Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free, because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say, and can’t, and the other half have nothing to say, and keep on saying it.”

- Robert Frost.

What is the secret of success?
Right decisions.
How do you make right decisions?
Experience.
How do you game experience?
Wrong decisions.

- Unknown but as seen on the inter-webs.

1. U.S. Picks Troops to Prepare for Potential Deployment to Middle East

2. US Army special ops chief on 'most important' lesson from Ukraine: Information operations

3. Hostage Rescue Experts On The Daunting Challenges Israel Faces

4. In China's military 'purge,' final outcomes remain to be seen

5. America’s ‘Gold Standard’ GPS Risks Falling Behind Rival Systems

6. Who's behind Israel-Gaza disinformation and hate online?

7. Back to the Future: Reinvigorating America's Psychological Operations Capabilities in the Age of Information Warfare

8. Behind closed doors, Marines struggle with a glaring diversity problem

9. Expert Analysis: The Coming Storm - Insights After Nine Days of War in Israel

10. China Isn't Going to War Because It Doesn't Have To

11. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 16, 2023

12. Iran Update, October 16, 2023

13. The Global Alliance of Failed States

14. Army takes on a naval tinge as it adapts to the Pacific

15. China’s social-media attacks are part of a larger ‘cognitive warfare’ campaign

16. War in the Middle East Challenges Biden’s Defense Strategy

17. Statement from Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh on Force Posture

18. Cheap and terrifying surprise attacks are the new face of warfare

19. The Need to Train Data-Literate U.S. Army Commanders

20. Putin visits 'dear friend' Xi in show of no-limits partnership

21. When a CEO Plays President: Musk, Starlink, and the War in Ukraine

22. Meet the Extraordinary Fighters of Myanmar’s Resistance

23. Russia Goes on the Offensive in Ukraine—and Suffers Heavy Losses

24. US special operations and the importance of personnel recovery missions

25. Soldiers Are Getting Burned Out. Army Leadership Knows It's a Problem.

26. Five ideas to counter Hamas’ lawfare strategy…and why

1. U.S. Picks Troops to Prepare for Potential Deployment to Middle East

What kind of advice can we offer the IDF?

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestinians/card/u-s-picks-troops-to-prepare-for-potential-deployment-to-middle-east-0pYNLxiZ7dmUbN6NxCML?utm

Live Coverage Feed

Updated 2 hours ago

U.S. Picks Troops to Prepare for Potential Deployment to Middle East

Nancy A. Youssef

A U.S. site facility in Germany. (Daniel Karmann/Zuma Press)

The U.S. military has selected roughly 2,000 troops to prepare for a potential deployment to support Israel, U.S. defense officials said. The troops are tasked with missions like advising and medical support, the officials said, and they are from across the U.S. armed services. They aren’t intended to serve in a combat role, the officials said. No infantry have been put on prepare-to-deploy order.

The troops are currently stationed both inside the Middle East and outside, including Europe, the officials said. It isn’t clear under what circumstances the U.S. could deploy the troops or to where, but the Pentagon decision signaled it is preparing to support Israeli troops should Israel launch a ground incursion into Gaza. It is unclear how many of those troops, should they be deployed, would go into Israel. But the officials said that at least some of them could enter the country to support Israeli forces. A predeployment order doesn’t mean the troops will certainly deploy but rather shortens the time troops need to be ready to move.

2. US Army special ops chief on 'most important' lesson from Ukraine: Information operations

Yet there are rumors that our Psychological Operations forces will be reduced.

17,000 surrenderees is a nice quantifiable measure of performance but most of the effects of psychological operations are not so easily quantifiable.

US Army special ops chief on 'most important' lesson from Ukraine: Information operations - Breaking Defense

US Army Special Operations Command's Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga credits successful information operations with the defection of 17,000 Russian soldiers.

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · October 13, 2023

Official Twitter account of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, is displayed on a mobile phone screen photographed for the illustration photo. Krakow, Poland on January 30, 2023. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

AUSA 2023 — Of the many, many lessons American military leaders and tacticians are taking from Ukraine’s fight against Russian invaders, one stands above the rest for the head of US Army special operations: the criticality of information operations.

“I think [information ops] … could be the most important lesson learned from the crisis in Ukraine,” Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, commanding general of US Army Special Operations Command, said today. “I mean, the world has rallied to support the Ukrainian armed forces, in my belief, because of information operations and gathering support.

“I think the resistance and the resilience capability of the Ukrainian people is there because of successful information operations,” he said. “There’s tragedies all around the world that the world doesn’t necessarily pay as much attention to, but I think information operations is key.”

Beyond global support, Braga credited Ukraine’s aggressive and sophisticated public campaign for contributing to some 17,000 Russians deserting the military. (Last November, then-US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said Russia has seen 100,000 casualties, which presumably includes defections in addition to those killed or wounded.)

“Messaging has played a huge role in the tactical and operational sense,” he said. “You’ve had 17,000 Russians desert. That’s 17,000 soldiers you haven’t had to blow up on the battlefield or destroy.”

Braga said there’s a clear tactical benefit to “eroding the will of individual soldiers” and “impos[ing] doubt into the mind of the adversary.”

Ukraine’s military, and President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy personally, have been extremely aggressive in public messaging from the outset of the war — including a key video of Ukrainian leaders standing steadfast in Kyiv as Russian forces closed in on the first days of the invasion. Ever since, social media, as well as traditional media, has been saturated with videos of Ukrainian military successes as well as purported Russian depravity, each bolstering Western support for Ukraine.

Braga suggested the US Army has supported its Ukrainian partners in its information campaign, and that the US would be well served to follow Kyiv’s example in a future conflict.

Ultimately, he said, “warfare is about a contest of wills. You can have an annihilation strategy where you destroy every red icon on the map … but at the end of the day, you have to convince a human to stop doing what you’re doing.”

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · October 13, 2023

3. Hostage Rescue Experts On The Daunting Challenges Israel Faces

Comments from:

Tomer Israeli

Navy Reserve Lt. Cmdr Bryan Stern

Zorka Martinovich

Retired Army Gen. Joseph Votel

Hostage Rescue Experts On The Daunting Challenges Israel Faces

Here is what experienced hostage rescue experts have to say about the risks and chances of success of getting hostages from Hamas alive.

HOWARD ALTMAN

UPDATED OCT 16, 2023 5:43 PM EDT

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · October 16, 2023

Hostage rescue operations are among the most complex missions any military will face. Success requires detailed planning, actionable intelligence, speed, surprise, and a degree of control over the hostage location.

With about 150 hostages spread out across Gaza, some in buildings, some in tunnels, and some in Hamas’s best-protected enclaves in what is akin to the middle of an active war zone that is packed with an extremely hostile population, Israel doesn't have many of those elements on its side.

Palestinian civilians and rescuers help clear the rubble in the heavily bombarded city center of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip following overnight Israeli shelling, on October 10, 2023. (Photo by SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images)

Given all this, several former military, intelligence, and FBI personnel who worked intimately on hostage rescue efforts gave us expert analysis of the challenges Israeli now faces, what they need to accomplish, and the chances for success.

Tomer Israeli

Tomer is a former member of “Shin Bet” (Israeli Secret Service), a former captain in the Israeli Army Special Forces Sayeret Matkal - a field intelligence-gathering unit, conducting deep reconnaissance behind enemy lines to obtain strategic intelligence, also tasked with counter-terrorism and hostage rescue beyond Israel's borders. He is also a former Executive Protection Special Agents Team Leader at the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. He now runs the Israel Tactical School.

Tomer Israeli, a former Israeli intelligence and special operations forces officer, has years of hostage rescue experience. (Israel Tactical School photo)

Israel is facing a unique problem set in trying to extract the hostages from Hamas control.

“There has never been a hostage rescue from Gaza before,” Israeli told us.

The reason, he said, is that despite being one of the most highly surveilled places on earth, Gaza is such a tight-knit community that human intelligence is extremely difficult to gather.

Even more so now.

“We cannot get the information like before because this is basically a war zone,” he said. “It’s not like I can run an undercover team in a peaceful environment, like in regular days, and collect information for an attack.”

That’s a problem, because information gathering is “one of the key components” of a successful hostage rescue. Without that, “the chance to really understand the objective is very, very slim.”

Another potential problem is the lack of surprise in conducting operations.

“Surprise is the key,” he said. “More than 90% of success in combat is to surprise.”

All this factors into mission planning, critical from conception to execution.

Hostage rescue planners need to understand where the hostages are located, who is holding them, and the level of danger to rescuer and hostage alike.

“Every building is different. The doors are different. They are secured in different ways. There are all kinds of surprises. If the enemy is very creative, it can do a lot of things” to thwart a rescue attempt.

IDF soldiers during close quarters battle training. (IDF)

“First of all, in order to rescue the hostages you need to make sure that the area is safe, meaning you will have some control over the objective, let's say a house or an apartment or basement or a place where the hostages are held,” Israeli told us. “You need to what we call ‘freeze the perimeter.’”

After that, a field assessment is made of the situation.

“You want to create a situation where basically the enemy will be too busy to handle the force penetrating their space,” Israeli said.

All this is complicated by Hamas separating the hostages and moving them around.

“There is not just one objective with where the hostages are held, it’s probably several of them,” said Israeli. “Maybe some of them are underground and also maybe in the most protected places in Gaza.”

That, said Israeli, is Dar al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The hospital is the center of the Palestinian medical community’s efforts to treat the tremendous influx of people wounded in the ongoing massive Israeli bombardment. It is also a morgue for the drastically increasing number of people killed in those attacks. However, in addition, it serves as a Hamas headquarters, according to Israeli.

“It's a very busy hospital, but Hamas is using their own patients and civilians as a human shield. Basically, under the hospital, they have the headquarters of the Hamas regime, the Hamas army is headquartered there. Everything is under al-Shifa Hospital.”

A paramedic carrying a young child with injuries arrives at Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza City, on October 12, 2023. (Photo by Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Hostage rescues add a great deal of danger to those performing them, said Israeli.

“These missions are very, very surgical, meaning it's selective. We cannot use grenades, for example, because we may kill the hostages. If I cannot use grenades, the way to go in may put the soldier in jeopardy.”

Adding to the danger is the time rescuers have to take to ensure that no hostages are in the line of fire.

“You cannot shoot without identifying what you are shooting at.”

That gives the enemy additional time to react.

“So all the movement is much more dangerous to the soldier because they need to identify the enemy and distinguish between the enemy and non-combatants. That motion is more dangerous...than traditional infantry urban warfare.”

IDF troops train for hostage rescue at a special urban warfare training center. (IDF)

There are some benefits to carrying out such missions in the middle of what is going to become a massive military assault, Israeli said.

“The units that are actually doing the work of hostage rescue are the most highly trained units in the country,” said Israeli. “We know how to do it. But to go to a position that involves hostage rescue, we need also to get a level of security from not as trained forces. Units with the infantry that will secure the perimeter while the hostage rescue units actually work on the objective.”

Israeli's elite Shayetet 13, a unit akin to U.S. Navy SEALs, will likely be involved in any hostage rescue attempt. (IDF photo)

“We know how to manage that situation, especially in Israel,” he added. “The biggest problem is to know where the hostages are and get the information to actually plan a mission that has a good chance to succeed.”

Given the challenges noted earlier, the IDF is relying on a mix of open-source intelligence as well as human, signals and electronic intelligence “and basically different channels of information that we can verify from a rumor to a fact. We have to make sure the information we have is valid.”

Israel’s decision to cut off fuel, electricity and water is a benefit to hostage rescue efforts, said Israeli.

“It’s super helping because it puts pressure on Hamas, it is as simple as that. So basically we can now negotiate a situation that wasn't there before. Once we shut off the electricity, the water and the other stuff, we put the Hamas decision-makers in a position that they have pressure. And due to this pressure, they will be more available to compromise. For example, give us the women, the kids. You know they kidnapped toddlers, it's really crazy, right?”

With utility services used as a bargaining chip, “basically, it is like, unfortunately, a business negotiation.”

Israeli said that to his knowledge, U.S. special operations forces have never participated alongside Israelis on the ground in a hostage rescue mission. There is, however, a long history of cooperation.

“We have collaboration on the intelligence level, always all the time. It's a good one, a meaningful one.”

Despite the many challenges, Israeli remains confident that at least some hostages can be saved.

“We can we can do it,” he said. “It's more challenging, but nothing is impossible.”

Navy Reserve Lt. Cmdr Bryan Stern

Lt. Cmdr Stern is assigned to SOCOM - Navy Reserve. He was previously assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency-Defense Attaché Service and served as an advisor to the Defense Secretary’s Protecting Critical Technology Task Force. He spoke to us Friday from Israel where he is organizing an effort to rescue American citizens in his capacity as CEO of Project DYNAMO. That's a non-profit international rescue organization conducting rescues of Americans, allies, and partners from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, and other denied-areas.

Bryan Stern, CEO of Project DYNAMO, is currently in Israel working to evacuate Americans. (Project DYNAMO photo)

“This is one of the most complicated and dynamic and large hostage rescue hostage situations that I’ve ever seen,” Stern told us. “There's many, many, many of them, not just Americans. There's all kinds of nationalities, up to 150, and they're in the most densely populated real estate on Earth.”

“So from a hostage rescue perspective, the element of surprise is nearly impossible. It really is. And that issue is further exacerbated by the likely poor human intelligence that the Israelis had just happened [ahead of the Hamas Oct. 7 invasion]. The Israelis have made the same mistake that we have made with our intelligence community. We're really excited about AI and sensors and drones and satellites and technology and all those good things, but there is no replacement for looking at a man's eyeballs.”

“That's why we're having this conversation,” he said. “They're really excited about the technology. But the reality is, technology only tells you so much. So to that extent, being able to sneak in and establish placement and access as Israelis sought …without people, without any forces on the ground, that's going to be a big challenge.”

Stern said that the Duvdevan, one of Israel’s “really elite and awesome units that do this sort of thing in Israel” suffered heavy casualties this week, rendering them far less effective and adding to Israel’s hostage rescue challenges.

“So this is hard stuff that hostages are being held all over the place under really terrible conditions. Really hard to sneak up on.”

Stern, who has worked for years with U.S. special operations forces and is currently attached to SOCOM, told us he didn’t know of any plans to have Tier 1 elements on the ground in Gaza and wouldn’t tell us if he did.

“I don't think any U.S. Tier 1 assets would go with [the Israelis]. I think that would be surprising. Never say never.”

Stern is not overly optimistic about the outcome of this situation.

“I think in the end, we're gonna see blood on the streets,” he said. “I think we're gonna lose a few hostages. I think that some are going to die in captivity. There's at least one that I know of that - you know, people have died of us. I'll say that.”

If there are any hostage rescues, Stern said they will most likely be “negotiated out.”

“I would elect to not do a tactical operation based on what I know today,” he said. “I think that is a really, really, really high risk. There’s a tremendous amount of intel they probably don't own.”

But that is likely wishful thinking. After the brutal Hamas invasion on Oct. 7, there isn't much appetite for talking, said Stern.

"The Israelis I’ve worked with and spoken to - there are many of them who consider those hostages already martyrs and heroes and they want to build shrines.”

The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team enters a target building during training. (FBI)

That grim perspective, Stern said, “takes away the leverage from the hostage takers. Meaning a hostage is only good if he is valuable to somebody else. If that hostage is no longer valuable, then it doesn’t really matter.”

Israel, he said, will do the best it can under very trying circumstances.

“In a hostage world, negotiation is always better... because it’s more amicable and it's safer for the hostage, right? People get killed in hostage rescue operations, even the hostages. It happens all the time.”

While “an amicable negotiation is certainly in the cards,” the problem, said Stern, “is that I don’t know if the Israelis are hearing that. I’m not sure they are having this conversation.”

Zorka Martinovich

Martinovich retired in 2018 from the FBI as a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit as a negotiator and served on the National Security Council Hostage Working Group.

Retired FBI agent Zorka Martinovich was a supervisory special agent in the Crisis Negotiation Unit. (Courtesy Zorka Martinovich)

As someone who has helped negotiate hostage situations around the world and supervised many other such cases, Martinovich told us that one of Israel’s biggest challenges in this case “is not losing their patience.”

For the Israelis, this is a great dilemma, “because all their options are bad, are fraught with risks, understandably, in considering the size of the kind of area that they want to have cordon around and isolate the terrorists. It's complicated just by the sheer volume and size.”

For Hamas, one of the questions becomes how close are they to their original plan for this hostage-taking as it was conceived, said Martinovich.

Hamas knows that Israel “historically made big concessions to win freedom for hostages, almost all of them over soldiers or their remains,” according to The Associated Press.

Israel’s history of lopsided prisoner exchanges included the trading of Staff Sgt. Gilad Schalit - held by Hamas for over five years - for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in 2011. Among them was current Hamas leader in Gaza, Yehia Sinwar.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Gilad Shalit five months after his release on March 29, 2012 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Gilad Shalit was released on October 18, 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange, after being held captive by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip for more than five years. (Photo by Moshe Milner/GPO via Getty Images)

Hamas has demanded freedom for all 5,200 prisoners the Palestinians say are held in Israeli jails in exchange for the captives, according to The Associated Press. As we reported previously, Hamas has threatened to broadcast the execution of Israeli civilians every time Israel bombs Gaza without warning. So far, that has not happened, and, as we have previously reported, Israel has dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza.

Hamas only released its first hostage video on Monday and claimed to show "Mujahideen from the Al-Qassam Brigades provide medical care to a female prisoner in Gaza, who was captured on the first day of the Al-Aqsa Flood battle," according to the Hamas Telegram channel.

Martinovich wonders where the hostages are being held and “what kinds of decisions can their captors make? Is there any possibility of getting some of these people out, trying to get some sort of dialogue going with them more directly to discuss the release of some of the hostages?”

On the other end of the hostage rescue efforts are the families desperately waiting for news about loved ones.

In addition to U.S. military personnel advising the IDF, the FBI also has agents in Israel and elsewhere working on this problem.

“I'd imagine there have been teams with different services, crisis negotiators, case agents, who have physically and personally met with families,” said Martinovich.

The FBI is working with families on “managing expectations,” providing what information agents can, and helping families with their messaging as they take to social media and do interviews.

“I have seen quite a few families putting out public messages. So I would hope that the FBI and others are supporting the families in being very strategic in their messaging.”

Not only is it possible that the hostages see these messages, but the captors could very likely as well.

The hostages “live the consequences of our actions and decisions. And that includes actions by the families. And so we'll be really careful and coordinated.”

One of the difficulties in knowing how this will turn out is not knowing how Hamas is reacting to the increasing pressure being applied by Israel, both in terms of kinetic activity like the ongoing bombardment and the cut-off of vital services.

A fireball erupts during Israeli bombardment in the northern Gaza Strip on October 14, 2023. (Photo by Aris MESSINIS / AFP) (Photo by ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images)

“What we're working against is not necessarily the reality of what's happening. It's the perception of the terrorists and what they imagine to be happening,” she said.

A looming question is how Hamas is reacting to the increasing pressure.

While Israel cut off electricity, fuel and water for a myriad of reasons, one typical hostage negotiation technique is called “manipulation of anxiety,” she said. That's where efforts are taken to make the hostage takers uncomfortable.

“Where they're sitting, they see an escalation and they probably feel this cordon tightening on them, and their utilities have been turned off.”

This technique has consequences, and some may be unwelcome, she added.

“You just have to be careful and deliberate in applying your strategy. You can incrementally adjust it, so that you're not doing anything that is going to cause some sort of traumatic escalation.”

The FBI generally cautions against using this technique, "but there are few absolutes in negotiating and considering the extreme circumstances, it seems the potential benefit outweighed the risk at that decision point," she said.

The Lotar counter-terror unit practiced hostage saving in an urban area environment. (IDF)

The concern is exacerbated by having so many hostages in multiple locations.

“Generally in a situation where you have multiple hostages, whether you release someone or you kill someone to demonstrate your seriousness, they still have more hostages. So it is going to impact.”

Another question hostage rescue planners have to consider is what happens if Hamas begins killing hostages.

“If they were to kill one hostage, would that change the calculus for Israel? So all of those things [raise] difficult questions. [There are] difficult decisions to be made. And every decision and every potential outcome is fraught with risks.”

London-based British-Israelis, Noam Sagi (R) and Sharon Lifschitz, whose respective parents were taken hostage from the Nir Oz Kibbutz during the surprise attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, attend a press conference hosted by Defend Israeli Democracy UK, in London on October 12, 2023. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)

Despite all the discussion about an Israeli tactical response, Martinovich said she holds out hope that a negotiated settlement can still be worked out.

As for whether there is a successful outcome to all this, Martinovich said that all depends the definition of success.

“For me it would be getting all the hostages out alive, at the minimum, saving lives. And that's across the board for everyone.”

That includes ‘the operators going in very dangerous situations and putting their lives on the line.”

Retired Army Gen. Joseph Votel

Votel is former head of both U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command and is currently a Distinguished Fellow at The Middle East Institute. He oversaw numerous hostage rescue efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

Then Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, addressing sailors aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans transiting the Strait of Hormuz in 2016. (Howard Altman photo)

“Actionable intelligence is the biggest challenge,” Israel will face in rescuing hostages from Gaza, he told us. “Hostage rescue operations are designed to be very precise in order to preserve surprise and security but also to present the greatest chance of recovering the hostage alive.”

That any rescue attempts will take place amid a major ground incursion into Gaza is both a help and a potential hindrance, said Votel.

“Major operations could provide some cover for a more precise hostage rescue operation, but it is also very possible that Hamas could further endanger the hostages as a result of a more general military on-the-ground campaign. That said, the Israelis may not have the luxury of being so distinct or waiting. In any case, they will grapple with not only risk to the force but risk to the hostages.”

Those risks are numerous, he said.

“Difficult urban terrain, destroyed infrastructure, ‘home field’ advantage for the hostage takers and a civil population that is more aligned to Hamas than it is to Israel all make this very difficult.”

The rubble of destroyed buildings and cars after an Israeli air stike in Gaza City, on October 9, 2023. (Photo by Sameh Rahmi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The situation in Gaza, he said, is quite different than those he oversaw at CENTCOM and SOCOM.

“I think they are much different than my experience, which largely included (but not exclusively) remote areas where we had very clear dominance and could operate in a more permissive manner. We also had fairly exquisite intelligence that supported our operations and the opportunity to stage forces in a way that gave us a lot of flexibility.”

Whether Israel will succeed in rescuing at least some of the hostages is “very hard to say,” said Votel. “These are all very deliberate operations that include a very comprehensive discussion of risk. We would not just execute for the sake of executing - but only if there was an acceptable level of risk and an assessment that it would be successful.”

