Quotes of the Day:

"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the Progressive movement is making life a little easier for all our people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the success of that movement." 

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated." 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There has never been a perfect government, because men have passions; and if they did not have passions, there would be no need for government." 

- Voltaire

1. The Army’s new chief has a plan and it’s all about warfighting

2. The fate of Army Special Operations Forces

3. Change of plans: US Army embraces lessons learned from war in Ukraine

4. Israeli strikes demolish entire Gaza neighborhoods as sealed-off territory faces imminent blackout

5. Beijing wants to be a peace broker in the Middle East. How has it responded to the Israel-Gaza war?

6. ‘As long as it takes’: US Army doubles down on Ukraine training goals

7. US may send second aircraft carrier toward Israel

8. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 10, 2023

9. Taiwan neighbors oppose US cutting Taipei support

10. China Doesn’t Get It

11. The End of America’s Exit Strategy in the Middle East

12. Israel’s Intelligence Disaster

13. What the Israel-Palestine Conflict Means for China-US Competition

14. Ukraine Situation Report: Kyiv Brace For Unprecedented Winter Drone War

15. How to Avoid a Second Front Between Israel and Hizballah

16. What Happened to Iron Dome? A Lesson on the Limits of Technology at War

17. Israel's War With Hamas Will Ripple Across the Region and the West

18. A new American strategy for Ukraine BY MICHAEL O’HANLON

19. Ukraine fatigue unlikely to reach Japan anytime soon

20. How the green beret became the symbol of US Army Special Forces

1. The Army’s new chief has a plan and it’s all about warfighting

Excerpts:

George, 58, talked with Army Times about his four focus areas, the generals he’s tasked with leading those efforts and what he expects from soldiers across the force.

The four areas sound simple but cover a wide range of what the Army, the largest service, must do to compete in today’s world and, if necessary, win in a conflict.

Those areas are warfighting, continuous transformation, strengthening the profession and delivering ready combat formations.

In George’s mind, each of those areas folds into a singular goal: Making the Army the world’s most effective fighting force.

The Army’s new chief has a plan and it’s all about warfighting

armytimes.com · by Todd South · October 9, 2023

Gen. Randy George begins his tenure leading the Army as it faces a period of rapid change, competition with adversaries across the globe and a strained force. The new chief of staff intends to fuel that fight by distilling the complex set of challenges facing the force into a singular goal: ensuring the service is the best warfighting organization it can be.

The general was once a private, having enlisted out of his Iowa hometown, but by 1984 he was at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Graduating in 1988, the infantry officer first saw combat with the 101st Airborne Division as part of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm only two years later.

That operational career has informed how he wants to lead the Army through the coming years amid old and new demands on a smaller Army that’s expected to be everywhere it’s needed when called.

George, 58, talked with Army Times about his four focus areas, the generals he’s tasked with leading those efforts and what he expects from soldiers across the force.

The four areas sound simple but cover a wide range of what the Army, the largest service, must do to compete in today’s world and, if necessary, win in a conflict.

Those areas are warfighting, continuous transformation, strengthening the profession and delivering ready combat formations.

In George’s mind, each of those areas folds into a singular goal: Making the Army the world’s most effective fighting force.

Preparing for war

To lead this effort, George intends to draw on leaders with a lot of stars on their shoulders — Gen. Charles Flynn, over at U.S. Army Pacific, Gen. Andrew Poppas, with Forces Command, and Gen. Darryl Williams, of U.S. Army Europe and Africa.

Those three generals either oversee forces overseas directly or, as in Poppas’ case, manage all of what flows those forces into planned or emergency deployments.

Much of the process is working, but refining and improving the system, George said, will improve readiness for the Army and the joint partners it supports in every theater.

Gen. Charles A. Flynn, commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific, receives a farewell salute from Capt.. Joshua Aquinde, commander of the 230th Engineer Company at the Hawaii Army National Guard Puunene Armory, Maui, Aug. 15, 2023. (Spc. Tonia Ciancanelli/Army)

“The Army is doing a great job meeting all of our requirements globally — I want us to continually look at how we get better at managing home station training, [operational tempo], and transformation so units have the appropriate time to meet their requirements and get the time they need to rest, refit, and stay connected with their families,” George said.

One of the ways he expects to do that is to reduce the strain on commanders, especially lower-echelon leaders.

He shared an example wherein even a company-level commander could be responsible for a 118-page property book. Much of that gear may have served a purpose at one point but is either so rarely used or not needed for combat that it’s simply weighing down the commander and their unit with added inventory, maintenance and other duties.

“If you’re spending time laying out equipment, servicing equipment that you don’t use or need or are not going to combat with, then we shouldn’t have that inside of the formation,” George said.

The chief wants the Army to find ways to conduct “passive inventory,” which entails electronic tracking of materials, instead of people hauling out gear and marking paper sheets to know what they have and where it is — similar to how Walmart or Amazon might review their wares.

He wants to cut obsolete or irrelevant equipment from those property books and has a pilot program starting this month to do so.

Maj. Gen. David Doyle, commanding general of the 4th Infantry Division and Fort Carson and Command Sgt. Maj. Alex Kupratty, command sergeant major of the 4th Infantry Diviision and Fort Carson, Colorado welcome the then-Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Randy George and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael R. Weimer during a visit to Powidz, Poland, Aug. 26, 2023. (Spc. Joshua Zayas/Army)

The end result would buy back time for commanders and soldiers, he said.

“What it should do is free up more time to train but it should also make it easier for going home at night, spending time with their family,” George said. “If they save 100 hours and they spend 20 more hours at the range and 80 hours off, I’m good with that. That’s 20 more hours on the range.”

To put that in motion, George has tasked Poppas at FORSCOM and Gen. Charles Hamilton, over Army Materiel Command to select two divisions to reduce their non-essential inventory within three months, starting in October.

“I’ve asked AMC and FORSCOM to spearhead this effort within XVIII (Airborne) Corps,” he said. “The goal is to get leaner, lighter, and less complex to allow those units to focus on their warfighting mission. There is no numeric goal tied to it, but I want unit commanders and NCOs to feed into this process.”

Gen. Andrew Poppas, commanding general, U.S. Army Forces Command, salutes a folded flag presented to him at the Eternal Heroes' Memorial Ceremony June 5, 2023 in Normandy, France. During the ceremony, Poppas presented veterans and veterans' family members with folded flags and coins. (Sgt. Erin Conway)

That effort may provide a template for the rest of the Army’s divisions, but with such a quick turn, there will also be ways to improve. But George doesn’t want to dissect those types of changes from the Pentagon, he wants units to do the work and see what happens.

“Part of that is moving out. We may not be exactly where we want but the point is when you say you’re going to do something, you need to show you’re serious about it,” George said.

The chief sees taking action in those types of scenarios as the best way to show the force he’s serious about change and prioritizing warfighting.

Beyond equipment, the acting chief wants to trim or eliminate much of the administrative strain of entering data or jumping through hoops with unnecessary online training.

In a recent presentation at Fort Moore, Georgia, the chief was explicit with the maneuver force audience.

“If there are things on your training schedule that are not making you more lethal or more cohesive where you’re taking care of your teammates, then you need to have a discussion about taking that off the schedule and not doing it,” George said.

He backed that up, telling commanders at Fort Moore to remove online pre-course requirements for one of their command courses.

Having led at nearly every operational level, George has watched the number of pieces of equipment in command centers on the battlefield grow exponentially, making the operational centers cumbersome and clunky.

Gen. Charles Hamilton, commander of Army Materiel Command, shakes hands Monday with retired Capt. Mike Rose, a Medal of Honor recipient, during Huntsville’s Memorial Day Ceremony and Laying of Wreaths at the Huntsville Madison County Veterans Memorial. (Jonathan Stinson/Army)

It’s a problem the Army’s been seeking to change for at least the past decade. But the chief has an even more ambitious aim than simply cutting out a few pieces of equipment or having a nice folding tent on the back of a vehicle that makes a mobile operations center.

George envisions a commander needing no more than a tablet to share an operating picture of his or her forces with their staff, sitting in the back of a Stryker or other such vehicle.

Transformation

Gen. James Rainey, over Army Futures Command, will lead the continuous transformation effort, evolving the Army to be ready for current and future threats.

Rainey spoke in September at the Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Moore, Georgia and laid out a stark assessment of what warfighting will demand of soldiers in an era that threatens peer-level, large-scale combat.

“I think we got to be a little more clear about the horror and difficulty of the fighting that we’re going to have to do,” Rainey said.

Gen. James Rainey, Commanding General, Army Futures Command, serves as the keynote speaker Mar. 29, 2023 at the AUSA Global Force Symposium, speaking on transforming the Army for war-winning future readiness. (Joseph Kumzak/Army)

And while technology is enabling some futuristic capabilities in cyber, data and electronic warfare that might have seemed impossible a few years ago, war is still war.

“Technology increases the punishment of unskilled commanders in untrained units,” Rainey said. “If you’re not good, if you’re not prepared, you’re going to pay for it at an unprecedented level.”

Long-range fires, cyber-infrastructure attacks, and psychological operations may keep the threat at bay initially, but regardless of the technological advancements, close combat — and the hellish hardship that comes with it — will still be what decides a war’s outcome.

“Somebody’s going to close that last 500m in the dark, smoked, the old-fashioned way,” Rainey said. “We better have rifle squads who can stab people on the objective, and we better have armor units that can set things on fire.”

At futures command, Rainey and his team are marrying the new tech with dirty old close combat in novel ways through the Army’s use of cross-functional teams that focus on areas such as the next generation combat vehicle, long range precision fires and soldier lethality.

“What I like about the [Cross Functional Teams] is that when there’s a problem, we pull the right experts together and they tackle the problem,” he said. “We just have to be adaptive and look at ways to transform to the changing character of war.”

Transformation doesn’t mean only new rifles and high-tech simulations for battlefield training. It also means easing the lives of soldiers and their families, helping them get the resources they need when they need them.

To that end, George has given guidance to the Installation Management Command to improve a smartphone application for garrisons across the service.

The apps would be tailored to the specific installation and would provide basic information such as commissary and gym hours, alerts for gate closures or emergencies and a way for installation commanders to communicate quickly and directly with post personnel and their families.

“I’ve provided guidance to improve what they’ve already put in place,” he said. “The bottom line is, we must provide soldiers and families with timely, reliable information, and we have the technology to do that.”

Making life outside of combat training easier, in George’s thinking, will allow soldiers to focus on those combat tasks, which is how the Army will win wars.

Or, as his top enlisted soldier, Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer, put it in remarks at Fort Moore.

“Warfighting is the reason we exist,” Weimer said. “But you can’t be a good warfighter if you don’t take care of your family, if you don’t take care of your teammates. You can’t be a good warfighter if you can’t manage your time. The list goes on and on and on. So, they’re not inseparable.”

Standards

Gen. Gary Brito, over Training and Doctrine Command, will guide the effort to strengthen the profession.

Brito recently told Army Times a key example of that starts with the first days of basic training, where drill sergeants now put recruits in leadership roles.

The old-school form of discipline meant drill sergeants shouting in recruits faces, demeaning them into submission. A new approach is to hold those recruits to stringent standards in their small teams, making them accountable and showing them why discipline matters in personal, tangible ways.

What’s left to be seen is how NCOs across the force will translate the Chief’s message. Soldiers have valid concerns, and likely personal experiences of overbearing leaders who dished out discipline for discipline’s sake, adding further demands to the already demanding lives of rank-and-file soldiers.

In recent presentations, high-ranking officers have told forces that they expect junior NCOs and officers to enforce Army standards. George admitted that the environment has changed since he was a young officer with the addition of social media.

But discipline is key and it’s a major focus for how George sees units and individual soldiers being successful.

Gen. Gary Brito, commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, discusses the AH-64 Apache Longbow Crew Trainer with Maj. Gen. Michael McCurry, U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker commander, at Fort Rucker, Alabama, November 16, 2022. (Lt. Col. Andy Thaggard/Army)

“I still know that discipline is required for a unit to be successful in combat,” George said. “We have to make sure we’re instilling that discipline every day.”

Crucial to having leaders and subordinates on the same level is to emphasize that discipline is every soldier’s responsibility, from private to general. But inside of that, commanders must clearly communicate the expectations.

As a Corps commander, George held Facebook Live town halls as well as post-physical training session meetings with staff and other senior leaders. Sometimes simply to ensure that everyone clearly understood his guidance.

“I expect everyone to do this and this is the standard and I expect you to enforce it,” he said.

If everyone is on the same page, George, Brito and others have said in recent months, then soldiers are more likely to understand the role of their battle buddy, their NCOs and officers, thus creating a more cohesive team that can be hardened through training and other aspects of Army life.

Combat Ready

Hamilton, over Army Materiel Command, will lead the effort of delivering combat ready formations.

Once he took over AMC earlier this year, Hamilton didn’t mince words about his command’s purpose — precise and predictive sustainment. That means a slimmer and more nimble approach to getting the right gear to those who need it.

Large logistical convoys heading to Forward Operating Bases are nothing but targets now.

And potential cyber attacks on U.S. infrastructure, including homeland military bases, could cut the steady flow of supplies. All that means that commanders at every level will need to know what they have, what they truly need and what they can do without in combat.

Some of those obstacles will be met by technology.

Hamilton told Army Times’ sister publication Defense News earlier this year that one example could be fewer and quieter generators. Battery-run generators provide a near-silent operation, helping mask a force’s signature. Finding better power management to reduce the need for 30 to 40 generators will free up space for ammunition, food and water on shipments to the force.

Readying the force goes beyond equipment, knowing what’s happening on the modern battlefield and funneling that into relevant training is key.

George expects current battlefield lessons, such as those in Ukraine, to be captured, analyzed and then, if validated, fed into training cycles from home station to the schoolhouses to the combat training centers.

One such example is a top-to-bottom look at putting unmanned aerial and ground systems at nearly every echelon and troubleshooting how they’re deployed in a variety of formations.

Those rapidly evolving systems are getting cheaper to produce and easier to use. He wants each formation thinking about how to use that technology at their level, and how to protect themselves from it.

The Fires Center of Excellence in Fort Sill, Oklahoma established a Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems University this past year that seeks to train commanders on best practices for the threat.

Such efforts also feed another focus: Fighting at echelon. In layman’s terms, this means that at the squad level, soldiers better know their roles and master their tasks, and that flows up the chain for platoons, companies, battalions and beyond. If half the squads in a platoon can’t perform, the platoon is ineffective, which has a ripple effect on what company, battalion and brigade commanders can expect from their formations.

In recent years there’s been an ongoing push to shift the Army’s unit of action from the brigade to the division, part of the Great Power Competition shift to readying the force for the possibility of large-scale combat operations. George doesn’t see the future fight as binary — brigade versus division.

“We need to be good at fighting at echelon,” George said. And that means all echelons from squad to corps.

While adding new tech, equipment and even headquarters to coordinate it all has remained a steady effort, those larger formations don’t fight well if the subordinate units don’t perform.

George made a point to say there are situations in the Indo-Pacific theater where an Army battalion or even company may serve as the focus of an effort or a joint force enabler. If soldiers can’t manage the company-level tasks, then that unit is ineffective.

Having led at every level, George has seen the massing of equipment in command centers on the battlefield. It’s a problem the Army’s been seeking to change for at least the past decade.

The Why

George had a long career before sitting as acting chief. He started out enlisted before becoming an officer. He served multiple combat tours, ran units at various levels and did his time in the Pentagon.

He’s seen a lot. And while there are always new things in the sight picture, many have a familiar feel.

The four-star said he hears a lot of talk about generational differences with new soldiers, how Generation Z youth expect leaders to explain their reasoning, not something past generations of soldiers may have even been allowed to ask.

Former U.S. Army Capt. Larry L. Taylor speaks with then-Vice Chief of Staff of the Randy A. George after receiving the Medal of Honor at the White House in Washington, D.C., Sept. 5, 2023. Taylor was awarded the Medal of Honor for his acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while serving in the Vietnam War. (Henry Villarama/Army)

As a brand new private, George remembers his platoon sergeant being the kind of soldier who would explain to troops what was going on, why it was important and what they had to do, even if it didn’t always make sense at their level.

“And sometimes doing something that wasn’t important, but we had to do it anyway,” he said. “I appreciated that he was truthful with everyone.”

Even Pvt. George had questions.

“I think I always wanted to know, it’s important to explain why,” he said.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

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armytimes.com · by Todd South · October 9, 2023

2. The fate of Army Special Operations Forces

Does this foreshadow how Congress will act on this issue?

Excerpts:

“Due to the recruiting crisis, the Army’s total end strength is decreasing so they are looking across the enterprise for places to cut,” said a congressional aide to Republican Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, whose state is home to U.S. Army Special Operations Command and U.S. Marine Forces Special Operations Command. “They’ve opted to make cuts to SOF [special operations forces] to maintain conventional capabilities that not everyone is convinced will have the same impact in either competition or potential conflict.”

Advocates for the special operations community say this is the time to leverage experience in irregular warfare to the U.S. military’s advantage. And the recipe for success requires two non-negotiable ingredients: time and people.

The fate of Army Special Operations Forces

America’s next combat operation is likely to prove irregular, but the Army is looking to make cuts to its lead force for that mission.

Defense News · by Todd South · October 10, 2023

They didn’t arrive under the cover of darkness, parachuting in from thousands of feet above, nor did they slip into a remote beach cove on a rubber boat.

The teams of special operations soldiers and Marines stood in line, handed over their passports and waited respectfully while airport security patted them down and scrutinized their government forms.

The more than a dozen men didn’t wear uniforms, but their civilian clothes, military haircuts and posture were a giveaway.

And that was all part of the plan.

These special operators — Green Berets from 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group; an Army psychological operations unit; and the Marine Corps Reserve 4th Civil Affairs Group — weren’t looking for a cloak-and-dagger operation. The members of this task force came to meet with local officials in Morgantown, West Virginia, otherwise known in this fictional military exercise scenario as the proud nation of Kanawhaton.

As the days of the Army National Guard-led Ridge Runner exercise unfolded and an aggressive neighboring state mounted simulated attacks, the team continued talking with local leaders about building goodwill through sanitation and education projects, coordinating with teams in the field, and spotting enemy soldiers from the fictional country of Watogan as they breached the Kanawhaton border.

The scenario that played out in the West Virginia mountains in June may have been fake, but it was similar to work that Army Special Forces have performed for years across the globe, nowhere more pronounced than in Ukraine, especially since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

As the U.S. military shifts its sights to new ground vehicles, missiles, robots and artificial intelligence that it hopes will modernize the force for the possible conflict between nations with standing militaries of their own, at least one Cold War lesson resonates: Preparing for the big fight is crucial, but soldiers are more likely to face an enemy’s bullets in smaller conflicts that don’t include peer-on-peer fighting, yet still influence the power and position of those peer nations.

Those conflicts may start small but can metastasize over time, as was the case in Vietnam and Afghanistan — and even Kanawhaton.

Both scenarios fall in the shadow of U.S. military competition with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and other adversaries, but also lie directly in the crosshairs of an age-old effort: irregular warfare.

A member of a Green Beret and Marine Civil Affairs task force fills out forms during a military exercise called Ridge Runner, held in June in West Virginia. (Todd South/Military Times)

Though irregular warfare can refer to smaller-scale conflict, its use in military competition is to gain political influence by providing training, expertise, and both military and nonmilitary aid to partner and allied forces. On the ground, that has historically meant small teams of special operators meeting, training and living with partner forces for extended periods of time.

Door-kicking operators will always be needed. But people skills, an understanding of language and culture, and relating to partner forces at an individual level may be in higher demand.

But this won’t happen overnight.

Special operations experts do tout their system, which involves training teams focused on psychological operations and civil affairs as well as operators before sending them repeatedly to the same region for years. Though time-consuming and founded on developing hard-earned experience, members of the special operations community point to this approach as a key factor to their success in areas such as Colombia, which saw its share of violence but never erupted into a transregional conflict after decades of special operations forces’ involvement.

Irregular warfare experts and research suggest these kinds of capacity-building approaches are critical for U.S. forces to have both an understanding an understanding of their allies in the area if a conflict erupts.

But strains on military recruiting, especially in the Army, threaten cuts to personnel in special operations and elsewhere. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth’s staff declined to comment on personnel planning matters when asked by Army Times.

