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · October 3, 2022

Not too long ago, certain lawmakers and media personalities were positively drooling about a Russian military recruiting commercial that showed a muscular young man doing PT, jumping out of an airplane, and killing a terrorist with his sniper rifle.

In one memorable instance, the Russian commercial was juxtaposed with a U.S. Army recruiting commercial that featured the story of a soldier who grew up with two mothers, and shared widely across social media. That video went viral when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) retweeted it along with the comment: “Holy crap. Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea….”

The message was clear: Russian troops are virile, healthy, and strong super soldiers, who are fueled by raw testosterone to become Alpha males on the battlefield. Critics of President Joe Biden pointed to the video as evidence that the Russian military was masculine and strong, while the American military had become more feminine and — in their eyes — weak.


Subscribe to Task & Purpose Today. Get the latest military news, entertainment, and gear in your inbox daily.

But the performance of Russian troops in Ukraine over the past year serves as a stark reminder that expectations do not always meet reality. In fact, Russia’s army of supposedly ripped, barrel-chested, supermen has fought so poorly in Ukraine that the Russians have been forced to mobilize veterans who have been out of uniform for a decade or more. Pictures of white-haired men in Russian uniforms receiving their weapons are eerily reminiscent of Germany’s Volkssturm, which involved the recruitment of old men, including World War I veterans, during the last year of World War II.

Recalling all the Russian military’s failures in Ukraine since February would take far too much time, but it’s worth remembering some of the highlights. At the war’s outset, Russia attempted to swiftly capture Kyiv. The initial attack included an assault by Russian airborne troops on Hostomel airport, just 10 kilometers from Ukraine’s capital. But the Russian advance from the north ran out of fuel and became a 40-mile traffic jam. Eventually, the Russian military had to abandon its attempt to take Kyiv and the troops at Hostomel airport were forced to retreat.

The ignominious end to the Hostomel mission is not exactly how that viral Russian recruiting commercial portrayed Russia’s airborne operations. It is also one of many major setbacks for the Russians, who reportedly lost several general officers that were forced to micromanage their troops from the front because they didn’t trust their subordinates to do their jobs.

The Russian military was also hampered when its communications system broke down, so its troops and leaders started using cell phones that could be targeted by the Ukrainians.

Buy your own medicines. Get a tourniquet from a car first aid kit. You need panty liners for your boots. And tampons to plug bullet wounds. Welcome to the Russian army.

No jokes. She really does say all that. https://t.co/s1GvhDsyPD
— Paul Niland (@PaulNiland) September 27, 2022

The feared Russian warship Moskva, which helped capture Ukraine’s Snake Island in the opening days of the war, sank in April. The circumstances of what happened remain murky. The Ukrainians claim they struck the ship with two Neptune anti-ship missiles. The official Russian story is that the ship was damaged and later sank after a fire broke out aboard the vessel and set off its ammunition. Either way, the former pride of the Black Sea fleet has transitioned from a cruiser to a submarine, and the Ukrainians retook Snake Island at the end of June.

Russian tanks have proven so vulnerable to any sort of anti-tank weapon that more than 1,000 of them have been lost since the start of the Ukraine war. The Russian military’s tank tactics are not much better. In March, a large Russian column of tanks came within eight miles of Kyiv but they bunched up their vehicles on the road and became easy targets for Ukrainian artillery.

As for how well the individual Russian soldier has fought in Ukraine: let’s not forget the video of a Russian soldier running from a drone, who led the aircraft right back to Russian positions, which were then reportedly attacked by Ukrainian artillery. Another video showed how Russian troops were unable to do a single thing right when caught in a Ukrainian ambush. And then there was that time a group of Russian soldiers were trapped in an elevator.

In one battle alone, more than 400 of roughly 550 Russian troops who tried to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in May were killed, showing an appalling lack of tactical skill.

Indeed, the Russians have fared so badly in Ukraine that the recruiting commercial that so many people swooned over last year has been brutally parodied.

The lessons from all this are: 1) Don’t believe Russian recruiting commercials; 2) If you’re going to make snap judgements about a military’s strength, do it based on battlefield successes, not propaganda footage.

The latest on Task & Purpose

Want to write for Task & Purpose? Click here. Or check out the latest stories on our homepage.