Given the circumstances, the level of acceptable risk may change, he said.

“We may be willing to accept a bit more risk for an American citizen than we might for something else.”

Israeli special operations commando trains with simunitions for hostage rescue at a urban warfare complex. (IDF)

As our friends at Task and Purpose reported, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “has also told the Joint Special Operations Command to ‘lean forward’ with providing intelligence and planning support” to the IDF.

Last week, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters “the Israelis have made it very clear that they don't want foreign troops on their soil.” He added that while “we have some experts that were already in country, in part providing advice and counsel on, like, hostage recovery,” the U.S. ”has no intentions, no plans to put American troops on the ground in combat.”

We asked Votel if U.S. Tier 1 units, like U.S. Navy SEALs' DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) or Detachment D (commonly known as Delta Force), could be acting under Title 50 (generally speaking, the U.S. law pertaining to covert action), instead of Title 10 (the U.S. law pertaining to the military, thus, technically, combat operations).

Sometimes, as in the case of the May 3, 2011 raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden, the U.S. carries out Tier 1 missions under the Title 50 auspices.

Then-Defense Secretary Leon "Panetta stated that this was a Title 50 operation after the raid," Votel said of the Bin Laden raid. "I think the reason was probably a combination of intel community authorities, secrecy, and deniability (especially for the Afghans)."

“I lack the specific intel and situational understanding that might drive U.S. forces to participate and I do not know what policy discussions are taking place with the Israeli Government over this matter,” Votel told us. "That said, the U.S. is the best in the world and, if not involved in a direct way, would likely be involved in an indirect fashion helping our Israeli partners. I would also add that these missions are not typically Title 50 operations, they are more predominantly Title 10 operations.”

U.S. Special Operations Forces generally have operated under more favorable conditions than Israel will face when rescuing hostages. (Army)

On Friday, the IDF said it retrieved the bodies of several Israelis who had been missing since the Oct. 7 surprise attack and notified their families, Haaretz reported.

Given the circumstances, and the tremendous challenges Israel faces in rescuing those who are still being held, it is unfortunately likely that there will be more such notifications to come.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · October 16, 2023

4. In China's military 'purge,' final outcomes remain to be seen

Excerpts:

Dean Cheng, now a senior advisor the US Institute of Peace’s China program, said soon after the PLA Rocket Force officers were swept away that “the potentially most likely” reason was “either genuine corruption issues, or corruption coupled with compromise (i.e., perhaps these officers were being blackmailed or were working for Taiwan, or the US or some other Western government). I say it’s the most likely because there IS a lot of corruption in the Chinese system, and Xi has been sustaining an anti-corruption campaign since coming into office in 2012.”

...

While this vast expansion might normally be happily greeted by apparatchiks, Cheng pondered if the increase in resources could have led to the PLARF leadership becoming “arrogant.” It’s also important to remember, Cheng said, that all those removed now were promoted directly by the man who removed them: Xi Jinping.

In fact, all of those who have been removed “presumably rose with Xi’s implicit, if not explicit, approval,” Cheng wrote. But it is also possible that Xi’s “massive reforms of the military,” which upset traditions such as domination of the PLA by ground forces may have sparked internal opposition.

The most worrying interpretation Cheng offered was that Xi “is clearing the decks, ensuring that the top military officers are onboard in preparation for major conflict. This would be the feared invasion of Taiwan, or an overt military move against, say, the Philippines or the Vietnamese in the Spratlys/South China Sea.”

But that, he said, would be a leading indicator, one that would be impossible to confirm for quite some time.

In China's military 'purge,' final outcomes remain to be seen - Breaking Defense

"We know about the disappearances within the PLA and elsewhere. But no one really knows why," said Ian Chong, associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

breakingdefense.com · by Colin Clark · October 16, 2023

Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army’s Honor Guard Battalion wear protective masks as they stand at attention in front of photo of China’s president Xi Jinping at their barracks outside the Forbidden City, near Tiananmen Square, on May 20, 2020 in Beijing, China. *Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

SYDNEY — As many high-level military officials from China’s People’s Liberation Army have disappeared over the last two months, experts are in agreement that something disturbing is happening inside the world’s fastest growing military — even if what exactly is driving it all is unclear.

“Though China hasn’t confirmed it, I think the general consensus at the moment among China watchers is that a purge is underway,” Meia Nouwens, Chinese military expert at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email to Breaking Defense.

That term, “purge,” has appeared more and more this fall among China experts. And there is a reason: two ministers and three high-profile generals have all fallen under charges of corruption, an excuse that has historically been used to remove those that leaders in Beijing want removed:

Defense Minister and (more importantly) member of the Central Military Commission Li Shangfu simply vanished from sight. He’s reportedly under investigation for corruption;
Foreign Minister Qing Jang was formally removed from office. No reason was given, though reports say he’s being investigated for corruption;
Li Yuchao was head of the Rocket Force; the South China Morning Post reported he was under investigation for corruption;
Two former deputies of Li’s, Zhang Zhenzhong and Liu Guangbin, are also being investigated.

And there may be more. The Japanese English newspaper, Nikkei Asia, went so far as to report last week that “a great military purge is underway in China.” The story by Katsuji Nakazawa, the paper’s longtime China reporter now based in Japan, cited “the absence of key military figures” at a Sept. 28 dinner to celebrate the 74th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.

“We know about the disappearances within the PLA and elsewhere. But no one really knows why. Nikkei has been publishing a few quite eye-catching pieces, but it is not possible to independently corroborate their claims,” warned Ian Chong, associate professor at the National University of Singapore. “At best, we can say there is some degree of upheaval across various parts of the PRC and CCP, but no one can be sure as to why. The PRC’s current opacity only adds to the uncertainty.”

The Importance Of China’s Rocket Force

The removal of officers “seems to be particularly targeted at the PLA Rocket Force and Equipment Development Department,” Nouwens told Breaking Defense.

“We need more information to understand what the impact of this all is for the PLA’s capability and combat readiness. Depending on the reason behind the purge, it could signal that there may be issues within the Rocket Force that we have been unaware of, or it could have an impact on the PLA’s morale, as the military already went through an anti-corruption campaign earlier in President Xi’s first term,” Nouwens said.

“Something seems to have gone wrong in these two organizations. However we don’t know what,” she said. “There are rumors of espionage, or intelligence leaks, or just plain old (but significant) corruption. Whatever it is, it has to have been serious enough for President Xi to decide to take action against trusted officials that he only very recently promoted to their current positions.”

Dean Cheng, now a senior advisor the US Institute of Peace’s China program, said soon after the PLA Rocket Force officers were swept away that “the potentially most likely” reason was “either genuine corruption issues, or corruption coupled with compromise (i.e., perhaps these officers were being blackmailed or were working for Taiwan, or the US or some other Western government). I say it’s the most likely because there IS a lot of corruption in the Chinese system, and Xi has been sustaining an anti-corruption campaign since coming into office in 2012.”

The Rocket Force, or PLARF, removals, though they involve people further down the ladder than the foreign and defense ministers, are very intriguing.

Cheng points out that the PLARF “has massively expanded, in terms of nuclear forces, at least based on the number of ICBM silos detected (more than 300). That suggests a major expansion in the PLARF’s responsibilities and resources, as it had been generally credited with only a few score ICBMs.”

While this vast expansion might normally be happily greeted by apparatchiks, Cheng pondered if the increase in resources could have led to the PLARF leadership becoming “arrogant.” It’s also important to remember, Cheng said, that all those removed now were promoted directly by the man who removed them: Xi Jinping.

In fact, all of those who have been removed “presumably rose with Xi’s implicit, if not explicit, approval,” Cheng wrote. But it is also possible that Xi’s “massive reforms of the military,” which upset traditions such as domination of the PLA by ground forces may have sparked internal opposition.

The most worrying interpretation Cheng offered was that Xi “is clearing the decks, ensuring that the top military officers are onboard in preparation for major conflict. This would be the feared invasion of Taiwan, or an overt military move against, say, the Philippines or the Vietnamese in the Spratlys/South China Sea.”

But that, he said, would be a leading indicator, one that would be impossible to confirm for quite some time.

breakingdefense.com · by Colin Clark · October 16, 2023

5. America’s ‘Gold Standard’ GPS Risks Falling Behind Rival Systems

Are alarm bells ringing?

America’s ‘Gold Standard’ GPS Risks Falling Behind Rival Systems

China, Russia and the European Union have developed satellite networks offering global-positioning services as the U.S. system ages

By Drew FitzGerald

Oct. 14, 2023 9:00 pm ET

A Beidou navigation satellite being launched in May. PHOTO: YANG ZHIYUAN/ZUMA PRESS

Nearly 50 years since its founding, the U.S. Global Positioning System is in danger of losing its cachet as the world’s gold-standard location service.

The U.S. military, which runs GPS, is upgrading the system with more-modern satellites that can give nonmilitary devices more-precise coordinates in more indoor and hard-to-reach spaces. But the next-generation GPS service for civilians isn’t expected to go live for several years.

While academics and national-security officials caution that the delayed upgrades don’t mean that GPS is failing, they say that other countries’ more modern systems could give them influence over global commerce at Washington’s expense. China, for instance, uses its advanced-satellite service as a selling point for business and research partnerships in presentations to officials from African and Asian countries. In an extreme case, a government could feed inaccurate data to rival countries, making smartphones and vehicles that depend on their signals unusable during a conflict.

Where it began

Once the stuff of science fiction, GPS pioneered the so-called positioning, navigation and timing industry by offering civilians a new, free-to-use utility. The service, originally developed for the military, turned into an indispensable tool for smartphones, ships and smart devices to figure their whereabouts in real time.

The Pentagon first authorized the GPS program in 1973. The Air Force launched the system’s first satellite in 1978, and the system was fully operational by 1995. The Space Force, the Pentagon’s newest branch, later took over management of GPS launches.

Nonmilitary users have come to depend on GPS in ways far beyond those that its original planners might have imagined. Uber drivers often rely on a smartphone’s GPS data to find and route passengers. Electric utilities use the network’s precise atomic clocks to detect power-transmission faults within fractions of a millisecond.

Other countries, meanwhile, are fulfilling GPS’s role on their own. Russia’s Glonass system and the European Union’s Galileo also offer global coverage, while satellites from Japan and India broadcast data to areas around their home territories.

A model of the Beidou navigation-satellites system at the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services. PHOTO: TINGSHU WANG/REUTERS

China’s blanket coverage

China’s Beidou system, once a bare-bones regional network with clunky satellite receivers and few nongovernment users, has grown significantly since launching its first two satellites in 2000. The Chinese system hit a global coverage target in 2020 and blankets the planet with 46 operational satellites, outnumbering the 31 satellites that the U.S. says serve GPS.

China’s satellite-navigation network is bolstered by at least 30 precision-enhancing monitoring stations on Earth and claims to pinpoint users’ locations to within several centimeters. The service also offers basic two-way communications capabilities.

Days before

Apple AAPL -0.07%decrease; red down pointing triangle last year touted one of its latest iPhone innovations—phones that can hail emergency responders via satellite—its Chinese rival, Huawei Technologies, captured the limelight with its own such announcement. The Huawei Mate 50 smartphone surprised observers not only for its own satellite-based rescue feature but also because it was Beidou’s infrastructure that made it possible.

The Huawei Mate 50 phone touts a satellite-based emergency feature that uses China’s answer to GPS. PHOTO: ALEJANDRO GARCIA/SHUTTERSTOCK

“The advantage that GPS was once perceived to have over other global systems is no longer clear-cut,” says Sarah Sewall, executive vice president of In-Q-Tel, a tech investment firm backed by U.S. intelligence and national-security agencies. “The dominance has eroded.”

GPS works by broadcasting precise time measurements from a constellation of satellites that circle the globe twice a day. Devices on the ground use the timestamps from multiple satellites to determine where they are on Earth.

GPS guides U.S. missiles, ships and troops through more-secure military frequencies kept separate from its civilian signals. Its past dominance even made rival militaries reliant on the Pentagon-controlled system.

Because their civilian signals are free to use, Chinese, European and Russian satellite-navigation systems don’t directly profit their sponsor countries. The immediate benefits beyond “bragging rights” and a boost to countries’ domestic aerospace industries might be hard to see, according to John Betz, an emeritus fellow at the U.S.-funded research nonprofit Mitre Corp. who has contributed to GPS modernization efforts.

But the new systems’ more advanced capabilities are hard to ignore. Future makers of smartphones, vehicles and industrial equipment might decide to stop using GPS by default and start relying on Chinese signals first, for instance.

“There’s some inertia in being able to modernize GPS,” Betz says. “It doesn’t get to start with a blank sheet of paper.” The U.S. plans to keep using GPS’s original radio frequency, for instance—even as it adds new channels—to avoid making billions of dependent devices obsolete.

The Space Force said in a statement that GPS continues to set the gold standard in its field. “While other nations may report improvements in accuracy and equivalent performance in availability, GPS is still the clear leader in integrity and is the only system accepted for international flight use,” a spokeswoman for the branch’s Space Systems Command said.

A GPS satellite being launched in January. PHOTO: JOSHUA CONTI/USSF/ZUMA PRESS

U.S. plans

The U.S. military has long planned to upgrade GPS with a fleet of modern and upgradable satellites that provide more-precise coordinates subject to less interference. The newer satellites broadcast data to civilian users over a new frequency called L5.

The Space Force has 17 L5-equipped satellites in orbit after a spate of delays but has yet to reach the 24 live satellites needed to run a reliable system. Some already-built satellites sit in a Colorado warehouse awaiting their turn for a funded launch.

A Space Force spokesperson says the system with newer frequencies will keep growing and will be fully operational by 2027. Another fleet of satellites is slated to go live in the 2030s. A 2021 Government Accountability Office report estimated the two core satellite upgrades together would cost more than $15 billion.

The slow rollout worries Mark Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral who leads the federally chartered U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a group tasked with developing defenses against potential cyberattacks. He cites the civilian industries that rely on GPS, from seaport cranes to cellular networks, as a blind spot for American defense officials.

“Here’s this system that is absolutely vital to our critical infrastructure and we have almost no resiliency, and in fact the U.S. system is starting to decay,” Montgomery says. He urged the Space Force to fast-track its future launches.

Lockheed Martin LMT -0.15%decrease; red down pointing triangle, which built the four satellites in storage, says one is already slated to launch in mid-2024. Program management director Juli Best says the company built a suite of new features into the satellites and streamlined its production processes “to help us enhance and deliver GPS faster,” adding that the defense contractor “is prepared to support the U.S. Space Force’s planned cadence of GPS launches.”Drew FitzGerald is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, D.C. Email him at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com. Yang Jie in Tokyo contributed to this article.

6. Who's behind Israel-Gaza disinformation and hate online?

Information operations are complicated. Who is orchestrating offensive and defensive information operations in the US?

Who's behind Israel-Gaza disinformation and hate online?

BBC · by Menu

Published
3 hours ago

About sharing

Who are the people behind the accounts?

Several of the accounts suggesting that hostages were soldiers rather than civilians seem to belong to real, younger people. They have otherwise shared funny memes or football clips to their profiles.

Some have posted pictures with slogans like "Free Palestine". When I message them they tell me they are based in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

For some profiles, whether they're real people is less obvious.

A handful have posted about an eclectic mix of political topics; in support of Russian President Putin and the war in Ukraine, as well as about former US President Donald Trump. Several of these accounts are newly set up or have recently become active.

In the past, both the Israeli government and Hamas militants have faced accusations of trying to distort online narratives with "bot" networks - inauthentic accounts used to repeatedly push divisive or misleading ideas.

According to Cyabra, a company based in Israel that analyses social media, one in five accounts taking part in conversations about the attacks committed by Hamas since 7 October are fake.

"Fake" in this context can mean they are automatically operated - but others could also be run by real people posing under false identities.

The company says they've found approximately 40,000 fake accounts, including on X and TikTok.

It says some of these profiles have been spreading misleading claims in support of Hamas and suggesting - for example - that militants were compassionate to hostages in situations where evidence suggests otherwise. That does not rule out the existence of inauthentic pro-Israel accounts, too.

There are clues we can use to identify an account as inauthentic. For example, if a profile is newly set up and is suddenly sharing a large amount of divisive, misleading and at times conflicting content.

Ultimately, though, determining whether a profile is actually fake and who exactly is behind it is a very difficult task. It requires information from the social media companies that journalists don't often have access to.

Pressure on social media sites

Social media sites have been widely criticised over the spread of disinformation this week. The EU is investigating X over the possible spread of terrorist and violent content, and hate speech.

Former Twitter (X) employees have previously told me how the company is no longer able to protect against state-co-ordinated disinformation following layoffs under new owner Elon Musk.

Ray Serrato, who tackled state-sanctioned campaigns at the social media company, told me how his former team was "decimated" after the takeover.

According to him, that means a number of key experts who "covered special regions" - including in the Middle East - and whose job it was to deal with specific co-ordinated disinformation operations, are no longer at the company.

X has not responded to the BBC's request for comment. The social media site this week said it had removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts from the platform.

In TikTok's Community Guidelines, the company says it has "increased dedicated resources to help prevent violent, hateful, or misleading content on TikTok" in relation to the current situation.

The way that disinformation spreads on X, TikTok and other platforms can shape the general public's view of the situation in both Gaza and Israel.

That in turn could also put pressure on the politicians making big decisions about what's unfolding.

BBC · by Menu

7. Back to the Future: Reinvigorating America's Psychological Operations Capabilities in the Age of Information Warfare

Not only reinvigorating our PSYOP forces but giving them the authorities AND permissions necessary "to let slip the PSYOP dogs of war."

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Back to the Future: Reinvigorating America's Psychological Operations Capabilities in the Age of Information Warfare

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/back-future-reinvigorating-americas-psychological-operations-carr-cusbc%3FtrackingId=TYG62cxMV9w8GEpbrCNy%252Fg%253D%253D/?trackingId=TYG62cxMV9w8GEpbrCNy%2Fg%3D%3D&utm

Brad Carr

19 articles Following

October 16, 2023

**The views expressed in this article are my own and may not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, United States Army Special Operations Command, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.**

The United States of America is currently navigating the intricate waters of a reinvigorated great power competition. This burgeoning geostrategic contestation necessitates the sustenance and augmentation of a diversified array of capabilities to safeguard our national interests and maintain a solid position of strategic superiority on the global stage. A pivotal instrument in our strategic quiver, which has regrettably experienced a noticeable diminution over recent years, is the capability embodied within our Psychological Operations (PSYOP) forces and the unique capabilities they bring which are under current threat of further reduction (a pattern that has been occurring for some time). For this discussion, a point of clarification is greatly needed. PSYOP is a Special Operations capability defined in Title 10 USC Section 167j and NOT an “enabler” as some recent articles have stated. Such misguided statements are ripe for their own series of articles on the lack of strategic awareness, understanding, and history; or in some cases, the refusal to accept it at many levels. This contraction of PSYOP capabilities unfurls at a precarious juncture (much like what happened with PSYOP in 1985), wherein adversarial nations have markedly amped up their investments in the realm of information warfare, thereby underscoring an exigent imperative for Congressional review and intervention as the long-term stakes are significantly higher today.

Historical Précis:

Cold War history serves as a testament to the indispensable role of PSYOP as a robust facet of our national defense strategy, instrumental in the containment of Soviet ideological expansion and the strategic contestation of global spheres of influence. This epoch, marked by ideological dichotomy and geopolitical rivalry, unveiled the potent force of psychological operations, thereby crystallizing its strategic importance in the larger scope of national security and global posturing. The United States, cognizant of the immense potential harbored by PSYOP, meticulously nurtured and honed this capability, deploying it assiduously across divergent theaters of geopolitical contestation.

During this bygone era of strategic rivalry, the concerted endeavors of our nation bore fruit in the form of an elaborate, sophisticated framework of psychological operations across the Department of Defense and other government agencies. This framework transcended mere influence endeavors, evolving into a comprehensive strategy encompassing specialized units, cutting-edge technological accouterments, and sophisticated methodologies tailored for influencing target audiences. The arsenal of capabilities was not merely theoretical constructs, but tangible assets actively deployed in various theaters of conflict, ranging from the verdant jungles of Vietnam to other locations across the globe, exemplifying the versatility and the strategic imperative of PSYOP in global geopolitical machinations.

Furthermore, the Cold War era witnessed the symbiotic confluence of PSYOP with other critical branches of the military and intelligence apparatus. This era saw the evolution of a broader inter-agency endeavor, marked by close collaboration with the Department of State and multiple Intelligence agencies. This collaborative synergy was institutionalized through various inter-agency agreements, providing the flow of information and coordination of efforts aimed at crafting a unified, coherent strategy for information warfare. This strategy was adaptable and capable of being applied across different theaters and against various adversaries, showcasing the strategic flexibility inherent in a well-oiled PSYOP machinery.

Notwithstanding, as the Cold War curtains were drawn, a discernible shift in military strategy emerged, ostensibly sidelining the strategic import of information warfare and psychological operations. This strategic pivot was not merely a change in operational focus but was accompanied by a significant reduction in the funding and resources allocated to PSYOP. This decline was not a one-off event but a gradual process that unfurled over the years, leading to the atrophy of a critical capability that once held a pride of place in our strategic arsenal. Despite vociferous recommendations from various quarters, including the robust recommendations encapsulated in the 1985 and 1990 DoD Psychological Operations Master Plans, these recommendations have largely fell on deaf ears for decades. This trend, regrettably, continued to disregard almost every PSYOP (and then eventually renamed Military Information Support Operations (MISO) mission that PSYOP forces perform) related strategic directive thereafter, culminating in a fragmented approach to the overall operational, strategic, and national influence mission.

The narrative delineates a poignant journey of PSYOP from its pinnacle of strategic importance during the Cold War era to its gradual diminution in the post-Cold War period. The repercussions of this strategic shift are not merely historical footnotes but resonate with alarming relevance in the contemporary geopolitical landscape, marked by the resurgence of great power competition and the escalating significance of information warfare in the global strategic paradigm.

The Crux of Contemporary Concern:

As we traverse contemporary geopolitical realities, the nuanced arena of great power competition beckons a strategic introspection into our preparedness and the robustness of our military capabilities. Central to this analysis is the state of our PSYOP forces, which have, regrettably, witnessed a discernible diminution in recent times. This diminution unfolds at a precarious juncture, wherein the strategic tide necessitates a robust, well-resourced, and adeptly maneuvered PSYOP capability. The contemporary era, marked by burgeoning information warfare and the increasingly digital nature of geopolitical engagements, requires nations to invest significantly in psychological operations and information warfare. This realm transcends the traditional battlefields, infiltrating the very cognitive fabrics of societies and shaping the perceptions and behaviors of the global populace, thereby being a potent force in the furtherance of national interests on the global stage.