“Due to the recruiting crisis, the Army’s total end strength is decreasing so they are looking across the enterprise for places to cut,” said a congressional aide to Republican Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, whose state is home to U.S. Army Special Operations Command and U.S. Marine Forces Special Operations Command. “They’ve opted to make cuts to SOF [special operations forces] to maintain conventional capabilities that not everyone is convinced will have the same impact in either competition or potential conflict.”

Advocates for the special operations community say this is the time to leverage experience in irregular warfare to the U.S. military’s advantage. And the recipe for success requires two non-negotiable ingredients: time and people.

“Conventional units are just not a natural fit,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas Trask, former vice commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

When did this shift start?

The 2018 National Defense Strategy first spelled out the official military move to great power competition — the “great power” part meaning essentially industrialized nations with large, standing militaries such as the United States, Russia and China; and “competition” representing what occurs before bullets start flying — usually involving nonconventional military and intelligence operations. That has mostly meant positioning troops and equipment in various strategic areas, partnering with nations against advanced forces like those of Russia and China, and training those partners to counter adversaries both before and during a potential conflict.

Irregular warfare was not mentioned by name in that document. But by 2020, an annex dedicated to irregular warfare emerged in the National Security Strategy.

The same document admonished readers to avoid temperamental funding and focus on the effort.

“We must not — and will not — repeat the ‘boom and bust’ cycle that has left the United States underprepared for irregular warfare in both great power competition and conflict,” the document stated.

The Army’s version of next year’s budget seeks to cut 10% to 20% of the military personnel within the service’s special operations force due to overall recruiting shortfalls and competing modernization priorities.

Numbers fluctuate, but Army Special Operations Command includes roughly 34,000 personnel. They fall under U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees an estimated 53,000 personnel, according to official figures.

The Army’s special operations force makes up more than half of all of U.S. Special Operations Command, and the service carries the largest contingent of special operations personnel among all the military branches.

Wormuth is expected to present her proposed recommendations for reductions to the service to Congress during the budget process.

The overall special ops community grew tremendously over the course of the post-9/11 era, adding personnel, missions and leadership at levels that U.S. Special Operations Command had not seen in its 36-year history.

While much of that work did include training partner forces, most of the missions focused on counterterrorism.

As the Defense Department shifted its focus to China and Russia, U.S. Special Operations Command found itself in a transition period, emphasizing a need for more cyber and electronic warfare capabilities while also refreshing and revitalizing missions that were more common during the Cold War.

U.S. and International Miliatry Service Members, alongside Prior Service Military acting as Guerrilla Role Players, conduct training and complete a culminating event (culex) at a remote location in West Virginia as part of Ridge Runner Exercise 2023. (Edwin Wriston/West Virginia Army National Guard)

The potential cuts, still not yet clearly defined by the Army, have triggered an outcry from the special operations community. Indeed, a sustained focus on irregular warfare has always been a challenge, experts noted.

“America’s way of warfare is vastly more aligned with conventional warfare than with irregular warfare,” said Jonathan Schroden, an expert in irregular warfare at the CNA think tank.

But that focus on big weapons systems and large formations doesn’t address irregular warfare threats, those that have plagued U.S. forces since at least Vietnam and dragged on through the decades-long war in Afghanistan.

Three big areas unique to Army special operations forces — operational detachment alpha teams as well as psychological and civil affairs enablers — are not replicated in other parts of the service. If trimmed, that’s less capability in those areas for future special forces missions, leading to tough choices about where to deploy the remaining teams and choosing which regions go uncovered.

Without those assets, Schroden said, the military risks not having “access and placement” for the conventional forces in areas where Army special forces traditionally deployed and built long-standing relationships.

Trask, who served as the vice chief of U.S. Special Operations Command from 2014 to 2017, told Army Times that despite its success, the special operations community is always under a funding microscope.

“There is always a target on SOCOM,” Trask said.

In current House and Senate versions of the budget, congressional committees have now included language that requires more detailed explanations of budget requests, and one version includes a prohibition on cutting Army special operations personnel in the current budget.

“We expect the [Defense] Department to ‘show us their math’ in both a written report and briefings,” the congressional aide for Budd told Army Times. “How do the proposed cuts align with the National Defense Strategy, Joint Concept for Competing, increasing combatant command demand for SOF, and the already stressed SOF enterprise given their roles in counterterrorism, crisis response and competition?”

Amid this uncertainty, the Army is trying to figure out where its special forces fit in a conventional war. And the special operations forces community is trying to convince the powers that be that these unique personnel have a role in that fight — a role only they can fill.

With recruiting continuing to struggle, the fight over personnel cuts is likely to move to next year’s budget, experts said.

“The distinction here really falls into a definitional debate. Do you believe that [U.S. Army Special Operations Command] is more part of the Army or more part of the SOF enterprise overseen by SOCOM?” Schroden said. “The Army is arguing at this point that it’s more of the former.”

Irregular warfare is different

The 2020 irregular warfare annex spells out that sustaining irregular warfare competencies is not only the job of special operations but also a necessity for the conventional force.

Some of that is seen in the Army’s fielding of its security force assistance brigades, six of which were established between 2017 and 2022 to focus on their respective geographical regions. The brigades often operate in small teams, training partner forces in conventional military skills.

But Trask and others told Army Times that while those units are helpful on the conventional side, the irregular warfare approach includes the unique skills of special operations forces.

For example, combined teams during the Ridge Runner exercise in West Virginia saw a Marine Reserves civil affairs team working with a local mayor on water purification projects while Green Berets in the same team simultaneously helped identify emerging battlefield targets, such as enemy drones and short-range missile launchers deployed in the host nation’s territory.

“The Army seems to imagine that they’re going to do this irregular warfare with units other than SOF and that they’re trying to justify their own force structure based on that,” Trask said.

That’s in part because teams within the Green Berets may return multiple times over many years to the same region, working with the same local counterparts over the course of a career. That builds competency, clear communication and trust.

And it takes time.

If too many individual positions are cut in the special operations force, some areas will not be covered. And the damage may not be seen for years.

The Irregular Warfare Group and Company C-3 perform a training exercise with a joint combatives training session and Battle Drill 6 to give a foundation in close quarters combat. (Army)

Special operations teams are already spread thin across the various combatant commands and are always in high demand for a variety of missions.

Though special operations forces, more so perhaps than any other portion of the military, has boots on the ground in nearly every region on the planet, China and the Pacific theater remain the main focus for nearly every facet of the U.S. military. That’s true both for the conventional fight — think ships, planes, missiles and troops — and the irregular fight, which leans on small teams training other small teams in faraway hills, jungles and city centers.

“Now you’re having to make sure ... you’ve created those relationships in the right places that are going to be the places where you’re going to want to counter Chinese influence over the next 10 to 20 years,” Trask said.

If the U.S. military guesses right — that long-term commitment could prevent a war. If leaders are wrong then the United States may not have any capabilities — or friends — in the neighborhood when the Chinese military comes calling.

A possible path forward

It’s unclear what’s likely to be cut from the Army’s special operations community. For now, the service is undergoing its so-called total Army analysis process, looking to decipher what kinds of forces it needs to meet the current and future threats by manning its combat divisions and brigades. That process will affect more than just special operations.

Back at the Ridge Runnder exercise, events unfolded that echoed Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. A smaller nation faced incursions by a neighboring country’s forces into its territory while cyberattacks and influence operations sought to overthrow political leadership.

But a combination of aid for local infrastructure needs and pairing U.S. teams with host nation units helped beat back the small-scale invasion.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan incorporated the use of Guard and Reserve special operators more than at any previous point, said Doug Livermore, communications director for the Irregular Warfare Initiative, partly sponsored by the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy. Livermore also serves an Army reservist and is deputy commander of an Army special ops advisory group.

“It has certainly been a shift,” Livermore said about the growing capabilities of special operations forces in the Guard and Reserve. “I would call it an evolution rather than a revolution.”

While the Guard and Reserve could not replace what their active duty counterparts do, they could supplement the work.

One contribution the Guard could make is to provide an enduring presence in various regions, Livermore said. He pointed to the decades-long Army National Guard state partnership program, which pairs each of the states with a foreign partner or ally.

He likened the work of active duty special operators, tasked under various geographic combatant commands, to a “sprint” — meeting current threats as they arise. But a special operations Guard unit can return again and again to the same place.

“Over time an active duty [special forces] group touches the same group. Now, we’re really taking this long view, particularly as we counter Russia and China. These are going to be generational approaches that require not sprinting ... but incorporating the Guard into that, taking a longer view,” Livermore said.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

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Defense News · by Todd South · October 10, 2023

3. Change of plans: US Army embraces lessons learned from war in Ukraine

Excerpts:

The war in Ukraine has also made clear artillery is still critical, said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who previously led U.S. Army Europe. A layered approach to artillery in formations — meaning using towed or mobile systems with different types of munitions that achieve different ranges — is required, he said.

The new artillery strategy will determine both the existing capability and capacity while also detailing future needs, Rainey said. The strategy will also consider new technology to enhance conventional fires on the battlefield, such as advances in propellant allowing midrange cannons to shoot as far as longer-range systems.

The document will also address the role of robotics, such as autoloaders for munitions. The Army has experimented with technology like autoloaders, which take a burden off of artillery operators and improve firing rates.

Change of plans: US Army embraces lessons learned from war in Ukraine

Defense News · by Jen Judson · October 9, 2023

WASHINGTON — Expensive, massive tanks destroyed by small and cheap loitering munitions.

Drones helping artillery locate targets.

A battlefield so flooded with sensors that it’s impossible to stay hidden for long.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Army has carefully taken note of these trends. Now those changes are reshaping the service’s plans from acquisition to how to approach formations to reimagining logistics. Already, the Army has rethought its plans to modernize tanks and altering its strategies with drones.

“The character of war is changing,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “It’s changed more in the last couple of years because of the war in Ukraine. And I think it will continue to change at a very rapid pace and we have to have the mindset to change with it.”

Gen. James Rainey, who leads Army Futures Command, the service’s organization in charge of modernizing the force, said the service needs to adapt its artillery strategy based on both “what’s happening in Ukraine” as well as what U.S. Army Pacific requires from conventional fires.

“Everything we’re seeing in Ukraine [is] about the relevance of precision fires, all the emerging technology, but the big killer on the battlefield is conventional artillery, high-explosive artillery,” he said.

The U.S. Army plans to issue a new conventional fires strategy by the end of the year, he added.

Ukraine and Russia are locked in daily heavy artillery battles. The U.S. and its partners and allies have sent a wide variety of artillery weapons, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and millions of rounds of ammunition to counter Russia’s firepower.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has credited HIMARS with making a “huge difference” in liberating critical areas of the country under Russian occupation.

The war in Ukraine has also made clear artillery is still critical, said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who previously led U.S. Army Europe. A layered approach to artillery in formations — meaning using towed or mobile systems with different types of munitions that achieve different ranges — is required, he said.

A man walks on top of a damaged Russian tank in Dmytrivka, Ukraine. (Karl Ritter/AP)

The new artillery strategy will determine both the existing capability and capacity while also detailing future needs, Rainey said. The strategy will also consider new technology to enhance conventional fires on the battlefield, such as advances in propellant allowing midrange cannons to shoot as far as longer-range systems.

The document will also address the role of robotics, such as autoloaders for munitions. The Army has experimented with technology like autoloaders, which take a burden off of artillery operators and improve firing rates.

Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told Defense News in September the fires strategy will drive key decisions within his portfolio, including how to pursue the Extended Range Cannon Artillery requirement.

“The strategy is looking at a combination of factors,” Bush said. “Where do you need towed artillery versus perhaps tracked versus perhaps wheeled? What can you do with munitions to get range versus building new cannons?”

The Army is developing an Extended Range Cannon Artillery system that uses a service-built 58-caliber gun tube mounted on the chassis of a BAE Systems-made Paladin Integrated Management howitzer.

But the service in 2020 also assessed available 155mm mobile howitzers seeking improvements in range, rate of fire, and mobility over the artillery systems used within Stryker brigade combat teams. The Army evaluated at least four foreign companies’ offerings in a shoot-off, but ultimately did not move forward with a new capability.

A new artillery strategy could renew the push for rapid procurement of a field-proven 155mm mobile howitzer.

“Some of our NATO allies have some really good kit [and] capability that we’re interested in,” Rainey noted.

Bush recently visited 18th Airborne Corps, which consist of very light units and they “still value towed artillery, because they can move it around with helicopters. ... But other parts of the Army might want something different,” he said.

Taking a new look at an off-the-shelf mobile howitzer is a part of the strategy’s purview, he noted. “From an acquisition standpoint, if I get a requirement, we’ve got some options to go pretty fast, if it is acceptable, for example, to take a foreign system rather than building a new one from scratch,” Bush said.

“The broad lesson is that you still need artillery. It is the No. 1 killer on the battlefield, still in this conflict [in Ukraine],” he said.

A fresh take on tanks

The Army in September, after watching loitering munitions destroy tanks in Ukraine and observing both sides struggle to maneuver tanks on the battlefield, opted to scrap its upgrade plan for the M1 Abrams tank and instead pursue a new variant: the M1E3.

The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in a statement at the time. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

The Abrams tank “with all its hood ornaments is already too heavy,” Hodges told Defense News. “Getting heavier is not the answer.”

Part of the new effort will take weight off the tank, increasing its mobility and sustainability. Today, if a tank breaks or gets hit in combat, it requires two recovery vehicles to pull it out of the fight. Reducing the tank’s weight would help, Dean said.

The new design is also intended to integrate active protection capability, including protection from attacks to the roof from loitering munitions and drones.

A Ukrainian soldier equips a drone with grenades in the Donetsk region on March 15, 2023. (Roman Chop/AP)

Dean told Defense News in a recent interview the new design will consider how to reduce the supply chain and make it easier to maintain the vehicle while on the battlefield. It will also improve reliability.

Ukraine has begun to receive its 31 M1 Abrams tanks from the U.S. military, and the U.S. Army is likely to soon learn more about how the tank holds up against the Russians, Dean said.

The tank “remains very, very relevant,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at a recent think tank event. “The claims that we’re seeing the end of the value of tanks were a little bit premature.”

According to reports, in the first two months of the war, Russia lost well over 400 tanks, spurring a debate over whether tanks were too cumbersome for the modern battlefield.

Wormuth acknowledged munitions that can hit the top of armored vehicles and tanks remain a challenge and said “we are working to develop capabilities to defend against that.”

Dean, noting he could not discuss details, said the Army is working extensively on how to protect tanks and combat vehicles from loitering munitions. Loitering munitions regularly destroy tanks and combat vehicles on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.

“We have got to get better at top-attack inbound defeat,” Rainey said at the AUSA Warfighter Summit in July. “It’s solvable.”

While the service has long focused on protecting combat vehicles from the side and has integrated Rafael’s Trophy active protection system on the M1 Abrams tank, the protection has decreased the tank’s mobility. The same problem applies to the APS kits, which provide protection from anti-tank weapons. The service has yet to field APS on either the Stryker combat vehicle or the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.

Moving in minutes

The Army has long set up elaborate command posts on the battlefield, putting up climate-controlled tents equipped with generators. The service has said these tactical operations centers must get smaller, both in size and in electromagnetic signature.

But the war in Ukraine has put more pressure on the service to act.

“Gone are the days where you’re setting up a whole [tactical operations center]. And two hours is too much time,” George said. “We need to be able to move in minutes. We need to be able to command and control on the move.”

He noted the war has also proven the need for open architecture that is mobile and can be rapidly updated.

The Army “has to fix what it has and then pivot to what the C2 architecture is going to be in the future,” George added.

He told Defense News he was struck recently by watching a unit going through a large exercise and only relying on five Stryker combat vehicles and 35 people to provide command-and-control for the entire brigade combat team. The Strykers, equipped with commercial, off-the-shelf laptops, tablets and radios, never had to be together physically as they were connected through a network operating as one node, George said.

Wormuth also recalled a similar visit to a training rotation at Fort Johnson where a unit had designed its TOC to be “much more mobile” and could break down and set up within two hours.

“That’s definitely something that we’re going to be spending time on, developing the capabilities to do that,” she said.

Ukraine has taught the Army it is going to have to learn how to “fight under constant observation of commercially available space, the electromagnetic spectrum, social media,” Rainey said. “We are going to have to figure out how to fight when the enemy’s going to know where we are or prevent him; so concealment, deception, camouflage, constantly good tactics.”

Wormuth also noted the Army must be able to operate even if command posts are cut off due to failed signals or enemy jamming. The Army is experimenting in this type of environment regularly during events like Project Convergence, a large exercise focused on developing a modernized force.

Remote logistics

The U.S. quickly faced a challenge early in the war in Ukraine. It was sending complex equipment to Ukraine — but without the experienced maintainers to fix it.

From a parking lot in Poland just months after the war began, the U.S. Army started answering the call for help, offering remote maintenance support. Army maintainers virtually demonstrated maintenance to their Ukrainian counterparts.

Since then, the Army has expanded its use of remote maintenance support to nearly every platform sent to Ukraine, including those of allies and partners. The service built a facility and a repair parts warehouse in Poland and began offering expertise through text message, prerecorded video or live stream.

This effort is now providing a road map for future logistics. George said at a recent event Ukraine is changing how the service “is looking at things on the logistics side,” citing virtual maintenance and 3D printing of parts.

U.S. soldiers offload M1A1 Abrams tanks needed for training Ukrainian forces at Grafenwoehr, Germany, on May 14, 2023. (Spc. Christian Carrillo/U.S. Army)

The Army now weighing how to apply tele-maintenance to the Indo-Pacific region, George told Defense News.

Additionally, the Army, watching Ukraine, is preparing for what it calls contested logistics, meaning its logistical efforts would be under constant attack.

“There’s been a theoretical recognition that logistics were going to be contested, but the Ukraine conflict, I think, has really made that very real to all of us,” Wormuth said at a recent event.

The Army has established a new cross-functional team for contested logistics under Army Futures Command focused on this challenge.

Preparing for the future

The war in Ukraine has, according to service leaders, validated many of the Army’s modernization priorities, laid out a little over five years ago.

The Army was already focused on countering unmanned aircraft systems because of operations in the Middle East and had set up a joint office at the Pentagon. The use of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine has accelerated efforts to come up with a layered approach to defeating the systems, both big and small.

“The scale of [drones on the battlefield] has been sort of astonishing and it has reinvigorated this focus on the lowest sort of short-range air defenses that would be needed for that,” Stacie Pettyjohn, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security, told Defense News.

Ukrainian servicemen fly a drone on the outskirts of Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on Dec. 30, 2022. (Sameer al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images)

And not all technology used to defeat drones needs to be exquisite. While the Army is working on directed-energy and high power microwave capabilities to defend against drone swarms, “you’re seeing that the Ukrainians need things like a smart shooter, a sight that they can put on a rifle that allows them to use [artificial intelligence]. It’s still pretty advanced, but it’s this tech that improves existing guns and allow them to take out some of the smallest quadcopters,” Pettyjohn said.

Formations may also need to change, Wormuth said. The Army “need[s] to probably have organic air defense with our fires in our maneuver units so that they can protect against drones.”

Air and missile defense for threats beyond drones is also receiving new attention. Russia has shown it will use multimillion dollar rockets and missiles against apartment buildings, Hodges said.

Wormuth said the Army is beginning to grow the air and missile defense force. The service is in the process of building an additional Patriot battalion, but it’s not dedicated to a specific combatant command yet. The Army also wants to grow additional Indirect Fire Protection Capability units as well, she noted.

These new units will be able to defend against cruise missiles and drones along with rockets, artillery and mortars at fixed and semi-fixed sites. The Army is still developing prototypes.

Having the ability to see or sense as much as possible at all times, is another way the Army is changing because of Ukraine. “There’s a lot of interest in drones to be able to provide us with [persistent sensing],” Wormuth told Defense News. “But we’re going to have a layered approach to that ... we’re investing in the [High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System], fixed-wing platform. ... I think you’ll see aerostats.”

Drawing from Ukraine, “there’s no shortage of observations that we should think about,” Rainey said. And the Army is “committed to turning those observations genuinely into lessons learned.”

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

Share:

Defense News · by Jen Judson · October 9, 2023

Defense News · by Jen Judson · October 9, 2023

WASHINGTON — Expensive, massive tanks destroyed by small and cheap loitering munitions.

Drones helping artillery locate targets.