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · October 3, 2022




18. How Marines Can Fight the Stifling of Independent Thought


Some good advice here:


Excerpts:


Marine Corps culture and its senior leaders and editors ought to act more in accordance with Gen. John Lejeune’s guidance about teacher-scholar by providing a reasonably graded on-ramp to encourage young leaders to write and express their thoughts and experiences. It is by writing and thinking that young leaders will develop their writing and thinking. Publications and classrooms should not be forums for crushing developing leaders or ideas. They should be forums for encouraging the development and maturation of people and ideas.
Authors and readers ought to avoid the prevailing culture’s point/counterpoint framing and discussion of issues. While such simplistic bifurcations of issues are popular with lawyers, politicians, and commentators on various media platforms, serious students of complex systems recognize multiple unique perspectives are essential to even beginning to understand the functioning and adaptations of complex systems. Moreover, we all ought to resist labeling and categorizing authors. Each person is unique, has a unique set of experiences and skill sets, and tends to orient and focus based on those traits.
Editors, readers, professors, and students ought to read articles as a reflection of the author’s current understanding of an issue—an understanding that hopefully will develop the learning and understanding of others—just as thoughtful, respectful critiques of an author’s work will act to further the author’s learning and understanding. Said more bluntly, articles should not be viewed as “partisan political positions” or “political narratives” that are rigidly held and result in DC-style “doubling down” when met with constructive criticism. Rather, if the Marine Corps truly values learning, then articles should be seen as a means of improving the learning and understanding of all, author and readers alike.
Ultimately, what matters is whether or not articles or papers contribute to accomplishing missions and making Marines.


How Marines Can Fight the Stifling of Independent Thought

Those entering the nation’s militaries and assuming positions of responsibility, like all citizens, are increasingly becoming products of these repressive intellectual environments.


The National Interest · by Keith T. Holcomb · October 3, 2022

The nation is suffering from the loss of open, respectful, inclusive, and professional dialogue. At the very time when the complexity and interrelatedness of issues require independent thinking from multiple perspectives, there has instead been a rise in powerful figures working with considerable skill to build and impose one narrative (one thought construct from one perspective) on all members of a group—in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, “one ring to rule them all.”

For years we have seen how both those in power and those seeking power have used a host of media outlets and techniques to impose narratives. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s claim that he is pursuing the“de-nazification of Ukraine” is a particularly egregious example of the power (and effects) of narrative, but many in the United States live in environments where one statement contrary to whatever the ruling narrative is on a particular issue can result in being labeled, thrust into a category, and forced to suffer the loss of a job, school seat, or position on a team.

Those entering the nation’s militaries and assuming positions of responsibility, like all citizens, are increasingly becoming products of these repressive intellectual environments. They have developed great sensitivity to what is acceptable thought, what can be expressed without concern, and what can be expressed only at the risk of losing a grade, a recommendation, or a much sought for position. They know that merely exploring, let alone advocating, unaccepted positions incurs significant risk. For them, it is a matter of great personal courage to red-team a superior’s plan or to challenge his orientation on any issue, tactical or otherwise.

And yet, the great complexity and interrelatedness of issues mandate multiple perspectives, multiple skill sets and experiences, and yes, much open, dynamic, and respectful collaboration to understand, frame, and solve problems. However, such an approach is anathema to those seniors with authoritarian inclinations, who, frustrated with sclerotic processes, so want results that they are more than willing to engage in stifling independent thought. And given the sensitivities already developed in juniors conditioned by dominating narratives, it is relatively easy for such seniors to suppress independent thought. In short, they win the narrative game and their decisions and actions proceed apace. The great tragedy, of course, is that those capability gaps and capability dependencies not fully vetted in transparent red teaming and minimally constrained experimentation can be exploited by aggressive enemies with no inclination to spare the egos of those who won’t allow themselves to be challenged.


Opening what is a rapidly closing, insular, and repressive culture will take time, thought, and commitment. It is too much to expect that improving our collective intellectual culture can be done quickly. But, we can begin by identifying some potential forums and guidelines with which to encourage independent thought and analysis. We can develop cognitive behaviors that help us work with complex systems. We can help each other learn.

In the not too distant past, various service-related publications and schools played constructive roles in helping to develop what came to be called maneuver warfare. They provided open forums for considerable spirited and mostly professional discussion. Publishers, editors, writers, readers, instructors, and students encouraged each other to learn and to grow; and in so doing, spurred much creative thought which culminated in capstone publications and operational concepts.

More importantly, the senior leaders of that era led by example. Distinguished veterans of the Vietnam War and survivors of the disastrous policies and strategies of Robert McNamara, his “whiz kids” and Gen. William Westmoreland, they resolved to rebuild the Marine Corps. Toward that end, they put themselves in the learning arena, they made themselves vulnerable, and they encouraged others to engage. They “cast their nets widely” from stock exchange traders to cognitive psychologists. They constantly questioned and re-oriented as they learned. And they not only accepted criticism, they encouraged it. Character and competence, not position and ego, were what mattered.