The strategic precipice on which we currently stand is characterized by a marked escalation in the information warfare capabilities of adversarial nations. The likes of Russia and China have meticulously and ardently bolstered their information warfare arsenals, employing them effectively in various geopolitical theaters to shape environments in their favor to limit any crises or conflict. They have not merely invested in this domain, but have demonstrated a sophisticated application of these capabilities, thereby achieving a significant level of mastery in wielding information as a weapon. These nations have astutely recognized the immense potential harbored by the domain of information warfare and have accordingly marshaled substantial resources toward developing sophisticated capabilities for influencing target audiences and disseminating disinformation. Leveraging an array of digital platforms and harnessing the ubiquity of social media, they have adeptly amplified their messages, reaching a global audience and significantly impacting the narrative in various geopolitical engagements.

In stark juxtaposition, the United States has traversed a downward trajectory in terms of the fiscal and human resources apportioned to PSYOP. This trajectory reflects not merely a numerical diminution but symbolizes a deeper, more concerning strategic lacuna. The budgetary and personnel reductions resonate with an alarming decrescendo in the strategic emphasis accorded to PSYOP, potentially impairing our ability to adeptly navigate the complex domain of information warfare. As adversarial capabilities burgeon and morph into sophisticated informational arsenals, the erosion of our PSYOP capabilities may render us strategically outpaced in this critical domain. The implications of this capability gap extend far beyond mere numerical imbalances; they echo a broader strategic myopia, potentially undermining our ability to effectively counter informational and psychological offensives by adversarial entities.

Furthermore, the contemporary strategic environment is not static, but dynamically evolving, with emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing poised to revolutionize the information environment and cognitive domain. These technological advancements portend a future where information warfare will be characterized by an unprecedented level of sophistication and complexity. In this emerging reality, the importance of a robust, modern, and well-resourced PSYOP capability cannot be overstated. It is not merely about matching the capabilities of our adversaries, but ensuring a strategic superiority that will enable us to effectively safeguard our national interests and maintain a position of advantageous posturing in the global geopolitical landscape.

Strategic Implications:

The broad swath of strategic implications underscores the exigency of addressing the attenuation of PSYOP forces that this diminution foreshadows. At the heart of these implications lies the very essence of contemporary military strategy, which is increasingly being shaped by the complex dynamics of information warfare, psychological operations, and the cognitive domain. The ability to effectively engage in these realms, influence perceptions, mold behaviors, and steer decision-making processes among target audiences, is central to achieving strategic objectives in the modern geopolitical landscape. Hence, the degradation of PSYOP capabilities symbolizes a potential strategic misstep, one that could undermine the efficacy and the strategic posture of the United States in the face of evolving threats and challenges.

First and foremost, the reduction in PSYOP capabilities presents a glaring vulnerability in our strategic arsenal, potentially emboldening adversarial entities who have markedly ramped up their investments in the domain of information warfare. Nations like Russia and China, among others, have demonstrated a sophisticated application of information warfare techniques, leveraging them to shape narratives, influence public opinion, and achieve strategic objectives in various geopolitical engagements. The inability to effectively counter or match these capabilities could significantly hinder our strategic flexibility and responsiveness in diverse geopolitical scenarios. Moreover, the absence of a robust PSYOP capability could impair our ability to effectively counter disinformation campaigns, which are increasingly becoming a staple in the modern geopolitical landscape.

Furthermore, the strategic implications transcend mere military engagements and delve into the realm of global perception management. In an era marked by the rapid dissemination of information and the pervasive influence of digital platforms, the ability to effectively manage perceptions, both domestically and globally, is of paramount importance. A well-resourced and adeptly maneuvered PSYOP capability is central to this endeavor, enabling the United States to maintain a favorable narrative and uphold its position of influence on the global stage. The erosion of PSYOP capabilities could potentially undermine the United States' ability to effectively engage in the battle of narratives, a critical facet of modern geopolitical engagements.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, the strategic implications resonate with an alarming relevance in the face of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing. These technologies are poised to significantly alter the landscape of information warfare, ushering in a new era marked by an unprecedented level of sophistication and complexity. The absence of a robust PSYOP capability could render the United States ill-equipped to effectively navigate this emerging landscape, potentially ceding the strategic advantage to adversarial entities who have invested heavily in these domains. The future of information warfare is poised to be characterized by a complex interplay of advanced technologies and psychological operations, and the readiness to effectively engage in this realm is central to maintaining a position of strategic superiority.

Moreover, the strategic implications extend into the broader realm of inter-agency collaboration and the ability to effectively leverage the synergies between various branches of the military and intelligence apparatus. A well-resourced PSYOP capability could act as a linchpin, fostering enhanced coordination and collaboration among diverse entities engaged in the complex domain of information warfare. The degradation of PSYOP capabilities could potentially hinder this collaborative synergy, thereby impacting the broader strategic efficacy of the United States' engagements in the information domain.

Conclusion

In summation, the strategic implications of the reduction in PSYOP capabilities are manifold and resonate with a profound significance in the contemporary geopolitical landscape. The urgency of the matter requires Congressional intervention for a conscientious review and decisive action to redress this strategic shortfall. The revitalization of PSYOP capabilities is not a discretionary endeavor but a categorical imperative to ensure the United States remains strategically poised to effectively navigate the complex, evolving landscape of modern warfare and geopolitical engagements. Hence, it is imperative to arrest the decline of PSYOP forces and robustly invest in revitalizing this critical strategic asset, thereby ensuring the United States remains at the zenith of strategic superiority in the face of burgeoning geopolitical challenges and adversarial advancements in the domain of information warfare.

#PSYOP #InformationWarfare #MilitaryStrategy #NationalSecurity #SpecialOperations #DefenseStrategy #CognitiveDomain #PsychologicalOperations #ModernWarfare #Influence #GreatPowerCompetition #DepartmentofDefense

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This week’s article delves into the urgent need to rejuvenate U.S. PSYOP capabilities amidst rising geopolitical tensions, the accelerating pace of information warfare, and reverse the trend of diminishing budgets, readiness, modernization, and force structure. By drawing parallels between past successes and future exigencies, the article advocates for a robust investment and strategic focus on PSYOP (similar to what occurred at the height of the Cold War with the PSYOP Master Plan of 1985 mandated from the POTUS level) to ensure the U.S. remains at the zenith of informational and psychological influence in the global theater. As adversarial nations ramp up their info-warfare arsenals, it's time we revisit and revitalize our PSYOP strategies to secure a fortified stance in the cognitive domain of contemporary warfare. ** The views expressed in this article are my own and may not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, United States Army Special Operations Command, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.** #PSYOP #InformationWarfare #MilitaryStrategy #NationalSecurity #SpecialOperations #DefenseStrategy #CognitiveDomain #PsychologicalOperations #ModernWarfare #Influence #GreatPowerCompetition #DepartmentofDefense

8. Behind closed doors, Marines struggle with a glaring diversity problem

I did not expect this.

Excerpts:

To lead the effort, Berger tapped Charles Bolden Jr., a former NASA administrator and the second Black Marine aviator ever promoted to general officer, and Bolden’s son Ché, who spent 26 years in the Marine Corps. In an interview, Charles Bolden said he accepted the assignment “somewhat leery,” having grown disillusioned with what he characterized as the Pentagon’s vague efforts to promote military diversity.

“I came out depressed,” he said. “Because I personally had no idea we had gone as backwards as we have gone.” He and his son remain doubtful that Marine Corps leaders will expend the resources and effort required to achieve the change they prescribe.

The Boldens’ study, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, has not been made public. It concludes that the Marine Corps cannot overcome generations of discrimination and mistrust merely by having removed barriers to participation in top-tier jobs such as fighter pilot. Rather, the Boldens assert, the service must establish new pathways to reach and recruit African Americans and entrust the role of “chief diversity officer” to the commandant himself rather than delegate that responsibility to a leader with less visibility and influence as it does now.

“We made a very clear statement upfront that, hey, the Black jet pilot community is an avatar for the Marine Corps,” Ché Bolden said.

Behind closed doors, Marines struggle with a glaring diversity problem

The Washington Post · by Hope Hodge Seck · October 16, 2023

The number of Black Marines who fly fighter jets has fallen. Critics say the service appears unwilling to take aggressive steps that could level the playing field.

October 16, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. EDT

Zach Mullins was used to walking into rooms filled with White faces. But he was taken aback when, at an air show last year in San Diego, a man approached to ask: “Did you know that you’re the only Black fighter pilot in the Marine Corps?”

Mullins, who flies F/A-18 Hornets, is one of five, in fact. But in recalling the exchange, he said that, “I never really thought about the numbers just because it was the job that I wanted to do” — though it was “a little staggering,” the Marine captain conceded, to learn the number of African Americans in elite jobs like his was so small.

The Marine Corps, in step with the rest of the U.S. military, has spent decades making a concerted push to become more reflective of the diverse nation it defends. Officials point to sustained gains in recruiting women to join the force and in growing overall diversity among the service’s officer ranks.

But within its community of fighter pilots, these efforts have failed to keep pace. And while leaders acknowledge they have work to do, observers say the institution appears unwilling to take the aggressive and resource-intensive steps that experts deem necessary to put Black candidates for those jobs on more equal footing with their White peers.

Gary Graham Jr., a film producer whose father flew fighter jets in the Marine Corps, has researched the imbalance and concluded that the service’s leaders underestimate what’s required for African Americans to overcome certain obstacles that can stymie the prospects of otherwise qualified individuals. He points to previous flying experience, which is expensive. Graham also faults a recruiting system that he said has done a lackluster job engaging the Black community specifically.

“So those opportunities,” he said, “aren’t known to folks who would even consider it, and who would be skillful or educated enough.”

Over the past quarter-century, the number of Black Marines who fly fighter jets has fallen from an all-time high of 15 in 2000 to just the five today — not even 1 percent of the approximately 580 fighter pilots serving across the Marine Corps. It’s the military’s worst such disparity — and one made more striking by the rise of Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a fighter pilot and African American, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff holds the military’s highest post.

David Berger, who retired in July as the Marines’ top general, commissioned during his tenure as commandant an independent study that yielded a road map for the service to start closing the gap. But two years later, the study’s most transformative recommendations remain unimplemented as leaders opt instead to remain on a course that emphasizes a broad concept of diversity rather than targeting shortfalls in individual demographics or career fields.

To lead the effort, Berger tapped Charles Bolden Jr., a former NASA administrator and the second Black Marine aviator ever promoted to general officer, and Bolden’s son Ché, who spent 26 years in the Marine Corps. In an interview, Charles Bolden said he accepted the assignment “somewhat leery,” having grown disillusioned with what he characterized as the Pentagon’s vague efforts to promote military diversity.

“I came out depressed,” he said. “Because I personally had no idea we had gone as backwards as we have gone.” He and his son remain doubtful that Marine Corps leaders will expend the resources and effort required to achieve the change they prescribe.

The Boldens’ study, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, has not been made public. It concludes that the Marine Corps cannot overcome generations of discrimination and mistrust merely by having removed barriers to participation in top-tier jobs such as fighter pilot. Rather, the Boldens assert, the service must establish new pathways to reach and recruit African Americans and entrust the role of “chief diversity officer” to the commandant himself rather than delegate that responsibility to a leader with less visibility and influence as it does now.

“We made a very clear statement upfront that, hey, the Black jet pilot community is an avatar for the Marine Corps,” Ché Bolden said.

In response to questions about the study, Maj. Joshua Larson, a Marine Corps spokesman, pointed to a mission statement indicating that the service is “committed” to diversity, equity and inclusion, “not to satisfy abstract notions of political correctness, but as a very real means to recruit, develop, and retain Marines of varied talents.”

‘Data masking’

Only the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps operate fighter jets, and while all have struggled to recruit and retain Black pilots, the Marines have performed most poorly.

There are 60 Black fighter pilots in the Air Force, or 2 percent of the community. Navy data show 15 Black pilots out of 1,124, about 1.3 percent. Those figures could be higher, however, as both services allow personnel to identify as multiple races or decline to respond.

In the Marine Corps, the fighter pilot community has an outsize impact: The service’s top officers are almost always promoted from within the infantry and aviation fields. One takeaway from the Boldens’ study was that Black Marines often take themselves out of the running for these positions at the start of their military careers by pursuing fields such as logistics or administration that transfer more readily to future civilian employment.

The Marine Corps could diversify its pilot ranks by selecting more Black enlisted troops for officer training, the study found. But a restrictive process that requires enlisted Marines to serve at least four years — which is the duration of a standard contract — before entering an officer program reduces the pool of candidates. The Boldens recommended removing these barriers, but to date, the service has not done so.

Last year the Marine Corps did launch a program that brought 40 enlisted reservists from underrepresented demographics to the D.C. region where, for a week, they observed Marine officer training — to help them “visualize” what it would be like to pursue such a career path, according to program materials supplied by Larson, the spokesman.

Statistics provided by the Marine Corps show that, in the past two years, about 35 percent of newly commissioned lieutenants came from what the service calls diverse backgrounds, defined as anyone other than a White male. The data show, too, that last year nearly 45 percent of those enrolled in enlisted-to-officer programs were categorized as diverse.

The Bolden study is critical of the service’s broad-brush discussion of diversity, saying that failing to distinguish demographics by race and job field amounts to “data masking.”

Another focus of their study was the availability of education opportunities that prepare promising leaders for future military service. The Boldens called for establishment of an additional military feeder school at a historically Black college or university — there are six such institutions nationwide now — and aviation-specific recruitment programs at each.

“The Marine Corps does not have close, long-term, habitual relationships with key institutions within the Black community,” the Boldens wrote, emphasizing that this “very same shortcoming” was highlighted during a similar diversity initiative undertaken during the early 1990s. “Decades later,” they wrote, “it remains a problem.”

Before retiring, Berger, the study’s commissioner, said he agreed the Marines have more to learn from HBCUs — “that’s a partnership we can continue to build on” — and noted that he had met last year with administrators from Florida A&M to discuss diversity and bridging “perceived gaps about what service means today.” To date, the Marines have not announced any plans to pursue the establishment of a new feeder school, though. Doing so would require collaboration with the other military branches and Congress.

A culture of ‘silence’

Mullins’s path to the cockpit illustrates the effectiveness of community outreach. A Houston native, he said he had a natural affinity for engineering and loved to attend air shows but knew nothing about military academies until an Army officer visited his school when he was in eighth grade.

It was a family friend, who’d flown for the Navy, who turned Mullins’s head with stories of landing on aircraft carriers. Ultimately, he attended the Merchant Marine Academy in New York, a lesser-known federal service academy. He said his education, from his days at a predominantly White Catholic high school, prepared him well not only for a demanding military career, but for navigating non-diverse environments.

“I wouldn’t say I’d settled into being the minority in the group, but I think it’s a statistic that I’m not unfamiliar with,” Mullins said. “As I matured, I realized what that meant. And I do think I carry a little bit of extra intentionality with the way … I conduct myself, because I do know that I might be the only Black guy in the room.”

The Boldens’ study noted only a few reported incidents of racial hostility within the Marines’ aviation units, and none from recent years, but it described a culture of “silence” in which Black and White Marines are unwilling to engage in conversations about race and representation. Often, the study says, as the only minorities in their unit, non-White Marines deem it necessary to “adapt to the cultural circumstances in which they find themselves if they want to be accepted by peers.”

The Boldens have called for the creation of Socratic-style discussion groups, centered on topics of diversity and race, at Marine Corps training hubs. Officials said the service will consider such groups.

Charles and Ché Bolden suggested that, until the message comes from the Marines’ most senior leaders that Black fighter pilots are needed in the ranks, efforts to reach candidates will ring hollow. They called in their study for assigning the responsibilities of chief diversity officer to the commandant, a recommendation that has gone unheeded. Such a step, they added, would permit Marines in the ranks to pursue more radical solutions for building diversity, rather than relying on established approaches.

“Without the commandant’s explicit oversight,” Ché Bolden said, “you’re always going to find those younger, or those who are not able to chart their own destiny, afraid of sticking their neck out.”

At NASA, where he answered directly to the president, Charles Bolden said, he assigned himself this role. The move was meant to make his priorities clear to all. “I felt that the only way to build an effective, No. 1-ranked organization that beats everybody else is to have that organization be diverse and inclusive,” he said.

The Washington Post · by Hope Hodge Seck · October 16, 2023

9. Expert Analysis: The Coming Storm - Insights After Nine Days of War in Israel

A comprehensive list of topics for analysis:

War in Israel

A Failure of Imagination

The First Strike

A Failure of Deterrence

The Expanding Tentacles of Iran

Border Security is National Security

Masking is Vital

Drones and Precision Weapons Shape the Battlespace

A Failure of Military Doctrine

AI is Ready to Assist Human Decision Makers

Mobilization Matters

The Information War is War

The Requirement for Moral Clarity

Expert Analysis: The Coming Storm - Insights After Nine Days of War in Israel

sofrep.com · by Colonel John Antal · October 16, 2023

There are lots of potential players in the war in Israel.

War in Israel

War erupted in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This war is an attempt by the proxy armies of Iran–Hamas (in Gaza) fighting now, and Hezbollah (in Lebanon) promising to enter the fight if Israel attacks Gaza–to destroy Israel and engulf the region, and possibly the world, in conflict. Israel has been fighting Hamas for over a week. Many Israelis experienced disbelief and shock from the brutal, barbaric, and ruthless attacks by Hamas terrorists during the first week of the war. This shock has transformed into a resolute determination for revenge. Israel has suffered the loss of nearly 1,500 souls, with thousands more injured. Innocents–children, women, and grandparents–were butchered by Hamas terrorists without remorse or pity. At least 29 Americans who were in Israel during the attacks are dead, and other American citizens may be hostages in Gaza. The US is moving forces into the region. America is involved, and people wonder how Hamas could do this. The answer to this question is that Hamas and Hezbollah follow Iranian directives. Whether the orders from Iran were explicit or implicit ignores the core issue. As Kim Ghattas reported in an Oct. 8, 2023, article in The Atlantic: “The Hamas attack against Israel is not only a massive Israeli intelligence and military (as well as a U.S. intelligence) failure, but also a dramatic success for Iran’s axis of resistance from Yemen to Gaza.” Iran seems to have no fear of the US and hopes to destroy Israel. Americans need to know what is happening in Gaza because our military may soon be engaged in combat with Iran and its proxies.

In house-to-house combat in the past week inside Israeli kibbutzim and military outposts, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has killed 1,500 Hamas terrorists on Israeli territory, reclaimed Israeli settlements near Gaza, and mobilized 360,000 troops.[1] Attacking into the 25-mile stretch of land known as the Gaza Strip is the IDF’s next move. This city is one of the most densely populated cities on earth and about the size of Philadelphia in the USA. To shape the battlespace, Israel has launched over 6,000 missile and bomb strikes against Hamas positions in Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack. The IDF has warned noncombatants to evacuate Gaza and flee to Egypt to avoid being used as human shields by Hamas terrorists. Hamas, however, is blocking their departure, making the situation even more complicated. Israel knows that a block-by-block battle for Gaza will be dangerous, desperate, and deadly. Hamas has bragged that it is prepared for the coming battle and is determined to fight to the end. The terrorists have announced that they have a vast arsenal of small arms, mines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), antitank weapons, and drones to inflict tremendous casualties on the IDF. The IDF response to Hamas’ boasts is simply this: every Hamas terrorist is a dead man walking. Hamas is the target, not the Palestinian people. Soon, the IDF will begin the ground assault into Gaza. By the time you read this, it may already have begun.

Simultaneously, on the Lebanese border, Hezbollah is engaging the IDF in minor skirmishes and vows to attack with 130,000 rockets and missiles if the IDF assaults Gaza. Such a missile barrage might overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome defenses and cause untold death and destruction. A US aircraft carrier strike group has moved into range in the Mediterranean to hit Hezbollah in Lebanon if Hezbollah opens a second front against Israel. Other US and UK forces are on the way. On Friday, Oct. 13, Hezbollah’s deputy chief, Naim Qassem, said that Hezbollah was ready to fight and that: “The behind-the-scenes calls with us by great powers, Arab countries, envoys of the United Nations, directly and indirectly telling us not to interfere will have no effect.”[2] On Saturday, Iran sent a message to Israel saying that if Israel invades Gaza, then Iran will intervene.[3] As the war in Gaza progresses into its ninth day, the specter of a more intense conflict, a coming storm of greater devastation, is on the horizon.

American leaders must quickly learn from the fighting in Israel and Gaza and articulate to the American people why we must stand by Israel and prepare for the possibilities that lie ahead. We need leaders with foresight–the ability to solve problems in the short term and create solutions for the long run. Foresight in military affairs is rare, but we must strive for it. Ultimately, those leaders with imagination and foresight are the ones who succeed. To cultivate this foresight, the following insights encourage leaders to think, discuss, and dialogue with the American people and to act before the storm engulfs us.

A Failure of Imagination

Israel, the United States, and Europe were completely surprised by the terrible Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. This is clearly a failure of the intelligence agencies, but it is also a failure of imagination. Over the past quarter-century, the US has exhibited a worrying lack of imagination and little prescience in deterring and winning wars. The attacks on September 11, 2001, against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the subsequent retaliatory, long, and indecisive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, were significant failures. In particular, our route from Afghanistan was an ignoble, self-induced disaster, and our enemies took notice. We must learn from the fighting in Israel and garner the courage to see our recent defeats for what they are: a failure of imagination. Continuing to fight endless wars far away from home only led to the loss of skilled warfighters, the depletion of our treasury, the distrust of our allies, and the degradation of our ability to project deterrence. We need to do detailed and holistic after-action reviews to find out why we failed and learn from those lessons. Where is the detailed After Action Review (AAR) on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror (GWOT), and what did we learn from 20 years of this indecisive conflict?

The First Strike

Hamas struck Israel without warning, and Israel is still reeling from this devastating one-two punch, mass rocket and missile barrages coupled with a ground infiltration attack. He who strikes first gains a tremendous advantage, as we witnessed on Oct. 7. According to Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean military doctrine, a surprise first strike, just as Hamas struck Israel, is the optimal way to start a war. Hamas launched over 3,000 missiles and rockets in their first strike. Most of these were unguided rockets which the Iron Dome took down. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has a large arsenal of precision-guided rockets that will be more difficult to destroy. In such a situation, hardened positions that can withstand a rocket barrage are the difference between life and death. Are our troops stationed overseas, in Syria (about 900 troops), South Korea and the Pacific (roughly 84,000 troops), Europe (about 67,000 mostly in Germany, Poland, Romania, and Estonia), and other places, operating from hardened, protected enclaves or are they in peacetime barracks that offer our enemies easy targets? What are we doing to make our troops hard targets, not easy prey? How will our forces survive an enemy’s first strike?