A battlefield so flooded with sensors that it’s impossible to stay hidden for long.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Army has carefully taken note of these trends. Now those changes are reshaping the service’s plans from acquisition to how to approach formations to reimagining logistics. Already, the Army has rethought its plans to modernize tanks and altering its strategies with drones.

“The character of war is changing,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “It’s changed more in the last couple of years because of the war in Ukraine. And I think it will continue to change at a very rapid pace and we have to have the mindset to change with it.”

Gen. James Rainey, who leads Army Futures Command, the service’s organization in charge of modernizing the force, said the service needs to adapt its artillery strategy based on both “what’s happening in Ukraine” as well as what U.S. Army Pacific requires from conventional fires.

“Everything we’re seeing in Ukraine [is] about the relevance of precision fires, all the emerging technology, but the big killer on the battlefield is conventional artillery, high-explosive artillery,” he said.

The U.S. Army plans to issue a new conventional fires strategy by the end of the year, he added.

Ukraine and Russia are locked in daily heavy artillery battles. The U.S. and its partners and allies have sent a wide variety of artillery weapons, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and millions of rounds of ammunition to counter Russia’s firepower.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has credited HIMARS with making a “huge difference” in liberating critical areas of the country under Russian occupation.

The war in Ukraine has also made clear artillery is still critical, said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who previously led U.S. Army Europe. A layered approach to artillery in formations — meaning using towed or mobile systems with different types of munitions that achieve different ranges — is required, he said.

A man walks on top of a damaged Russian tank in Dmytrivka, Ukraine. (Karl Ritter/AP)

The new artillery strategy will determine both the existing capability and capacity while also detailing future needs, Rainey said. The strategy will also consider new technology to enhance conventional fires on the battlefield, such as advances in propellant allowing midrange cannons to shoot as far as longer-range systems.

The document will also address the role of robotics, such as autoloaders for munitions. The Army has experimented with technology like autoloaders, which take a burden off of artillery operators and improve firing rates.

Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told Defense News in September the fires strategy will drive key decisions within his portfolio, including how to pursue the Extended Range Cannon Artillery requirement.

“The strategy is looking at a combination of factors,” Bush said. “Where do you need towed artillery versus perhaps tracked versus perhaps wheeled? What can you do with munitions to get range versus building new cannons?”

The Army is developing an Extended Range Cannon Artillery system that uses a service-built 58-caliber gun tube mounted on the chassis of a BAE Systems-made Paladin Integrated Management howitzer.

But the service in 2020 also assessed available 155mm mobile howitzers seeking improvements in range, rate of fire, and mobility over the artillery systems used within Stryker brigade combat teams. The Army evaluated at least four foreign companies’ offerings in a shoot-off, but ultimately did not move forward with a new capability.

A new artillery strategy could renew the push for rapid procurement of a field-proven 155mm mobile howitzer.

“Some of our NATO allies have some really good kit [and] capability that we’re interested in,” Rainey noted.

Bush recently visited 18th Airborne Corps, which consist of very light units and they “still value towed artillery, because they can move it around with helicopters. ... But other parts of the Army might want something different,” he said.

Taking a new look at an off-the-shelf mobile howitzer is a part of the strategy’s purview, he noted. “From an acquisition standpoint, if I get a requirement, we’ve got some options to go pretty fast, if it is acceptable, for example, to take a foreign system rather than building a new one from scratch,” Bush said.

“The broad lesson is that you still need artillery. It is the No. 1 killer on the battlefield, still in this conflict [in Ukraine],” he said.

A fresh take on tanks

The Army in September, after watching loitering munitions destroy tanks in Ukraine and observing both sides struggle to maneuver tanks on the battlefield, opted to scrap its upgrade plan for the M1 Abrams tank and instead pursue a new variant: the M1E3.

The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in a statement at the time. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

The Abrams tank “with all its hood ornaments is already too heavy,” Hodges told Defense News. “Getting heavier is not the answer.”

Part of the new effort will take weight off the tank, increasing its mobility and sustainability. Today, if a tank breaks or gets hit in combat, it requires two recovery vehicles to pull it out of the fight. Reducing the tank’s weight would help, Dean said.

The new design is also intended to integrate active protection capability, including protection from attacks to the roof from loitering munitions and drones.

A Ukrainian soldier equips a drone with grenades in the Donetsk region on March 15, 2023. (Roman Chop/AP)

Dean told Defense News in a recent interview the new design will consider how to reduce the supply chain and make it easier to maintain the vehicle while on the battlefield. It will also improve reliability.

Ukraine has begun to receive its 31 M1 Abrams tanks from the U.S. military, and the U.S. Army is likely to soon learn more about how the tank holds up against the Russians, Dean said.

The tank “remains very, very relevant,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at a recent think tank event. “The claims that we’re seeing the end of the value of tanks were a little bit premature.”

According to reports, in the first two months of the war, Russia lost well over 400 tanks, spurring a debate over whether tanks were too cumbersome for the modern battlefield.

Wormuth acknowledged munitions that can hit the top of armored vehicles and tanks remain a challenge and said “we are working to develop capabilities to defend against that.”

Dean, noting he could not discuss details, said the Army is working extensively on how to protect tanks and combat vehicles from loitering munitions. Loitering munitions regularly destroy tanks and combat vehicles on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.

“We have got to get better at top-attack inbound defeat,” Rainey said at the AUSA Warfighter Summit in July. “It’s solvable.”

While the service has long focused on protecting combat vehicles from the side and has integrated Rafael’s Trophy active protection system on the M1 Abrams tank, the protection has decreased the tank’s mobility. The same problem applies to the APS kits, which provide protection from anti-tank weapons. The service has yet to field APS on either the Stryker combat vehicle or the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.

Moving in minutes

The Army has long set up elaborate command posts on the battlefield, putting up climate-controlled tents equipped with generators. The service has said these tactical operations centers must get smaller, both in size and in electromagnetic signature.

But the war in Ukraine has put more pressure on the service to act.

“Gone are the days where you’re setting up a whole [tactical operations center]. And two hours is too much time,” George said. “We need to be able to move in minutes. We need to be able to command and control on the move.”

He noted the war has also proven the need for open architecture that is mobile and can be rapidly updated.

The Army “has to fix what it has and then pivot to what the C2 architecture is going to be in the future,” George added.

He told Defense News he was struck recently by watching a unit going through a large exercise and only relying on five Stryker combat vehicles and 35 people to provide command-and-control for the entire brigade combat team. The Strykers, equipped with commercial, off-the-shelf laptops, tablets and radios, never had to be together physically as they were connected through a network operating as one node, George said.

Wormuth also recalled a similar visit to a training rotation at Fort Johnson where a unit had designed its TOC to be “much more mobile” and could break down and set up within two hours.

“That’s definitely something that we’re going to be spending time on, developing the capabilities to do that,” she said.

Ukraine has taught the Army it is going to have to learn how to “fight under constant observation of commercially available space, the electromagnetic spectrum, social media,” Rainey said. “We are going to have to figure out how to fight when the enemy’s going to know where we are or prevent him; so concealment, deception, camouflage, constantly good tactics.”

Wormuth also noted the Army must be able to operate even if command posts are cut off due to failed signals or enemy jamming. The Army is experimenting in this type of environment regularly during events like Project Convergence, a large exercise focused on developing a modernized force.

Remote logistics

The U.S. quickly faced a challenge early in the war in Ukraine. It was sending complex equipment to Ukraine — but without the experienced maintainers to fix it.

From a parking lot in Poland just months after the war began, the U.S. Army started answering the call for help, offering remote maintenance support. Army maintainers virtually demonstrated maintenance to their Ukrainian counterparts.

Since then, the Army has expanded its use of remote maintenance support to nearly every platform sent to Ukraine, including those of allies and partners. The service built a facility and a repair parts warehouse in Poland and began offering expertise through text message, prerecorded video or live stream.

This effort is now providing a road map for future logistics. George said at a recent event Ukraine is changing how the service “is looking at things on the logistics side,” citing virtual maintenance and 3D printing of parts.

U.S. soldiers offload M1A1 Abrams tanks needed for training Ukrainian forces at Grafenwoehr, Germany, on May 14, 2023. (Spc. Christian Carrillo/U.S. Army)

The Army now weighing how to apply tele-maintenance to the Indo-Pacific region, George told Defense News.

Additionally, the Army, watching Ukraine, is preparing for what it calls contested logistics, meaning its logistical efforts would be under constant attack.

“There’s been a theoretical recognition that logistics were going to be contested, but the Ukraine conflict, I think, has really made that very real to all of us,” Wormuth said at a recent event.

The Army has established a new cross-functional team for contested logistics under Army Futures Command focused on this challenge.

Preparing for the future

The war in Ukraine has, according to service leaders, validated many of the Army’s modernization priorities, laid out a little over five years ago.

The Army was already focused on countering unmanned aircraft systems because of operations in the Middle East and had set up a joint office at the Pentagon. The use of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine has accelerated efforts to come up with a layered approach to defeating the systems, both big and small.

“The scale of [drones on the battlefield] has been sort of astonishing and it has reinvigorated this focus on the lowest sort of short-range air defenses that would be needed for that,” Stacie Pettyjohn, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security, told Defense News.

Ukrainian servicemen fly a drone on the outskirts of Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on Dec. 30, 2022. (Sameer al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images)

And not all technology used to defeat drones needs to be exquisite. While the Army is working on directed-energy and high power microwave capabilities to defend against drone swarms, “you’re seeing that the Ukrainians need things like a smart shooter, a sight that they can put on a rifle that allows them to use [artificial intelligence]. It’s still pretty advanced, but it’s this tech that improves existing guns and allow them to take out some of the smallest quadcopters,” Pettyjohn said.

Formations may also need to change, Wormuth said. The Army “need[s] to probably have organic air defense with our fires in our maneuver units so that they can protect against drones.”

Air and missile defense for threats beyond drones is also receiving new attention. Russia has shown it will use multimillion dollar rockets and missiles against apartment buildings, Hodges said.

Wormuth said the Army is beginning to grow the air and missile defense force. The service is in the process of building an additional Patriot battalion, but it’s not dedicated to a specific combatant command yet. The Army also wants to grow additional Indirect Fire Protection Capability units as well, she noted.

These new units will be able to defend against cruise missiles and drones along with rockets, artillery and mortars at fixed and semi-fixed sites. The Army is still developing prototypes.

Having the ability to see or sense as much as possible at all times, is another way the Army is changing because of Ukraine. “There’s a lot of interest in drones to be able to provide us with [persistent sensing],” Wormuth told Defense News. “But we’re going to have a layered approach to that ... we’re investing in the [High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System], fixed-wing platform. ... I think you’ll see aerostats.”

Drawing from Ukraine, “there’s no shortage of observations that we should think about,” Rainey said. And the Army is “committed to turning those observations genuinely into lessons learned.”

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

Share:

Defense News · by Jen Judson · October 9, 2023

4. Israeli strikes demolish entire Gaza neighborhoods as sealed-off territory faces imminent blackout

Israeli strikes demolish entire Gaza neighborhoods as sealed-off territory faces imminent blackout

AP · October 11, 2023

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians in the sealed-off Gaza Strip scrambled to find safety Wednesday, as Israeli strikes demolished entire neighborhoods, hospitals ran low on supplies and a power blackout was expected within hours, further deepening the misery of a war sparked by a deadly mass incursion of Hamas militants.

Airstrikes smashed entire city blocks to rubble in the tiny coastal enclave and left unknown numbers of bodies beneath mounds of debris. The bombardment raged on even though militants are holding an estimated 150 people — soldiers, men, women, children and older adults — who were dragged into Gaza during the weekend attack.

Israel has vowed unprecedented retaliation against the Hamas militant group ruling the Palestinian territory after its fighters stormed through the border fence Saturday and gunned down hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival.

The war, which has already claimed at least 2,100 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate — and compound the misery of people living in Gaza, where basic necessities and electricity were already in short supply.

Israel has stopped the entry of food, water, fuel and medicine into the territory — a 40-kilometer-long (25-mile) strip of land wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians. The sole remaining access from Egypt was shut down Tuesday after airstrikes hit near the border crossing.

As Palestinians crowded into U.N. schools and a shrinking number of safe neighborhoods, humanitarian groups pleaded for the creation of corridors to get aid in, warning that hospitals overwhelmed with wounded people were running out of supplies.

“There is no safe place in Gaza right now,” journalist Hasan Jabar said after three Palestinian journalists were killed in the bombardment of a downtown neighborhood home to government ministries, media offices and hotels. “I am genuinely afraid for my life.”

Gaza’s power authority says its sole power plant will run out of fuel within hours, leaving the territory without electricity after Israel cut off supplies. Palestinians there have long relied on generators to power homes, offices and hospitals, but have no way of importing fuel for those either.

The U.N.’s World Health Organization said that supplies it had pre-positioned for seven hospitals have already run out amid the flood of wounded. The head of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies were running out at two hospitals it runs in Gaza.

In one, “we consumed three weeks worth of emergency stock in three days, partly due to 50 patients coming in at once,” Matthias Kannes, the aid group’s head of mission in Gaza, said Wednesday. He said the territory’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, only has enough fuel for three days.

Israel has mobilized 360,000 reservists and appears increasingly likely to launch a ground offensive into Gaza, with its government under intense pressure from the public to topple Hamas, which has ruled the territory since 2007. That goal was considered unachievable in the past because it would require a reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, at least temporarily.

“We will not allow a reality in which Israeli children are murdered,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a meeting with soldiers near the southern border on Tuesday. “I have removed every restriction — we will eliminate anyone who fights us, and use every measure at our disposal.”

Exchanges of fire over Israel’s northern borders with militants in Lebanon and Syria, meanwhile, pointed to the risk of an expanded regional conflict.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned other countries and armed groups against entering the conflict. The U.S. is already rushing munitions and military equipment to Israel and has deployed a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean as deterrence.

Israeli airstrikes late Tuesday struck the family house of Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, killing his father, brother and at least two other relatives in the southern town of Khan Younis, senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told The Associated Press.

Deif has never been seen in public and his whereabouts are unknown.

In a new tactic, Israel is warning civilians to evacuate neighborhood after neighborhood, and then inflicting devastation, in what could be a prelude to a ground offensive.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Israeli airstrikes destroyed the entire al-Karama neighborhood in Gaza City, with a “large number” of people killed or wounded. It said medical teams were unable to reach the area because all roads to it were destroyed. Rescue officials say they have struggled to enter other areas as well.

In another neighborhood, Palestinian Civil Defense forces pulled Abdullah Musleh out of his basement together with 30 others after their apartment building was flattened.

“I sell toys, not missiles,’’ the 46-year-old said, weeping. “I want to leave Gaza. Why do I have to stay here? I lost my home and my job.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Hamas fired barrages of rockets toward the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and Tel Aviv. There were no immediate reports of casualties. On Tuesday night, a group of militants entered an industrial zone in Ashkelon, sparking a gunbattle with Israeli troops, the military said. Three militants were killed, and troops were searching the area for others.

Four previous rounds of Israel-Hamas fighting between 2008 and 2021 all ended inconclusively, with Hamas battered but still in control.

“The objective is for this war to end very differently from all of the previous rounds. There has to be a clear victory,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel. “Whatever has to be done to fundamentally change the situation will have to be done,” he said.

Hamas officials have said they planned for all possibilities, including a punishing Israeli escalation. Desperation has grown among Palestinians, many of whom see nothing to lose under unending Israeli military occupation and increasing settlements in the West Bank, a 16-year-long blockade in Gaza and what they see as the world’s apathy.

Days of clashes between rock-throwing Palestinians and Israeli forces in the West Bank have left 15 Palestinians dead, but Israel has clamped down heavily on the territory, preventing movement between communities. The violence also spread into east Jerusalem, where Israeli police said they killed two Palestinians who hurled stones at police late Tuesday.

The Israeli military said more than 1,200 people, including 155 soldiers, have been killed in Israel, a staggering toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria that lasted weeks. In Gaza, 950 people have been killed, including 260 children and 230 women, according to authorities there; Israel says hundreds of Hamas fighters are among them. Thousands have been wounded on both sides.

The bodies of roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were found on Israeli territory, the military said. It wasn’t clear whether those numbers overlapped with deaths reported by Palestinian authorities.

In Gaza, more than 250,000 people have fled their homes, the U.N. said, the most since a 2014 air and ground offensive by Israel uprooted about 400,000. The vast majority are sheltering in schools run by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. Damage to three water and sanitation sites have cut off services to 400,000 people, the U.N. said.

Tens of thousands of people in southern Israel have been evacuated since Sunday.

___

Shurafa reported from Gaza City, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel and Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

AP · October 11, 2023

5. Beijing wants to be a peace broker in the Middle East. How has it responded to the Israel-Gaza war?

Nectar Gan

Beijing wants to be a peace broker in the Middle East. How has it responded to the Israel-Gaza war?

https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/16970157696469ccbdac00391/raw?utm_term=16970157696469ccbdac00391&utm_source=cnn_Meanwhile+in+China+%E2%80%93+10.11.2023&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=dNfvWP%2Fr9zGO48hDXHPzFnXcpHxFbqEk832abh9GPlRyCzZk6Vtf0T0wwzIQPHP1&bt_ts=1697015769649

When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited Beijing in June, China vowed to contribute “Chinese wisdom, Chinese strength” to resolve the long-standing conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.

That pledge, coming on the heels of a Beijing-brokered rapprochement between bitter rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, was widely seen as part of China’s ambition to expand its diplomatic clout in the Middle East – a region traditionally dominated by US power.

A few months on, Beijing’s offer to broker peace in one of the world’s most intractable conflicts is being tested by a fresh outbreak of war between Israel and Gaza, after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel.

So far, China’s response to the crisis – which has left at least 1,200 Israelis dead alongside 950 Palestinians and thousands more wounded or displaced – has been a bland call for restraint from both sides, with no condemnation of Hamas for a rampage that unleashed the killing of civilians and kidnapping of hostages, including children and the elderly.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who touted a Beijing-led security initiative for the Middle East as an alternative to the US-led system when he last visited the region in December, has yet to make any public statement on the conflict.

Experts say this initial response may expose Beijing’s limited influence in the region, despite official propaganda talking up China as the world’s new peacemaker.

“China doesn’t really have the experience or expertise in the region to make a meaningful change” on the long-running, complex Palestine-Israel conflict, said Jonathan Fulton, an Abu Dhabi-based senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“You don’t see governments in the region saying ‘what’s China’s solution to this’ because they’re not seen as a credible actor here yet.”

China’s response

As condemnations against Hamas poured in from the United States, Europe and much of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Beijing refrained from calling out the group and sought to present itself as a neutral party in the conflict.

In a brief statement Sunday, China’s Foreign Ministry called on “relevant parties to remain calm, exercise restraint and immediately end the hostilities.” It repeated Beijing’s support for a “two-state solution” to establish an independent State of Palestine as a way out of the conflict.

Beijing’s muted reaction to Saturday’s rampage by Hamas has drawn pushback from Israel. Yuval Waks, a senior official at the Israeli Embassy in Beijing, said his country expected a “stronger condemnation” of Hamas from China.

“When people are being murdered, slaughtered in the streets, this is not the time to call for a two-state solution,” Waks told reporters Sunday, according to Reuters.

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who was in Beijing for a bipartisan congressional visit, also expressed his disappointment with China’s response during a meeting with Xi on Monday.

“I say this with respect but I’m disappointed by the foreign ministry’s statement showing no sympathy or support for the Israeli people during these tragic times,” Schumer said, echoing criticism he had made earlier while meeting with China’s foreign minister.

Following the criticism, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning went a little further at a regular news briefing later on Monday, saying China was “deeply saddened by the civilian casualties” and condemns “any acts that harm civilians.”

But she sidestepped a question about whether Beijing consider Hamas’ attacks on civilians as terrorist acts and reiterated the message of neutrality, calling China “a friend to both Israel and Palestine.”

Throughout its statements, Beijing has stopped short of naming Hamas, describing the crisis vaguely as an “escalation of tensions and violence between Palestine and Israel.”

Read the full story here.

Nectar Gan is China Reporter for CNN International based in Hong Kong. She covers the changes taking place in China, and their impact on the world.

6. ‘As long as it takes’: US Army doubles down on Ukraine training goals

How do we prioritize Ukraine and Israel?