And so, we come to the critical issue: What first steps can be taken to encourage independent thinking in an era when those in authority choose orientations and facts to build narratives to dominate? What is to be done when the focus is on messaging and shifting narratives to manipulate and control rather than on leading and learning how changes and innovations might ripple through complex, interconnected national and international systems? In short, we recognize that, unlike the era in which we served, seniors are using a host of measures (non-disclosure agreements, suppression of critical articles, assignments, and so on) to limit and control independent thought and discussion.

In such a difficult environment, we question ourselves and others: Can schools and publications take constructive roles in developing independent thinkers capable of open, inclusive, respectful, and professional discussion? From a career standpoint, will authors and students perceive that it is just too dangerous to divest themselves of the notion that they must support service-level narratives? Will they, like tenured professors on civilian campuses, lose their positions for expressing thoughts counter to the dominant narrative? Is it possible for Marines to engage in spirited, aggressive red teaming of Headquarters Marine Corps ideas and narratives? Will Marines be encouraged to engage in pointed, detailed discussions, exercises, and experimentation that reveal capability gaps and capability dependencies before aggressive, opportunistic enemies exploit them? In short, will students and authors be afforded the opportunities to challenge this era’s version of McNamara and his whiz kids?

Toward the hopeful end that schools and service-related publications might dare to develop independent thinkers in this difficult environment, we propose some initial, first-cut guidelines that we hope others will further develop.

Proposed Guidelines:

Marines ought to be able to present their thinking without fear of reprisal or personal attacks. Marines ought to be able to present their thoughts and ideas as clearly and directly as possible, without great concern about political correctness or risk to career. Said more directly, no waffling, wordy, or carefully phrased sentences: Authors need to say what they mean so that others can understand and respond appropriately.

The quality of a Marine’s thinking ought to matter more than rank or position. Yes, we should be respectful of seniors. But we should be respectful of all who care enough about an issue to try to express their thinking or lessons learned on a particular matter. While some authors may lack well-developed writing skills, editors and readers should be more interested in content. For example, the combat lessons a young developing leader is trying to share about his/her first combat experiences ought to be valued more heavily than whether or not his/her writing skills are sufficiently nuanced to avoid bruising the ego of a senior whose directives added to the confusion of that first engagement.

Marine Corps culture and its senior leaders and editors ought to act more in accordance with Gen. John Lejeune’s guidance about teacher-scholar by providing a reasonably graded on-ramp to encourage young leaders to write and express their thoughts and experiences. It is by writing and thinking that young leaders will develop their writing and thinking. Publications and classrooms should not be forums for crushing developing leaders or ideas. They should be forums for encouraging the development and maturation of people and ideas.

Authors and readers ought to avoid the prevailing culture’s point/counterpoint framing and discussion of issues. While such simplistic bifurcations of issues are popular with lawyers, politicians, and commentators on various media platforms, serious students of complex systems recognize multiple unique perspectives are essential to even beginning to understand the functioning and adaptations of complex systems. Moreover, we all ought to resist labeling and categorizing authors. Each person is unique, has a unique set of experiences and skill sets, and tends to orient and focus based on those traits.

Editors, readers, professors, and students ought to read articles as a reflection of the author’s current understanding of an issue—an understanding that hopefully will develop the learning and understanding of others—just as thoughtful, respectful critiques of an author’s work will act to further the author’s learning and understanding. Said more bluntly, articles should not be viewed as “partisan political positions” or “political narratives” that are rigidly held and result in DC-style “doubling down” when met with constructive criticism. Rather, if the Marine Corps truly values learning, then articles should be seen as a means of improving the learning and understanding of all, author and readers alike.

Ultimately, what matters is whether or not articles or papers contribute to accomplishing missions and making Marines.

Keith Holcomb is a retired USMC brigadier general whose commands included the 8th Marines and 2nd Light Armored Infantry Battalion. His last assignment was as the Director of Training and Education Division.

Image: DVIDS.

The National Interest · by Keith T. Holcomb · October 3, 2022




19. Is Our Competitor ‘China’ or the Chinese Communist Party?



Conclusion:


Using the correct words to distinguish between the CCP regime and the Chinese people and their ancient civilization is one way to slow Xi’s march toward his goals—and protect the American people both strategically and at home. Defense leaders and writers should take note.


Is Our Competitor ‘China’ or the Chinese Communist Party?

We should carefully choose the words we use when discussing our strategic competitor.

BY JIMMY CHIEN

OCTOBER 3, 2022 03:54 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Jimmy Chien

Words, chosen deliberately, can strengthen or weaken nations. Too often, we conflate “China” and the “Chinese Communist Party,” bolstering the authoritarian regime at the expense of our own strategic goals.