A Failure of Deterrence

When a bully tells you they are going to “get you,” you can deter them by waving a baseball bat and bravely shouting, “Bring it on.” The attacker may just look at your resolution, see the bat, estimate how many broken bones will ensue, and then call off the attack. Just be sure you do not show up to a gun or knife fight with a baseball bat. Nations act much the same way. They respect force when they recognize they will lose and lose badly if they attack. Deterrence is the ability to make it crystal clear that any attack your enemy attempts will fail, and doing so will bring on his ruin. Deterrence requires three things: 1) having a credible force that instills fear in the enemy; 2) the commitment to rapidly apply violent force if the enemy is not deterred; and 3) clear and consistent messaging that you will do 1 and 2. Your opponent must fear you, know you will fully commit to winning if attacked, and understand this message. Actions count. Words are cheap. Lose credibility to instill fear or the belief that you will rapidly act with violent force and poorly articulate your message, and you lose deterrence. We also need the right weapons to deter the enemy. A baseball bat will not deter an enemy with a shotgun. Military and national security leaders have a duty to understand and study the changing methods of war in order to make deterrence unambiguous. We count on these leaders to deter war and, if deterrence fails, to fight smart and win. Hamas was not deterred on Oct. 7. Israel understands they must reestablish deterrence and that the clock is ticking. The IDF must win a rapid, decisive victory against Hamas. When deterrence fails, winning quickly is vital, as long wars are the ruin of nations.[4] The US did not deter Russia from invading Ukraine or Iran from using its proxy armies to strike Israel. Israel is our most important ally in the Middle East. Will American deterrence stop Iran’s moves against Israel? Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, says that China will take all measures necessary to absorb Taiwan. Is US deterrence strong enough to keep a determined Communist China from invading Taiwan,[5] possibly in 2024 during a turbulent US election year?

The Aircraft Carrier USS Gerald Ford in the Mediterranean Sea, on 11, 2023, sailing in response to the war in Gaza. (Department of Defense image)

The Expanding Tentacles of Iran

Few in the US Government want to blame Iran for this war. The truth is that Hamas is a proxy army supported, supplied, trained, and endorsed by Iran. Israel knows this, and the US Government knows this, but both are being coy right now as they believe that not naming names will keep Iran from expanding the war. The US State Department says there is no direct proof of Iran’s involvement in the war because to announce otherwise would compel the US to take action against Iran. This is a false hope. Iran wants the Middle East on fire to push its own agenda for regional power.[6] The weaker our response, the bolder Iran will become. Since we will not even mention Iran as the primary power behind the attack on Israel, we are avoiding the issue. This does not reinforce deterrence. It nullifies it. Does the US have the courage to stand up to Iran? How will China and Russia view our actions?

Border Security is National Security

As Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel on Oct. 7, small teams of terrorists breached the Israeli border defenses at multiple locations in a well-planned and coordinated assault. Hamas expertly knocked out sensors along the wall, snipers suppressed or killed Israeli soldiers in towers, and demolition teams placed charges on the border wall. Since it was a holiday and apparently no one in the IDF expected a ground attack, Israel’s high-tech, $1.1 billion, 65 km long “Iron Wall” was breached, and the IDF’s forces on guard at the border were killed or overrun. Through the gaps made in the border defenses, thousands of Hamas terrorists entered Israel. They invaded Israel from the ground, sea, and air. Hundreds of Israelis were killed, and about 150 were taken hostage. The IDF underestimated their enemy. IDF soldiers outnumbered and surprised, failed to protect the nation. As the Hamas terrorists stormed forward, unarmed civilians in the nearby settlements were left at the mercy of their attackers, and Hamas showed no mercy, not even for children. The Hamas rampage was barbaric, ruthless, and bloody and specifically designed to enrage and humiliate Israel. The IDF’s high-tech “Iron Wall” was not as successful as when every Israeli carried a gun and devoted riflemen guarded Nahal and Kibbutz communities back in the 1950s. What are the implications to the US with our porous border with Mexico? Will a failure of imagination regarding border security cause our next national catastrophe?

Masking is Vital

Hamas cleverly masked its attack on Oct. 7, gaining surprise in a battlespace that is one of the most sensor-rich in the world. Israel was confident that its Iron Wall with high-tech surveillance sensors would provide early warning of any attack. Multi-layered sensors, from ground level to drones and aircraft to satellites in space, should have detected Hamas terrorists as they massed for the attack, but they did not, or their warnings were disregarded. Masking is the full spectrum, multi-domain effort to deceive enemy sensors and disrupt enemy targeting. It is an essential capability to survive and win in the modern battlespace. In a combination of multifaceted actions, Hamas deceived Israeli sensors and disrupted the IDF’s targeting system. Masking their attack, Hamas achieved tactical, operational, and strategic surprise. Do we understand and embrace masking? Will we be able to detect our enemies in Europe or the Pacific if they decide to strike us?

A small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) drops an anti-tank grenade on an Israel Defense Force (IDF) vehicle on Oct. 7, 2023. (Hamas video screen capture)

Drones and Precision Weapons Shape the Battlespace

In their initial attack, well-trained, rehearsed groups of Hamas terrorists had excellent ISR from small surveillance drones and also used drones to drop grenades and attack IDF tanks and positions. Top attack, by precision weapons, missiles, rockets, and drones, is now the preferred method of war. Any power, even Hamas, can employ top attack systems such as small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) to gain a tactical and operational advantage. Since World War II, the US military has enjoyed air dominance due to its superior air forces, but this is no longer assured. “The threat has changed. Our adversaries, large and small, now integrate Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) sensors, especially UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), with long-range precision fires. For US forces, this is the end of guaranteed air superiority.”[7] Hezbollah is reported to have many precision rockets and as many as 130,000 ready to shoot at Israel. Is Israel prepared for such a barrage? Has Hamas used most of its sUAS in the Oct. 7 attacks, or do they have more in storage, ready to use as the IDF advances into Gaza? Hamas had thousands of rockets and missiles, but few were precision weapons. Our enemies have many more precision-guided munitions and drones than Hamas. War is now a matter of “finders” versus “hiders” and “strikers” versus “shielders.” There is no place in the battlespace that cannot be seen and hit. Today, to be detected is to be targeted is to be killed. Israel has energized industry to deliver new weapons ahead of schedule and will deploy a Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) called the Iron Beam. We may see this counter-missile laser defense system employed in the weeks ahead.[8] Is the US military prepared to defend against and defeat a peer enemy’s top attack forces in our overseas areas or even in the US itself?

A Failure of Military Doctrine

As effective as the Iron Dome missile defense is, defensive systems cannot win wars. In the past few years, some influential IDF leaders worried that the IDF was adopting a defensive “Maginot Line” attitude. This defensive mentality placed trust in walls and technology over aggressive patrolling and hard soldiering. This attitude directly contributed to the surprise and shock Israel experienced on Oct. 7.[9] No technology can take the place of well-trained, expertly-led human soldiers. Over time, the IDF has seen its enemies learn, adapt, and improvise and has correctly identified the proxy armies of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah as rocket-based terror armies that are “organized, well-trained armies, well-equipped for their missions.”[10] Israel also knows it must win quickly. Accordingly, the IDF is implementing a new military doctrine called “Decisive War.” Everything that follows in the IDF’s attack on Gaza will be aimed at completely defeating Hamas and, if needed, Hezbollah. A hint that this is the IDF’s intent is the mobilization of nearly every military reservist in Israel. “At its core, the concept is a response to the military establishment’s growing frustration with the previous strategy’s questionable effectiveness against threats from Gaza and Lebanon, deemed ‘a dead-end strategic and doctrinal pattern.’”[11] A key element of this new doctrine is the ability “to attack deep into enemy territory to conquer main nerve centers and inflict a decisive defeat while suppressing enemy rockets and missiles launched nearby toward Israeli forces and toward the home front.”[12] In the weeks ahead, the IDF will attempt to execute according to this new doctrine, and American leaders will have the opportunity to learn from this. Are we thoroughly examining our doctrine and mindset to identify similar problems within the US military? How rapidly can we deploy cutting-edge technology in a crisis?

Elbit Systems, an Israel-based international defense electronics company, has designed AI-powered command and control systems, such as this Torch-X C4ISR command post configuration. Torch-X features AI-based decision support tools to reduce cognitive load at all echelons, facilitating optimal decision-making and planning processes to integrate multi-domain weapons and effects with AI in real time. Such systems may be used to synchronize combat operations in the days ahead. (Elbit Systems image)

AI is Ready to Assist Human Decision Makers

Data is now a weapon. Turning data into information and leveraging information at scale in real time requires robust Artificial Intelligence (AI). Connecting AI with networked weapons will accelerate the orient, observe, decide, and act loop (OODA) and generate speed in decision-making and execution. Galileo once said that “the book of nature is written in mathematics.”[13] If so, the book of modern war is written in algorithms, and these algorithms can be harnessed to aid warfighters in seeing the battlespace and executing military actions in real-time. On Oct. 7, the Israelis relied too heavily on their technology to provide early warning and defend the border wall. It is clear that there were too few human warfighters in the defensive zone. Nevertheless, as the IDF conducts a combined arms multi-domain campaign into Gaza, we will see them use AI to their advantage. AI will enable the IDF to sort and apply intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) data and enable the precision targeting of their foes. AI will also play a major role in supporting the coordination among IDF units. The 2021 Israel-Hamas War, called “Operation Guardian of the Walls” by the IDF, lasted only 11 days, but this conflict shows how Israel will fight in the weeks and months ahead. The IDF called this conflict the “first artificial intelligence war”[14], as AI was the key element in their success. Hamas launched 4,360 rockets at Israeli cities and towns, many of which were knocked out of the sky by Israeli Iron Dome anti-missile rockets. The Israeli anti-missile defense was impressive, but to end the war, the IDF had to take the fight to the enemy. Hamas terrorists were hiding among the people, and Israel’s dilemma was to separate combatants from non-combatants in a dense urban battlespace. Israeli sensors collected years of data on their enemies from all sources, centralized this information into a multidomain sensor database and accessed it in real-time to generate multidomain targeting information. Sensors input data continuously and in real-time to update a common operational picture that provided the IDF with a transparent view of their opponents. The IDF also used AI-enabled drone swarms for sensing and striking. The AI-generated a super-fast kill chain that enabled the IDF to eliminate enemy fighters and destroy Hamas rocket launchers while minimizing civilian casualties within the city of Gaza. As Israeli forces attack Gaza in 2023, the IDF will attempt to recreate the success they experienced in the 2021 War. Israeli leaders believe that the coordination of multi-domain effects in real-time requires synchronization by AI.[15] Is the US military capable and ready to use AI to create a super-fast kill chain or an AI-enabled kill web?

On Oct. 13, 2023, Israel ordered the citizens of Gaza to evacuate the city before the beginning of IDF’s ground offensive.

Mobilization Matters

The ability to rapidly mobilize a nation’s military manpower, civilian population, industry, and economy is a vital war-winning capability. Under continuing invasion, Ukraine was able to do this in 2022 but is struggling today. The Russians are straining to put troops in the field, and thousands of young Russian men have fled to other countries rather than respond to the call to service. Israel, on the other hand, was able to mobilize as many as 360,000 reservists in less than a week and without protest from the Israeli population. This is a phenomenal feat for a nation of 9.5 million. The entire US Army has a total of 1 million soldiers (active duty, reserves, and National Guard), whereas the US has a population of 337 million. Israel mobilized roughly one-third the force of the entire US Army with a population that is about 35 times smaller. Israel has also mobilized its industry and commercial sector to support the war. In our next crisis, will the US be able to do the same? Do we have the organization and planning needed to accomplish a WWII-like mobilization of our industry and manpower?

The Information War is War

Hamas and Iran have won the first phase of the information war. Merely surprising Israel and wreaking death and destruction was a propaganda “info-war” victory for Hamas and Iran. To reinforce this victory, former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal called for protests across the world on Friday, Oct. 13, in support of the Palestinians and urged other countries to join the fight against Israel. Many responded. Protests occurred in cities in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia to respond to Meshaal’s summons.[16] Some US cities raised their threat levels, but no major disruptions occurred in the USA. Israel is on the offensive in the information war, detailing Hamas atrocities and establishing the moral reason for their attack on Gaza, and Meshaal’s countermove was an attempt to blunt the Israeli effort. What happens next in the info-war sphere will make a difference to the overall conflict. America’s next war will also be an information war. Is the US ready to wage an information war to gain worldwide support in the coming crisis in the Middle East, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the impending crisis with China over Taiwan? What are we doing to prepare for the next info war?

The Requirement for Moral Clarity

In any war, you must know what you stand for, what you will fight for, and what you will die for. You must believe that what you are fighting for is worthy of the sacrifice. In an interview on Sky News Australia on Oct. 13, best-selling author Douglas Murray explained the need for moral clarity during the current crisis: “Our age allowed this to happen… terrorism is glorified while speech is vilified… if someone says they want to annihilate you, believe them… they have said it for years. It is us that are stupid. It is we in countries like Australia, Britain, and America who have been naive, and we should do something about that.”[17] Have we clearly articulated the moral clarity needed to energize the American people? Does the US have the moral certainty to respond to the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, in Europe, or in the Pacific?

America is not heeding the lessons of the wars that have occurred since 2020. We are not ready for what is coming. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we should have turned the US into the arsenal of democracy, ramping up our industry as we did prior to WWII. While the world is focused on what is happening in Gaza, Russia is on the attack at Avdiika in the Donbas, and there is mounting evidence that the Russians are planning a major rocket and missile attack against Ukraine this winter.[18] A gathering storm may soon hit the US, and the attack on Israel is our latest wake-up call. We have squandered these warnings. Time is running out. Very soon, we will regret that we have not risen to this challenge in time. How many more disasters will it take?

He who thinks, wins. Imagination matters. Technology is vital, and humans are more important than hardware, but only if those humans think and prepare. We will not rise to the level of our most exquisite technology; we will fall to the level of our collective training, using what we have when the war starts. If we do not learn from recent wars, we will not get a second chance. The purpose of America’s military power is to deter conflict and win the nation’s wars. Our opponents have studied our methods and failures. We must reimagine how we fight. We must develop leaders with imagination and foresight. We cannot afford to be unprepared in a fight against a peer enemy. If we do not adapt our thinking and act in time, even wars against lesser powers could be disastrous. Time is running out. There is an urgent need to think differently, learn from recent conflicts, and prepare for the next war. If we do so, maybe we can stop it from happening.

—

By John Antal

Author of Nex War, Reimagining How We Fight

https://www.casematepublishers.com/9781636243351/next-war/

John Antal is a best-selling author and a thought-leader in military affairs. He writes and speaks extensively about the art of war and the changing methods of warfare. His latest book, Next War: Reimagining How We Fight, is an analysis of modern war and was published on September 28, 2023, by Casemate Publishers of London. Next War is a primer for understanding how war is waged in current conflicts around the globe.

See: https://www.casematepublishers.com/9781636243351/next-war/

To contact John Antal, go to: johnantal.com

sofrep.com · by Colonel John Antal · October 16, 2023

10. China Isn't Going to War Because It Doesn't Have To

Excerpts:

If we don't want a war, all we need to do is preserve Taiwan's status quo.

In sad emulation of great powers of the past, the United States has invested in the wrong kind of weapons for a kind of war that won't be fought again. Battleships took the lion's share of every combatant's military budget before World War II, and as Victor Davis Hanson observes in The Second World Wars, Germany and Japan made the mistake of building battleships rather than carriers, and that probably cost them the war. After Japanese bombers sunk four U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor and two British capital ships near Singapore in December 1941, no navy ever laid a battleship keel again. The aircraft carrier ruled the seas for half a century. Now missiles have made the carrier obsolete.

Under Reagan, the federal development budget (building weapons prototypes) comprised 0.75 percent of GDP, compared to a paltry 0.25 percent today. If we want to restore the technological edge of America's military, we need to mobilize our national resources and fund R & D on Reagan's scale. That requires a radical shift in defense priorities from forever wars to high-tech weaponry. That's the right thing to do, but it would take years to achieve in the best-case scenario.

In the meantime, trash-talking China will get us nowhere. The kind of "denial" that applies to our national debate over Taiwan has more to do with Freud than Clausewitz. It's time to stop posturing and start rebuilding.

China Isn't Going to War Because It Doesn't Have To

DAVID P. GOLDMAN , DEPUTY EDITOR OF ASIA TIMES, WASHINGTON FELLOW OF THE CLAREMONT INSTITUTE

ON 10/15/23 AT 7:14 PM EDT

Newsweek · October 15, 2023

Relax, boys and girls: China won't invade Taiwan, and the U.S. Navy won't engage Chinese forces any time in the foreseeable future. It's a scam, a goof, a Muppet show, whose point is to cover up the incompetence and corruption which led the Pentagon to spend trillions on obsolete weapons. We lost the South China Sea years ago. We're in roughly the same position as Britain was in Singapore in late 1941, except that unlike the feckless British, we know it. We just can't admit it.

The U.S. Department of Defense has known since no later than 2012—when I consulted for the late Andrew Marshall at the Office of Net Assessment—that Chinese surface-to-surface (STS) missiles can destroy U.S. aircraft carriers, or any other military asset that isn't submerged. Not until recently did the U.S. military concede this in official assessments.

In contrast to the Reagan Administration, which made missile defense a priority, we're doing little to counter China's formidable capabilities. We can't test defenses against hypersonic missiles, because we can't even launch a hypersonic missile. Lockheed junked its flagship hypersonics program last March.

China is under no time pressure to take military action. From a military standpoint, a seaborne landing like the Normandy invasion of December 1944 would be senseless. Taiwan has storage capacity for 11 days of natural gas consumption. A Chinese blockade would force Taiwan's surrender in short order.

Pictured president Tsai Ing-wen on the the Keelung warship part of the "Han Kuang 38 Exercise" joint interception combat live ammunition exercise. Taiwan Military News Agency

The Pentagon knows this, and isn't stupid enough to stumble into a firefight. Nonetheless, American commanders talk as if Chinese soldiers are about to hit Taiwanese beaches. In March 2021, Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Philip Davidson, Pacific Fleet commander, warned that China might invade Taiwan by 2027. Chief of naval operations Michael Gilday, said he could "not rule out" a Chinese attempt to invade as early as 2023.

Really? Why indeed would China risk military action of any kind in the Taiwan Strait? For the time being, China is getting everything it wants from the island. Taiwanese investment on the mainland is running at $4 billion a year and rising. Taiwanese chip engineers built China's chip fabrication plants.

Leave aside the risk of a nuclear exchange—depicted chillingly in Admiral James Stavridis' thriller 2034—the least consequence of any kinetic confrontation would be a global economic slump due to trade restrictions.

China has a decisive advantage in its home theater, and it's growing. It can deal with Taiwan whenever it wants. "The conventional arm of the PLARF is the largest ground-based missile force in the world, with over 2,200 conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles and with enough antiship missiles to attack every U.S. surface combatant vessel in the South China Sea with enough firepower to overcome each ship's missile defense," as Maj. Christopher J. Mihal wrote in 2021 in a U.S. Army journal.

"The [People's Liberation Army Air Force's] ground-based missile forces complement the air and sea-based precision strike capabilities of the PLAAF and PLAN," the Pentagon's November 29,2022 report, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China," found. "The PLARF continues to grow its inventory of DF-26 IRBMs, which are designed to rapidly swap conventional and nuclear warheads. They are also capable of precision land-attack and anti-ship strikes in the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea from mainland China.

And that doesn't take into account Chinese hypersonic missiles, against which there is no defense; hypersonics fly as fast as the anti-missile missiles that are supposed to intercept them. "China has tested and deployed a new longer-range hypersonic missile that is probably able to evade U.S. defenses, according to an overlooked top-secret document among those recently leaked. Now, the public can see what the American intelligence community already knew: China is quickly improving its capacity to strike thousands of miles from its shores and prevent the United States from intervening," Josh Rogin reported last April in the Washington Post.

One circumstance, and one only, would prompt China to take military action against Taiwan, and that is a move by the island toward sovereignty. It mounted a de facto two-day blockade of Taiwan in August 2022 during then-House Speaker Pelosi's visit. In China's calculus, the Speaker of the House is second in line to the president, and Pelosi's visit raised the prospect of diplomatic recognition of Taiwan.

As long as China can maintain the diplomatic fiction that Taiwan is a renegade province that belongs to China, it will eschew the use of force. But Beijing would view American support for an independent Taiwan as an attempt to break up China, as the imperialist powers did during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and respond with all the power at its disposal.

If we don't want a war, all we need to do is preserve Taiwan's status quo.

In sad emulation of great powers of the past, the United States has invested in the wrong kind of weapons for a kind of war that won't be fought again. Battleships took the lion's share of every combatant's military budget before World War II, and as Victor Davis Hanson observes in The Second World Wars, Germany and Japan made the mistake of building battleships rather than carriers, and that probably cost them the war. After Japanese bombers sunk four U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor and two British capital ships near Singapore in December 1941, no navy ever laid a battleship keel again. The aircraft carrier ruled the seas for half a century. Now missiles have made the carrier obsolete.

Under Reagan, the federal development budget (building weapons prototypes) comprised 0.75 percent of GDP, compared to a paltry 0.25 percent today. If we want to restore the technological edge of America's military, we need to mobilize our national resources and fund R & D on Reagan's scale. That requires a radical shift in defense priorities from forever wars to high-tech weaponry. That's the right thing to do, but it would take years to achieve in the best-case scenario.

In the meantime, trash-talking China will get us nowhere. The kind of "denial" that applies to our national debate over Taiwan has more to do with Freud than Clausewitz. It's time to stop posturing and start rebuilding.