I am sure our adversaries wna to see how we deal with this and coming dilemmas.

‘As long as it takes’: US Army doubles down on Ukraine training goals

Defense News · by Bryant Harris · October 10, 2023

WASHINGTON ― Canadian and U.S. Army officials are determined NATO efforts to train Ukrainian forces will last long term, despite uncertainty over whether Congress will continue to fund additional military assistance for Kyiv.

Canadian Brig. Gen. Mason Stalker, the deputy training commander for Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, stressed Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference that dozens of NATO members are contributing to these efforts, even though the future of the United States’ role in the conflict remains unclear.

“We’re not going to comment on bilateral or individual nations’ policy decisions and how they will potentially affect the future,” Mason told Defense News. “But what I can say is that SAG-U has got over 25 nations in it right now. And we are continuing to coordinate the delivery of equipment that’s been donated.”

Speaking alongside Mason, U.S. Army officials described training Ukrainian troops to use armored fighting vehicles, tanks and Patriot missiles as one of the highlights of their careers during a panel titled “As Long as it Takes ― International Efforts to Train Ukraine’s Military.”

There are currently 25 countries training Ukrainian forces amid an influx of NATO equipment Ukraine has received since Russia invaded the country. The equipment is delivered as part of the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, an initiative U.S. European Command set up in November 2022.

Mason noted that 7,254 Ukrainians are receiving training through Security Assistance Group-Ukraine and that NATO members have trained about 90,000 troops overall at 88 training sites.

The coalition has trained 17 brigades and is currently focused on reconstituting several of them as winter approaches.

Congress passed $113 billion in economic and military support to Ukraine, but failed to pass a fifth aid package earlier this month despite the White House’s request. The Pentagon says it can use roughly $5.5 billion remaining from prior fiscal years to continue transferring weapons to Ukraine, but that’s not expected to last for much more than a couple of months.

Col. Bryan Harris, the commander of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, recently returned home after deploying to NATO’s eastern front to train Ukrainians on combat maneuvers.

During that time, his unit trained 9,000 Ukrainians to use Bradley fighting vehicles, M1A1 Abrams tanks and M109 Paladin howitzers.

“Up to that point in December 2022, it was all platform training — how to operate this platform, how to operate this weapons system,” Harris said at the panel. “But in January, we started combined arms maneuver training.”

“There were Ukrainian crew members on Paladins supporting Bradley maneuver manned by Ukrainian crew members, and it was a sight to see,” Harris said. “It was a highlight of my 25-year career.”

Lt. Col. Seth Barrett, commander of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Battalion, 6th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, also described his unit’s efforts to train Ukrainians to use the Patriot missile defense system at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Barrett noted this took “a herculean effort” by the linguist community, noting that U.S. soldiers with Ukrainian backgrounds reenlisted to help with translation.

Ukrainian trainees were versed in the Soviet-era S-300 missile system, giving them a sense of the fundamentals, but still needed Patriot-specific training.

“Soviet systems tend to be a lot more user-involved,” Barrett said. “An S-300 has 84 different cables that you have to plug in. We have five.”

About Bryant Harris

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

7. US may send second aircraft carrier toward Israel

Provide options to the commander in chief.

US may send second aircraft carrier toward Israel

Politico · by Lara Seligman · October 11, 2023

This photograph taken on May 24, 2023 shows the US aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford cruising near Jeloya island, in Moss, south of Oslo. The ship is the world's largest warship and will be in port in Oslo for four days. Russia's embassy in Norway on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 hashly criticised the visit by the US aircraft carrier to Oslo as an "illogical and harmful" show of force. (Photo by Terje Pedersen / NTB / AFP) / Norway OUT (Photo by TERJE PEDERSEN/NTB/AFP via Getty Images

By

October 11, 2023 4:34 am CET

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The U.S. could soon have two aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean, according to Defense Department officials, a move that would mark a major escalation in U.S. military power in the region as fighting intensifies between Israeli forces and Hamas militants.

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with its associated warships and fighter jets, was already scheduled to depart from Norfolk, Va., this week and may be ordered to deploy to the waters off the coast of Israel, according to two DOD officials who were granted anonymity to discuss future operations.

The Eisenhower group has long been scheduled to deploy and operate near Europe, DOD spokesperson Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry said in a statement Tuesday.

The ship is slated to leave Norfolk on Friday and could reach the eastern Mediterranean by the end of October if ordered, one of the DOD officials said. At that point, the Eisenhower would join the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford and its strike group, which the Pentagon ordered to the waters off Israel on Sunday as a show of force after the surprise attacks on southern Israel.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will continue to review the deployment plans of both ships, “as he considers the appropriate balance of maritime capability across theaters in support of national security priorities,” McGarry said.

The rare move to potentially have two aircraft carriers, which are accompanied by cruisers, destroyers and fighter jets as part of their strike groups, in the same area would be a major signal to Hamas that the U.S. military is supporting Israel.

The Pentagon did deploy two carriers to the Middle East in March 2020 amid heightened tension with Iran. At the time, both the Eisenhower and the USS Harry S. Truman, with their respective escorts, both operated in the Arabian Sea.

But the double carrier strategy has severely stretched the Navy in the past, with service leaders warning that it was unsustainable. Aircraft carriers are in high demand around the globe and are typically spread out to different regions.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the U.S. was considering sending the Eisenhower toward Israel.

8. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 10, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-10-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces launched localized offensive operations in the Avdiivka area of Donetsk Oblast and southwest of Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 9, which are likely intended to fix Ukrainian forces away from the Robotyne area.
• The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed up to three Russian battalions conducted an attack in the Avdiivka direction, and ISW has observed footage of fighting in the area, but ISW has not observed any confirmation of these claimed Russian advances as of this writing.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and made confirmed advances in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
• Russian military leadership may have once again replaced the commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA), suggesting ongoing pervasive Russian command and control issues in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced plans to open a new corridor through Moldova and Romania for the export of Ukrainian grain.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 10.
• The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Luhansk Oblast occupation authorities are cracking down against Ukrainian underground communication networks.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 10, 2023

Oct 10, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 10, 2023

Christina Harward, Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, and Mason Clark

October 10, 2023, 5:30pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1pm ET on October 10. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the October 11 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

NOTE: ISW has added a new section on Russian information operations and narratives to the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, found at the end of the update.

Russian forces launched localized offensive operations in the Avdiivka area of Donetsk Oblast and southwest of Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 9, which are likely intended to fix Ukrainian forces away from the Robotyne area. Russian forces intensified offensive operations northwest of Avdiivka near Ocheretyne, Tonenke, and Berdychi and southwest of Avdiivka on the Vodyane-Opytne line.[1] Russian forces also attacked southwest of Orikhiv on the Pyatykhatky-Zherebyanky line, and Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up two kilometers in the area.[2] The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed up to three Russian battalions conducted an attack in the Avdiivka direction, and ISW has observed footage of fighting in the area, but ISW has not observed any confirmation of these claimed Russian advances as of this writing.[3] Russian milbloggers are largely portraying the Avdiivka-area operations as a significant offensive effort aimed at encircling the Ukrainian force grouping in Avdiivka and capturing the city.[4] A successful encirclement of Avdiivka, one of the most heavily fortified areas of the Donetsk Oblast front line, would very likely require more forces than Russia has currently dedicated to the Avdiivka-Donetsk City effort. Russian forces have largely deployed irregular forces along this frontline, primarily elements of the 1st Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Army Corps and additional volunteer formations that have largely suffered from poor and abusive command culture and tensions with regular Russian units.[5] ISW has observed no recent Russian deployments to this line. Russian forces have also conducted grinding offensive operations for relatively minimal territorial gains near Avdiivka for the past year and a half of the war, and the Russian military command is likely aware that an effort to capture Avdiivka would require more and higher-quality units than those currently deployed in the area.[6]

The increased Russian offensive operations in the Avdiivka and Zherebyanky areas coincide with other localized offensive efforts in Luhansk Oblast and eastern Zaporizhia Oblast, all likely aimed at fixing Ukrainian forces and preventing Ukrainian command from transferring reserves to critical areas of the front in western Zaporizhia Oblast.[7] Ukrainian officials have made a number of statements within the past few weeks to this effect, particularly noting that Russian attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line are meant to prevent Ukrainians from transferring forces to Zaporizhia Oblast.[8]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and made confirmed advances in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area. Geolocated footage published on October 9 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced northeast of Mykilske (3km southeast of Vuhledar and about 30km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved partial success near Andriivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut).[10] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced west of Novofedorivka (15km northeast of Robotyne and 6km northeast of Verbove).[11]

Russian military leadership may have once again replaced the commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA), suggesting ongoing pervasive Russian command and control issues in western Zaporizhia Oblast. A Russian insider source claimed on October 9 that the Russian command removed Lieutenant General Denis Lyamin from command of the 58th CAA, after Lyamin replaced former commander Major General Ivan Popov on July 13.[12] The insider source claimed that during Lyamin’s three-month tenure, the Russian General Staff went to great lengths to conceal the true nature of the situation within units of the 58th CAA, which are currently defending against Ukrainian counteroffensives in western Zaporizhia Oblast, and claimed that this is in large part because Lyamin is a close associate of Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov. The insider source suggested that Gerasimov removed Lyamin from command of the 58th CAA and re-assigned him the position of Chief of Staff of the Central Military District to shield him from criticism over Russian operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast. While ISW cannot independently confirm Lyamin’s alleged re-appointment, the suggestion that the 58th CAA has undergone two major command changes in a short period possibly indicates command-and-control challenges, and at minimum concern among Russian command over the conduct of operations in this key sector of the front.

Russian forces conducted a series of drone strikes targeting southern Ukraine on the night of October 9 to 10. The Ukrainian General Staff and Air Force reported that Ukrainian air defenses downed 27 of the 36 Shahed-131/-136 launched from occupied Cape Chauda, Crimea towards Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson oblasts.[13] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk reported on October 10 that Russian forces are likely conducting strikes using only Shahed drones because the Russian military is attempting to conserve missiles since Russian missile production has slowed due to sanctions.[14] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated that Ukrainian air defense systems will continue to operate as usual during the winter and that Ukrainian forces will strengthen their defense of energy and fuel facilities.[15]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced plans to open a new corridor through Moldova and Romania for the export of Ukrainian grain.[16] Zelensky announced that the overland grain corridor will open soon during a press conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in Bucharest on October 10.[17]

NATO adopted several resolutions aimed at increasing aid to Ukraine on October 9. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly adopted six resolutions related to the war in Ukraine and called for NATO countries to increase and expedite political, military, intelligence, financial, training, and humanitarian support to Ukraine and to “sustain this support for as long as it takes for Ukraine to prevail.”[18] The resolutions also called for the increased and rapid delivery of military equipment to Ukraine, including air defense systems, missiles, and fighter aircraft.

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces launched localized offensive operations in the Avdiivka area of Donetsk Oblast and southwest of Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 9, which are likely intended to fix Ukrainian forces away from the Robotyne area.
• The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed up to three Russian battalions conducted an attack in the Avdiivka direction, and ISW has observed footage of fighting in the area, but ISW has not observed any confirmation of these claimed Russian advances as of this writing.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and made confirmed advances in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
• Russian military leadership may have once again replaced the commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA), suggesting ongoing pervasive Russian command and control issues in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced plans to open a new corridor through Moldova and Romania for the export of Ukrainian grain.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 10.
• The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Luhansk Oblast occupation authorities are cracking down against Ukrainian underground communication networks.

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

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on October 10 and reportedly advanced in some areas. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in the Kupyansk direction near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk) and Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) and southwest of Svatove near Makiivka (20km southwest).[19] One Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces deployed “powerful armored groups” to launch large-scale offensive operations near Synkivka, Ivanivka, and Makiivka, and another milblogger claimed that Russian forces captured several Ukrainian positions near Synkivka.[20] Russian sources claimed that elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District) are deployed in the Kupyansk direction, while elements of the newly formed 25th Combined Arms Army are attacking Ukrainian positions near Makiivka.[21] Another prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces have nearly reached the eastern outskirts of Makiivka and advanced along the entire Novovodyane-Ploshchanka line (about 20km northwest of Kreminna).[22] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash noted that Russian forces have increasingly deployed motorized rifle units, tank battalions, and “Storm-Z” assault companies to the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line and are using poorly trained “Storm-Z” elements for reconnaissance and mine-detection purposes.[23]

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Kupyansk and Kreminna on October 10.[24]

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

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut on October 9 and reportedly advanced. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continue offensive operations south of Bakhmut and achieved partial success near Andriivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut).[25] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Klishchiivka (5km southwest of Bakhmut) and Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut).[26] A Russian milblogger claimed that fighting is ongoing near the railway line near Andriivka and Klishchiivka.[27]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut on October 9 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks towards Chasiv Yar (5km west of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and Andriivka.[28] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked from Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut) toward Bohdanivka (5km northwest of Bakhmut).[29] A Ukrainian military observer stated on October 10 that as of October 6 a Russian operational-tactical group consisting of regular forces, BARS (Russian Army Combat Reserve), 1st Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Army Corps, 2nd Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Army Corps, Territorial Defense, and “Storm-Z” assault units are operating in the Bakhmut direction.[30] The military observer also reported that this operational-tactical group has 60 to 65 percent of all arms and military equipment in the Russian Southern Grouping of Forces (which is committed throughout Donetsk Oblast) but that over half of the operational-tactical group‘s brigade and regiment level units have personnel shortages of 30 to 35 percent and about 10 to 15 percent of brigade and regiment level units have a personnel shortage of up to 55 to 60 percent.[31]

Russian forces intensified offensive operations near Avdiivka on October 9 but did not make confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported up to three Russian battalions with tank and armored vehicle support intensified offensive operations near Avdiivka, Tonenke (7km northwest of Avdiivka), Keramik (14km northwest of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka).[32] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces attacked from Krasnohorivka (8km northwest of Avdiivka) toward Berdychi (10km northwest of Avdiivka), along the Opytne-Vodyane line (3-7km southwest of Avdiivka), and near Tonenke and Pervomaiske after intense artillery preparation.[33] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces reached the outskirts of Berdychi but denied other Russian reports that Russian forces captured the settlement.[34] Russian sources also claimed that fighting is ongoing near Ocheretyne (15km northwest of Avdiivka).[35] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces captured unspecified positions near Avdiivka and Krasnohorivka.[36] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces intend to cut off Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) that supply Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka and encircle them, though Russian forces are likely conducting fixing operations intended to pin Ukrainian forces near Avdiivka rather than attempting to complete a full operational encirclement of the settlement.[37] Russian milbloggers noted that Ukrainian forces have built extensive fortifications in Avdiivka since 2014, making it difficult for Russian forces to break through Ukrainian defenses.[38]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Marinka on October 9 but did not make confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Marinka and Novomykhailivka (10km south of Marinka).[39] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked Novomykhailivka and conducted a “powerful” assault on Marinka.[40] Footage published on October 9 purportedly shows elements of the 150th Motorized Rifle Division (8th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) operating in Marinka.[41]

The Russian MoD claimed on October 10 that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks on Vodyane (7km southwest of Avdiivka).[42]

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

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast and in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 10 and made confirmed marginal advances. Geolocated footage published on October 9 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced northeast of Mykilske (3km southeast of Vuhledar and about 30km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[43] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Pryyutne (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and west of Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[44] A Russian milblogger claimed on October 10 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Mykilske and northwest of Novomayorske (18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[45]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in western Donetsk and in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area and reportedly advanced on October 10. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and that Ukrainian forces are holding Russian forces back near Levadne (18km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[46] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces captured up to 10 strongholds in unspecified areas on the left flank in the Vremivka direction, but ISW has not observed visual evidence of this claim.[47] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Pryyutne on October 9.[48] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) are operating near Mykilske and that elements of the Russian 40th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) are operating north and northwest of Novomayorske.[49]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly advanced on October 10. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced west of Novofedorivka (15km northeast of Robotyne and 6km northeast of Verbove) but unsuccessfully attacked Novofedorivka itself.[50] Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked Novoprokopivka (2km south of Robotyne).[51]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in the Orikhiv sector of western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed advances on October 10. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Verbove (11km southeast of Robotyne) and in the area of Inzhenerne (23km east of Robotyne).[52] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Novoprokopivka and northwest of Verbove.[53]

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces initiated a renewed offensive effort west of Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly advanced in this area on October 10. Several Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Zherebyanky (30 km northwest of Robotyne and 26km southwest of Orikhiv).[54] Russian sources made several different claims of the specifics of Russian advances in this area. A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced north of Zherebyanky.[55] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 2km into Ukrainian defenses near Zherebyanky and Pyatykhatky (29km northwest of Robotyne and 25km southwest of Orikhiv) line, whereas another Russian source claimed that Russian forces advanced several hundred meters in this area.[56]

Russian sources continued to discuss Ukrainian operations in the Dnipro River Delta. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to land on unspecified islands in the Dnipro River.[57] Another Russian milblogger claimed that fighting is ongoing on the Dnipro islands.[58] A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian activity on the Dnipro islands has decreased due to worsening weather conditions.[59]

A Ukrainian official stated that Russian ground lines of communications (GLOCs) in occupied Crimea and southern Ukraine are unable to operate at full capacity. Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk stated that the Henichesk, Chonhar, and Kerch Strait bridges in occupied Crimea are not fully open, leading the Russian military to increasingly use the M17 (Kherson City-Dzhankoy-Feodosia-Kerch) highway that connects occupied Ukraine to Russia.[60]

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

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues efforts to portray itself as effectively mobilizing the Russian defense industrial base (DIB). Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the Almaz-Antey Aerospace Defense Concern’s Ulyanovsk Mechanical Plant and inspected the production of Buk-M3 medium-range anti-aircraft missile systems on October 10.[61] Ulyanovsk Mechanical Plant General Director Sergei Churin stated that the plant shipped one division’s worth of Buk-M3 systems to the MoD already in September 2023 and will ship another division’s worth in October.[62]

Russian authorities are expanding drone production and drone training facilities to occupied areas of Ukraine. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balisky announced on October 9 that a drone production base for assembling attack drones, reconnaissance drones, and loitering munitions and for training drone operators has begun operating in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[63] Balitsky stated that this production base will support both the occupation administration’s “Sudoplatov” volunteer battalion and other Russian forces operating in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.

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

The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Luhansk Oblast occupation authorities are cracking down on Ukrainian underground communication networks.[64] The Resistance Center reported that occupation authorities installed wired internet that users can only access with identification and that authorities will question users who log on through a VPN on these networks.[65] The Resistance Center stated that authorities have not created restrictions to monitor traffic yet due to technical constraints but announced their intent to do so to discourage Ukrainians from providing information to the Ukrainian military.[66]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives:

NOTE: ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin has and will continue to exploit the Hamas attacks in Israel to advance several Russian information operations about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, ISW has notably not observed any evidence — and does not assess — that the Kremlin supported, directed, or is involved in the Hamas attacks.

The Kremlin continues efforts to maintain Russia’s influence in the Middle East against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Israel. Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani at the Kremlin on October 10, marking the first meeting between the two since al-Sudani took office in October 2022.[67] Russian media reported that the meeting had already been planned before Hamas attacks in Israel began on October 7, but Putin and al-Sudani nevertheless reportedly discussed the situation in Israel, as well as the development of “multifaceted” Russo-Iraqi cooperation.[68] Putin told al-Sudani that he believes that the war in Israel is the result of US foreign policy failures and called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.[69] Putin’s remarks to al-Sudani do not necessarily represent an inflection in Russia’s posturing vis-a-vis the wider Middle East. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emphasized on October 9 that Russia benefits from conflict and instability in the Middle East, which is consistent with ISW’s running assessment that the Kremlin has and will continue to exploit the war in Israel to advance information operations and bolster Russia’s geopolitical reputation.[70]

The Russian Investigative Committee announced on October 10 that it has completed its investigation into the April 2 attack that killed prominent Russian milblogger Maxim Fomin (Vladlen Tatarsky).[71] The Investigative Committee reported that it transferred the case to the Russian prosecutor’s office after closing its investigations into Daria Trepova, who Russian authorities accused of planning and carrying out the attack, and Dmitry Kasintsev, who authorities charged with harboring Trepova after the attack.[72] ISW previously reported that Russian authorities accused Ukraine of staging the assassination through Trepova.[73]

Russian officials continue to invoke Russia’s potential revocation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty to further a running nuclear brinksmanship information operation. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov claimed on October 10 that Russia has “no choice” but to withdraw from the treaty in order to balance its status with the US and emphasized that Russia will resume nuclear tests if the US also does so.[74] Ryabkov then went on to make baseless claims that Russia has evidence to suggest that the US either has recently or is currently preparing for nuclear tests in Nevada.[75] Ryabkov likely made this claim to further set conditions for the revocation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty by accusing the US of essentially forcing Russia’s hand.