Understanding why requires a bit of linguistic and cultural history. “China,” written 中國, was likely first used during the Warring States period (475-221 BCE) to refer to the central states of the Yellow River valley. During the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE), it came to describe the civilization at large. The nation-state, however, was not called 中國, but took the name of whichever dynasty was in power at the time.

The dynasties are gone, but this tradition endures. In 1949, control of the traditional territory of “China” passed to the People’s Republic of China (中華人民共和國), a state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. As understood by Chinese people, the PRC is the political power that controls the civilizational territories of China. Many Chinese-language speakers refer to the PRC as 中共 (pronounced zhong-gong), not 中國 (zhong-guo), emphasizing the second character 共, because it denotes the Communist Party.

The CCP has long aimed to eradicate this distinction between country and party. Current leader Xi Jinping, even more than his predecessors, has striven to condition the people of China to view themselves not as members of the ancient Chinese civilization, but as cogs in the CCP machine. As explained by BBC’s Shanghai correspondent, “the Communist Party strategy has been to try to morph the Party and the machinery of government and the perception of the nation of China into one.”

This has proven difficult. Of the 1.4 billion people in the PRC, just 95 million, or 6.7 percent, are CCP members. The Chinese people have a long history of independent thoughts and actions, far removed from centralized authority. Most identify with their locale—village, city, or province—rather than the state at large. As the Yuan Dynasty proverb goes, 天高皇帝遠 (“Heaven is high and the emperor is far away”).

But Xi’s quest is abetted by the widespread use, in English-language commentary, of “China” to mean the PRC. Positive news brings pride to the Chinese people, while the CCP takes all the credit. And negative news invokes a sense of attack on the civilization at large. This is one of Xi’s most successful tactics: rallying the Chinese people against foreign attacks on 中國 (China). By understanding the differences and correctly using the terms “PRC,” “CCP,” “China,” and “Chinese,” the United States can help the Chinese people defend their cultural and historical identity from sublimation into CCP’s manufactured reality.

Separating the terms not only complicates the CCP’s strategy, it also makes plainer the flaws in Samuel Huntington’s infamous clash-of-civilizations thesis, which argues that differences in cultures make conflict inevitable. One acolyte is Kiron Skinner, the Trump-administration State Department policy-planning director who advanced the notion that competition with the PRC was a unique challenge: “a fight with a really different civilization…a competitor that is not Caucasian.” But as the University of Massachusetts’ Paul Musgrave has written, “whether great-power relations will be cooperative or conflictual” turns on whether we see competition in terms of culture and identity, or in terms of who’s actually running things. Chinese people and those of Chinese heritage are separate from the CCP and the PRC state. By incorrectly using these terms interchangeably, we form and reinforce biases that all Chinese people and members of the diaspora are associated with the CCP and PRC.

The harm we do in conflating the terms extends to our own shores and our own people. Violence against Chinese-Americans, and Asian-Americans in general—long present in American society—is rising again because many mistakenly blame Asian-Americans for the outbreak of COVID-19. When media outlets and political leaders say “China” or “Chinese,” many listeners do not make the distinction between agents of the PRC and people of ethnic Chinese heritage. UCSD professor Susan Shirk has said that overstating the Chinese threat could produce “an anti-Chinese version of the Red Scare that would put all ethnic Chinese under a cloud of suspicion,” and 22 million Asian-Americans could become collateral damage.

Using the correct words to distinguish between the CCP regime and the Chinese people and their ancient civilization is one way to slow Xi’s march toward his goals—and protect the American people both strategically and at home. Defense leaders and writers should take note.

The views expressed in this piece are strictly the author’s and do not reflect the position of the United States Air Force, or the Department of Defense.

defenseone.com · by Jimmy Chien



20. From HIMARS to helos: What the US has given Ukraine [GRAPHIC]


Graphic at the link: https://breakingdefense.com/2022/10/from-himars-to-helos-what-the-us-has-given-ukraine-graphic/?utm


From HIMARS to helos: What the US has given Ukraine [GRAPHIC] - Breaking Defense

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · October 3, 2022

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III meets with Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Nov. 18, 2021. (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)

WASHINGTON — With last week’s Pentagon announcement of another eye-watering $1.1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, the US has committed more than $16.2 billion in defense aid since Russia’s invasion in February. And while some of that money covers training and other personnel issues, a majority of it is in cold, hard weapons systems — from HIMARS long-range artillery to anti-tank Javelins to over 60 million rounds of small arms ammunition.

Breaking Defense has been tracking the arms shipments, and below is an updated infographic based on the Defense Department’s latest release [PDF].