David P. Goldman is Deputy Editor of Asia Times and a Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute. He formerly was global head of debt research at Bank of America.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Newsweek · October 15, 2023

11. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 16, 2023

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

Key Takeaways:

Russia likely deployed elements of at least two Central Military District (CMD) brigades to reinforce offensive operations by Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) forces on the Avdiivka front.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 16.
A new Russian procedure restricting the border checkpoints that Ukrainians can use to enter Russia from third countries came into force on October 16, effectively only allowing Ukrainians to enter Russia from third countries through the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow.
A group of Russian lawyers appears to be challenging the Kremlin’s precariously crafted veneer of legality surrounding the Russian judicial system, calling for a strike three days after Russian authorities arrested four lawyers on extremism charges.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, in the Bakhmut direction, near Avdiivka, southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) reported further details on ongoing North Korean weapons shipments to Russia on October 16.
Senior Russian officials reiterated boilerplate narratives about the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the Israel-Hamas war during a Russian Security Council meeting on October 16 likely to deter Western support for Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 16, 2023

Oct 16, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 16, 2023

Karolina Hird, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, Christina Harward, and Mason Clark

October 16, 2023, 6pm 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 1:30pm ET on October 16. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the October 17 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russia likely deployed elements of at least two Central Military District (CMD) brigades to reinforce offensive operations by Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) forces on the Avdiivka front. A Ukrainian military observer reported on October 16 that three Russian brigades — the DNR’s 114th Motorized Rifle Brigade (MRB) and the CMD’s 15th and 21st MRBs (both of the 2nd Combined Arms Army [2nd CAA]) — have been involved in recent attacks on Avdiivka alongside various scattered DNR elements, while Russian forces are holding the CMD’s 30th MRB in tactical reserve.[1] Elements of the CMD, particularly of the 2nd CAA, have been active along the Svatove-Kreminna line until recently, and the newly formed 25th CAA likely relieved them along the Svatove-Kreminna line.[2] 2nd CAA elements have primarily conducted defensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line for the last several months and have therefore likely had more time to rest and reconstitute before deploying to a more challenging sector of the frontline, which accounts in part for recent Russian advances in the previously stagnant Avdiivka sector of the front.

Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Avdiivka direction on October 16 and recently made some gains, albeit at a relatively slower pace than in the initial attacks. Geolocated footage posted on October 16 shows that Russian forces have marginally advanced past the E50 road about 3km south of Avdiivka.[3] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a total of 22 Russian attacks in the Avdiivka direction in the past day, notably fewer than the 30 reported attacks on October 15.[4] Russian sources noted that Russian forces have increased the intensity of air and artillery strikes on the settlement in order to compensate for slow ground maneuvers, which are complicated by heavy Ukrainian fortifications surrounding Avdiivka.[5] During a meeting on the operational situation in Ukraine on October 16, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Russian forces have improved their tactical positions in unspecified areas and that the Russian “active defense” along the front, including near Avdiivka, is prohibiting Ukrainian advances.[6]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 16. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) and Bakhmut directions.[7] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted assaults near Avdiivka and on Verbove’s western and northwestern outskirts (10km east of Robotyne or 18km southwest of Orikhiv).[8] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces are within 200 to 300 meters of Russian positions west of Verbove.[9]

Kremlin-appointed Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova reiterated statements admitting that Russia deported millions of Ukrainians — including 700,000 children — to Russia since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as a Qatari-mediated deal returned four children from Russia to Ukraine. Lvova-Belova claimed in a report published on October 15 that Russia has “accepted” about 4.8 million Ukrainians, including 700,000 children, since February 2022 and that Russian authorities have placed 380 Ukrainian orphans into foster care in Russia between April and October 2022.[10] Lvova-Belova also attempted to discredit information about Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children and claimed instead that Ukrainian authorities act “against the interests of children.”[11] The Washington Post reported on October 16 that four children ranging from two to seventeen years old have returned or will return to Ukraine from Russia after Ukraine asked Qatar to mediate negotiations on the matter.[12] An official source told The Washington Post that more Ukrainian children may be returned in the future as part of the Qatari-mediated negotiations but that the process has been complicated by Russia providing a list of only hundreds of Ukrainian children currently in Russia while Ukraine has identified thousands of deported children. International humanitarian law defines the forced transfer of civilians to the territory of an occupying power as “deportation,” and ISW continues to assess that Russian authorities are conducting a large-scale campaign to deport Ukrainians to Russia.[13]

Some Russian milbloggers continue to complain about the alleged restriction of information about Russian military failures. A Russian milblogger criticized an unspecified associate of Russian Lieutenant General Andrey Sychevoy, who was reportedly recently dismissed from a command position for military failures near Bakhmut, for causing Russian forces (presumably near Bakhmut) to suffer 1,500 casualties in September 2023.[14] The milblogger also criticized the broader Russian military command for communication failures and forcing injured personnel back into combat.[15] The milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces have crossed the railway line south of Bakhmut in some places and complained that only one major milblogger has discussed this issue, underlining the fact that many milbloggers restrict their presentation of negative information about Russian capabilities.[16] Another milblogger, who previously claimed to censor all but 10-20 percent of the “sad” information they receive, claimed that the first milblogger’s complaints provide a glimpse into the 80-90 percent of unreported information, yet criticized other Russian milbloggers for consistently claiming that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed.[17]

Russian forces conducted a drone and missile strike against Ukrainian rear areas on the night of October 15-16. Ukrainian military sources reported that Russian forces launched five Kh-59 cruise missiles, one Iskander ballistic missile in eastern and southern Ukraine, and 12 Shahed-131/136 drones in western Ukraine.[18] Ukrainian air defense reportedly destroyed two of the Kh-59s and 11 Shahed drones.[19] Ukrainian officials reported explosions near Myrhorod, Poltava Oblast, and in Kirovohrad Oblast.[20] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that one strike destroyed a Ukrainian communication center at the Myrhorod airfield in Poltava Oblast.[21]

A new Russian procedure restricting the border checkpoints that Ukrainians can use to enter Russia from third countries came into force on October 16, effectively only allowing Ukrainians to enter Russia from third countries through the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow. The new procedure only allows Ukrainians aged 14 and older to enter Russia from third countries through the Ludonka automobile checkpoint from Latvia and Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow.[22] Latvia announced on October 12 that it would close its side of the Ludonka checkpoint beginning on October 16.[23] ISW previously assessed that Russia implemented this new border crossing procedure likely in response to continued concern over the security of Russian border regions.[24] The new procedure does not apply to Ukrainians entering Russia from occupied Ukrainian territories or Ukrainians under the age of 14 traveling with a legal guardian.[25]

A group of Russian lawyers appears to be challenging the Kremlin’s precariously crafted veneer of legality surrounding the Russian judicial system, calling for a strike three days after Russian authorities arrested four lawyers on extremism charges. A group of Russian lawyers published a petition encouraging members of the Russian Federal and Regional Chambers of Lawyers and other public lawyer associations to strike from all types of legal proceedings from October 25 to 28 in response to commonplace intimidation of lawyers in the Russian judicial system.[26] The petition states that Russian authorities often ignore violations of the professional rights of lawyers and threaten violence against them on “trumped-up administrative and criminal charges.”[27] The petition also argues that Russian judges increasingly abuse their powers and accuse Russian law enforcement officers of perpetrating crimes against lawyers. The petition states that “sophisticated methods of prosecuting lawyers for their professional activities on far-fetched administrative and criminal charges” have become established practices by Russian law enforcement agencies and courts. This petition comes three days after Russian authorities arrested four lawyers, including three of imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s lawyers, on extremism charges on October 13.[28] The Russian lawyers calling for a strike appear unwilling to further tolerate the Kremlin’s weaponization of the Russian judicial system, challenging the Kremlin’s veneer of legality and legitimacy in Russian institutions that are intended to provide cover for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian and corrupt rule.[29]

Key Takeaways:

Russia likely deployed elements of at least two Central Military District (CMD) brigades to reinforce offensive operations by Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) forces on the Avdiivka front.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 16.
A new Russian procedure restricting the border checkpoints that Ukrainians can use to enter Russia from third countries came into force on October 16, effectively only allowing Ukrainians to enter Russia from third countries through the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow.
A group of Russian lawyers appears to be challenging the Kremlin’s precariously crafted veneer of legality surrounding the Russian judicial system, calling for a strike three days after Russian authorities arrested four lawyers on extremism charges.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, in the Bakhmut direction, near Avdiivka, southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) reported further details on ongoing North Korean weapons shipments to Russia on October 16.
Senior Russian officials reiterated boilerplate narratives about the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the Israel-Hamas war during a Russian Security Council meeting on October 16 likely to deter Western support for Ukraine.

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push 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 offensive operations on the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on October 16 but did not make confirmed advances. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces captured new positions near Krokhmalne (25km southeast of Kupyansk) and Stepova Novosilka (17km southeast of Kupyansk) but noted that Russian forces have not achieved significant advances in the Kupyansk direction.[30] Other Russian milbloggers reported continued Russian offensive operations near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Lyman Pershyi (12km northeast of Kupyansk), Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna), and in the Serebryanske forest area (11km south of Kreminna).[31] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Synkivka, Ivanivka (19km southeast of Kupyansk), Stelmakhivka (12km northwest of Svatove), and Nadiya (20km west of Svatove).[32] Ukrainian military analyst Petro Chermyk stated that Russian forces are concentrating 100,000 personnel in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction to distract Ukrainian forces from ongoing offensive operations near Bakhmut.[33] Chernyk stated that Russian forces may achieve partial success in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction but will need to commit significant forces to capture territory.

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations on the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on October 16 but did not advance. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Synkivka, Ivanivka, Novoyehorivka (16km southwest of Svatove), Makiivka, Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna), and the Serebryanske forest area.[34] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces periodically conduct unsuccessful attacks in the Kupyansk area.[35]

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

Russian forces continued limited counterattacks in the Bakhmut direction on October 16 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka (6km southwest) and Andriivka (8km southwest).[36] Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash noted that there were seven meeting engagements in this direction over the past day.[37] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attempted to regain lost positions near Klishchiivka and Andriivka but were unsuccessful.[38]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut direction on October 16 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Ukrainian forces continued offensive actions near Bakhmut but did not specify the outcome of the Ukrainian attacks.[39]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Avdiivka on October 16 and made confirmed advances on the northern outskirts of Donetsk City. Geolocated footage posted on October 16 shows that Russian forces have marginally advanced past the E50 road about 3km south of Avdiivka.[40] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces continue attacking the fortified area around Avdiivka while shelling Ukrainian logistics routes into the settlement.[41] One milblogger claimed that Russian forces continue ground attacks in several directions in an attempt to encircle Avdiivka from Sieverne (southwest), the Opytne-Spartak area (south), and Krasnohorivka (north).[42] The milblogger additionally claimed that Russian forces marginally advanced near Stepove (7km northwest of Avdiivka) but failed to advance toward Keramik (10km northwest of Avdiivka).[43] Russian sources additionally presented conflicting claims about the status of the waste heap area northwest of Avdiivka, with some claiming that Russian forces do not control the area at all, others claiming that battles are ongoing near the waste heap and that Russian forces are advancing into the contested ”grey zone,” and some sources claiming that Russian forces completely control the waste heap.[44] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Avdiivka, Keramik, Stepove, Tonenke (5km west of Avdiivka), Sieverne (5km west of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske (10km southwest of Avdiivka).[45] A Ukrainian reserve officer noted that Russian forces are increasingly resorting to heavy air and artillery strikes on infrastructure within Avdiivka due to heavy Ukrainian fortifications around the settlement that are making it difficult for Russian troops to advance.[46]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful counterattacks near Avdiivka on October 16.[47] One milblogger reported that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to launch attacks from positions in the Avdiivka Coke Plant in northwestern Avdiivka.[48]

Russian forces continued offensive operations southwest of Donetsk City on October 16 and have recently advanced. Geolocated footage posted on October 13 indicates that Russian forces control Stepne, a settlement about 23km southwest of Donetsk City.[49] Additional geolocated footage posted on October 16 shows that Russian forces have advanced up to a tree line south of Novomykhailivka, 20km southwest of Donetsk City.[50] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled numerous Russian attacks near Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City).[51] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are conducting ”powerful” attacks on Ukrainian positions in Marinka.[52]

Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed ground attacks southwest of Donetsk City on October 16.

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

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks in the Doentsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 16. Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Oleg Chekhov claimed on October 16 that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[53] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Pryyutne (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[54] The Russian “Vostok” Battalion, reportedly fighting near Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), claimed that their section of the front was quiet on the night of October 15 to 16.[55] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack near Staromayorske on October 15.[56] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed on October 15 that positional battles occurred near Pryyutne over the past week.[57]

Russian forces continued attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 16 and reportedly advanced. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks north of Pryuutne, south of Zolota Nyva (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), and south of Prechystivka (18km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[58] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces advanced near Zolota Nyva.[59]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 16 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction.[60] Russian sources, including the Russian MoD, claimed that Ukrainian forces launched an unsuccessful mechanized assault on Verbove‘s western and northwestern outskirts (10km east of Robotyne or 18km southwest of Orikhiv).[61] One Russian milblogger claimed that the intensity of the Ukrainian assault on Verbove subsided due to bad weather.[62] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are within 200 to 300 meters of Russian positions west of Verbove.[63] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked in the direction of Kopani (5km northwest of Robotyne or 11km southwest of Orikhiv).[64]

Russian forces continued counterattacks in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 16 and marginally advanced. Geolocated footage published on October 15 indicates that Russian forces marginally advanced northwest of Verbove.[65] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked southwest of Novodanylivka (4km south of Orikhiv), west of Robtyne, and west of Verbove.[66] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces counterattacked along the Kopani-Robotyne-Novoprokopivka-Verbove line (5km northwest to 10km east of Robotyne).[67] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are advancing along the Robotyne-Verbove line.[68]

Russian sources continued to express concern on October 16 over the perceived future threat of Ukrainian amphibious landing in occupied Crimea.[69] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces destroyed a barge near the Kinburn Spit in Mykolaiv Oblast, which they claimed Ukrainian forces were planning to use as a “jumping platform” for a future attempt to conduct an amphibious operation in the Black Sea.[70]

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

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) reported further details on ongoing North Korean weapons shipments to Russia on October 16. RUSI reported on October 16 that satellite imagery from August through October 2023 indicates that two Russian vessels repeatedly transported hundreds of shipping containers likely containing North Korean armaments between Rajin, North Korea, and Dunai, Russia from mid-August to early October.[71] RUSI reported that Russian authorities rapidly expanded a munitions storage facility 200 kilometers from the Ukrainian border in Tikhoretsk, Krasnodar Krai in early August and that this facility received cargo containers of the same size and color as those transported from Rajin to Dunai.[72]

US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby previously stated on October 13 that North Korea provided Russia with as many as 1,000 containers of “equipment and munitions” in “recent weeks” from North Korea to Tikhoretsk, Krasnodar Krai via sea and rail.[73] The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) previously reported on October 8 that satellite imagery indicates that rail traffic between North Korea and Russia also “dramatically” increased since mid-September 2023 and that these containers likely transported ammunition and artillery for the war in Ukraine.[74]

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 Russian federal government continues efforts to integrate occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin stated on October 16 that small and medium-sized businesses in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts will be able to participate in Russian federal grant programs for education, medicine, social services, culture, sports, and hotel businesses.[75]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Senior Russian officials reiterated boilerplate narratives about the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the Israel-Hamas war during a Russian Security Council meeting on October 16, likely to deter Western support for Ukraine.[76] Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reiterated his claim from October 15 that Russian forces are conducting an “active defense” and claimed that Russian forces have improved their tactical positions in some places. Shoigu also reiterated standard Russian claims about the Ukrainian counteroffensive having failed. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov reiterated claims about Western policies bearing responsibility for the Israel-Hamas war.

Putin reiterated standing attempts to portray Russia as a capable, long-term partner to China during an interview with the Chinese Media Corporation on October 16.[77] Putin claimed that current Russian-Chinese relations have developed over the past two decades and are based on goodwill and national interests. Putin also expressed support for China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. Putin also reiterated longstanding Kremlin narratives falsely claiming that the West caused the war in Ukraine and that Russia remains open to meaningful negotiations.

Russian officials continue efforts to downplay the effects of the Russian war in Ukraine on domestic society and avoid fully shifting domestic society to a wartime footing. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov claimed that the fulfillment of social obligations is one of the highest priority areas in the Russian federal budget, 30.5 percent of which is allocated to social issues.[78] Siluanov stated that defense capability is another priority area of the Russian federal budget but that the federal budget is not a military budget.

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

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on October 16 that the next group of Belarusian maneuver elements had begun a combat readiness check.[79] The readiness check includes moving military personnel and equipment along roads in Minsk, Grodno, Brest, and Vitebsk oblasts for combat training. The Belarusian MoD stated that Belarusian forces inspected the equipment of tank elements of the 6th and 120th Separate Mechanized Brigades.[80]

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.

12. Iran Update, October 16, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-october-16-2023

Key Takeaways:

Palestinian militias continued drone and indirect fire attacks into Israel, primarily southern Israel, on October 16. The rate of small arms clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants dropped slightly on October 16 after peaking on October 13.
Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned on October 15 and 16 that a multi-front war against Israel is becoming more likely and that Iranian-backed militias may take preemptive actions against Israel in the “coming hours.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is trying to improve its operational security in eastern Syria likely as part of an effort to move advanced military systems into Syria and Lebanon. 250-500 Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces arrived in Syria and Lebanon on October 16.

IRAN UPDATE, OCTOBER 16, 2023

Oct 16, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, October 16, 2023

Johanna Moore, Ashka Jhaveri, Annika Ganzeveld, Andie Parry, and Nicholas Carl

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

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

Key Takeaways:

Palestinian militias continued drone and indirect fire attacks into Israel, primarily southern Israel, on October 16. The rate of small arms clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants dropped slightly on October 16 after peaking on October 13.
Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned on October 15 and 16 that a multi-front war against Israel is becoming more likely and that Iranian-backed militias may take preemptive actions against Israel in the “coming hours.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is trying to improve its operational security in eastern Syria likely as part of an effort to move advanced military systems into Syria and Lebanon. 250-500 Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces arrived in Syria and Lebanon on October 16.

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

Gaza Strip

Palestinian militias continued indirect fire attacks into Israel, primarily southern Israel, on October 16. Hamas’ militant wing, the al Qassem Brigades, claimed responsibility for 18 mortar and rocket attacks.[1] Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) militant wing, Saraya al Quds, claimed responsibility for another six mortar and rocket attacks.[2] The militant wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the National Resistance Brigades, claimed two mortar attacks into Israel from Gaza.[3] CTP-ISW recorded 10 unclaimed mortar and rocket strikes as well.[4]

CTP-ISW did not record any reports of infiltrations or small arms clashes in southern Israel on October 16.

West Bank

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

The rate of small arms clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants dropped slightly on October 16 after peaking on October 13. CTP-ISW recorded nine clashes and four marches in the West Bank compared to 32 clashes recorded on October 13.[5] Israeli forces arrested 20 individuals affiliated with Hamas in the West Bank and seized various small arms and ammunition.[6] CTP-ISW previously suggested that arrest campaigns in the West Bank may be contributing to the declining violence.[7] Hamas remains committed to expanding the war to the West Bank, however.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

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

Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) claimed six attacks on Israeli positions in Northern Israel on October 16 and fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli tank.[8] CTP-ISW recorded one mortar attack into Israeli territory from Lebanon, a decrease compared to seven recorded on October 15.[9] The IDF said that there were multiple small arms clashes on Israel’s northern border.[10] CTP-ISW also recorded one small arms clash between LH and Israeli security forces across Israel’s northern border on October 16.[11] LH released a video on October 16 showing LH militants shooting at Israeli surveillance equipment on the Lebanese border.[12] LH members were seen shooting at Israeli Army radio towers and cameras at outposts along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Israel’s National Emergency Authority (NAE), which falls under the Israeli Ministry of Defense, evacuated Israeli citizens from 28 towns on the Israel-Lebanon border to create a two-kilometer buffer zone.[13] Lebanese Hezbollah steadily increased its activity along the Israeli border between October 7 and 15.[14] CTP-ISW has also reported several unconfirmed reports of militia infiltrations into northern Israel.[15]

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned on October 15 and 16 that a multi-front war against Israel is becoming more likely and that Iranian-backed militias may take preemptive actions against Israel in the “coming hours.” Abdollahian stated in an interview with Al Jazeera on October 15 that Israel’s continued siege of Gaza is making a multi-front war “increasingly more probable.”[16] Abdollahian similarly posted on X (Twitter) on October 16 that “the time for political solutions is coming to an end” and that the expansion of the Israel-Hamas war to new fronts is becoming “inevitable.”[17] Abdollahian also warned on October 16 that resistance groups may take “preemptive measures” against Israel in the “coming hours.”[18] Iranian state media recirculated Abdollahian’s warning in English, indicating that their intended audience is the United States and Israel. [19] CTP-ISW will continue to closely monitor the Israel-Hamas war to forecast whether a multi-front war is becoming more or less likely.

The Iranian regime continues to signal its unwillingness to enter a direct conflict with Israel. Iran’s Mission to the United Nations emphasized that Iran will not intervene in the Israel-Hamas war if Israel refrains from attacking Iranian territory, interests, and nationals in a statement on October 15.[20] CTP-ISW previously reported that Iran has articulated its red line for directly intervening in the Israel-Hamas war as an Israeli attack on Iran.[21]
Iran and elements of its Axis of Resistance are preparing for the Hamas-Israel war to expand into a regional conflict. Iranian-backed militants have deployed to southern Lebanon and southwestern Syria.[22] These militants include Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces units, and the Afghan Fatemiyoun and Pakistani Zeynabiyoun divisions. The IDF has conducted airstrikes on Damascus and Aleppo international airports to disrupt Iranian military shipments to Syria and Lebanon.

Iran would likely provide material and financial support to its proxies to fight Israel rather than get directly involved in the Israel-Hamas war were this war to expand into a regional conflict. Direct Iranian involvement would lead to escalation with Israel, which Iran seeks to avoid. Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani warned Israel against attacking Iran on October 9, threatening a “devastating response” to any attack.[23] Iran has historically used its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen to advance its regional objectives—such as expelling the United States from the Middle East—while retaining a degree of plausible deniability.[24]

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is trying to improve its operational security in eastern Syria likely as part of an effort to move advanced military systems into Syria and Lebanon. Iran typically takes steps to reinforce operational security along its ground lines of communication in Syria to protect military shipments from Israeli airstrikes.[25] Israel has conducted airstrikes on the Damascus and Aleppo international airports in recent days, which Israeli media and officials have indicated is meant to disrupt the transfer of Iranian military systems to Syria and Lebanon. CTP-ISW is monitoring Iran positioning its proxies in the Levant to support the Palestinian militias fighting against Israel.