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

Nothing significant to report.

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

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

9. Taiwan neighbors oppose US cutting Taipei support

Per my earlier message I should have asked, how do we prioritize Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan (and more)?

Tue, Oct 10, 2023 page3

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/10/10/2003807482

Taiwan neighbors oppose US cutting Taipei support

REPORT: While Japan thinks Washington should increase its support to Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines are concerned about the effects it would have on them

• By Lin Tsuei-yi and Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff reporters in TOKYO and TAIPEI
• 
  
•  
•  
• Japan, South Korea and the Philippines all oppose the US reducing its support to Taiwan, research by US think tank RAND Corp and Japan’s Sasakawa Peace Foundation found.
• The report was completed in February and published online last month. The foundation invited the authors — including Jeffrey Hornung, Miranda Priebe and Bryan Rooney, who are all political scientists at RAND Corp — to share the findings in an online forum.
• The authors interviewed policymakers and experts in the three countries, asking them about their views on potential changes to the US’ Taiwan policies in the areas of diplomacy, intelligence, the military and economy.
• 
  

The national flags of Taiwan and the US fly outside a hotel in Houston, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2017, during President Tsai Ing-wen’s transit stop on her way to Central America.

• Photo: CNA
• Japan underscores the importance of Taiwan to its security as it thinks a Chinese invasion of Taiwan might be the first step in China attacking Japan, Hornung said.
• The US should increase its diplomatic, military and economic support to Taiwan, and Japan would follow suit, he said.
• Among the hypothetical US policies raised in the interviews, Japan supports the US advocating for Taiwan’s inclusion in forums that do not require statehood, as well as increasing official high-level interactions with Taiwan, its presence in the region, and arms sales and security assistance to Taiwan, the report said.
• Regarding whether the US should explicitly state that it would defend Taiwan or increase its presence in or near Taiwan, the Japanese interviewees had mixed feelings.
• Meanwhile, South Korea strives to strike a delicate balance between the US and China, supporting the US while avoiding tensions with China, Hornung said.
• South Korea worries that a conflict over Taiwan could prompt China to support North Korea’s military action against it, which is its major concern, he said.
• South Korea generally does not support increased US diplomatic and military support to Taiwan and prefers maintaining the “status quo,” he said.
• The Philippines has a similar attitude, as it is far more concerned about China’s expansion in the South China Sea than it is about security in the Taiwan Strait, he said.
• It does not support increasing official high-level interactions between the US and Taiwan, and thinks that the US should not increase its military presence in or near Taiwan, the report said.
• Despite their ambiguous feelings toward increased US support, the three countries all oppose reduced US support to Taiwan, as they believe it might lead to instability in the Taiwan Strait, Hornung said.
• If the US reduced its support for Taiwan, they would perceive the move as the US being less committed to their security, Priebe said.
• Regarding economic relations, the three countries think the US should pursue a bilateral free-trade agreement with Taiwan and support for its inclusion in regional trade agreements, because integrating Taiwan’s economy is beneficial to the region and less likely to anger China, Hornung said.
• It is crucial for Taiwan to maintain relationships with regional partners, Rooney said.
• Although the Philippines might maintain its neutral stance, it could take steps to protect its close economic and trade relations with Taiwan, he said.
• 
  

10. China Doesn’t Get It

Conclusion:

China claims it does not want competition or contestation; yet its actions suggest otherwise. As Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued a decade ago, China wants the benefits of a charm offensive, but it also wants to guard its territorial claims. Problematically, it cannot do both. China today is still attempting to square this circle while turning to an assertive foreign policy. But China still does not appear to get it. Just as countries are rejecting Russia’s naked revanchism, countries will not follow an arrogant China trying to force a version of an international order based on its distorted interpretations. Wake up Beijing.

China Doesn’t Get It

By Jeffrey W. Hornung

October 10, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/10/10/china_doesnt_get_it_985033.html?mc_cid=b6306f27d5&mc_eid=70bf478f36&utm_source=pocket_saves

A Philippine supply boat, center, maneuvers around Chinese coast guard ships as they try to block its way near Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin Shoal, at the disputed South China Sea on Aug. 22, 2023. Two Philippine supply boats breached a Chinese coast guard blockade in the South China Sea on Wednesday, Oct. 4, in a recurring confrontation near the disputed shoal some fear could spark a larger security crisis that could draw in the United States. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

While Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine continues to galvanize international public opinion against it, on the other side of the world China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific have been scoring numerous own-goals of their own. Given the series of several foolish actions, it is hard not to think that Chinese leadership is clueless about the implications of its behavior. The more likely answer is it simply does not care. Problematic for Beijing, the more undiplomatically it acts, the more it brings countries together in shared resentment against it. 

Start with Europe. Several months ago, China’s Ambassador to France Lu Shaye questioned the sovereignty of ex-Soviet republics. At a time that most of Europe is staunchly opposed to Russia’s unjustified war against Ukraine, Lu’s comments effectively echoed similar language Russian President Vladimir Putin has made about Ukraine, causing Europe to bristle. The former Soviet republics were first. Latvia’s foreign minister Edgars Rinkēvis not only said the comment was “unacceptable” but “false and a misinterpretation of history.” Similarly, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis cited the remark as a reason why the Baltic States do not trust China to broker peace in Ukraine. Elsewhere, the EU foreign affairs ministers discussed Lu’s comments to “assess and recalibrate” the bloc’s stance towards Beijing. And in France’s Le Monde, almost 80 European parliamentarians called upon the French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna to declare Lu persona non grata.

Consider next Southeast Asia. China’s Ministry of Natural Resources recently released the new “standard” official map that lays claim to almost all the South China Sea and parts of land that are currently in India and Russia. The reaction by those countries whose sovereignty was ignored was quick and pointed. Those countries in the South China Sea that lay claims to land features ignored by China’s map rejected China’s “unilateral claims” and said the map is “not binding.” And India accused China’s claims as having no basis and said the map “only complicate[s] the resolution of the boundary question.” Only Russia has yet to respond. But it should be noted that China’s claims over Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island in Russia are in direct conflict with an agreement the two countries signed two decades ago. 

Perhaps the worst display of Chinese arrogance is its reaction to Japan’s release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. In response to Japan’s actions, China instituted a blanket ban on all Japanese seafood imports. This action not only ignores the fact that its decision is conducted under international safety standards and with the help of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it also sets China apart from the rest of international society that has shown an understanding of Japan’s action. What is more, despite its public outrage, China reportedly turned down Japan’s proposal to take part in the International Atomic Energy Agency's system in which countries monitor the results of ocean water off Fukushima. Perhaps the most damning are the reports the Chinese government and state media have been running a coordinated disinformation campaign targeting the release of the wastewater and questioning the science behind the decision.

Behind all these actions, Beijing likely believes it is in its interest to signal strength and show no intention of conceding on its claims or positions. That is the behavior most foreign policy analysts have come to expect from China. But that does not mean it will work to further China’s interests. In fact, the opposite is true, given that China’s behavior is backfiring in spectacular fashion.

Noted above were the various countries diplomatically naming and shaming China for the positions it has taken. Beyond this, China’s provocations are serving to further galvanize countries against it. In August, the United States, Japan, and South Korea, for example, released a historic joint statement that showed unity across many different areas, including a direct criticism of China’s “dangerous and aggressive behavior” in the region. This follows Japan’s efforts to strengthen relations with other U.S. allies, like Australia and the United Kingdom. This month, at the ASEAN meeting in Jakarta, member states put discussion about China’s increasingly assertive actions in the South China Sea high on the agenda. And India criticized China’s possible presence at the G-20 conference it hosted. Importantly, Biden was welcomed in Vietnam—as well as India’s G20 meeting—to shore up support against China’s growing clout. Underlying all of this is a continuation of China’s deteriorating image. Polling data by Pew Research Center show that negative views of China are on the rise.

Regardless of what Chinese officials may claim, its brazen attempts to bully, rewrite, or lie its way to a leading position in the international community are leading to increasingly negative views among the international community. While Chinese behavior today may not be the Wolf Warrior diplomacy on display even a couple years ago, named for China’s forceful staking of positions, it is nevertheless just as threatening to the global order given its blatant failure to abide by the norms and values that underwrite most of what is expected by international society. 

Of course, none of this behavior is new. For many years now, China has been pursuing a more assertive foreign policy. Many have argued, however, that under Xi Jinping this assertiveness has grown more intense. But that begs the question why? Is it simply that Xi brings a more fiery nationalism to its foreign policy than his predecessors? Is it because China now feels it can get away with greater provocations and belligerence because it is economically and militarily stronger? Or could it be because China believes this is what great powers do? 

Regardless of cause, it is backfiring and fueling resentment. As long as China pursues this clumsy foreign policy, its actions will never lead others to see it as a respectable great power they want to follow or emulate. Quite the contrary, it will continue to lead countries to band together against it. In other words, the more it lashes out or forcefully pushes its unilateral view around the globe, the greater resentment it fuels among like-minded states. 

China claims it does not want competition or contestation; yet its actions suggest otherwise. As Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued a decade ago, China wants the benefits of a charm offensive, but it also wants to guard its territorial claims. Problematically, it cannot do both. China today is still attempting to square this circle while turning to an assertive foreign policy. But China still does not appear to get it. Just as countries are rejecting Russia’s naked revanchism, countries will not follow an arrogant China trying to force a version of an international order based on its distorted interpretations. Wake up Beijing.

Jeffrey Hornung is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

11. The End of America’s Exit Strategy in the Middle East

The Middle East is like a magnet for the US. Try to leave but it just keeps pulling us back.

Maybe we should reevaluate shifting regional priorities. If we are a global power, maybe we need to stop prioritizing one region over another (or at least telegraphing those priorities). Maybe we need to figure out how to secure our interests around the world.

What happens when we create a perceived vacuum? Or does our presence or lack thereof really matter to groups like Hamas?

Excerpts;

For the Biden administration, it is long past time to shed the mindset that shaped prior diplomacy toward Iran: a conviction that the Islamic Republic could be persuaded to accept pragmatic compromises that served its country’s interests. Once upon a time, that may have been credible. But the Iranian regime has reverted to its foundational premise: a determination to upend the regional order by any means necessary. Washington should dispense with the illusions of a truce with Iran’s theocratic oligarchs.

On every other geopolitical challenge, Biden’s position has evolved considerably from the Obama-era approach. Only U.S. policy toward Iran remains mired in the outdated assumptions of a decade ago. In the current environment, American diplomatic engagement with Iranian officials in Gulf capitals will not produce durable restraint on Tehran’s part. Washington needs to deploy the same tough-minded realism toward Iran that has informed recent U.S. policy on Russia and China: building coalitions of the willing to ratchet up pressure and cripple Iran’s transnational terror network; reinstating meaningful enforcement of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian economy; and conveying clearly—through diplomacy, force posture, and actions to preempt or respond to Iranian provocations—that the United States is prepared to deter Iran’s regional aggression and nuclear advances. The Middle East has a way of forcing itself to the top of every president’s agenda; in the aftermath of this devastating attack, the White House must rise to the challenge.

The End of America’s Exit Strategy in the Middle East

Hamas’s Assault—and Iran’s Role in It—Lays Bare Washington’s Illusions

By Suzanne Maloney

October 10, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Suzanne Maloney · October 10, 2023

The shocking Hamas assault on Israel has precipitated a beginning and an end for the Middle East. What has begun, almost inexorably, is the next war—one that will be bloody, costly, and agonizingly unpredictable in its course and outcome. What has ended, for anyone who cares to admit it, is the illusion that the United States can extricate itself from a region that has dominated the American national security agenda for the past half century.

One can hardly blame the Biden administration for trying to do just that. Twenty years of fighting terrorists, along with failed nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq, took a terrible toll on American society and politics and drained the U.S. budget. Having inherited the messy fallout from the Trump administration’s erratic approach to the region, President Joe Biden recognized that U.S. entanglements in the Middle East distracted from more urgent challenges posed by the rising great power of China and the recalcitrant fading power of Russia.

The White House devised a creative exit strategy, attempting to broker a new balance of power in the Middle East that would allow Washington to downsize its presence and attention while also ensuring that Beijing did not fill the void. A historic bid to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia promised to formally align Washington’s two most important regional partners against their common foe, Iran, and anchor the Saudis beyond the perimeter of China’s strategic orbit.

In tandem with this effort, the administration also sought to ease tensions with Iran, the most dangerous adversary the United States faces in the Middle East. Having tried and failed to resuscitate the 2015 nuclear deal with its elaborate web of restrictions and oversight of Iran’s nuclear program, Washington embraced a Plan B of payoffs and informal understandings. The hope was that, in exchange for modest economic rewards, Tehran could be persuaded to slow down its work on its nuclear programs and step back from its provocations around the region. Stage one came in September, with a deal that freed five unjustly detained Americans from Iranian prisons and gave Tehran access to $6 billion in previously frozen oil revenues. Both sides were poised for follow-on talks in Oman, with the wheels of diplomacy greased by record-level Iranian oil exports, made possible by Washington’s averting its gaze instead of enforcing its own sanctions.

As ambitious policy gambits go, this one had a lot to recommend it—in particular, the genuine confluence of interests among Israeli and Saudi leaders that has already generated tangible momentum toward more public-facing bilateral cooperation on security and economic matters. Had it succeeded, a new alignment among two of the region’s major players might have had a truly transformative impact on the security and economic environment in the broader Middle East.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

Unfortunately, that promise may have been its undoing. Biden’s attempt at a quick getaway from the Middle East had one fatal flaw: it wildly misperceived the incentives for Iran, the most disruptive actor on the stage. It was never plausible that informal understandings and a dribble of sanctions relief would be sufficient to pacify the Islamic Republic and its proxies, who have a keen and time-tested appreciation for the utility of escalation in advancing their strategic and economic interests. Iranian leaders had every incentive to try to block an Israeli-Saudi breakthrough, particularly one that would have extended American security guarantees to Riyadh and allowed the Saudis to develop a civilian nuclear energy program.

At this time, it is not known whether Iran had any specific role in the carnage in Israel. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Tehran was directly involved in planning the assault, citing unnamed senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group. That report has not been confirmed by Israeli or U.S. officials, who have only gone so far as to suggest that Iran was “broadly complicit,” in the words of Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser. At the very least, the operation “bore hallmarks of Iranian support,” as a report in The Washington Post put it, citing former and current senior Israeli and U.S. officials. And even if the Islamic Republic did not pull the trigger, its hands are hardly clean. Iran has funded, trained, and equipped Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups and has coordinated closely on strategy, as well as operations—especially during the past decade. It is inconceivable that Hamas undertook an attack of this magnitude and complexity without some foreknowledge and affirmative support from Iran’s leadership. And now Iranian officials and media are exulting in the brutality unleashed on Israeli civilians and embracing the expectation that the Hamas offensive will bring about Israel’s demise.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR TEHRAN?

At first glance, Iran’s posture might appear paradoxical. After all, with the Biden administration proffering economic incentives for cooperation, it might seem unwise for Iran to incite an eruption between the Israelis and the Palestinians that will no doubt scuttle any possibility of a thaw between Washington and Tehran. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, however, the Islamic Republic has used escalation as a policy tool of choice. When the regime is under pressure, the revolutionary playbook calls for a counterattack to unnerve its adversaries and achieve a tactical advantage. And the war in Gaza advances the long-cherished goal of the Islamic Republic’s leadership to cripple its most formidable regional foe. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has never wavered in his feverish antagonism toward Israel and the United States. He and those around him are profoundly convinced of American immorality, greed, and wickedness; they revile Israel and clamor for its destruction, as part of the ultimate triumph of the Islamic world over what they see as a declining West and an illegitimate “Zionist entity.”

In addition, in the Biden administration’s entreaties and conciliation, Tehran smelled weakness—Washington’s desperation to shed its 9/11-era baggage, even if the price was high. Domestic turmoil in both the United States and Israel likely also whet the appetites of Iranian leaders, who have long been convinced that the West was decaying from within. For this reason, Tehran has been committing more strongly to its relationships with China and Russia. Those links are primarily driven by opportunism and a shared resentment of Washington. But for Iran, there is a domestic political element as well: as more moderate segments of the Iranian elite have been pushed to the sidelines, the regime’s economic and diplomatic orientation has shifted to the East, as its power brokers no longer see the West as a preferable or even a viable source of economic and diplomatic opportunities. Closer bonds among China, Iran, and Russia have encouraged a more aggressive Iranian posture, since a crisis in the Middle East that distracts Washington and European capitals will produce some strategic and economic benefits for Moscow and Beijing.

Finally, the prospect of a public Israeli-Saudi entente surely provided an additional accelerant to Iran, as it would have shifted the regional balance firmly back in Washington’s favor. In a speech he delivered just days before the Hamas attack, Khamenei warned that “the firm view of the Islamic Republic is that the governments that are gambling on normalizing relations with the Zionist regime will suffer losses. Defeat awaits them. They are making a mistake.”

WHERE DOES IT GO FROM HERE?

As the Israeli ground campaign in Gaza gets underway, it is highly unlikely that the conflict will stay there; the only question is the scope and speed of the war’s expansion. For now, the Israelis are focused on the immediate threat and are disinclined to widen the conflict. But the choice may not be theirs. Hezbollah, Iran’s most important ally, has already taken part in an exchange of fire on Israel’s northern border, in which at least four of the group’s fighters died. For Hezbollah, the temptation to follow the shock of Hamas’s success by opening a second front will be high. But Hezbollah’s leaders have acknowledged that they failed to anticipate the heavy toll of their 2006 war with Israel, which left the group intact but also severely eroded its capabilities. They may be more circumspect this time around. Tehran also has an interest in keeping Hezbollah whole, as insurance against a potential future Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program.

For now, therefore, although the threat of a wider war remains real, that outcome is hardly inevitable. The Iranian government has made an art of avoiding direct conflict with Israel, and it suits Tehran’s purposes, as well as those of its regional proxies and patrons in Moscow, to light the fire but stand back from the flames. Some in Israel may advocate for hitting Iranian targets, if only to send a signal, but the country’s security forces have their hands full now, and senior officials seem determined to stay focused on the fight at hand. Most likely, as the conflict evolves, Israel will at some point hit Iranian assets in Syria, but not in Iran itself. To date, Tehran has absorbed such strikes in Syria without feeling the need to retaliate directly.

As oil markets react to the return of a Middle East risk premium, Tehran may be tempted to resume its attacks and harassment of shipping vessels in the Persian Gulf. U.S. General C. Q. Brown, the newly confirmed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was right to warn Tehran to stay on the sidelines and “not to get involved.” But his choice of words unfortunately suggests a failure to appreciate that the Iranians are already deeply, inextricably involved.

For the Biden administration, it is long past time to shed the mindset that shaped prior diplomacy toward Iran: a conviction that the Islamic Republic could be persuaded to accept pragmatic compromises that served its country’s interests. Once upon a time, that may have been credible. But the Iranian regime has reverted to its foundational premise: a determination to upend the regional order by any means necessary. Washington should dispense with the illusions of a truce with Iran’s theocratic oligarchs.

On every other geopolitical challenge, Biden’s position has evolved considerably from the Obama-era approach. Only U.S. policy toward Iran remains mired in the outdated assumptions of a decade ago. In the current environment, American diplomatic engagement with Iranian officials in Gulf capitals will not produce durable restraint on Tehran’s part. Washington needs to deploy the same tough-minded realism toward Iran that has informed recent U.S. policy on Russia and China: building coalitions of the willing to ratchet up pressure and cripple Iran’s transnational terror network; reinstating meaningful enforcement of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian economy; and conveying clearly—through diplomacy, force posture, and actions to preempt or respond to Iranian provocations—that the United States is prepared to deter Iran’s regional aggression and nuclear advances. The Middle East has a way of forcing itself to the top of every president’s agenda; in the aftermath of this devastating attack, the White House must rise to the challenge.