Breaking Defense graphic showing US security assistance to Ukraine. (Breaking Defense)

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · October 3, 2022



21. The U.S. Has a Microchip Problem. Safeguarding Taiwan Is the Solution.






The U.S. Has a Microchip Problem. Safeguarding Taiwan Is the Solution.

A Chinese attack on the island would imperil the world’s supply of semiconductor components. Here’s how to offset that threat.

By Jason Matheny


The Atlantic · by Jason Matheny · October 3, 2022

Taiwan’s domination of the microchip industry has been a boon to the global economy, but it now presents an acute challenge. Taiwan today manufactures most of the world’s microchips, which are in practically everything: cars, coffee makers, combine harvesters. The whole world hums with microelectronic components—including about 92 percent of all advanced microchips—that are made largely in a handful of factories on an island less than one-tenth the size of California. Little more than 100 miles away across a strait lies mainland China, which views Taiwan as a breakaway region and has vowed to bring it back under its control.

Were China to seize Taiwan, one of two things could happen to the chip supply: The microchip factories could end up being controlled by China, or they could be destroyed in a conflict. Either way, a global catastrophe would ensue. In the first scenario, China could decide to limit access for the U.S. and its allies to advanced chips, significantly reducing American technological, economic, and military advantages. But if the second scenario came to pass, the world could experience an economic crisis the likes of which we have not seen since the Great Depression.

Luckily, Taiwan is now watching and learning from Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion. And the lessons Taiwan is taking from that conflict suggest how the U.S. can help Taipei—and itself—avoid either dire outcome.

Derek Thompson: The everything-is-weird economy

One of the island’s major manufacturers is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited. An enterprise founded in 1987 through a government initiative, it now makes many of the world’s most essential microchips for Nvidia, Qualcomm, Apple, and thousands of other companies. Thirty-five years ago, when TSMC’s foundries were just getting started, the U.S. firm Intel made about 65 percent of the world’s advanced chips. Today Intel controls less than 10 percent, while TSMC’s share is 53 percent.

To see why this matters, look no further than the U.S. auto industry, which forecast an estimated $210 billion in lost revenue last year after factory slowdowns caused by the pandemic led to bottlenecks in the supply chain for automobile chips. In the event of a conflict with China, the destruction of Taiwan’s microchip manufacturing would mean not a slowdown or a bottleneck but a sudden and complete stop of nearly two-thirds of the world’s supply for the industries that depend on it.One view about the risks associated with Taiwan’s near-monopoly in microchip manufacturing in the face of a looming, belligerent China is that it is still, in essence, a supply-chain problem. Therefore, the best way out of this potential catastrophe is to build up production elsewhere, including in the U.S. The recently passed bipartisan CHIPS Act, which will fund programs worth $53 billion, is explicit in its aim “to develop onshore domestic manufacturing of semiconductors critical to U.S. competitiveness and national security.”

Another position on Taiwan is that this issue is a strategic military problem, and the best way to respond to an invasion by China would be for the U.S. to leap to Taiwan’s defense. President Joe Biden expressed this view when asked, in a recent interview on 60 Minutes, if U.S. forces would defend the island. “Yes,” he said, “if, in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.”

Read: No more ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan

The problem with these approaches is that they both, in their different ways, misapprehend the significance of time. The idea of replacing microchip imports with American-made products undervalues Taiwan’s 40-year head start with its microchip industry—and it took at least a decade for the island to become globally competitive. A similar lag will apply to the U.S., which will probably need several decades at least of further investments of the same scale as the CHIPS Act before it can manufacture domestically most of the microchips it requires.

An additional complication is that TSMC’s operations have features that are hard to imagine replicating elsewhere. Its advanced-research division, for example, has engineers working in three shifts so that it can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week—“the Nightingale Army,” as they’re sometimes known, who are sacrificing themselves for this national purpose, Taiwan’s “silicon shield.”

The time issue with the idea of leaping to Taiwan’s defense is that if China attacks, it could be too late. Should China invade, the coastal-based microchip factories could be destroyed by the time the U.S. military responded. The world would already be well on its way to plunging off an economic cliff.

The U.S. does have a third option: make it too costly for China to invade Taiwan by enabling Taiwan to defend itself. Earlier this month, the Biden administration asked for, and Congress is expected to approve, a $1.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan. The package included anti-ship and air-to-air missiles, as well as an estimated $665 million to support Taiwan’s surveillance-radar program. But Taiwan probably needs more defenses to credibly deter an invasion.