The IRGC commander of eastern Syria prohibited cellphones at IRGC headquarters in Deir ez Zor city in one of several security measures to protect infrastructure and foreign fighters against airstrikes, according to local media.[26] The IRGC attempted to disguise its activity in eastern Syria by providing personnel with civilian cars and rebranding facilities as Syrian Arab Army positions.[27] CTP-ISW previously noted that the IRGC and LH deployments to Deir ez Zor indicated the militias have struggled to preserve operational security as they expand operations in Syria.[28]
Israel conducted multiple airstrikes on Damascus and Aleppo international airports on October 12 and 14 which disrupts critical aerial nodes through which Iran funnels military equipment and personnel into the Levant.[29] Iran transfers weapons through these airports, as was the case in February 2023 when it sent air defense equipment to Aleppo along with earthquake relief shipments.[30]
A senior official at the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry indicated that the air strikes in Syria are part of an Israeli effort to prevent Iran from moving weapons into Syria and/or opening a front against Israel from there.[31] Israeli media reported on October 16 that Israel detects an intensive Iranian effort to transfer advanced weapons to LH in Lebanon.[32]

An Iraqi-based open-source intelligence account claimed on October 16 that 250-500 Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces arrived in Syria and Lebanon. This is consistent with CTP-ISW’s tracking of Iranian-backed foreign fighters deploying to border areas with Israel.[33] Iranian-backed militants have deployed to the southwestern Syrian border since the war began on October 7.[34] These militants also include members of the Afghan Fatemiyoun Division and Pakistani Zeynabiyoun Division, according to Israeli media.[35] IRGC Quds Force Commander Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani was in Syria coordinating some of these deployments as of October 15, according to an Iran-based journalist.[36] LH similarly redeployed militants from Mayadin to Damascus as part of an effort to transfer LH members throughout Syria to the southwestern border.[37]

Iran has pursued greater coordination with Palestinian groups during the past year. Iranian officials, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Palestinian militant groups held meetings, visits, and calls in the year leading up to Hamas’s October 7 attack. The coordination included Iran providing explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), which militants in the West Bank used in attacks against the IDF. This is consistent with comments from the PIJ leader in Lebanon, Ihsan Ataya, who acknowledged as recently as September 28 that Iran supports PIJ with money, weapons, and “everything it needs to confront Israel.”[38] The coordination also occurred after Hamas began planning its October 7 attack on Israel. The group’s spokesperson claimed the group began planning its attack in 2022.[39] The graphic below demonstrates this coordination with senior Iranian political and strategic leadership, as well as Hamas and PIJ military developments.

13. The Global Alliance of Failed States

The Global Alliance of Failed States

An alliance of failed states is threatening to disrupt the international order, but do they have the economic power or bonds of trust to challenge the free world?

cepa.org · by Walter Clemens · October 13, 2023

The visit of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un to Russia, and the possible visit of Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang, represent the top layer of a global partnership of failed states that have been bound more closely together since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Unlike Haiti or some African countries, the governments of Russia and North Korea are still very much in control of nearly everything inside their borders. So why regard them as “failed states?” The answer is that they and their partners fail to provide the basics for human development and mutual trust.

The UN Human Development Index (HDI) ranks countries by their physical health (life expectancy), education (years of schooling), and material well-being (GDP per capita). The index is not perfect, but it provides the best single picture of global trends. By all these measures, Switzerland and Norway came out on top. Hong Kong, before China’s takeover, ranked fourth in the world on the HDI, while recent decades saw Canada fall to 15th and the USA to 21st.

A measure of mutual trust can be found in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Here too, Scandinavia ranks highest, joined by New Zealand and Singapore. Canada ranks 14th and the USA 24th.

, Russia ranked 52nd on the HDI, its life expectancy falling to 69 years, and its GDP per capita at $22,000. Basic honesty in Russia, as measured by the CPI in 2022, was among the lowest anywhere — 137 th out of 180 countries on the index.

Vladimir Putin’s new comrades in North Korea hide most measures of human development, but millions of North Koreans starved to death in the 1990s and many are short of food in 2023. Still, the UN reports that North Korea’s life expectancy is higher than Russia’s at 73.3.

North Korea’s CPI, however, rates the DPRK at 171st, very nearly the worst in the world. Various measures of people’s power say that the DPRK is the least free country anywhere, although Putin appears indifferent to these numbers as long as Kim Jong Un can trade him ammunition for technology and food.

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Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping claim to be best friends, but the putative superpower ranks much lower on the HDI than Russia – at 79 in the world, three places below Russia’s drone suppliers in Iran (76) and worse than Belarus (at 60).

China’s life expectancy, however, at 78.2 years is eight years higher than Russia’s and about four years higher than Iran’s. China’s CPI score is also much better than Russia’s — 65th in the world versus 137th. Per capita income in China was $17,500 in 2017, when these numbers were gathered, compared with $22,200 in Russia (at least in major cities). By 2023, however, Chinese incomes have gone up and Russians’ down.

Nine more failed states tend to vote with Russia at the United Nations. They include Cuba (HDI ranking 83), South Africa (109), Vietnam (115), Venezuela (120), India (132), Laos (140), Cambodia (146), Syria (150), and Mali (186). India is included in this list because, while it is becoming a major power in outer space, it does poorly by its own people.

How solid is this failed state partnership? China and Russia have, after all, voted for UN sanctions on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

The ostensible solidarity between Russia and China could also easily return to the mutual hostility that prevailed for most of the last 500 years, and while India and China now show up at the same conferences (although not always) but are virtually at war in the Himalayas.

Professor Leif Eric-Easley, at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, was probably correct when he told the New York Times: “Trust is so low among Russia, North Korea, and China that a real alliance of the three isn’t credible or sustainable.”

The total population of these failed states makes up well over half of humanity. If their goods and services are combined, however, they produce no more than one-quarter of the global GDP. The United States and its European and Asian partners, generate more than half of the world’s GDP. If major Latin American countries were included, the weight of free world economic power would be still higher.

Even if the failed states could trust each other enough to form an effective alliance, since most forms of hard and soft power depend on economic strength, the free world is still far ahead.

Walter Clemens is an Associate at Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University. HBlood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (Westphalia, July 2023).

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Europe's Edge

CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.

cepa.org · by Walter Clemens · October 13, 2023

14. Army takes on a naval tinge as it adapts to the Pacific

Army takes on a naval tinge as it adapts to the Pacific

Undersecretary cites several aspects of the service’s efforts to develop “linchpin” capabilities for the joint force.

defenseone.com · by Jennifer Hlad

The Army’s Maneuver Support Vessel (Light), or MSV(L), prototype was launched Oct. 10, 2022, at the Vigor, LLC marine fabrication facility in Vancouver, Washington. Vigor, LLC via the U.S. Army

October 16, 2023 09:35 PM ET

By Jennifer Hlad

Senior News Editor, Defense One

October 16, 2023 09:35 PM ET

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii—The U.S. Army is looking just a bit more naval as it adjusts to the Pacific region, adopting missiles long wielded by its sister service and even developing new cargo vessels.

It’s all part of a “multi-year effort” to develop the capabilities the Army will need to provide for the joint force, said Gabe Camarillo, who is making his first visit to the region since becoming Army undersecretary in February 2022. “Our role is the linchpin of the Joint Force.”

Among those capabilities: air- and missile-defense systems, as well as offensive mid- and long-range fires. The Army can bring SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles—weapons long associated with the Navy—to bear on “maritime targets” that threaten U.S. or partners’ bases, Camarillo said.

The service is also trying to figure out how to keep supplies moving around a vast Pacific theater in wartime. Prepositioned stocks and interior lines are “going to be really critical for us,” Camarillo said. “So part of that is ensuring that we have not only the prepositioned capabilities here in the area, but also the ability to move them around within the theater. And that’s one of the things the Army is going to be called upon to do. That’s why we’re investing, for example, in Army watercraft.”

He said production has begun on the Maneuver Support Vessel (Light), a 117-foot, 82-ton vessel first floated last year, and the service is finalizing the requirements for a larger Maneuver Support Vessel (Heavy). These will add to the Army’s existing fleet.

Meanwhile, a year-old Army organization is working on contested logistics—“everything from autonomous resupply, which is one of the areas they’re looking at, to command and control of logistics and how we can do that in a very sophisticated way,” he said.

Camarillo will tour the Army’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center on Oahu before visiting Guam and Japan on his tour of the Pacific.

15. China’s social-media attacks are part of a larger ‘cognitive warfare’ campaign

These are operations in the human domain. Are we prepared?

Conclusion:

China did not invent the internet, but it seeks to be at the forefront of its future as a means of not just communication and commerce but conflict. Its own analysts openly discuss the potential power of this space to achieve regime goals not previously possible. The question is not whether it will wage cognitive warfare, but are its target’s minds and networks ready?

China’s social-media attacks are part of a larger ‘cognitive warfare’ campaign

U.S. strategists must take heed of this important domain.

By JOSH BAUGHMAN and PETER W. SINGER

OCTOBER 17, 2023 12:01 AM ET

defenseone.com · by Josh Baughman

The phrase “cognitive warfare” doesn’t often appear in news stories, but it’s the crucial concept behind China’s latest efforts to use social media to target its foes.

Recent stories have ranged from Meta’s “Biggest Single Takedown” of thousands of false-front accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Substack to an effort to spread disinformation about the Hawaii fires to a campaign that used AI-generated images to amplify divisive U.S. political topics. Researchers and officials expect similar efforts to target the 2024 U.S. election, as well as in any Taiwan conflict.

In Chinese government and military writings say cognitive operations aim to “capture the mind” of one’s foes, shaping an adversary’s thoughts and perceptions and consequently their decisions and actions. Unlike U.S. defense documents and strategic thinkers, the People’s Liberation Army puts cognitive warfare on par with the other domains of warfare like air, sea, and space, and believes it key to victory—particularly victory without war.

Social media platforms are viewed as the main battlefield of this fight. China, through extensive research and development of their own platforms, understands the power of social media to shape narratives and cognition over events and actions. When a typical user spends 2.5 hours a day on social media—36 full days out of the year, 5.5 years in an average lifespan—it is perhaps no surprise that the Chinese Communist Party believes it can, over time, shape and even control the cognition of individuals and whole societies.

A recent PLA Daily article lays out four social-media tactics, dubbed “confrontational actions”: Information Disturbance, Discourse Competition, Public Opinion Blackout, and Block Information. The goal is to achieve an “invisible manipulation” and "invisible embedding" of information production “to shape the target audience's macro framework for recognizing, defining, and understanding events,” write Duan Wenling and Liu Jiali, professors of the Military Propaganda Teaching and Research Department of the School of Political Science at China’s National Defense University.

Information Disturbance (信息扰动). The authors describe it as “publishing specific information on social media to influence the target audience's understanding of the real combat situation, and then shape their positions and change their actions.” Information Disturbance uses official social media accounts (such as CGTN, Global Times, and Xinhua News) to push and shape a narrative in specific ways.

While these official channels have taken on a more strident “Wolf Warrior” tone, recently, Information Disturbance is not just about appearing strong, advise the analysts. Indeed, they cite how during 2014’s “Twitter War” between the Israeli Defense Force and the Palestinian Qassam Brigade, the Palestinians managed to “win international support by portraying an image of being weak and the victim.” The tactic, which predates social media, is reminiscent of Deng Xiaoping’s Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦)—literally translated as "Hide brightness, nourish obscurity.” China created a specific message to target the United States (and the West more broadly) under the official messaging of the CCP, that China was a humble nation focused on economic development and friendly relationships with other countries. This narrative was very powerful for decades; it shaped the U.S. and other nations’ policy towards China.

Discourse Competition (话语竞争)The second type is a much more subtle and gradual approach to shaping cognition. The authors describe a “trolling strategy” [拖钓], “spreading narratives through social media and online comments, gradually affecting public perception, and then helping achieve war or political goals.”

Here, the idea is to “fuel the flames” of existing biases and manipulate emotional psychology to influence and deepen a desired narrative. The authors cite the incredible influence that “invisible manipulation” and “invisible embedding” can have on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in international events, and recommend that algorithm recommendations be used to push more and more information to target audiences with desired biases. Over time, the emotion and bias will grow and the targeted users will reject information that does not align with their perspective.

Public Opinion Blackout (舆论遮蔽). This tactic aims to flood social media with a specific narrative to influence the direction of public opinion. The main tool to “blackout” public opinion are bots that drive the narrative viral, stamping out alternative views and news. Of note to the growing use of AI in Chinese influence operations, the authors reference studies that show that a common and effective method of exerting cognitive influence is to use machine learning to mine user emotions and prejudices to screen and target the most susceptible audiences, and then quickly and intensively "shoot" customized "spiritual ammunition" to the target group.

This aligned withIn another PLA article entitled, “How ChatGPT will Affect the Future of Warfare,” .” Here, the authors write that generative AI can “efficiently generate massive amounts of fake news, fake pictures, and even fake videos to confuse the public” at a n overall societal level of significance[8]. Their The idea is to create, in their words, a “flooding of lies"” while by the dissemination and Internet trolls to create "altered facts" creates confusion about facts and . The goal is to create confusion in the target audience's cognition regarding the truth of "facts" and play on emotions of fear, anxiety and suspicion. to create an atmosphere of insecurity, uncertainty, and mistrust. The end-state for the targeted society is an atmosphere of insecurity, uncertainty, and mistrust.

Block Information (信息封锁). The fourth type focuses on “carrying out technical attacks, blockades, and even physical destruction of the enemy's information communication channels”. The goal is to monopolize and control information flow by preventing an adversary from disseminating information. In this tactic, and none of the others, the Chinese analysts believe the United States has a huge advantage. They cite that in 2009, for example, the U.S. government authorized Microsoft to cut off the Internet instant messaging ports of Syria, Iran, Cuba and other countries, paralyzing their networks and trying to "erase" them from the world Internet. The authors also mention in 2022, Facebook announced restrictions on some media in Russia, Iran, and other countries, but falsely claim that the company did so to delete posts negative toward the United States, for the US to gain an advantage in “cognitive confrontation.”

However, this disparity in power over the network is changing. With the rise in popularity of TikTok, it is conceivable China has the ability to shape narratives and block negative information. For example, in 2019 TikTok reportedly suspended the account of a 17-year-old user in New Jersey after she posted a viral video criticizing the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghur ethnic minority. China has also demonstrated its influence over the Silicon Valley owners of popular social media platforms. Examples range from Mark Zuckerberg literally asking Xi what he should name his daughter to Elon Musk’s financial dependence on Communist China’s willingness to manufacture and sell Tesla cars. Indeed, Newsguard has found that since Musk purchased Twitter, engagement of Chinese, Russian, and Iranian disinformation sources has soared by roughly 70 percent.

China has also begun to seek greater influence over the next versions of the Internet, where its analysts describe incredible potential to better control how the CCP’s story is told. While the U.S. lacks an overall strategy or policy for the metaverse (which uses augmented and virtual reality technologies), the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released in 2022 a five-year action plan to lead in this space. The plan includes investing in 100 “core” companies and “form 10 public service platforms” by 2026.

China did not invent the internet, but it seeks to be at the forefront of its future as a means of not just communication and commerce but conflict. Its own analysts openly discuss the potential power of this space to achieve regime goals not previously possible. The question is not whether it will wage cognitive warfare, but are its target’s minds and networks ready?

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air University, the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government agency.

defenseone.com · by Josh Baughman

16. War in the Middle East Challenges Biden’s Defense Strategy

Excerpts:

The Biden team renewed the push to shrink the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, determining that it could end the conflict in Afghanistan and put meaningful resources and policy attention toward the Indo Pacific. The concern over Beijing has been driven by U.S. assessments that Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed his military to be ready by 2027 to take military action against Taiwan, though American officials say that military action by China isn’t inevitable.

The U.S. withdrew more than eight Patriot missile batteries out of the region last year, including from Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and their accompanying troops, as well as a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad system, from Saudi Arabia.

The naval and aircraft deployment that were kept in the region were generally very modest while the Pentagon maintained it could surge forces back to the Middle East in a crisis.

The Pentagon now is confronting the reality of the region, which at least for now, requires a strong U.S. military presence there. The question is whether that extends beyond the current crisis.

“The Middle East matters to us because of oil, Islamist terrorism and Israel, not always in that order,” said Eliot Cohen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “The idea that we can walk away from the region was always false.”

War in the Middle East Challenges Biden’s Defense Strategy

The U.S. is faced with re-establishing some of its military footprint in a region it has been trying to draw away from

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/war-in-the-middle-east-challenges-bidens-defense-strategy-534808f5

By Gordon LuboldFollow

, Nancy A. YoussefFollow

and Michael R. GordonFollow

Updated Oct. 17, 2023 12:07 am ET

TEL AVIV—The war between Hamas and Israel is forcing the Biden administration to send more forces and military capabilities back into the region, once again refocusing American policy on the Middle East at a time when it has been hoping to concentrate on potential threats from China and Russia.

Fearing that the conflict set off by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel could widen, including by drawing in Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Biden administration in the past week has re-established some of its military footprint in the region.

Though the recent U.S. deployments of naval assets, fighter squadrons—and potentially support troops—are intended to be temporary, the crisis that triggered them doesn’t appear to be short-term. That conflict could force the U.S. to rethink how it uses its military in the Middle East and poses a test for how the Pentagon can continue to support Ukraine and keep its focus on China, which the Defense Department has dubbed its top longer-term priority, as the new flashpoint erupts.

This sudden turnaround comes as the U.S., which spent two decades fighting insurgencies in the Middle East and Central Asia, was starting to tackle a new era of great-power competition with China and Russia. The upsurge in Middle East violence, which started when Hamas launched a surprise assault from Gaza on Israel, and the intensive American efforts to prevent the conflict from spreading, could eclipse longer-term U.S. efforts to focus on the Indo-Pacific and to buttress the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s ability to deter Russia.

A Palestinian youth carrying bread walks past buildings destroyed in recent Israeli strikes in Al Remal, in Gaza City. PHOTO: MOHAMMED SABER/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

A father grieves during the burial of his son, who was killed during the attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7, in Ashdod, Israel. PHOTO: ALEXI J. ROSENFELD/GETTY IMAGES

President Biden has insisted that the U.S. has the global reach and military resources to handle the Gaza crisis and support Ukraine. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense,” Biden told CBS’s “60 Minutes” during an interview aired Sunday.

Some former military commanders say the strategic importance of the Middle East region means that the U.S. needs to maintain a more substantial day-to-day presence, especially with an eye on Tehran.

“Our posture in the region does make a difference,” said Frank McKenzie, the retired Marine general who led U.S. Central Command from 2019 to 2022. “Iran carefully watches what we do. When we draw down our forces and couple that with inept policy messaging that our singular focus is now on the Asia Pacific, we don’t give assurance to our friends in the region and we do give confidence to our potential enemies in the region.”

The U.S. has so far sent two aircraft carrier strike groups—one is there, and another is en route—which consists of roughly a dozen ships and 12,000 military personnel, redeploying assets in Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean. One of the carrier strike groups, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, was supposed to participate in a NATO exercise during its scheduled six-month deployment, but will now head directly toward the Middle East, arriving in roughly two weeks.

The USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship currently operating near the Red Sea, began moving Monday toward Israel’s shores and could potentially help evacuate Americans, a U.S. defense official said.

The U.S. deployed a second aircraft carrier, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, from Naval Station Norfolk, Va., on Saturday. PHOTO: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The flight deck of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, which arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean last week. PHOTO: US NAVY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The Pentagon had reduced naval assets in the region in recent years, moving more of its resources toward the Asia Pacific to combat threats from China. The U.S. last had two carrier strike groups in the Middle East in 2020.

Similarly, the Pentagon also moved A-10 attack aircraft, and F-15 and F-16 jet fighters back to the Persian Gulf, beefing up the air assets it has rotated through the region in recent years. The Defense Department is also preparing to potentially deploy roughly 2,000 troops to the region, including some who could go to Israel as a deterrent.

There are other resources that are being tapped for the conflict, including armaments. Israel has so far received several thousand 155mm artillery rounds since Hamas launched its attack, defense officials said.

This comes not long after the U.S. effectively emptied its prepositioned stockpiles of 155mm rounds kept in Israel, as part of its larger effort to meet Ukraine’s demand for the highly sought artillery.

The latest carrier deployments followed two others earlier this year. In April, the U.S. sent a guided missile submarine to the Red Sea, and, in July, amphibious warships and thousands of Marines were dispatched to the Persian Gulf to stop Iranian forces from seizing oil tankers in the region.

Statement from Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh on Force Posture

defense.gov

Release

Immediate Release

Oct. 17, 2023 |×

Today, Secretary Austin placed approximately 2,000 personnel and a range of units on a heightened state of readiness through a prepare to deploy order, which increases DoD's ability to respond quickly to the evolving security environment in the Middle East. No decisions have been made to deploy any forces at this time. The Secretary will continue to assess our force posture and remain in close contact with allies and partners.

Additionally, he approved a deployment extension for the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group in the U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/Sixth Fleet Area of Operations. The strike group was nearing the end of its six-month deployment to the U.S. European Command area of responsibility.

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18. Cheap and terrifying surprise attacks are the new face of warfare

What is old is new again.

Excerpts:

This is not new. Many war games have been played with similar scenarios. Indeed, Admiral Jim Stavridis and author Elliot Ackerman wrote a great novel called “2034: A Novel of the Next World War,” in which the Chinese Navy employed surprise to sink a good part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

What needs to be understood today is this: Surprise remains a powerful tactic. In the past, navies were only defeated by similar sea, air and undersea forces. The profound difference is that cheap, effective commercial technologies are now readily available. The above scenario would cost an attacker virtually nothing. Yet a nuclear carrier strike group with an air wing and escorts costs upwards of $20 billion.

Sailing in harm’s way is essential for the U.S. Navy. But do so wisely and with caution.

Cheap and terrifying surprise attacks are the new face of warfare

BY HARLAN ULLMAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/16/23 1:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4257190-cheap-and-terrifying-surprise-attacks-are-the-new-face-of-warfare/?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d

Hamas’s heinous and dastardly attacks in Israel and the battle in Ukraine reaffirm one unchanging aspect of warfare and create what may be a new one. The critical reason why Israel was taken off guard by Hamas is that surprise attacks to start wars work. History is definitive on this.

From the mythical Trojan Horse to Japan’s surprise attack on the Russian base in Port Arthur to initiate the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 to Pearl Harbor 37 years later, the past is littered with examples.

Surprise does not guarantee victory. Often quite the opposite is the case, as Japan and Hitler learned in 1945, despite the latter’s initial success in surprising the Allies in 1939 and Stalin in 1941. While 9/11 was devastatingly shocking and it took more than a decade, Osama bin Laden paid the price.

What Hamas demonstrated in its attack and the damage Ukraine is doing to the Russian Navy is the value of cheap, readily available technology. In Gaza, Hamas used speed boats, paragliders and bulldozers. In Ukraine, with air and sea-based drones and missiles, Kyiv has severely damaged a number of Russian warships and forced that navy to retreat to the east out of missile and drone range.