• SUZANNE MALONEY is Vice President of the Brookings Institution and Director of its Foreign Policy program.

Foreign Affairs · by Suzanne Maloney · October 10, 2023

12. Israel’s Intelligence Disaster

Excerpts:

Now is the time to fixate on the present, not the past. Israel is at war, and its urgent task is finding a pathway to peace, security, and healing. The right time to thoroughly investigate why a surprise attack succeeded is when the immediate threat has subsided.

But Israel will, eventually, need to examine what happened. Interrogating the past—systematically, thoughtfully, and independently—will be essential for enabling a more secure future for Israel and its people.

Answering these questions will also be essential for the United States. In today’s complex and uncertain threat landscape, American intelligence has never been more important. Washington must study Israel’s failures so that it does not repeat them.

Israel’s Intelligence Disaster

How the Security Establishment Could Have Underestimated the Hamas Threat

By Amy Zegart

October 11, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Amy Zegart · October 11, 2023

Hamas’s devastating terrorist attack against Israel has unleashed the most violent and serious conflict the country has seen in half a century. Already, at least 1,000 Israelis (and 14 U.S. citizens) have been killed. It is an astronomical number for such a small country—equivalent to 30,000 Americans. About 2,900 more Israelis have been injured and an estimated 150 others, including toddlers, grandmothers, and foreign nationals, have been taken hostage. Meanwhile, at least 900 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, and another 4,500 have been injured.

These figures are likely to rise. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared war, launched deadly air strikes on the Gaza Strip— a densely populated Palestinian area controlled by Hamas that has been blockaded by Egypt and Israel for 16 years — and vowed to turn Hamas strongholds into ruins. With Hamas rockets raining down on Israeli cities, Israeli shells bombarding Gaza, and Hamas fighters threatening to execute hostages, fears of a broader regional conflagration are mounting.

In these early days, the fog of war is thick, and it is hard to anticipate exactly how the conflict will unfold. But this much is already clear: Hamas’s attack came as a shocking surprise. Israel’s billion-dollar, high-tech Gaza border wall was easily and quickly breached. Early reports suggest that Hamas fighters used unsophisticated weapons to overrun border security with cheap drones, bulldozers, and bombs, and that they traveled to inflict violence and take hostages on paragliders, motorcycles, and in a golf cart. Yet this was not an amateur-hour operation. The assault came by air, land, and sea, and attackers fanned out to capture and kill across multiple sites, simultaneously. That kind of large-scale sophisticated operation takes careful planning, coordination, time, and practice.

Israel’s leaders missed it.

It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this failure. Although lone wolf terrorist attacks are notoriously difficult to uncover, larger plots are more likely to leave digital traces and other telltale clues. What’s more, the possibility of Hamas attacking Israel was not some far-fetched, black swan event hatched by unknown adversaries in distant lands. This was a white swan event plotted by notorious terrorists next door. It was precisely the kind of worst-case disaster scenario that Israeli intelligence and defense officials were supposed to worry about, plan for, and prevent.

Hamas’ offensive is not the first time that a country has catastrophically missed an enemy attack. Japan launched a deadly surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, decimating the Pacific fleet, leading U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to declare war, and ultimately giving rise to the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies squandered 23 chances to disrupt al Qaeda’s September 11 plot, which killed nearly 3,000 people, traumatized the United States, and led to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel itself was caught by surprise almost 50 years ago to the day, when Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked it during a Jewish holiday and ignited the Yom Kippur War.

Although every surprise attack is unique, they share two common features: they are, by definition, consequential events with cascading, long-term geopolitical consequences, and they are almost never really surprises. Post-mortems invariably find that warning signs existed but were hard to identify before disaster struck. The question is why these signs were missed, and how to do better the next time.

In the days to come, investigations will undoubtedly examine what went wrong in Israel, and what lessons the Israeli government (and the rest of the world) should draw. To do so, analysts must determine whether it was intelligence agencies who failed, or whether intelligence officers uncovered Hamas’ plans only for policymakers to ignore them. They need to figure out if Israeli intelligence agencies understood that Hamas’s capabilities were changing, as well as the potential effect of Israel’s own domestic political crisis on adversary perceptions and actions. They need to evaluate whether Israeli intelligence officials have become too reliant on technology. And they need to understand what Hamas got so catastrophically right.

OPEN QUESTIONS

The first question facing Israel is whether this intelligence disaster was primarily a failure to warn or a failure to act. The number one mission of intelligence agencies is preventing strategic surprises. But for warnings to succeed, it is not enough for intelligence collectors and analysts to sound the alarm. Policymakers also have to take action. Weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, for example, U.S. intelligence agencies released an unprecedented stream of detailed intelligence warning of Putin’s impending attack. Yet even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy did not believe it. Zelensky’s courage under fire has been an inspiration for the world, and intelligence has proven pivotal to assisting Ukraine and rallying its allies since the war began. But it is worth asking how history might have unfolded differently if Zelensky and other world leaders took more action—or different actions—in response to the intelligence warnings, before disaster struck.

That is the policymaking side of the equation. To better understand the intelligence side of Israel’s failure, investigators must examine collection and analysis—and where intelligence officials may have been blindsided. A good place to start is by asking whether the country’s intelligence agencies were focused sufficiently on understanding discontinuous change: when an actor’s behavior makes a sudden break with the past. Humans tend to assume that history is a good guide to the future. That is often true, but it can also be dangerously wrong—which is why identifying indicators of discontinuous change is such hard and vital intelligence work.

This problem is not new. In the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, U.S. spy agencies collected reams of intelligence over months indicating that Soviet arms shipments were heading to Cuba. But they concluded Soviet officials would not dare place nuclear missiles there because they had never made such a risky deployment on foreign soil before. It was not until U2 spy planes found incontrovertible evidence of nuclear missile sites in Cuba that United States intelligence officials realized they were wrong.

In this case, Hamas attacked Israel with much greater sophistication and scale than ever before—a massive, discontinuous change. It will be important to unpack whether Israeli intelligence agencies saw this shift coming, whether they missed it, and (if so) why.

For warnings to succeed, it is not enough for intelligence agencies to sound the alarm.

Hamas is not the only entity that intelligence officials could have misjudged. Israeli intelligence might also have failed to understand Israel itself. Intelligence agencies, especially in democracies, focus their collection and analysis on understanding foreign adversaries. But domestic politics and problems can embolden enemies and alter their risk-reward calculus.

It is not enough to for intelligence officials to understand “them.” Intelligence must also understand “us,” and how what happens in an agency’s own country can change enemy perceptions and behavior. Israeli intelligence agencies, for example, might not have known whether or how their country’s unprecedented domestic political crisis was perceived by its enemies, including Hamas. And the crisis may also have helped Hamas’ attack succeed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed overhaul of Israel’s judiciary roiled Israeli society, leading to massive public protests. Hundreds of essential military reservists pledged to refuse to show up for duty if the overhaul passed. Investigators must ask whether this domestic turmoil weakened Israeli deterrence not only by influencing enemy perceptions, but also by eroding Israel’s actual intelligence capabilities and military readiness.

Investigators should also look at Israeli intelligence methods—in particular, whether Israeli intelligence agencies relied too much on technology. Emerging technologies are transforming the world as well as the ability of spy agencies to understand it. They are generating more threats, more speed, more data, more customers outside of governments who need intelligence, and more competitors in the open-source intelligence arena. In this technological era, intelligence agencies must understand and embrace new technologies faster and better to generate insight.

But like everything in intelligence, new tools carry risks as well as benefits. Chief among the risks is that spy agencies may end up placing too much weight on intelligence that is easier to obtain, measure, and analyze by technical means and not enough weight on intelligence that is more difficult to collect and impossible to quantify. In the lead up to the war in Ukraine, for example, part of why U.S. intelligence agencies overestimated Russia’s military capabilities and underestimated Ukraine’s is because it was easier to count tanks and troops than assess will to fight. Intelligence agencies, in other words, counted too much on the things that could be counted.

The attack also appears to be a major Hamas counterintelligence success.

The Israeli government is known for its technological sophistication. According to the New York Times, for example, in 2021, Israel assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist as he was driving to his vacation house by using an AI-powered, remote controlled machine gun that was operated via satellite and placed on the side of a road. An investigation into Hamas’s surprise attack should explore to what extent, if any, Israel’s technical prowess may have generated collection and analysis blind spots.

As analysts study this surprise attack, they should not just focus on what went wrong for Israel. The attack also appears to be a major Hamas counterintelligence success, and investigators must figure out what Hamas got right. They will have to determine how Hamas managed to keep such a large-scale, complex operation secret from one of the world’s best intelligence services.

It is possible, of course, that Hamas was more lucky than skilled, that the failure truly was Israel’s, and that Hamas did nothing remarkable to hide its intentions or capabilities. My research on September 11, for example, found that al Qaeda terrorists did not need fancy counterintelligence plans or even fake names to succeed. They just needed the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation to operate as they usually did. When the Cold War ended and the terrorist threat grew in the 1990s, these agencies failed to adapt their structures, incentives, and cultures to detect and defeat a new enemy. As a result, the CIA and FBI missed nearly two dozen opportunities to penetrate and possibly stop the 9/11 plot. To give just one example, in early 2000, CIA officers identified two suspected terrorists who were attending an al-Qaeda planning meeting in Malaysia, learned their full names, and discovered that one held a U.S. visa and the other had traveled to the United States. More than 50 CIA officials had access to this information, yet none of them told the State Department or the FBI for more than a year. One key reason for this failure is that before 9/11, there was no formal training, clear process, or priority placed on warning other government agencies about dangerous terrorists who might travel to the United States.

Those two men would go on to crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. For months, they plotted their attack while hiding in plain sight inside the United States, using their true names on a variety of documents, including rental agreements, credit cards, and the San Diego telephone directory. They even made contact with several targets of FBI counterterrorism investigations and at one point lived with an FBI informant, all unknown to the Bureau. Inside the FBI, counterterrorism procedures and capabilities were lagging so far behind that a highly classified internal report issued shortly before September 11 gave all 56 FBI field offices in the United States a failing grade.

PAST AND FUTURE

Now is the time to fixate on the present, not the past. Israel is at war, and its urgent task is finding a pathway to peace, security, and healing. The right time to thoroughly investigate why a surprise attack succeeded is when the immediate threat has subsided.

But Israel will, eventually, need to examine what happened. Interrogating the past—systematically, thoughtfully, and independently—will be essential for enabling a more secure future for Israel and its people.

Answering these questions will also be essential for the United States. In today’s complex and uncertain threat landscape, American intelligence has never been more important. Washington must study Israel’s failures so that it does not repeat them.

• AMY ZEGART is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the author of Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence.

Foreign Affairs · by Amy Zegart · October 11, 2023

13. What the Israel-Palestine Conflict Means for China-US Competition

A view from China.

What the Israel-Palestine Conflict Means for China-US Competition

The war between Israel and Hamas is upending new diplomatic trajectories in the Middle East.

thediplomat.com · by Wang Jin · October 10, 2023

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The new round of the Israel-Palestine conflict, in terms of both intensity and scope, is unprecedented since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In the coming period of time, there is a risk of further escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which will have a multifaceted impact on the long-term settlement of the issue, as well as affecting neighboring countries, regional countries, and the United States’ strategy in the Middle East.

For China, the new round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict brings both opportunities and risks.

Latest Round of Conflict between Israel and Palestine

The current conflict is characterized by many aspects, the most notable of which has been the suddenness of the escalation. In recent years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially the conflict between Israel and armed organizations such as Hamas in Gaza, has been the result of an escalation of the civil conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. However, the current conflict was different. It came almost without warning, bringing a major shock to Israel and the international community.

Within an hour of the outbreak of the conflict, Hamas fired 5,000 rockets into Israel, far more than the total number seen in recent years, and Palestinian militants infiltrated into southern and central Israel to launch raids, resulting in a large number of casualties in Israel (at current count, over 900 dead and 2,700 wounded). With Israel’s counter-offensive ramping up, it is bound to cause even more Palestinian casualties in Gaza.

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Another aspect setting this episode apart is that Hamas showed strong determination to launch deadly attacks against Israel. Hamas dispatched almost all of its weapons, equipment, and military personnel in the attacks. Even though it knows that the coming large-scale Israeli counter-attacks and retaliation are likely to weaken the organization’s influence, it is still fighting to the death, demonstrating a great deal of determination.

Finally, Hamas and the group Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza have shown strong cooperation. After 2018, the relationship between Hamas and the PIJ has been very delicate, with Jihad intending to challenge Hamas’ dominance in Gaza. But in the current military operation, Hamas and the PIJ launched simultaneous attacks, showing strong coordination and tacit understanding of the operation.

The new round of Israel-Palestine conflict in the coming weeks will be characterized by escalating intensity, surging casualties, and difficulty in mediation.

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First, the intensity of the new round of Israel-Palestine conflict will further increase in the future. Israel has launched a counter-offensive aimed at clearing out the Palestinian militants who have infiltrated the south, while Israel has announced that it will vigorously bombard the Gaza Strip, so the resistance of Palestinian militants may be even more fierce in the future. Israel’s attack will inevitably be accompanied by more powerful bombings and strikes.

A new round of Israel-Palestine conflict will inevitably lead to greater human casualties. On the one hand, the current Israeli death toll is approaching 1,000, and the number of injuries has exceeded 2,000, which is the highest number in any conflict since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. With Israel’s gradual purge of Palestinian militants infiltrating into southern Israel, it is likely that more Israeli dead will be found, and the number of casualties counted by Israel may continue to rise.

On the other hand, with Israel’s massive counter-offensive, especially its air strikes on densely populated Gaza, the number of Palestinian casualties in Gaza is bound to increase rapidly and may exceed 10,000 people.

Finally, a new round of Israel-Palestine conflict will make it difficult to achieve a ceasefire in the short term. For Israel, after suffering such large casualties, the government and the army are subjected to huge domestic pressure. The Israeli government and the army need to launch a counter-offensive to deal a heavy blow to Hamas and the PIJ, in order to salvage domestic public opinion.

In that context, the mediation initiative from Egypt – the traditional coordinator between Israel and Hamas in Gaza – has been rejected outright by Israel. It will be difficult to realize a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas before public opinion in Israel believes the militant group has been satisfactorily “punished.”

Possible Directions of Further Conflict

On the international level, there is a possible risk of escalation. On the one hand, there is a geographical risk of a north-south conflict. After the outbreak of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the armed forces of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon declared their support for Palestinian armed factions. There were some isolated exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel.

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At the same time, in southern Syria, there were exchanges of fire between Iran and Israel. The Shia armed factions in southern Syria, which are supported by Iran, may also show solidarity with Hamas and the PIJ and clash with Israel. There is also the possibility of conflict between the Iranian-backed Shia armed factions in southern Syria and Israel in support of Hamas and the PIJ.

On the other hand, there is a regional risk that the Israeli-Iranian conflict could widen. The possibility of a large-scale conflict between Iranian militia groups – like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Syria’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Fatima Brigades, and other Shiite forces that have close ties with Iran – and Israel cannot be ruled out.

The key to the proliferation of future conflicts lies in whether a new round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict will break out in the West Bank. In Nablus and Jenin in the West Bank, new armed groups emerged after 2021 which are not affiliated with the mainstream Palestinian faction Fatah or Hamas, but are more independent. Their attitude toward Israel, especially the Jewish settlers, has become stronger, as Jewish settlers have become more radicalized. If in the future the Palestinian population in the West Bank, especially the armed elements, inspired by the conflict in Gaza and Israel, launches large-scale attacks on Israel and Jewish settlements, it will inevitably increase the intensity and scope of the conflict and stimulate armed groups in Lebanon and Syria to launch attacks on Israel.

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Impact for the U.S. and China

This round of Israel-Palestine conflict will have a large impact on the future regional and international situation. First, the prestige of the Israeli Netanyahu government has been hit. Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government failed to pre-empt the attacks, severely denting its reputation among the Israeli public. Netanyahu’s political reputation as “Mr. Security” will lose its appeal in Israel.

Second, the relationship between the United States and Israel has been mended. Before the outbreak of the conflict, the Biden administration in the United States and Israel’s Netanyahu government had cold relations. Netanyahu was not offered a visit to the White House while he was in the United States for the recent United Nations General Assembly.

But after the outbreak of the conflict, Biden immediately reached out to Netanyahu to express support, and sent a fleet to Israel. In the future, the United States is bound to increase the material assistance to Israel. Even after the conflict, the U.S. is likely to work with Israel to strengthen security and defense cooperation.

Third, the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which the United States has been pushing for, will be difficult to reach in the short term. The United States has been pushing Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize relations since 2018, part of a larger strategy to promote the normalization of relations between Arab countries and Israel, and thereby change the geopolitical pattern of the Middle East, isolate Iran and check and balance China. But this round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict will inevitably put the normalization of Saudi Arabia-Israeli relations on ice. It is difficult to make a breakthrough in the short term.

Fourth, the United States-backed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) will be temporarily obstructed. At the G-20 summit in New Delhi, the United States, pulling together India, the European Union, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel and other countries, launched IMEC as an alternative transit route linking India with Europe. Observers had already questioned whether Israel and Saudi Arabia were willing to work together so publicly on the corridor. Now, with the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel being challenged, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor plan is bound to face new obstacles in its future implementation.

For China, this Israel-Palestine conflict has both positive and negative impacts. On the one hand, in the short term there will be a negative impact on the relationship between China and Israel. After the outbreak of the conflict, Israel hoped to get China’s comfort and sympathy, but China’s position, in Israel’s view, lacked sympathetic gestures. At the same time, there have been a wide number of postings on Chinese social media expressing support for Hamas; some of these have been widely translated by the Israeli domestic media, souring Israel’s public opinion on China. This may affect Israel’s policy and attitude toward China in the future.

On the other hand, the current round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict has broken the efforts of the United States to draw Arab countries together, which could be to China’s benefit. The new round of conflict has exposed the rift between Arab countries and the West on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The West stands by Israel, while the Arab countries sympathize with Palestine. The attitude and practice of the United States to fully support Israel is bound to hurt relations with Arab countries in the short term.

GUEST AUTHOR

Wang Jin

Wang Jin is an associate professor from China’s Northwest University

thediplomat.com · by Wang Jin · October 10, 2023

​14. Ukraine Situation Report: Kyiv Brace For Unprecedented Winter Drone War

What will we learn from this?

Ukraine Situation Report: Kyiv Brace For Unprecedented Winter Drone War

The Ukrainian Air Force says that 500 Russian drones were launched against the country last month alone, and that this is just the beginning.

BY

THOMAS NEWDICK

|

PUBLISHED OCT 9, 2023 4:01 PM EDT

thedrive.com · by Thomas Newdick · October 9, 2023

As winter draws closer, Ukraine is preparing for an even fiercer Russian drone offensive than that which was launched against its cities and infrastructure last year. The Russian drone attacks, which make particularly heavy use of Iranian-designed Shahed-series drones, have already stepped up considerably in recent weeks, Ukrainian officials say.

According to Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, attacks by Russian ‘suicide drones’ are expected to reach a record number this winter. Ihnat was speaking on Ukrainian national television, his remarks subsequently being reported by Reuters.

The country’s energy infrastructure is, once again, expected to be the main target of drone strikes, repeating Russian tactics from last winter, which left millions of Ukrainians without power. Repairs to the energy infrastructure are still ongoing as of now, and grid operators have been imposing regular rolling power cuts and rationing of hot water.

Fragments of an Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone (named Geran-2 by Russia), displayed as a symbol of war in the center of Kyiv. Photo by Aleksandr Gusev/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Looking at data for September, Ihnat said more than 500 drones were launched against Ukraine in that month, a new record in itself. By comparison, Russia used around 1,000 Shahed drones across a sixth-month period last winter.

Ukraine is preparing for the new offensive having received new Western-made air defense equipment, but still has nowhere near enough hardware of this kind to ensure coverage of all potential energy targets. At the same time, there is a demand for certain ground-based air defense systems to be used to protect Ukrainian troops taking part in the counteroffensive in the east and south of the country, putting a further strain on these critical weapons and forcing the use of emergency solutions against drone strikes, including small-arms fire.

F-16 fighters promised by Ukraine’s allies have still not arrived, and the jets currently operated by the Ukrainian Air Force are hardly well-suited to the job of intercepting low-level, slow-flying drones, as we have reported about in the past.