Taiwan has an unfortunate history of spending too much of its limited defense budget on expensive platforms such as fighter aircraft and surface ships—neither of which is likely to survive the first days of a war with China. Some of the same types of arms that the U.S. has agreed to sell to Taiwan are currently in use by Ukrainians in their defensive war against Russia.

Even better, these sorts of systems—such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), drones, loitering munitions, anti-tank missiles, and sea mines—might be able to do the job at relatively low cost. For about a tenth of the investment of the CHIPS Act, Taiwan could build up a so-called porcupine defense with a “large number of small things.”

Such a strategy, already proving successful in Ukraine, could yield results within a couple of years, rather than decades. One holdup in the process of arming Taiwan as quickly as America might like is a bottleneck in U.S. arms manufacturing caused by—you guessed it—microchips. The problem is temporary, but it only goes to underline what a priority it is for the U.S. to ensure that Taiwan has the right defense systems to project its own security, in the most timely way possible.

The Atlantic · by Jason Matheny · October 3, 2022



22. Taiwan’s first English TV channel to tell its side of China story





Taiwan’s first English TV channel to tell its side of China story​

  • News, lifestyle and entertainment channel TaiwanPlus aims to give island a bigger voice internationally
  • Taiwan needs to be able to combat what Beijing says about the island and put the Taiwanese viewpoint out, culture minister says


Reuters

+ FOLLOW

Published: 3:31pm, 3 Oct, 2022​

By REUTERS South China Morning Post2 min

View Original


Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen at the TV operations launch of TaiwanPlus, in Taipei on October 3. Photo: Handout

Taiwan launched its first English-language news, lifestyle and entertainment television channel on Monday to give it a bigger voice internationally at a time when Beijing is squeezing the island’s footprint and seeking to assert sovereignty.

The government-backed TaiwanPlus began operations last year as a mostly online streaming platform and has been strongly supported by President Tsai Ing-wen.

Speaking at the launch ceremony, Tsai said the channel had already raised Taiwan’s international profile and would help as the island forges ever closer ties with “countries that share our core values of freedom and democracy”.

“The stories of Taiwan should be shared with the world,” she said. “With more and more people around the world taking an interest in Taiwan, it is more important than ever that we have a platform to bring Taiwan to the international community.”

Beijing, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, is increasingly active in English-language media, conveying the ruling Communist Party’s views to an outside audience, especially via state television’s English-language news channel China Global Television Network, or CGTN.

Beijing is also pressuring Taiwan’s international space, including forcing foreign companies to refer to it as being part of China on their websites and routinely carrying out military drills near the island.

03:26

US Vice-President Kamala Harris addresses China threat as she kick-starts her Asia tour

Culture Minister Lee Yung-te said Taiwan needed to be able to combat what Beijing says about the island and put the Taiwanese viewpoint out.

“Internationally our voice has not been fully heard. China continually disseminates that Taiwan is part of China, and lots of people believe that. You tell them that’s not the case, and they ask, why?” Lee said.

“So in the future we’ll be using Taiwan’s own media to explain to the international community why that’s not so.”

The TV channel is so far only available in Taiwan, but Lee said they were eyeing launching in the United States in the next six months.

Taiwan already has a handful of domestic English-language media, the most prominent of which is the newspaper the Taipei Times, founded in 1999 and published by the mass circulation Liberty Times.




23. Ukraine war 'could end with Putin deposed and Russia broken up'


Wow. That is quite an outcome.


Ukraine war 'could end with Putin deposed and Russia broken up'


Putin deposed, Russia broken up, and NATO in a face-off with China: As Ukraine sees a path toward victory and a desperate Vladimir hits the panic button, expert argues THIS is how the war could end

  • Putin has spent the last week ramping up his war in Ukraine, from 300,000 conscripts to nuclear threats 
  • But his bluster is aimed at hiding the fact that Russia is losing the war, as Ukraine recaptures territory  
  • Alp Sevimlisoy, of Atlantic Council think-tank, spoke to MailOnline about what Russian defeat could look like  
  • Putin would not survive the defeat, he argues, while Russia itself could break up leaving the West competing with China over the spoils and NATO in a face-off with Beijing

By CHRIS PLEASANCE FOR MAILONLINE 

PUBLISHED: 04:46 EDT, 4 October 2022 UPDATED: 07:23 EDT, 4 October 2022

Daily Mail · by Chris Pleasance for MailOnline · October 4, 2022

Land grabs, hundreds of thousand of conscripts thrown on to the front lines, and a nuke for anyone who dares stand in his way: Vladimir Putin has spent the past week doubling down on his war in Ukraine.

But his bluster belies a simple fact: Russia is losing the war, and he knows it.