Now suppose Hamas or some other group or even a rival power wanted to employ these tactics and cheap weapons of war to harm the United States while leaving no fingerprints or means to determine responsibility, how might that be done? President Joe Biden has ordered the USS Ford carrier strike group into the Eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent. A carrier strike group possesses an extraordinary amount of firepower and advanced weapons systems.

USS Ford’s air wing includes advanced strike fighters as well as anti-submarine assets. Its half dozen or so Aegis-equipped cruisers and destroyers also carry long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles and an array of close-in defensive systems. This is more than formidable.

But sailing in harm’s way in the Eastern Mediterranean is not without risk, as the navy is well aware. It is a crowded body of water south of Crete and west of Cyprus filled with merchant ships and fishing boats. That means hiding the strike group from detection is not easy. A merchantman, fish boat or drone could act as a “trailer.” Using civilian satellite data also can help with surveillance.

Assuming the strike group can be detected and followed, it can be targeted. The firing points for land-based cruise missiles are easily identified, and hence, culpability is established. The obvious tactic is to rely on surprise.

Suppose Hamas or someone intent on doing damage to the U.S. outfitted fishing boats and small merchantmen with commercially available drones and missile technologies. Sailing in international waters, following the strike group at a distance of 10 to 20 or more miles would not be difficult. At an appointed time around 4 a.m. when the watch sections aboard the strike group were changing, the attack would be launched.

While some drones are detectable, others made from cardboard are not. The purpose of these drones is not to sink but to damage the warships in the strike group by knocking out radars and fouling the Ford’s flight deck. And if the attackers were indeed imaginative, the possibility of repeating the suicide attack on USS Cole in 2000 in Aden, Yemen is real.

Speed boats capable of 60 or more miles an hour could be launched. Even if these boats are stationed miles away from the strike group, they are capable of covering one mile a minute or closing from 10 miles in 10 minutes. Laden with explosives, these would not be sufficient to sink larger warships. However, they are capable of doing enough damage to incapacitate a warship.

This is not new. Many war games have been played with similar scenarios. Indeed, Admiral Jim Stavridis and author Elliot Ackerman wrote a great novel called “2034: A Novel of the Next World War,” in which the Chinese Navy employed surprise to sink a good part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

What needs to be understood today is this: Surprise remains a powerful tactic. In the past, navies were only defeated by similar sea, air and undersea forces. The profound difference is that cheap, effective commercial technologies are now readily available. The above scenario would cost an attacker virtually nothing. Yet a nuclear carrier strike group with an air wing and escorts costs upwards of $20 billion.

Sailing in harm’s way is essential for the U.S. Navy. But do so wisely and with caution.

Harlan Ullman Ph.D. is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. He served at sea in the U.S. Navy and the United Kingdom Royal Navy in the eastern Mediterranean. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available at Amazon. He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.

19. The Need to Train Data-Literate U.S. Army Commanders

Excerpts:

Conclusion

The starting horn to transform the Army sounded years ago. While Army current systems stodgily plod along at a gradual pace, artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms are progressing logarithmically. But these cutting-edge tools need data to run on. Once commands embrace data, it frees up their staff to do more impactful work — and when an entire organization is communicating and moving at the speed of data, the time savings get reinvested in hundreds of game-changing ways. Innovation feeds on time, and it breeds more innovation, and more time savings. The feedback loops are compounding.

On today’s battlefield, leading soldiers requires data literacy. The head of the Combined Arms Center, Lt. Gen. Milford “Beags” Beagle, and his co-authors have examined lessons from Ukraine and argued that the institution needs to evolve. “To optimize our command posts, we must reduce our reliance on the physical dimension (the materiel), increase our utilization of the information dimension (the data), and maximize our relationship with the human dimension (our leaders).” If the Army does not take this seriously, soldiers will die. “To achieve the full potential of convergence, command posts will need to adapt to such an extent that they will be unrecognizable to the generation of leaders that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The Army needs to evolve its systems, and that means adjusting leadership assessment criteria.

Data literacy should hold at least as much weight in selecting commanders as does measuring how far someone can throw a 10-pound ball. Adding a diagnostic assessment during the commander’s assessment program is the perfect wake-up call to both the Army and to the officer corps. When the Army start assessing the future leaders for data literacy, it will finally start to achieve the Department of Defense’s goal of “one Soldier, one byte, and one command at a time.”

The Need to Train Data-Literate U.S. Army Commanders - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Erik Davis · October 17, 2023

Editor’s Note: This article was written in response to our unofficial support for the Department of Defense’s innovation challenge for talent management. We want to help with this effort and have asked for original, creative ideas that reconsider the status quo, shake widely held assumptions, and take on the conventional wisdom about recruitment and retention.

Across the U.S. Army, every day, thousands of soldiers spend hours transferring information out of databases and into screengrabs, and then posting these images on PowerPoint slides. If only one quarter of the Army spends just two hours a week converting data back and forth into analog pictures for one command and staff or commander’s update meeting, that’s over 25 million hours per year wasted. And that’s a conservative estimate. The Army does this, in part, because it lacks many of the systems and the data standards that its own guidance requires. But it is equally because the leader at the head of the table, the commander, may not be comfortable with data.

The strategic documents guiding the U.S. Army are littered with phrases like “data-centric,” “data management,” “data interoperability,” and “data-driven.” The Department of Defense’s Data Strategy states that “Data is a Strategic Asset” and the secretary of the army’s second objective is “…to ensure the Army becomes more data-centric…”. Data is described as a key component to enabling “decision advantage’” and leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to out-pace America’s opponents. It is crucial to large-scale joint operations. Data matters to strategies.

The Army is now considering its first millennial recruits, those born after 1981 but before 1997, for brigade commands. At the most senior end, seven of the Army’s current 11 four-star generals are baby boomers. The responsibility for transforming the Army into a data-literate force lies with the commanders bookended by these two generations. In October 2023, the U.S. Army is set to gather over a thousand of its leaders at the annual Battalion and Colonels Command Assessment programs. Here they will select the next generation of the Army’s Command Select List. Candidates will be evaluated on tasks such as how far they can chuck a 10-pound ball backwards over their head and how well they can write a short essay. Noticeably absent from the assessment is any form of data-literacy test.

Become a Member

While the standing power throw has dubious value in determining who should be the next battalion and brigade commander, in the last year artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT have brought into question essay writing as one of the selection criteria. The Army should take this opportunity to send a clear message about the future: Data literacy is no longer an optional skillset for future officers. The Army should create a mechanism to test candidates for data literacy and offer opportunities for learning at service colleges and in specialized continuing education programs.

Data Matters

The soldiers who the Army selects for battalion and brigade commands have an outsized impact on the culture of their commands. Leaders set the schedules, priorities, and work-life balance of their organizations. If a commander thinks running is important, so will their formation. The way a leader processes information is just as impactful. It sets the standards for how a team uses and organizes its data. As the senior rater of the next generation of leaders, commanders set the tempo of change within their teams. For the last two decades, Army current leaders have slowed the pace of adopting data literacy rather than accelerating it.

The Army’s Data Strategic Effort defines data literacy as “…the ability to derive meaningful information from data so it can be applied effectively to actions and outcomes; it encompasses the ability to read, write, use, and communicate data.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Catherine D’Ignazio and research scientist Rahul Bhargava go further, detailing data literacy as:

Reading data: involves understanding what data is, and what aspects of the world it represents
Working with data: involves creating, acquiring, cleaning, and managing it
Analyzing data: involves ﬁltering, sorting, aggregating, comparing, and performing other such analytic operations on it
Arguing with data: involves using data to support a larger narrative intended to communicate some message to a particular audience

One can be digitally literate and not data literate, as has been the case with the widespread misunderstanding of crypto currencies. Data literacy is more than just counting things. Instead, data literacy is understanding both how to leverage data for decisions and how to use it to inform analysis and decision-making. It is knowing how to discern good data from bad. Data literacy does not require coding knowledge, though most users trying to parse a data set will find Python immensely helpful. It does not mean an individual needs to know how to build a computer, but instead have a good grasp of Excel, rather than relying so heavily on PowerPoint.

What Is Data?

Data is, at its simplest, structured information. Just because information is digital doesn’t make it data per se. Digital formats just enable speed. A 9-line medical evacuation report offers an example. The 9-line is a schema that translates information into structure. It becomes data. When that 9-line is called by voice over a radio, it must be copied down and then repeated so that the appropriate people can use the data to treat or evacuate a patient. But when it’s data and digital, that’s when a 9-line posted in a chat room can be instantaneously shared in a dozen other chats, all by script, and without transcription errors.

As another example, take the regular situation report. Most units submit their situation reports in raw text, usually in a word document. In my experience, most units’ processes entail multiple echelons copying and pasting text into yet another document, with context and detail falling to the cutting room floor. Even the information that makes it to the higher headquarters often isn’t accessible more than a week later.

An alternative would be to structure these reports as data instead of unstructured text. Give these reports a schema, input them into a common database, and from the moment the data is uploaded, it is organized, tagged, and archived. All the data is available, not just those tidbits each echelon selects. Commanders can query for specific criteria, which adds more data by cataloging how often an event is referenced. The time taken copying and pasting goes back to the soldiers, and a feedback loop of better writing starts working as data input and data output feed off each other.

Traditionally, commanders often turn to staffers or operations research and systems analysts to be the data-literate member of the team. The Army’s Military Intelligence Data Strategy lists “manager, steward, custodian, champion, scientist, architect, engineer, and analyst” as jobs for data-literates. But there is no mention of “commander.” The Department of Defense Data Strategy goes a little further, making it “…the responsibility of all Department of Defense leaders to treat data as a weapon system and manage, secure, and use data for operational effect.” If the Army and Department of Defense want “to fully integrate data across warfighting functions,” then the department should start assessing commanders for data literacy.

The proliferation of “commander’s dashboards” across the services has been an intermediate step in this direction. These dashboards are a data visualization, such as how many soldiers are expired on training. They have helped Army servicemembers see previously missed conclusions and bolster the value in keeping and maintaining good databases. But dashboards are just formulas that answer questions that have already been asked, such as how many soldiers are qualified marksmen. Indeed, once the dashboard can provide the answer, there is little need for the commander to decide anything. Answering new and novel questions from data requires either a commander comfortable with interfacing with data, or a staffer to build them a new dashboard.

When the commander is not data literate, it falls to their subordinates to do double the work. All too often soldiers are stuck transforming data into analog copies (typically on a slide) for presentation to senior leaders. Any enquiry requires soldiers to go back to the data, re-query, and repeat the cycle all over again.

Testing for Data Literacy

There is a simple-to-use test to judge data literacy. The economist Steven Levitt gave up written essays to determine grades for his graduate students years before ChatGPT. Recognizing the need for data literacy, he instead gives students a data set and requires them to clean the set of errors and then draw a novel conclusion from it. The Commander Assessment Program could easily adopt one of the existing data literacy exams, but it could just as easily take a similar approach to Levitt’s test for his students. The Army could provide candidates with an export from almost any Army data system, ask the applicant to clean it up, draw two conclusions from the data, and provide two questions they want more data to answer. This is a small first step, but one which could help the Army to find the more data-fluent commanders needed to change the organization.

Some may argue it is unfair to assess officers for a skill they were never trained to do. Thus, as a first step, data-literacy training should be part of the Army’s professional military education program. The integration of data literacy courses would be a welcome — and overdue — addition to the curriculum at service colleges. However, there is no need for a soldier to wait for their next professional military education course to begin to be trained to be data literate. As the Military Intelligence Data strategy advocates, “…we must become a leader in investing in data literacy training.” The Department of Defense already provides a slew of self-training tools, often partnered with some of the best universities in the nation. Every leader should be familiarizing themselves with at least the fundamentals of data. Self-directed training comes with a time cost, but Army officers will find the skills they pick up will help them save them time several-fold. Soldiers can also start small and simple: Add influencer accounts like Miss Excel to your Instagram feed to get started.

I believe there is a real urgency to start data-literacy assessments because the current generation of professional military education students won’t command for another decade. Thus, it is important to make these changes a priority. Indeed, given the value they place on data, the Army’s Talent Management Task Force should be eager to add data literacy to its assessment criteria. However, this new assessment should, quite obviously, not be the only means to select new commanders. Across the Army, different commands require different amounts of data. Thus, the Army should settle on a standardized baseline and then offer commanders taking command options to expand their knowledge.

Conclusion

The starting horn to transform the Army sounded years ago. While Army current systems stodgily plod along at a gradual pace, artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms are progressing logarithmically. But these cutting-edge tools need data to run on. Once commands embrace data, it frees up their staff to do more impactful work — and when an entire organization is communicating and moving at the speed of data, the time savings get reinvested in hundreds of game-changing ways. Innovation feeds on time, and it breeds more innovation, and more time savings. The feedback loops are compounding.

On today’s battlefield, leading soldiers requires data literacy. The head of the Combined Arms Center, Lt. Gen. Milford “Beags” Beagle, and his co-authors have examined lessons from Ukraine and argued that the institution needs to evolve. “To optimize our command posts, we must reduce our reliance on the physical dimension (the materiel), increase our utilization of the information dimension (the data), and maximize our relationship with the human dimension (our leaders).” If the Army does not take this seriously, soldiers will die. “To achieve the full potential of convergence, command posts will need to adapt to such an extent that they will be unrecognizable to the generation of leaders that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The Army needs to evolve its systems, and that means adjusting leadership assessment criteria.

Data literacy should hold at least as much weight in selecting commanders as does measuring how far someone can throw a 10-pound ball. Adding a diagnostic assessment during the commander’s assessment program is the perfect wake-up call to both the Army and to the officer corps. When the Army start assessing the future leaders for data literacy, it will finally start to achieve the Department of Defense’s goal of “one Soldier, one byte, and one command at a time.”

Become a Member

Lt. Col. Erik Davis is an active-duty Army officer with over 15 years of experience in special operations. He is also a Gen. Wayne A. Downing Scholar with master’s degrees from King’s College London and the London School of Economics. His assignments have taken him from village stability operations in rural villages in Afghanistan to preparing for high-end conflict in the First Island Chain, and he is contending for command at this fall’s Command Assessment Program. Erik is a 2023 Non-Resident Fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a joint production of Princeton’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point.

warontherocks.com · by Erik Davis · October 17, 2023

20. Putin visits 'dear friend' Xi in show of no-limits partnership

Putin visits 'dear friend' Xi in show of no-limits partnership

Reuters · by Ryan Woo

BEIJING, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on a widely watched trip aimed at showcasing the trust and "no-limits" partnership between the countries even as the war in Ukraine raged on.

In only his second known trip abroad since the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him in March, Putin and his entourage flew into the Beijing Capital International Airport on Tuesday morning, according to Reuters video footage.

He was greeted by the Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao.

It is also the Kremlin chief's first official trip outside of the former Soviet Union this year, after visiting Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, earlier this month.

The ICC, which accused Putin of illegally deporting children from Ukraine, obliges the court's 123 member states to arrest Putin and transfer him to The Hague for trial if he sets foot on their territory. Neither Kyrgyzstan nor China are members of the ICC, established to prosecute war crimes.

Xi last saw his "dear friend" in Moscow just days after the warrant was issued. At the time, Xi invited Putin to attend the third Belt and Road forum in Beijing, an international cooperation forum championed by the Chinese leader.

Putin is to attend the forum's official opening reception hosted by Xi and talk with the leaders of Vietnam, Thailand, Mongolia and Laos on Tuesday, Russian media reported.

As the forum's chief guest, Putin will speak after Xi on Wednesday and will meet with the Chinese president for bilateral talks later that day.

Beijing has rejected Western criticism of its partnership with Moscow even as the war in Ukraine showed no sign of ceasing, insisting that their ties do not violate international norms, and China has the right to collaborate with whichever country it chooses.

[1/3]Russia's President Vladimir Putin arrives at Beijing Capital International Airport to attend the Third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China, October 17, 2023. Parker Song/Pool via REUTERS Acquire Licensing Rights

Putin last visited China for the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022 when Russia and China declared a "no-limits" partnership days before the Russian president sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.

It would be Putin's third attendance of the Belt and Road Forum, which runs through Wednesday. He attended the two previous forums in 2017 and 2019.

BELT AND ROAD

The forum centres on the Belt and Road initiative, a grand plan launched by Xi a decade ago that he hopes would build global infrastructure and energy networks connecting Asia with Africa and Europe through overland and maritime routes.

Putin has praised the initiative, saying it is a platform for international cooperation, where "no one imposes anything on others."

Since the start of the Ukrainian conflict, Russia has cemented its energy ties with China in a sign of their economic cooperation.

Russia exports around 2.0 million barrels of oil per day to China, more than a third of its total crude oil exports. Moscow also aims to build a second natural gas pipeline to China.

While the heads of Russia's oil and gas giants Rosneft and Gazprom will be part of Putin's travelling delegation, no new deals in energy can be expected.

The trip is not a "full-fledged bilateral" visit, but one made on the sidelines of an international conference, according to the Kremlin.

When a CEO Plays President: Musk, Starlink, and the War in Ukraine - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · October 17, 2023

Explosive reports from major news outlets in September declared that, last year, tech guru and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk had shut down the Starlink service for the Ukrainian military in Crimea, thwarting Ukraine’s ability to conduct a major counteroffensive against the Russian navy. Following these reports, Musk publicly acknowledged that he had refused a request from Ukraine to activate Starlink around the port city of Sevastopol meant to enable Ukrainian command and control of a counteroffensive against the Russian fleet. Musk stated on X:

“The obvious intent (of the Ukrainian military was) to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

The Russian-annexed peninsula Crimea is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Following Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the unhindered combat fleet bombarded Ukraine’s coastal cities and imposed a naval blockade. Ukraine’s Prime Minister of Innovations and Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, privately urged Musk to enable Starlink connectivity so that Ukrainian kamikaze sea drones could carry out an attack on the Russian fleet. A successful offensive would have prevented further bombardment and blockade. Musk refused. The implications were reportedly serious enough to be discussed in a meeting between President Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley.

In an interview with his biographer, Musk reportedly asked, “How am I in this war? Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars.” I ask a similar question here: How did we get to this point? How did we enable a CEO of a commercial firm unparalleled influence to impact and affect foreign affairs at a level normally reserved for the Department of Defense, Department of State, and presidents?

We should start with the history of Starlink’s involvement in Ukraine.

On February 24, 2022, hours before their full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia accomplished a cyberattack that took down a commercial satellite communications network in Ukraine that was managed by the commercial arm of broadband communications firm Viasat. Russia knowingly disrupted Ukraine’s battlefield command and control during the first hours of the invasion, successfully disconnecting thousands of civilians from the internet both in Ukraine and across Europe. The growing threat of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s critical telecommunications infrastructure made Ukraine officials desperate for a quick fix, and Starlink presented a lucrative solution. The company was the first satellite communications firm to emplace a robust network of thousands of low-cost, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to enable high-speed commercial broadband connectivity almost anywhere on the globe. On February 26, two days into Russian invasion, Fedorov tweeted to Musk and SpaceX, “While your rockets successfully land from space—Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations.” By the end of the day, Musk had publicly informed Fedorov that he had activated Starlink service over Ukraine and that the company was preparing to provide terminals.

Within weeks, Starlink became a backbone of communications infrastructure across Ukraine, helping to maintain government operations, keep businesses open, and assist in humanitarian efforts. As the New York Times reported this July, “More than 42,000 Starlink terminals are now used in Ukraine by the military, hospitals, businesses and aid organizations. During Russian bombing campaigns last year that caused widespread blackouts, Ukraine’s public agencies turned to Starlink to stay online.” Starlink’s contribution toward maintaining critical state, regional, and local infrastructure has been among its most effective applications.

Yet, while Musk’s move to supply Ukraine with Starlink in the face of the Russian aggression seemed altruistic on the surface, it was arguably anything but. Musk and Starlink executives boasted openly of supplying free satellite communications service to Ukraine. However, as it turns out, Starlink has hardly fronted the bill. According to the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, as of September 2022, “based on the figures shared directly by the company, around 85 percent of the terminals and 30 percent of the internet connectivity provided were paid for by the United States…Poland, [U.K.] and other groups.” The more likely scenario for Musk’s swiftness to deliver Starlink to Ukraine was that the war provided SpaceX a global stage from which to showcase the new Starlink services: to expand their market and grow their consumer base. It is no accident that valuation of SpaceX since then rose by billions, and that Musk secured significant capital investment following Starlink’s deployment in Ukraine.

Establishing Starlink in Ukraine gave Musk another, even more concerning edge. It demonstrated how a tech entrepreneur, billionaire, and CEO could play both general and president, shifting the tide of war with a tweet, a phone call, or simple inaction. Musk has engaged directly with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and top Ukrainian officials in regard to both Starlink and the war in Ukraine. And he has even stated that he personally spoke with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Indeed, he seems to revel in the power and influence that comes with his status as owner and CEO of several highly influential global firms. This is exemplified in public statements like the tweet he made in April: “Between Tesla, Starlink & Twitter, I may have more real-time global economic data in one head than anyone ever.”

Starlink was quickly integrated into Ukraine’s military communications architecture, primarily for command and control of combat operations and direct control of drones and weapons. In November 2022, at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, Fedorov lauded this military application stating, “Starlink technologies changed this war.” And in an interview with the New York Times in July, Fedorov stressed the importance of Starlink for Ukrainian operations: “Starlink is indeed the blood of our entire communication infrastructure now.” However, Starlink service for Ukraine’s military operations has not been completely reliable for a variety of reasons. In September 2022, Musk demanded more payment from the Pentagon for the service in Ukraine. And in October, service over Ukraine temporarily went offline, halting Ukrainian military operations until behind-the-scenes talks with the US government quelled Musk.

Perhaps worse, Musk and Starlink executives have, time and again, denounced the offensive military employment of Starlink. On February 8, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell addressed the company’s concerns openly, stating, “(Starlink was) never meant to be weaponized. However, Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement…. We know the military is using them for comms, and that’s OK. But our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes.”

Shotwell then revealed that the company had been actively taking measures to prevent Ukraine’s military from using Starlink services for offensive combat operations, drone control, and targeting. “There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that…. There are things that we can do, and have done.” According to his biographer, Musk asserted that if Starlink had been used to help the Ukraine military destroy the Russian fleet at Crimea, “It would have been like a mini Pearl Harbor and led to a major escalation. We did not want to be a part of that.” Musk believed Ukraine was “going too far and inviting strategic defeat.”

Yet, by openly condemning Ukraine’s use of Starlink to enable their command and control of military combat operations, Musk and his Starlink executives demonize our ally in its ongoing defense against a foreign aggressor and staunch mutual adversary. This is not only naïve, but also gives aid and comfort to our enemies. Musk, and those like him, bury their heads in the sand and disregard an age-old black-and-white truth of war: War involves killing…and there are real, usually violent, consequences associated with reluctance to kill the enemy at every possible chance. Mykhailo Podolyak, top advisor to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, adequately summarized the consequences of Musk’s Crimea decision:

“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities. As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.”