It is no surprise, therefore, that air defense systems were stated as Kyiv’s priority during the visit to Washington by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month.

Today’s intelligence briefing from the U.K. Ministry of Defense also reflected on the ongoing drone war and, in particular, Russia’s increasing reliance on Iran in this regard.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense claims that “international isolation has forced Russia to redirect its foreign policy efforts towards previously less-desirable partnerships to gain diplomatic, economic, and military support,” before noting that Russia is now producing Iranian-designed drones under license.

Before we head into the latest from Ukraine, The War Zone readers can catch up on our previous rolling coverage here.

The Latest

While Russia continues its drone war against Ukraine, Kyiv meanwhile appears to be continuing its campaign against targets in Russia-occupied Crimea. This complex campaign has involved a wide range of weapons and tactics, including drones, long-range missiles, unmanned surface vessels, and sabotage teams. Among the more unusual weapons employed against Crimea are adapted Cold War-era S-200 long-range surface-to-air missiles, known to NATO as SA-5 Gammon.

According to Russian accounts, two such missiles, modified to attack static ground targets, were successfully intercepted by air defenses in Crimea over the weekend.

The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that its air defense systems “detected and destroyed” two Ukrainian S-200s that were fired against Crimea in a space of four hours on Saturday. On the Telegram messaging app, the defense ministry posted near-identical statements at around 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. Moscow time. These claimed that Kyiv “attempted a terrorist attack” and that the S-200 missile was in each case destroyed in the air.

While these claims cannot be independently confirmed, Ukraine’s national public broadcaster, Suspilne, quoted a resident of Yevtaporiya in the west of Crimea as saying that two explosions were heard around 10:25 p.m. Moscow time. There were also photos showing a column of smoke rising over Dzhankoi, home of a Russian military base in the north of Crimea, and further reports of explosions being heard there.

In the last few weeks, Ukrainian strikes against Crimea have targeted high-profile objectives such as the dry dock at the naval port of Sevastopol that contained a submarine and amphibious landing ship as well as S-400 air defense systems, also on the peninsula.

On the battlefield, Ukraine claims that its armed forces repelled a Russian attack in Novoprokopivkain the Zaporizhzhia region in the south of the country, while also stating that its troops had “partial success” in nearby Verbove. These claims were reported by Suspilne, quoting the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

While the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive has faced criticism for its slow progress against entrenched Russian positions in the east and south of the country, a recent intelligence briefing from the U.K. Ministry of Defense claims that Ukraine “almost certainly liberated at least 125 square kilometers [ square miles] of territory” in one eastern area of the country. The area in question is the Velyka Novosilka sector west of the town of Vuhledar in Donetsk oblast. As a result, the area has “become relatively quiet over the last four weeks” the U.K. Ministry of Defense added.

From Russia, meanwhile, there have been claims that five separate attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been successfully thwarted. The claims originated from the media officer responsible for Russia’s Central Group of Troops, located in occupied Luhansk. The Ukrainian attacks are said to have been defeated near Lyman and Torske, with 50 Ukrainian troops being killed in the process. These claims have not been independently verified.

Ukraine has removed the commander of its Territorial Defense Forces, Gen. Ihor Tantsyura, for reasons that remain unclear.

In a presidential order today, Ukrainian President Zelenskiy announced the appointment of Maj. Gen. Anatoliy Barhylevych as the new commander of the Territorial Defense Forces.

Gen. Tantsyura had been in the post since May 2022, presiding over the Territorial Defense Forces as they played an important role in repelling the Russian invasion.

Battle-hardened Barhylevych comes to the job having previously served as the chief of staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the east of the country, which has seen most of the heaviest fighting.

While primarily the military reserve component of the armed forces, the Territorial Defense Forces also have other more specialized functions, alongside defense of critical infrastructure, force protection, and security. For example, their units are also trained to combat Russian sabotage trams and intelligence forces that might be operating on Ukrainian territory.

The changeover at the top of the Territorial Defense Forces comes a month after Zelenskiy appointed a new defense minister. Rustem Umerov took over from Oleksii Reznikov, who was fired as his ministry came under fire from corruption allegations.

Servicemen of the 128th Separate Brigade of the Territorial Defense Forces apply first aid skills as they practice storming enemy positions during a tactical drill in the Zaporizhzhia direction, southeastern Ukraine. Dmytro Smolienko / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

More new variations of extemporized anti-drone measures have appeared on Ukrainian and Russian tanks of late, as the two tweets below indicate.

First up is the news, reported by the press service of Metinvest, that the Ukrainian company is now supplying Ukrainian units with bespoke metal structures for protection against Russian attack drones.

According to a statement, the company is undertaking serial production, making up to five units per week, with 32 sets of these protective structures already having been handed over to the military. Based on the supplied photos and artwork, these extensive coverings are intended to protect the vehicles when stationary or in dug-in combat positions, when they are at their most vulnerable.

Next up, however, is a similar-looking protective ‘cope cage’ that was seen on a Russian tank in recently emerged footage. Like the Ukrainian structure, it is an enormous structure that covers the entire tank, constructed from a combination of metal grids and netting, although it’s clearly designed for protecting a tank on the move.

Reflecting the growing strategic importance of Romania in the conflict, Ukrainian President Zelenskiy has announced that this NATO country will host his next visit. Zelenskiy is due in Romania tomorrow.

On the agenda will surely be the issue of grain exports via Romania. Since Russia pulled out of a deal that ensured safe passage of Ukrainian grain from Ukrainian Black Sea ports, Romania has become vitally important to Kyiv’s economy. Now, the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanța has become Kyiv’s main alternative export route for grain.

In the process, this has brought the war closer to Romania, with Russia targeting Ukrainian ports on the Danube River, from where grain is transported to Romania for onward shipment. On several occasions, fragments of Russian drones have landed on Romanian territory, to the alarm of local officials. In response, the Romanian military has increased patrols and observation posts and has expanded a no-fly zone along part of its border with Ukraine.

Romanian Army soldiers ride in a military truck after building a bomb shelter in the village of Plauru, Danube Delta, Romania, on September 12, 2023. Photo by MIHAI BARBU/AFP via Getty Images

In an interesting development in Sweden, a Russian-Swedish citizen is now awaiting trial, accused of conducting “unlawful intelligence activities” on behalf of Moscow. A court in Stockholm will make a verdict in the case of Sergei Skvortsov later this month. He is accused of passing Western technology to Russia and has been released from custody, awaiting his trial. Skvortsov was arrested at his Stockholm home in November last year.

If found guilty, Skvortsov could be imprisoned for up to five years.

While the 60-year-old is accused of having conducted his activities against Sweden and the United States over a 10-year period, the issue of intelligence activities directed by or on behalf of Russia, against the West, has taken on a greater significance since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions imposed on Russia have, in particular, restricted the country’s ability to resupply its forces, especially with high-tech weapons and equipment incorporating Western electronics and other advanced items.

Skvortsov is now alleged to have been a “procurement agent” for a vast Russian intelligence network that was tasked with acquiring technology that had become off-limits to Moscow due to sanctions.

As fighting rages in the latest outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas, as you can read about here, Ukraine’s President Zelensky has drawn a comparison between the situation in Israel and in his country.

Speaking via a video link at the NATO parliamentary assembly, Zelensky described Russia as a “terrorist state,” likening it to the “terrorist organization” Hamas and saying that they employed similar tactics. Zelensky provided the following set of definitions of terrorism:

“Do not rape women. Do not kill. Do not consider children as trophies. Do not fill villages and towns with blood. Do not shoot civilians in cars.”

“This is not the time to withdraw from the international arena into internal disputes. This is not the time to stay silent,” Zelensky continued, in words that were very likely aimed at Republicans in the U.S. Congress who are threatening to block additional aid packages for Ukraine.

Zelensky also drew a parallel between the two conflicts in regard to Iranian involvement.

Iran “can’t say it has nothing to do with what is going in Ukraine” if it sells Shahed drones to Russia, Zelensky argued. At the same time, Tehran cannot claim “it has nothing to do with what is going in Israel” if its own officials claim to support Hamas.

That’s it for now. We’ll update this story when there’s more news to report about Ukraine.

Contact the author: Thomas@thedrive.com

thedrive.com · by Thomas Newdick · October 9, 2023

15. How to Avoid a Second Front Between Israel and Hizballah

Excerpts:

What to do now to affect Hizballah’s decision-making and make sure that it won’t cross the line?

The first thing is to keep projecting the strength of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and emphasizing the support that Israel has from other European powers. Hizballah is powerful, and it relies on its missile force to cause significant damage in Israel. If it believes that this achievement will be minimized as a result of American military involvement, it might choose not to use it. The same message of international support should also be repeatedly conveyed to the leadership in Tehran, to induce it to pressure Hizballah to stay out of the conflict.

Second, Israel needs to restore its deterrence quickly, which is not an easy task. The image of Israeli military strength was damaged this past week. To restore it, Israel needs to show excellent results from its war in Gaza and fast, especially when it comes to taking out Hamas leadership. Unfortunately, it also needs to show that it is willing to cause unprecedented damage to Gaza’s infrastructure. Hizballah’s leadership needs to look at Gaza and be made to think twice before being responsible for that level of destruction in Lebanon.

The war in Gaza will be destructive and hard for both sides. And yet, it will result in a fraction of the damage that a war between Israel and Hizballah would cause. It is in all parties’ interests to make sure that a second front does not open between Israel and Hizballah. This should be on the top of everyone’s agenda.

How to Avoid a Second Front Between Israel and Hizballah - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Nadav Pollak · October 11, 2023

Israel is in a crisis. Last Saturday, the country experienced its most horrific terror attack in history — we still don’t know how many lives it claimed (the count so far is more than 1,000 deaths and thousands of injured). As Israel prepares for a full-scale war against Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza, violence may explode along another front: Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

It’s been 17 years since the 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hizballah. Events since the Hamas attack threaten to spiral out of control bringing the two sides closer to war. Hizballah is a terrorist organization that is, de facto, in charge of southern Lebanon. Since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, there have been a number of exchanges of fire between Hizballah, Palestinian factions in Lebanon, and the Israeli Defense Forces. These exchanges resulted in at least three Hizballah fighters dead and a number of Israeli casualties. The Hizballah casualties are significant because they are the first from direct Israeli fire since 2006.

The question on everyone’s mind right now is: Does Hizballah actually want a full-blown war with Israel? For now, it appears that Hizballah is still sitting on the fence and wants to avoid a war. However, as war in Gaza looms, the probability of miscalculation remains high, and there is an increased chance of escalation.

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To avoid the worse-case scenario — a full-blown war in Lebanon — two key things should happen: The United States should continue its crucial signaling to Hizballah and Iran that they should not take advantage of the situation and that the United States has Israel’s back. The second is that Israel needs to restore its deterrence quickly. That can be achieved only by going all out in Gaza and showing Hizballah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, that such attacks have a price.

Shots Fired

The first shot has already been fired. Ibrahim al Amin, the al-Akhbar journalist who is very close to Hizballah, wrote on Oct. 10 that the “resistance” (i.e., Hizballah) will support the Palestinians, but did not say anything about opening another front against Israel. The group certainly has the means with which to target Israeli territory. Hizballah has stockpiled weapons that can strike targets throughout the country. Israel is also distracted and in crisis. The security forces are in disarray, focused on the southern front and recuperating from a devastating attack. There is no doubt that Hizballah sees this perceived weakness. Yet, it has been days since Israel was attacked, and fighting between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hizballah have been relatively constrained.

There are a number of reasons for Hizballah, thus far, has chosen choosing not to join the fight. After the 2006 war, the “red lines” for each side were established and enforced, and it appears that these unofficially accepted terms have held to some extent. Hizballah has an arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, including precision capabilities, advanced drones, and surface-to-sea missiles. The group also has around 50,000 fighters, many of whom are battle experienced from their fight in Syria. This is why Israel has, for years, avoided operating extensively in the Lebanese arena against Hizballah.

Hizballah leadership, despite all of its grandiose rhetoric against Israel, also knows well that any war with Israel will result in enormous losses to the organization and to Lebanon. Israel has prepared for a war with Hizballah ever since 2006. As a soldier serving in intelligence in the Israeli Defense Forces, I still remember being called to serve many times as Israel conducted exercises preparing for a war in Lebanon. The Israeli army trained, gathered remarkable intelligence, built obstacles on the border to avoid infiltrations, and improved its missile defense capabilities, anticipating that such a war would come eventually. And Hizballah knows that.

Hizballah leadership may have concluded that it has lost the element of surprise. After suffering one of the harshest blows in its history, Israel is mobilizing its reservists, and the entire country is on war footing right now. As part of the mobilization, Israeli Defense Forces are being sent to the northern border, including reservists from elite units and battalions. Tanks and artillery were also mobilized in the north in preparation for escalation.

Hizballah’s leadership may have concluded that the United States is prepared to support Israel, raising the potential cost for any escalation. President Joe Biden has issued several statements in recent days about open-ended U.S. support for Israel. This includes a warning to regional actors against taking advantage of the situation. Biden ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford to move to the eastern Mediterranean to support Israel. This carrier strike group, which U.S. officials have indicated is meant as a signal to regional actors, is equipped with systems that could help defend Israel from Hizballah missile attack. This show of force, while perhaps ancillary to the forthcoming war with Hamas, could signal to Hizballah leadership that any escalation with Israel could be far more intense than in the past — and could include much more concrete U.S. support for Israeli military actions

Conclusion

Deterrence can always break down. Hizballah’s leadership may feel compelled to show solidarity with Hamas or to take advantage of Israel’s current situation in order to try and inflict losses on Israel. This could result in another full-blown war or a few days of heavy fire exchanges on the border and beyond. Iran, which created and supports Hizballah, may also use the group to pressure Israel, should tensions between the two countries escalate.

What to do now to affect Hizballah’s decision-making and make sure that it won’t cross the line?

The first thing is to keep projecting the strength of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and emphasizing the support that Israel has from other European powers. Hizballah is powerful, and it relies on its missile force to cause significant damage in Israel. If it believes that this achievement will be minimized as a result of American military involvement, it might choose not to use it. The same message of international support should also be repeatedly conveyed to the leadership in Tehran, to induce it to pressure Hizballah to stay out of the conflict.

Second, Israel needs to restore its deterrence quickly, which is not an easy task. The image of Israeli military strength was damaged this past week. To restore it, Israel needs to show excellent results from its war in Gaza and fast, especially when it comes to taking out Hamas leadership. Unfortunately, it also needs to show that it is willing to cause unprecedented damage to Gaza’s infrastructure. Hizballah’s leadership needs to look at Gaza and be made to think twice before being responsible for that level of destruction in Lebanon.

The war in Gaza will be destructive and hard for both sides. And yet, it will result in a fraction of the damage that a war between Israel and Hizballah would cause. It is in all parties’ interests to make sure that a second front does not open between Israel and Hizballah. This should be on the top of everyone’s agenda.

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Nadav Pollak is a lecturer on Middle East affairs at Reichman University and a former research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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warontherocks.com · by Nadav Pollak · October 11, 2023​ 

16. What Happened to Iron Dome? A Lesson on the Limits of Technology at War

Excerpts:

“Feeling safe isn’t the same as being safe.”

...

The United States continues to make significant investments in exquisite technologies as it adapts to the putative convergence of the sixth and seventh revolutions in military affairs and prepares for multidomain operations. Despite the high monetary cost, these are prudent investments since they leverage the advantages that the United States currently enjoys in strategic competition. They also implicitly recognize—and seek to mitigate—the United States’ disadvantages, however. In comparison to a pacing threat that has four times the population and interior lines of communication, one of the major disadvantages is mass.

Iron Dome is the most recent example of technology being overcome by adaptation. As it continues to operationalize the multidomain concept, the United States would be well served to investigate these examples and make hard assessments of the limitations of its exquisite military technologies, both recapitalized and future. It should be clear after this past weekend that one of the hardest assessments should be where adaptation might overcome the system and in what ways, even the most imaginative and improbable ones, it might do so—in other words, the inflection point between evolutionary and revolutionary adaptation.

What Happened to Iron Dome? A Lesson on the Limits of Technology at War - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Patrick Sullivan, John Amble · October 10, 2023

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In an episode of the latest season of the Netflix series Lupin, a flashback scene shows the main character, Assane Diop, and a friend planning their first burglary as teenagers. Diop chooses as the pair’s target a house overflowing with the trappings of wealth—and with expensive security mechanisms. His friend is hesitant, but Diop is undeterred, reminding his cautious accomplice of a fundamental truth.

“Feeling safe isn’t the same as being safe.”

Diop proved the prescience of those words by outsmarting the intricate web of security. Over the weekend, Hamas militants proved it by overwhelming one of the most advanced and interconnected air defense systems in the world: Israel’s Iron Dome.

Massing against Iron Dome

When Hamas launched its massive and coordinated attack on the morning of October 7, it initiated it with a barrage of rocket fire from inside Gaza. This is precisely the type of attack Iron Dome exists to defend against. Initially deployed in 2011, it recorded its first successful intercept of a rocket fired from Gaza just days later. The system of mobile batteries has since been expanded to cover population centers across southern and central Israel, and its effectiveness has steadily improved. During a period of attacks in March 2012, Iron Dome intercepted twenty-five of ninety rockets launched toward Israeli territory. Within months, in November of that year, when hundreds of rockets were fired during a period of heightened attacks, officials estimated that Iron Dome’s intercept rate had reached 85 percent. By 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, ten batteries were deployed, intercepting 90 percent of incoming rockets. In 2018, Israel claimed that Iron Dome intercepted all four of the missiles it engaged after Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force personnel launched them from Syria. When tensions spiked once again in May 2021, Iron Dome again successfully intercepted 90 percent of incoming projectiles over a ten-day period.

Against the backdrop of this statistically impressive performance, the sheer number of Hamas rockets that impacted on Israeli territory in the recent attack—including in densely populated cities—looks surprising. But there is another variable at play: mass. Over the first few years of Iron Dome’s deployment, the maximum number of rockets fired at Israel per day, even during periods of open conflict, ranged from 192 to 312. During the May 2021 fighting, that increased substantially—470 rockets fired over the first twenty-four hours of Hamas attacks. On Saturday morning, somewhere between 2,200 and upwards of 3,000 rockets were launched in just twenty minutes (Hamas claimed to have fired 5,000).

That quantity was simply too much for Iron Dome to manage. Hamas rocket fire is notoriously imprecise, and Iron Dome is designed not to expend ammunition on incoming rounds whose trajectories do not indicate an impact in a populated area. That is an important advantage weighing in Iron Dome’s favor. If Hamas fires ten rockets and misses with nine, Iron Dome can most likely intercept the one threatening round. If Hamas fires one hundred and misses with ninety, that poses more of a challenge, but given the system’s demonstrated success rate, most—and likely all—of the threat can be thwarted. But extrapolate this dynamic—by firing a thousand, two thousand, or even more rockets—and, eventually, the advantage shifts in favor of the attacker.

Tactical Adaptation, Evolutionary and Revolutionary

In any conflict, there is a discernible pattern that takes shape, with new offensive weapons and tactics countered by defensive adaptation that deliberately seeks to protect against them. Advancements in offensive airpower are followed by new air defense capabilities. Tanks and antitank weapons are in a perpetual struggle for advantage over one another. And the dominant approaches to arraying forces on the battlefield throughout history have each been upended by new tactics that exploit their vulnerabilities. It is an inevitable pattern of action and reaction because war is fundamentally interactive. This is the essence of Helmuth von Moltke’s reflection that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. As a result, the side that is more agile and better prepared to adapt should be more likely to emerge victorious.

But this fact, true as it might be, also obscures an important distinction between small, incremental adaptations and large, monumental ones—in other words, evolutionary or revolutionary adaptation. The modern history of the improvised explosive device (IED) in Iraq offers an illustrative example. When the first IEDs appeared on the battlefield in 2003, many US and coalition forces in the country moved around their areas of operations in Humvees with little armor. When the threat became apparent, armor was quickly added—in some cases by literally bolting on whatever steel plates were available to create what became known as “hillbilly armor.” Insurgents adapted by emplacing larger IEDs, and still more armor was added to vehicles. Subsequent insurgent adaptation saw the emergence of deep-buried IEDs that were less detectable, vehicle-borne IEDs that introduced maneuverability into the devices’ delivery, daisy-chained IEDs that enhanced targeting of coalition convoys, and even IEDs hidden in the bodies of dead animals alongside roadways. Each of these, however, was an evolutionary adaptation. And each was followed by a similarly evolutionary adaptation to defend against the new threat.