The despot is desperate. His army is in tatters, his battleplans shot, he's burning through his cash reserves at an unsustainable rate, and winter is looming. Meanwhile Ukraine's army continues to advance across the country, giving Kyiv a viable path to victory. Which begs the question: What happens if Russia is beaten?

According to Alp Sevimlisoy - millennium fellow at think-tank Atlantic Council, who spoke to MailOnline - that would mean Putin being deposed, Russia itself breaking apart, and NATO in a face-off with China over the spoils.

The West must begin preparing for that eventuality now, he adds, otherwise it will open the door for Beijing to muscle into regions such as Siberia, central Asia, Africa and South America where it already has toe-holds but will see opportunities as Russian power fades.

'We have to move into vacuums, seek to exert influence, and then we have to face up to the People's Republic of China. China is a globally-connected superpower, and we have to combat them effectively,' he said.


Ukrainian troops, having routed Russian troops to the east of Kharkiv last month, are continuing to push east - taking the city of Lyman at the weekend and pushing into Luhansk oblast in the last 24 hours


Ukraine is also making gains in the south, breaking through Russian defensive lines on the Dnipro River and pushing towards the city itself from the west, threatening Putin's forces with a major retreat


Putin has tried to stem the rot by annexing regions, conscripting hundreds of thousands of soldiers and threatening nuclear war - but an expert has told MailOnline he faces being deposed with NATO ended up in a face-off with China

Back in February, when Putin first launched his 'special military operation', such as scenario was barely thinkable.

The West may have been rooting hard for Ukraine, but few thought victory was possible - they were outnumbered, outgunned, and hemmed in from three sides by the full force of the Russian military, then estimated to be second only to the US. It may take days, or weeks, perhaps months, but few doubted Kyiv would eventually fall.

But then followed a series of spectacular miscalculations by Putin and his generals. Poor preparation and planning, corruption that had rotted Russia's military stockpiles from the inside out, and poor morale among the troops combined to hand Ukraine the initiative - which its commanders exploited ruthlessly.


Alp Sevimlisoy, a fellow with the Atlantic Council think tank, believes Putin would not survive defeat - and that Russia itself may begin to crumble

The lightning advance on Kyiv that Putin had banked on to topple the regime and hand him control of the country within a matter of days slowed, then stopped, and finally culminated in a 'goodwill gesture' - aka a full-scale retreat - as the Kremlin instead set its sights on 'liberating' the Donbas.

Despite the wide open lands of Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland being infinitely more-suited to Russian tactics - devastating artillery bombardments followed by slow troop and tank advances - problems persisted. Again, the advance slowed, and then largely stopped.

Ukraine then delivered a devastating one-two punch: An assault on Kherson in the south which sucked in Russian troops, before a hook east out of Kharkiv broke Russian lines, precipitated a full-scale rout, and handed thousands of square miles back to Kyiv's control in a matter of days.

Russia has been left reeling. Its military may not be flat on the canvas yet, but a heavy blow has been landed and its knees have begun to buckle. A few more, and a knockout is on the cards.

Speaking just after Ukraine launched its Kharkiv counter-attack, Mr Sevimlisoy told MailOnline: 'The Ukrainians have the momentum - they are winning. But this conflict won't just end with both sides going away and saying 'that's that', it will reverberate throughout Russia and the region.'

That would mean Russian power fading not just from the likes of South America and Africa - where it has previously sent mercenaries, handed out loans and built infrastructure - but also from ex-Soviet satellite states such as Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Armenia, he believes.

And Russia itself could succumb to in-fighting, with rebellious regions seeking to break away from Moscow's control as power-brokers within the Kremlin turn on one-another and vie for Putin's throne.

Though the prospect of a Putin-free Russia may once have seemed the stuff of fantasy, Mr Sevimlisoy believes there is almost no way for him to survive defeat in Ukraine.

'I can't see a future for Putin [if he loses the war],' Mr Sevimlisoy said. 'How do you go back to your people after this? After you've weaponized food and energy, how do you go back to the world stage after that?'


A Russian rocket slams into a Ukrainian special forces Humvee somewhere in Ukraine as Kyiv's offensive in the south continues. According to reports on Telegram, all troops survived the encounter


Ukrainian special forces troops are pictured advancing across the south of Ukraine amid reports of a breakthrough in Russian lines that may have pushed Putin's men back more than 10 miles



Ukrainian tanks open fire on Russian positions in Kherson, amid a major offensive in the region that aims to recapture the city from Russia - which would be a major blow to Putin's invasion


Ukrainian troops are filmed ambushing Russian armoured vehicles using anti-tank launchers in Donetsk, leaving at least one of them destroyed


The wreck of a Russian Tigr armoured vehicle is abandoned on a forest road (bottom centre) in Donetsk as others fleet (top) following a Ukrainian ambush

He's not alone in thinking so. In the weeks since Ukraine's counter-attack, experts have openly questioned whether Putin is facing the end - Professor Grigory Yudin predicted so to Canada's CBC, ex-British army officer Richard Kemp mulled the idea in The Telegraph, and it was also debated by Foreign Affairs magazine.