However, a revolutionary adaptation was in the offing. By 2006, a new form of IED—explosively formed penetrators—had become a scourge of coalition forces traveling along Iraq’s roads. These were not tweaks to the size or delivery method of explosives that could be countered by a bit of extra armor or greater vigilance by soldiers, but a change in the form of the weapon itself. Composed of a concave copper plate in the end of a cylinder packed with explosives, the detonation would invert the plate into a molten projectile that penetrated any armor available to coalition forces. For two years—until, in an impressive feat of rapid acquisition, an entirely new type of vehicle was fielded in large numbers—the new weapon wreaked havoc on coalition forces on Iraq’s roadways.

What Hamas forces accomplished days ago is similar. Had they slowly increased the scale of their rocket attacks—as they previously had—Israel was prepared to respond with similarly incremental adaptations, increasing the number of Iron Dome batteries fielded, making technical updates to improve the system’s tracking of incoming rockets, and stocking ammunition in greater numbers. But Hamas instead increased the scale of its barrage so dramatically that Iron Dome was overwhelmed. In two years, the group moved from firing a maximum of 470 rounds in a day—an average of just under twenty per hour—to several thousand in a fraction of an hour.

The Problematic Allure of Technology

The comparative failure of Iron Dome illustrates the limitations of technology to solve tactical and operational problems. Unfortunately, a bias toward technological solutions dominates defense planning in the United States and allies like Israel, and serves as a point of departure for the categorization of a particular military as “high-end.” The Hamas barrage and IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan combine with other recent examples—such as drone swarms over Nagorno-Karabakh and suicide bomber waves in Syria—to demonstrate the universal truth that technological advantage can be overcome. That may be achieved with mass. Or it may be a function of a political willingness by certain actors to do just about anything to achieve a tactical result, in contravention of the laws of war and other international norms if necessary. This is where insurgencies and terrorist groups like Hamas are perhaps particularly advantaged; since they are not sovereign states, they can afford to be less restrained in their tactical behavior.

The technological bias highlighted above acknowledges the changing character of war in the Clausewitzian sense. Indeed, there is a historically virtuous relationship between technological growth and military innovation, and aspiring militaries need to compete in the technological space to stay abreast of their enemies. To wit, the logic of structural realism in international relations, or more recent scholarship on “first mover–fast follower” market dynamics, has military-technical advantage at its core. But technological bias should not blind the competitor to the other part of Clausewitz’s insight—that irrespective of military-technical innovation, war is foremost a violent contest between opposing wills that serve political ends. When your competitor does not have a technological advantage, then you can be sure that it has significant offsetting investments in violence, will, and politics. And when there are existential stakes involved—as there surely are from the perspective of most insurgencies and terrorist groups—then the competitor has to seriously consider how much blood on top of technology it is willing to spend to win. Given what Hamas has shown in the first stage of this new war, Israel is unlikely to be restrained in response, and any victory that Israel subsequently achieves will not be a wholly technological one.

The United States continues to make significant investments in exquisite technologies as it adapts to the putative convergence of the sixth and seventh revolutions in military affairs and prepares for multidomain operations. Despite the high monetary cost, these are prudent investments since they leverage the advantages that the United States currently enjoys in strategic competition. They also implicitly recognize—and seek to mitigate—the United States’ disadvantages, however. In comparison to a pacing threat that has four times the population and interior lines of communication, one of the major disadvantages is mass.

Iron Dome is the most recent example of technology being overcome by adaptation. As it continues to operationalize the multidomain concept, the United States would be well served to investigate these examples and make hard assessments of the limitations of its exquisite military technologies, both recapitalized and future. It should be clear after this past weekend that one of the hardest assessments should be where adaptation might overcome the system and in what ways, even the most imaginative and improbable ones, it might do so—in other words, the inflection point between evolutionary and revolutionary adaptation.

Colonel Patrick Sullivan, PhD, is the director of the Modern War Institute at West Point.

John Amble is the editorial director of the Modern War Institute at West Point.

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

Image credit: Israel Defense Forces

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Patrick Sullivan, John Amble · October 10, 2023

17. Israel's War With Hamas Will Ripple Across the Region and the West

Excerpts:

The big political lesson belongs, however, to the U.S.

The anti-Western axis — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea — is pushing back on multiple fronts. The U.S. exit from Afghanistan was an invitation for Russia to invade Ukraine, now followed by the attack on Israel driven by Iran. Is an attack on Taiwan next?

The reality is that the West is under siege. It is time for Washington to overcome its dysfunctions and face up to this geopolitical challenge.

Israel's War With Hamas Will Ripple Across the Region and the West

Published 10/10/23 06:00 AM ET

Russell A. Berman

themessenger.com · October 10, 2023

The Hamas attack of Oct. 7 has shattered the self-confidence of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Hamas’s hostility to Israel was never a secret, nor was its dependence on Iran, which has been consistent in declaring the goal of abolishing the state of Israel. The only surprise is that the IDF proved so unprepared. This failure should have profound ramifications in Israeli politics.

There also will be a ripple effect in the United States. The question already is being posed as to how the Biden administration’s appeasement policy toward Iran has enabled it to fund its proxy armies like Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. The lax enforcement of sanctions and the recent release of $6 billion of otherwise sequestered funds made it easier for Tehran to decide to dedicate funds to pay for the Hamas attack. These policies likely reflect the influence of pro-Iran operatives in high-level positions reported to be in the U.S. government.

Yet whatever political debates ensue, we are still at the outset of the confrontation. The fog of war prevails, and events may take unexpected turns. For now the IDF has nearly regained control of the southern region where Hamas operatives seized control of several small towns. The Israeli Air Force has attacked Hamas sites in Gaza, and Israel has ceased providing electricity to Gaza. There also are indications that the IDF is preparing for a ground incursion into Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared the goal of ending Hamas’s fighting ability.

The conflict will be costly, and residents of Gaza will pay the highest price for Hamas’s adventurism.

Since Hamas reportedly attacked in coordination with Iran, it is noteworthy that — as of this writing — Iran’s other puppet, Hezbollah, has not mounted a symmetrical offensive. It has, so far, fired only a few missiles at Israeli radar sites, but there has not been — yet — a massive land incursion or a systematic targeting of civilians, as was the case with Hamas. If the Iranian goal were to topple the Israeli state, it certainly would have mobilized Hezbollah for a simultaneous invasion.

Nor have there been violent uprisings within Israel on the part of Israeli Arabs (who presumably prefer to live with Netanyahu, rather than under Hamas control).

A woman waves an Israeli national flag during a rally in support of the people of Israel at the call of the Belgian Coordination Committee of Jewish Organizations (CCOJB) in front of the Israeli embassy in Brussels on Oct. 9, 2023, two days after the surprise attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.SIMON WOHLFAHRT/AFP via Getty Images

The comments from elsewhere in the Arab world have included boilerplate condemnations of Israel but, with the exception of Qatar, there have been no full-throated endorsements of Hamas. Iran, of course, is another story, where the parliament rose to chant, “Death to Israel.” Only the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a partner to the Abraham Accords, issued a clear condemnation of the attack.

So far, in terms of real military action, Hamas is on its own. Gone are the days when multiple Arab armies collaborated to crush Israel.

Hamas’s goal was never to hold territory in the Israeli south but, instead, to score a propaganda victory by exposing Israel’s vulnerability. This goal included terrorizing Israelis through the dissemination of video clips of their kidnapped victims.

Eliciting a harsh Israeli response was the point: Iran unleashed Hamas precisely to disrupt the diplomatic efforts toward a normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That normalization, an extension of the Abraham Accords, would have been a boon to the region, with benefits for Israel and Saudi Arabia — as well as for the United States, by linking its two important partners. Iran’s malign agenda shows why that normalization would still be desirable, but the current conflict will impede diplomacy.

An additional political consequence of the attack will be the deferral for decades of any realistic prospect of a “two-state solution.” No Israeli public will now accept a sovereign Palestinian state on its West Bank border. In terms of national security issues, the Israeli electorate will move further to the right.

It is not only the Israeli electorate that is moving to the right. European anxiety about immigration is contributing to a drift toward the right and the far-right. In the face of the kidnappings and murders of civilians in Israel, the news reports of celebrations of Hamas by immigrant communities in Europe and even in a refugee camp in Greece will only harden anti-immigrant sentiment.

In the regional election in the German state of Hessia on Sunday, in the midst of the news from Israel, the far-right anti-immigrant AfD came in second. The biggest loser is Nancy Faeser, the current interior minister and a proponent of lax immigration policies, who had hoped to become governor in Hessia. Her Social-Democratic party came in a sorry fourth.

The big political lesson belongs, however, to the U.S.

The anti-Western axis — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea — is pushing back on multiple fronts. The U.S. exit from Afghanistan was an invitation for Russia to invade Ukraine, now followed by the attack on Israel driven by Iran. Is an attack on Taiwan next?

The reality is that the West is under siege. It is time for Washington to overcome its dysfunctions and face up to this geopolitical challenge.

Russell A. Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a co-chair of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

themessenger.com · October 10, 2023

18. A new American strategy for Ukraine BY MICHAEL O’HANLON

Excerpts:

If, in 2025, battlefield conditions and other factors make it wiser to adopt a fallback strategy, that may be an adequate approach to defend America’s core interests. Such a strategy might be one in which we help Ukraine hold the territory it then controls, maintain a sovereign and safe government, strengthen its own defenses to deter or stop any future Russian offensive, and anchor Ukraine to the West with some kind of security arrangement, whether through NATO or otherwise. But that would be an approach that gave Putin some of what he had wanted all along and, in that sense, would risk being seen as rewarding cross-border aggression. It is not a decision we should ever reach lightly, and it would be badly premature to reach it now.

Yes, the Ukraine war is expensive for us. But Europeans are contributing every bit as much as Americans when financial aid and refugee resettlement costs are considered, and the burden on us amounts to just over 5 percent of the total U.S. defense budget and about 0.2 percent of GDP. Given the stakes at hand, it is affordable and sustainable — as, by the way, is a new strategy for securing the border and attacking the fentanyl problem more assertively, which Republicans are right to identify as an additional top national security priority.

Biden can and should say as much in his speech, as well. But his top goal is to explain why the Ukraine war effort must in fact be intensified now — even if it should not be viewed as a forever war.

A new American strategy for Ukraine

BY MICHAEL O’HANLON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/09/23 8:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/4244449-a-new-american-strategy-for-ukraine/

When he gives his crucial speech on Ukraine in coming days, President Biden needs to provide a different framing.

Helping Ukraine is still the right thing to do. But helping Ukraine “as long as it takes,” as Biden and his team are prone to say, is fundamentally unsatisfying — not only to MAGA Republicans, but increasingly to most Republicans and even to many non-Republicans, who wonder how long the United States should support an open-ended and currently stalemated war effort.

To be clear: I agree with Biden that we must help Ukraine remain sovereign, independent and well-defended. It would be a moral calamity to abandon Ukraine in a war that is totally Russia’s responsibility. It would ignore America’s obligations under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which we promised to help ensure its future security as a way of persuading Ukraine to give up the nearly 2,000 nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union. Worst of all, it would constitute a huge strategic risk, since a Putin who was victorious in Ukraine could then become a serious threat to NATO countries like Latvia and Estonia — risking direct conflict with the U.S.

But expressing an open-ended commitment without conditions or time horizons only makes obvious sense for existential wars of national survival. Otherwise, any strategist must periodically review the costs and benefits of various possible policies before simply continuing with the current approach. As a political practicality, Americans expect as much.

Biden should announce that we will sustain and even increase support for Ukraine through 2024 and into 2025. But he should also acknowledge that, at that point, a newly elected president — himself or Donald Trump or someone else — would naturally be expected to conduct a fresh strategic review of the conflict (which is quite likely to be ongoing at that point, alas), taking into account all relevant factors in proposing any future course of action.

It is too soon to do that, however. For now, we should continue with the current strategy — and even intensify it. Biden should explain one by one the reasons for this approach:

1. In history, major wars often only reach their key turning points two to four years into the effort. The Ukraine war has not yet reached two years of duration. For example, in America’s major wars, the average turning point (for those wars we won) was usually after around 25 to 30 months. Ukraine’s own history, notably in the world wars, is not dissimilar.
2. Absorbing and learning to operate modern military equipment is a multi-year process. The average member of the American military serves about five to six years, and many of our troops serve 10 to 20 years or more, during which time they build up more and more expertise. Most U.S. military units train up to full combat readiness over cycles lasting one to two years. Ukraine has had Western tanks for only a few months and does not yet have any western aircraft. Most of its troops have had only modest training. The Ukrainian military needs all of 2024 to have a reasonable chance at carrying out effective combined-arms warfare (though they have been rather impressive to date in much of what they have already done).
3. American politics currently give Putin hope, and that is counterproductive. It is important that the prospect of a Trump victory in 13 months, or assertive action by Republicans in Congress before that, not encourage Putin to keep fighting in the hope that the White House will deliver him the victory that his own army cannot. Even if Trump would likely take a more minimalist approach to the Ukraine war than Biden, his new strategy would only emerge after he assembled a national security team that then developed the plan. In particular, the Trump team would presumably want to examine options for helping Ukraine keep its currently-held territory, and of course its sovereignty, even if the U.S. stopped providing Ukraine with offensive capabilities to attempt to retake occupied land.

As retired Gen. David Petraeus and strategist Fred Kagan have argued, there are reasons to hope that the current Ukrainian offensive, which is gaining at most hundreds of meters a day in territory, could produce results much faster in the months to come. Even incremental progress at some point adds up; forward Ukrainian fighting positions will then be able to range Russian supply lines that extend from Ukraine’s east over to Crimea. Also, while there is little immediate prospect of Russian lines breaking, it is not clear that Russia has adequate strategic reserves to plug any gaps that do develop in coming months. The current stalemate may break someday — just as the stalemate on the western front in World War I that prevailed from 1915-1917 finally broke in 1918.

Ukraine deserves a serious chance to retake its occupied territory and liberate its own peoples who live in those parts of the country before we give up on that possibility. My own instinct is that Ukraine’s prospects of achieving all these goals even by 2025 are no better than 50-50. But it is too soon to draw that conclusion — and it is certainly too soon to impose it on Ukraine’s government.

If, in 2025, battlefield conditions and other factors make it wiser to adopt a fallback strategy, that may be an adequate approach to defend America’s core interests. Such a strategy might be one in which we help Ukraine hold the territory it then controls, maintain a sovereign and safe government, strengthen its own defenses to deter or stop any future Russian offensive, and anchor Ukraine to the West with some kind of security arrangement, whether through NATO or otherwise. But that would be an approach that gave Putin some of what he had wanted all along and, in that sense, would risk being seen as rewarding cross-border aggression. It is not a decision we should ever reach lightly, and it would be badly premature to reach it now.

Yes, the Ukraine war is expensive for us. But Europeans are contributing every bit as much as Americans when financial aid and refugee resettlement costs are considered, and the burden on us amounts to just over 5 percent of the total U.S. defense budget and about 0.2 percent of GDP. Given the stakes at hand, it is affordable and sustainable — as, by the way, is a new strategy for securing the border and attacking the fentanyl problem more assertively, which Republicans are right to identify as an additional top national security priority.

Biden can and should say as much in his speech, as well. But his top goal is to explain why the Ukraine war effort must in fact be intensified now — even if it should not be viewed as a forever war.

Michael O’Hanlon is the Phil Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution, and author of “Military History for the Modern Strategist: America’s Major Wars Since 1861.”

19. Ukraine fatigue unlikely to reach Japan anytime soon

Japan may be the only country not to feel it. But can it alone sustain support for Ukraine (Obvious answer I know).

Ukraine fatigue unlikely to reach Japan anytime soon

japantimes.co.jp · by Gabriele Ninivaggi · October 11, 2023

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October 11, 2023

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a high level Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine, on the sidelines of the 78th U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on Sept. 20. | AFP-JIJI

By Gabriele Ninivaggi

staff writer

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Oct 11, 2023

With the conflict in Ukraine at a standstill and Western countries forced to cope with creeping war fatigue, Japan’s approach toward the war is unlikely to change in coming months.

“In order to stop the Russian aggression as soon as possible, the first thing Japan should do is strongly enforce sanctions against Russia and strengthen support for Ukraine,“ Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told The Japan Times and other media outlets in an interview last week.

While admitting that each nation has its own individual interests, Kamikawa added that forming a united front to support Ukraine with the international community, including countries in the so-called Global South, is still essential.

japantimes.co.jp · by Gabriele Ninivaggi · October 11, 2023

20. How the green beret became the symbol of US Army Special Forces

And here is the rest of the story on the Green Beret at JFK's grave site:

In April of 1962, the President penned an official White House Memorandum stating, "The Green Beret is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom." This official document forever joined the legacy of Kennedy with that of Army Special Forces.

Several months later the Green Berets would be called to serve the president as they stood guard over his coffin and participated in the Honor Guard at his funeral. Unaware of the impact it would make, Command Sergeant Major Francis J. Ruddy laid his own beret at Kennedy's grave in the ultimate gesture of gratitude and respect.

That same beret is now on display at the John F. Kennedy Library as a memory to the president's vision and to honor all Special Forces Soldiers who have served the Nation, especially those who sacrificed their lives.

Every year following, a contingent of Green Berets and members of The Old Guard, who stood watch that day in November 1963, remember this gesture by laying a wreath complete with the now iconic Green Beret at the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

https://www.army.mil/article/229902/the_green_berets_and_kennedy_two_legacies_forever_united

How the green beret became the symbol of US Army Special Forces

militarytimes.com · by Sarah Sicard · October 10, 2023

Despite their status as some of the most elite fighters in the world, U.S. Army Special Forces didn’t exist in the way we know them until 1952.

“Special Forces traces its lineage to the First Special Service Force (FSSF), constituted on July 5, 1942,” according to Army records. “A combined U.S. and Canadian unit, the FSSF was originally formed to conduct unconventional warfare in Nazi-occupied Norway.”

Alas, the group was disbanded in 1945, but their style of warfighting was just taking hold. Seven years later, Col. Aaron Bank helped create the 10th Special Forces Group, comprised heavily of soldiers formerly associated with the intelligence wing known as the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS.

Their tell-tale chapeaus — green berets — trace their origins to World War II, when American personnel stationed abroad often adopted headgear to match their European counterparts. Big among the French and Belgian troops were berets. Meanwhile, the distinctive green coloring is owed to British Commandos, who adopted the color for their own variants.

Despite not receiving approval to wear the colorful headgear, Special Forces soldiers did so anyway. Eventually, however, it became standard.

“The Green Beret was originally designated in 1953 by Special Forces Major Herbert Brucker, a veteran of the OSS,” records note. “Later that year, 1st Lt. Roger Pezelle adopted it as the unofficial headgear for his A-team, Operational Detachment FA32. They wore it whenever they went to the field for prolonged exercises. Soon it spread throughout all of Special Forces, although the Army refused to authorize its official use.”

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy legitimized the beret — seemingly inadvertently — as Army standard issue while visiting troops at Fort Bragg.

“He sent word to the Special Warfare Center commander, Brigadier General William P. Yarborough, for all Special Forces soldiers to wear their berets for the event,” according to SOF records. “President Kennedy felt that since they had a special mission, Special Forces should have something to set them apart from the rest.”

In 1962, Kennedy wrote an official White House Memorandum stating, “The Green Beret is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom,” according to Army records.

In doing so, Kennedy, a Navy veteran, became viewed as a champion of special forces.

“I know that you and members of your command will carry on for us and the free world in a manner which is both worthy and inspiring,” Kennedy said. “I am sure that the Green Beret will be a mark of distinction in the trying times ahead.”

After his assassination, Kennedy’s wife Jackie requested the Green Berets serve as the Honor Guard during his funeral procession.

To this day, the beret is worn along with the coveted Special Forces tab.

About Sarah Sicard

Sarah Sicard is a Senior Editor with Military Times. She previously served as the Digitial Editor of Military Times and the Army Times Editor. Other work can be found at National Defense Magazine, Task & Purpose, and Defense News.

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