Mr Sevimlisoy believes Putin's ouster would fire the starting pistol on all manner of in-fighting within Russia: Different branches of the military turning on one-another, regions bidding to break away from the country, and ex-Soviet satellite states looking for allies many miles away from Moscow.

'Russia's failure in Ukraine is failure of statecraft,' he said. 'There will be groups saying "this isn't how we should be governed". The military will say the campaign has been a failure.

'I think collapse will come from infighting in the intelligence services and military, and forces within Russia will see to use this as opportunity to say: "We can govern ourselves better and we have enough international support to push for independence." We should definitely support that.'

But there is no guarantee that whoever replaces Putin will be any less extreme. Many believe the heir-apparent to be Sergey Naryshkin, head of the foreign intelligence service, who is considerably more-hawkish than Putin when it comes to the West.

That means NATO's mission will be to 'contain Russia and the Russian armed forces', Mr Sevimlisoy argues, but also 'we'd be working to contain China.'

Russian power would wane over ex-Soviet satellite states such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - and even further abroad, in Africa and South America where Putin has been propping up dictatorial regimes with mercenaries, cheap loans and trade deals.

NATO must be ready to compete in all those arenas, or else risk losing them to Beijing's sway.

There are already signs that the rot is setting in. Kazakhstan, long an ally of Moscow, has been taking an increasingly defiant tone against Moscow - welcoming in more than 100,000 Russian men who had fled Putin's draft while also insisting that territorial integrity must be respected, though without directly mentioning Ukraine.

Azerbaijan and Armenia - another ally of Moscow - resumed fighting a few weeks ago as Moscow tried to shore up its western flank against the Ukrainians, with Armenia forced to acknowledge that Putin was not going to help defend its territory, despite the two being in a security pact.

And other nations that until now have given tacit support to Russia are beginning to voice concerns. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at the UN a few days ago, urged Moscow not to let the Ukraine war 'spill over' and to 'protect the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.'

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, having initially tried to tread a careful middle ground on Ukraine, delivered an even bolder rebuke - telling the Kremlin: 'Today's era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you about this.'

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also spoke out to say that he had talked with Putin at a recent summit in Uzbekistan, and believes 'he wants to end this as soon as possible' because 'the way things are going right now are quite problematic'.


Destroyed Russian tanks in a vehicle graveyard in Izium, which was recently recaptured by Ukrainian forces in a lightning offensive that routed Putin's troops and placed Ukraine firmly on the front foot


Russian reservists that have been conscripted into the army to fight in Ukraine fire a machine-gun on a training range somewhere in the Rostov region before being sent to the frontlines


A Russian reservist, called up as part of Putin's mobilisation order, practices firing a heavy machine-gun at a range in the Rostov region before being deployed into combat


Destroyed Russian armored vehicles left behind by Putin's army after they fled the city of Izium, in Kharkiv oblast

And Erdogan's position could be key to ending the war, Mr Sevimlisoy believes, because it would be Turkey together with Ukraine that would be key to containing the Kremlin after defeat.

'Russia will have to come to terms with the fact that it is no longer a world power, but a state - a Black Sea state whose system nobody seeks to imitate,' he said. 'And what we're going to see and are seeing now is that the domination of this region will be up to Turkey.'

Equipped with the latest-generation US fighter jets and hypersonic missiles, Mr Sevimlisoy believes that Turkey - alongside a Ukrainian military adept at fighting Russia - will be the key to Western influence in the region and further beyond into central Asia.

This is necessary, he says, because it will put NATO and the West in a strong position to compete with Beijing.

'In any region where Russian influence wanes, we have to make sure we have to create regional partnerships, to have permanent presences,' he said.

'We have to move into vacuums, seek to exert influence, and then we have to face up to the People's Republic of China. China is globally connected superpower, and we have to combat them effectively.

'We have far more military experience within NATO than the Chinese do, and that is to our advantage, but we have to put boots on ground in these places, to ensure that when the time comes to stand up to them - and that time will come - we're not playing catch-up.'

Daily Mail · by Chris Pleasance for MailOnline · October 4, 2022





De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com


V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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."


Company Name | Website
Facebook  Twitter  Pinterest  
basicImage