Equally concerning are Musk’s apparent nods to Russia and Putin. Whether intentional or not, Musk has faced criticism for what many see as a pro-Russia position on the war. Last year, he suggested that Ukraine should cede Crimea to Russia, along with other concessions, in a move that earned him direct condemnation from Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Musk retorted that he is clearly supporting Ukraine because his financial “support for Russia is $0.” Yet, most recently, he doubled down and urged that “both sides should agree to a truce.” Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, even applauded Musk for his decision to not enable the offensive on the Black Sea fleet: “It looks like Musk is the last adequate mind in North America.” It is reasonable to say that if Russian leaders are applauding your position, you may be supporting the wrong side. While Musk is a private citizen and is therefore empowered with the right to free thought and free speech on foreign policy and the military actions in Ukraine, business leaders like him should understand and respect the power and influence they wield as critical technology providers. In 2019, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos summed this quite well in speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum: “If big tech is going to turn their backs on the Department of Defense, this country’s in trouble.” If only Amazon’s Starlink equivalent, Project Kuiper, was online in time for the Ukraine fight.

Yet there are some who say Musk has acted from behind-the-scenes collaboration with US government and military officials. They cite Musk’s insistence that because of US sanctions on Russia at the time, Crimea was not an authorized Starlink coverage area in the first place, as it was within sanctioned Russia when the Ukrainian forces requested service for their counterassault. Never mind the vital fact that Crimea was the first Ukrainian territory invaded and annexed by Russia in 2014, and was and is of critical strategic importance to Ukraine’s independence. These individuals also cite SpaceX’s Starshield development—a version of Starlink being specifically built for the US government and military. But Starshield is an effort between Starlink and the US government wholly separate from the Ukraine situation (and which, incidentally, renders moot any virtue-signaling by Starlink and Musk in regard to militarization of Starlink technology). Pro-Musk pundits seem to honor Musk as a demigod and cling to a belief that he has kept the war in Ukraine from escalating to the point of nuclear and world war. They defend that Musk has been ethically right in his actions on Ukraine in the face of US saber-rattling, and that anyone opposing his position on Ukraine is a warmonger. In his recent Newsweek commentary, Professor Max Abrahms of Northeastern University nonsensically referred to those of us condemning Musk’s influence in Ukraine as “American war enthusiasts.”

In reality, our concern has nothing to do with “enthusiasm” for this or any war—and everything to do with the end goal of liberating the Ukrainian people from Russia’s tyranny.

The United States’ position on Ukraine is clear: Ukraine is a sovereign democratic ally, and its liberation from Russian aggression and occupation is necessary for defense of the sacred principles of freedom and justice we hold dear as Americans and vital to our national security and that of our allies. Speaking in Lithuania in July, President Biden proclaimed, “We will not waver…. Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken. We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.” Unfortunately, the actions and statements of one CEO, whose company is currently providing the backbone for communications and command and control in Ukraine, go directly against this commitment and present a significant foreign policy and security problem. General James Dickinson, commander of US Space Command, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in March that, in light of the ongoing issues with deployment of Starlink in Ukraine under Musk’s control, the government must from now on establish clear guidelines between commercial providers and the military in times of war.

Whether or not you agree ethically or strategically with Musk’s position on the Ukraine-Russia war and his actions to limit the use of Starlink in Ukraine’s combat operations, the level of power and influence he has brandished within the US national security and foreign policy sphere sets a dangerous precedent. The United States is not a plutocracy. Our constitution grants the powers of foreign relations and the employment of military capability to the legislative and executive branches of our government: to elected representatives and their vetted military and civilian appointees. As a country, we may never find ourselves in unanimous agreement with the policies or strategies of these elected representatives and officials. However, our republic demands we entrust them with the power to make and execute such decisions in the interest of the American people. The influence that Musk has flaunted over Starlink’s involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war presents a very real, if indirect and unsanctioned, plutocratic power. By enabling Musk, we have allowed a billionaire to wave a scepter of authority over one of our most sensitive foreign affairs to an extent that government and military officials anxiously deliberate the implications of his every move and decision. Authorities should never have allowed this scenario to unfold.

As of July, the Biden administration and Congress had allocated over $75 billion in humanitarian, financial, and military support to Ukraine, with Biden recently seeking another $24 billion from Congress. Most US assistance to Ukraine is in the form of weapons and weapons systems, training, and intelligence services. However, the US government should have paid equal attention to Ukraine’s military communications architecture. DoD’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) doctrine warns that: “In the current global security environment, the United States military faces agile adversaries who increasingly seek to undermine our strategic and operational strengths by impeding, and, where possible, denying our command and control (C2) capabilities.” In this time of strategic competition against Russia, China, and their allies, and as we strive to maintain US overmatch, our military understands the need for a robust and resilient communications architecture. Yet, in rolling out rapid assistance to Ukraine, we failed to address known gaps in Ukraine’s command, control, and communications architecture and instead applied duct tape with Starlink, neglecting to position Ukraine with the necessary communications dominance over its Russian aggressors. In Starlink’s proliferation throughout Ukraine’s military, we enabled a force-wide communications architecture that is neither secure nor resilient. It is concerning that, aside from the physical redundancy that comes with thousands of space-born nodes in a mega-constellation, Starlink does not meet the strict ruggedization and transmission security standards of most military communications. Accordingly, its vulnerabilities have already been exploited by the Russians and others. Moreover, we failed to foresee the power that Musk would exercise over the Ukraine government and military—to enable or disable communications services on a whim and to influence the outcome of military and diplomatic efforts.

Was the famed US defense industry positioned to deploy a constellation of secure LEO satellites to provide connectivity not only to the Ukraine military, but to all Ukrainian network users? The truth is: not within the time, and at the relatively low cost, that they were able to deploy Starlink. While our defense industry employs specialized and secure satellite networks for the military and government, it remains in the interest of national security that we do not allow just anyone to use these networks. That said, the US military industrial base had other resilient communications solutions at hand which, given more planning and investment on part of both Ukraine and US officials, could have been deployed for Ukraine’s utilization in lieu of Starlink.

Why hadn’t a constellation of secure militarized LEOs already been developed and deployed by the US defense industry ahead of a commercial company like Starlink? The answer lies simply in the money trail. Starlink, as a commercial enterprise, has had massive incentive to build a global constellation, and to develop and launch thousands of satellites toward that end, in order to garner the huge global revenue stream that will come from supplying high-speed broadband capability to every corner of the world. This incentive definitely played a part in Musk’s zeal to deploy Starlink to Ukraine in the first place, any altruism aside. The defense industry, given its narrow and focused market, has neither that same financial incentive nor the mission to do so. There is a figurative army of professional defense contractors in America across dozens of established firms who are always at the ready to develop, build, and field anything the US military and our allies need. And these firms will never deny capabilities or service based on the political views or emotional sentiments of executives. However, defense innovation, research, and development is driven almost solely via requirements directly or indirectly communicated from the US government. And most firms simply could not afford to take on the risk that would come with building something like a global LEO architecture without significant signaling from the government or DoD that there would be a funded market for their investment. With that in mind, it is vital, moving forward, that US government representatives clearly and transparently communicate and collaborate with defense industry professionals toward exactly what is needed, and what will be funded, in order to meet current and future requirements.

Commercial technology firms have a valuable place within our defense infrastructure, and Starlink is no exception. However, US government representatives and military officials have a crucial imperative to integrate commercial technologies into US and allied operations strategically. This demands an examination of all players involved in the national security sphere, and how they influence national security objectives either toward our interests or away from them. By no means should a non-state actor or CEO of any company—no matter how wealthy, famous, or influential—wield the level of power that Musk has had to single-handedly affect the outcome of allied combat operations and sway the tide of foreign policy. Now and in the future, US government and military officials alike must make abundantly clear to any individual or commercial firm offering technology toward the national security interests of the United States or our allies: If you are going to enter the arena, enter the arena: we don’t need solutions with caveats. And your technology, no matter how novel or critical, does not anoint you a diplomatic or military representative of the United States.

Wes J. Bryant is a retired master sergeant and former special operations joint terminal attack controller in the elite special warfare branch of the US Air Force. He is coauthor of the book Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell, a first-person account written alongside the former ground force commander of Iraq, Major General Dana J.H. Pittard. Wes is now an author and analyst with focus on foreign policy, counterterrorism, and extremism, and works as a defense technologist and business development professional specializing in broadband and tactical communications. You can follow him on Facebook, X, and Instagram @wesjbryant or visit his site wesjbryant.com.

Image caption: A Falcon 9 rocket carrying Starlink 4-36 payload launches from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., on Oct. 20, 2022. Starlink is the name of a satellite network developed by the private spaceflight company SpaceX to provide low-cost internet to remote locations. (Joshua Conti/U.S. Space Force)

irregularwarfare.org · October 17, 2023

22. Meet the Extraordinary Fighters of Myanmar’s Resistance

Excerpts:

Among the hundreds of resistance fighters in Kalay is a small squad of three persons, who decided to chart a different route in the Spring Revolution. After completing mandatory training with a group, the trio separated themselves to form a secret team early last year with a focus on assassinating dalans (informers for the military) and regime troops when they launched offensives against civilians.

The squad is led by a youth in his early 20s who was enrolled in the second year of a graduate course at a college in Kalay, when the military staged the coup two-and-a-half years ago. In a conversation on January 26, he explained the modus operandi of the squad and the areas where it is active.

“Our tactics depend heavily upon accurate information from our informers. Usually, there are fixed routes traversed by the regime troops before they reach any settlement in Kalay for a raid. On many occasions, they were found to march in a single column from the military establishment in Kalaymyo city. So, we have identified places where we take up positions along this route that would also give us ample time to escape after hitting our target,” said the leader of the group.

He claimed that three military personnel have been shot dead since the secret team was constituted early in 2022.

Such secret squads appear to be rare in the places in Sagaing Region and Chin State that I visited. Reports of similar groups in combat — such as the Urban Owls in Yangon — have surfaced from other regions of Myanmar occasionally, which have carried out a few sensational assassinations over the past few months.

Meet the Extraordinary Fighters of Myanmar’s Resistance

They include former teachers, a fighter who was shot three times, and another who lost his hand making weapons. All are undaunted and determined to end military rule.

thediplomat.com · by Rajeev Bhattacharyya · October 16, 2023

Myanmar’s military, which grabbed power through a coup in February 2021, is up against a powerful, armed resistance. The present resistance is far more widespread and involves a larger number of people than seen in past uprisings against previous military regimes in the country. People from diverse backgrounds have plunged headlong into the resistance movement with the sole objective of toppling the regime. They are determined to put a permanent end to coups in Myanmar.

According to an estimate by the United States Institute of Peace, there were around 300 battalions of the People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) in Myanmar almost a year ago with each comprising 200-500 functionaries, and 63 more battalions awaiting recognition by the opposition National Unity Government (NUG). In addition to the PDFs, there are the Local Defense Forces or Pa Ka Pha, which also emerged after the coup, and the ethnic armed organizations (EAO), which are bigger and have been battling the Myanmar government for several decades.

Between January and March this year, The Diplomat interviewed a cross-section of functionaries of resistance groups in Myanmar’s Chin State and Sagaing Region, activists engaged with the civil disobedience movement (CDM) and refugees who have taken shelter in the Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur. Among the interviewees were a few who stood out from the rest either due to their unique personalities, the roles they were performing, or their unfaltering commitment to the resistance movement. These are their stories.

One-Handed Trainer From Monya

Arkar, a functionary of Ayadaw PDF in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region, who lost his hand while manufacturing a landmine. Photo by Rajeev Bhattacharyya

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Arkar, aged 32, was born at Monywa in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region. After graduating in a course on naval architecture, he was employed at a shipyard near Yangon. He hoped to specialize further in the subject. But the coup forced him to change course.

Arkar had come to Monywa a month before the coup. As in other parts of the country, in his hometown too the coup triggered huge demonstrations, provoking the military to launch a brutal crackdown.

“For a while, I watched everything from a distance. Then I decided to get engaged with the Ayadaw People’s Defense Force (APDF) to fight the military,” Arkar told me at Tamu on March 24. “Recruitment to the group and training for the first batch of around 40 functionaries commenced from around September 2021 with assistance from the NUG,” he said.

As with most PDFs, the APDF too faced a scarcity of weapons, compelling Arkar’s squad to explore other options. Small consignments of arms were received from the Kachin Independence Army and some weapons were sourced from Thailand. But they were clearly not enough to sustain the campaign against the junta. It was at this juncture that Arkar and a group of about a dozen functionaries from the APDF decided to manufacture landmines and 60 mm mortars, which they believed would be more effective against the military.

“We acquired the technology for these weapons from different sources, including the internet,” Arkar said, adding that “most of the items, including the chemical ingredients were available in the market.”

“It was during these trial-and-error methods that I lost my hand in a blast,” Arkar said. “But I emerged as an expert in making landmines and I now teach other resistance groups how to manufacture them safely.”

Monywa, known for its copper mines, has witnessed air strikes by the junta and pitched battles between the resistance and the regime forces. Arkar claimed that 33 villages had been burnt by the military since the coup and about 20 civilians were killed and an equal number of resistance fighters have lost their lives in the conflict.

Shot Three Times But Still Going Strong

Former police sergeant Demo Htoo, who has suffered bullet injuries in three encounters with regime forces, heads a resistance group at Tamu in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region. Photo by Rajeev Bhattacharyya.

On March 24, almost two hours after I had interviewed Arkar, I met Demo Htoo at Tamu. Demo Htoo did not have any qualms about revealing his identity and kept his face uncovered when I asked him for a photograph.

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In his late 30s, Demo Htoo was a police sergeant when he joined the civil disobedience movement at Tamu on March 7, 2021. There were about 30 other police personnel from the same district who followed in his footsteps to take up arms against the military regime, he said.

“On March 25, a person died when the army fired on protesters in Tamu. We then decided to fight because the job of the police is to protect the people. A resistance group called Fighter Police CDM [Civil Disobedience Movement] was formed and weapons were borrowed from some other groups in the region,” Demo Htoo said. He briefly explained the major encounters in the region over the past couple of years and the incidents that resulted in his injuries.

The police sergeant has always led from the front in the battles in Tamu, which is a hotspot of conflict in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region. The first major encounter with the regime forces was on April 5, 2021, when 19 military personnel supposedly lost their lives. One resistance fighter also died and Demo Htoo suffered a bullet injury in his hand. He was back in action within a week and soon decided to reconstitute the group as more people were willing to join from the district.

On April 25, Demo Htoo almost lost his life when around 400 military personnel launched an operation against a combined squad of three outfits: Fighter Police CDM, Burma Students’ Organization (BSO), and Tamu Security Group. The camps of these three groups are located close to each other.

“A bullet pierced the left side of my stomach. I was bleeding heavily. Fortunately, I was carried to safety towards the border with India by my comrades. All the functionaries were able to escape, barring two who lost their lives,” he recalled.

The third time Demo Htoo was injured was in late December of 2022 when the military launched an offensive against the three groups. The battle continued for almost the whole day leaving at least five resistance fighters dead. Demo Htoo suffered an injury on his right thigh but was able to escape to a safer location with the help of other functionaries.

“These injuries have made me more determined to continue the battle till the regime is toppled,” Demo Htoo said. “Now we have established contacts with other resistance groups and have started receiving assistance from the NUG. The movement will only grow stronger,” he said at his hideout in Tamu.

From School Principal to Pa Ka Pha Leader

Head of the Pa Ka Pha in north Kalay Sir John during a meeting in a hideout in Myanmar. Photo by Rajeev Bhattacharyya

Sir John was in his early teens in 1988 when mass protests swept many areas of Myanmar, including Kalay. He vividly remembers the uprising against the military regime, and also the causes that led to the suspension of the movement.

“The movement against the military in 1988 was mainly led by students. Participation was limited to some sections of society. So, the support base of the movement was narrow,” Sir John told me in an interview on January 24. The current movement, he said, is “very different from the previous uprisings. We are focusing on spreading the roots among the common man.”

Sir John was the principal of a school when he decided to join the CDM and get engaged with the resistance movement. He did not wish to be associated with any of the resistance groups that had emerged in Kalay after the coup. Instead, he emphasized strengthening the movement at the grassroots and creating facilities for education and healthcare for the citizens after the closure of government institutions.

The seeds of the movement were sown sometime in mid-2021, when meetings were held under Sir John’s leadership for establishing the Pa Ka Pha to cover the northern zone of Kalay. Eventually, the number of people willing to join began to swell. This included a large number of teachers and other government officials, who had joined the CDM. Within a year, three schools were established in the region. These schools enrolled around 200 students. A police station and a judicial system that follows the norms and procedures laid down by the NUG were set up too. Factories to churn out mortars, 9 mm submachine guns, and landmines were also established as there was an extreme scarcity of weapons.

When The Diplomat visited Kalay, the Pa Ka Pha was working on expanding the facilities to cover more areas, including remote ones. Sir John and his associates are prepared for a long battle against the junta. “The junta will fight till the end. And it is going to end in war with the defeat of the junta. In the meantime, we will provide more facilities for our people,” Sir John claimed.

‘We Will Die Defending Our Village’

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Chief of the Mountain Eagle Defense Force (MEDF) Valthanmawia at Haimual village in Chin State in Myanmar. Photo by Rajeev Bhattacharyya

Valthanmawia is the commander-in-chief of the Mountain Eagle Defense Force (MEDF) at Haimual-New Haimual villages in Myanmar’s Chin State, located 5 miles from the border with the Indian state of Mizoram. MEDF is among the smaller resistance groups in the region but is highly committed to defending the villages from junta attacks.

A sudden raid by regime forces on the two villages on August 14, 2022, led to the death of two teenagers and triggered the exodus of all the residents to refugee camps in Mizoram. The attack compelled the group to redraw its plan for defending the village. The cadre strength was expanded and all out efforts were made to gather sophisticated weapons and ammunition from different sources.

I arrived at Haimual on January 14 to interview Valthanmawia and observe the defense measures he set up against the military. However, the MEDF chief was reluctant to provide details of the measures, although he permitted me to take photographs of him and the villages.

The room where I was provided accommodation was where the chief stayed. I was woken up around 1 a.m. by a noise in the room. Was some untoward incident in the offing?

I flashed the torch to find Valthanmawia picking up his rifle and darting out of the room where another functionary joined him. He returned after about 45 minutes and I went to sleep. At 5 a.m., I was awakened again when he repeated the same sequence of activities. I was not sure when he returned to the room as I had fallen asleep again. Everything made sense in the morning when I began to interact with the chief and a senior functionary of the group.

Valthanmawia’s group had received information about an impending raid by regime forces. Functionaries had taken up positions at vantage locations around the village for a counter-attack in the event of a raid. Valthanmawia had been on the move round-the-clock, checking the preparedness in every bunker and the alertness of the functionaries.

“We will have to defend our villages with whatever resources we have. The strategy has been finetuned, focusing on our advantages, which include the unflagging commitment of all the members of the group. We will die defending our village,” said Valthanmawia.

The Odd Squad Among the Resistance Groups

Among the hundreds of resistance fighters in Kalay is a small squad of three persons, who decided to chart a different route in the Spring Revolution. After completing mandatory training with a group, the trio separated themselves to form a secret team early last year with a focus on assassinating dalans (informers for the military) and regime troops when they launched offensives against civilians.

The squad is led by a youth in his early 20s who was enrolled in the second year of a graduate course at a college in Kalay, when the military staged the coup two-and-a-half years ago. In a conversation on January 26, he explained the modus operandi of the squad and the areas where it is active.

“Our tactics depend heavily upon accurate information from our informers. Usually, there are fixed routes traversed by the regime troops before they reach any settlement in Kalay for a raid. On many occasions, they were found to march in a single column from the military establishment in Kalaymyo city. So, we have identified places where we take up positions along this route that would also give us ample time to escape after hitting our target,” said the leader of the group.

He claimed that three military personnel have been shot dead since the secret team was constituted early in 2022.

Such secret squads appear to be rare in the places in Sagaing Region and Chin State that I visited. Reports of similar groups in combat — such as the Urban Owls in Yangon — have surfaced from other regions of Myanmar occasionally, which have carried out a few sensational assassinations over the past few months.

CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

Rajeev Bhattacharyya

Rajeev Bhattacharyya is a senior journalist in Assam in India’s northeast.

thediplomat.com · by Rajeev Bhattacharyya · October 16, 2023

23. Russia Goes on the Offensive in Ukraine—and Suffers Heavy Losses

Russia Goes on the Offensive in Ukraine—and Suffers Heavy Losses

Moscow’s assault on Avdiivka shows how hard it is for either side to move front line

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-goes-on-the-offense-in-ukraineand-suffers-heavy-losses-fd73202a?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Ian Lovett

Updated Oct. 17, 2023 12:05 am ET

The small industrial city of Avdiivka has been a top Russian target for nearly a decade. PHOTO: ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

KYIV, Ukraine—With Ukraine’s monthslong southern counteroffensive making slow progress, Russia last week launched a large-scale assault of its own with a narrower aim: the small eastern city of Avdiivka.

By most accounts, it didn’t go well.

Ukraine’s military said it destroyed dozens of Russian tanks and other armored vehicles and killed hundreds of Russian troops while losing little territory. Video released by Ukrainian officials showed the damage, with artillery and bomblets dropped from drones crashing into one Russian vehicle after another, leaving them smoking on the road.

The assault may mark an inflection point in the conflict. Moscow is trying to retake the offensive, confident that Ukraine doesn’t have the capacity for a breakthrough in the south, said Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting, a war analysis firm with a focus on Ukraine.

But in the 20th month of the war, it isn’t clear that either side is able to significantly move the front line, which hasn’t shifted much in nearly a year.

Battleground Ukraine: Shifting Strategies and a Potential Stalemate

US special operations and the importance of personnel recovery missions

sandboxx.us · by Frumentarius · October 16, 2023

One of the more closely guarded mission sets within the U.S. military is Personnel Recovery (PR). As defined by the Department of Defense’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), the PR mission is the “sum of military, diplomatic, and civil efforts to prepare for and execute the recovery and reintegration of isolated personnel.” In simplest terms, when a U.S. service member goes missing in combat, is captured, or in some other way becomes isolated from other U.S. forces, the military sets in motion its personnel recovery efforts.

Those efforts range from preparing service members on how to become and behave as a prisoner of war – through committing to the U.S. military’s Code of Conduct – to classified rescue missions to bring them home. In between those benchmarks fall the diplomatic and civil efforts, as well as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training, part of which involves training a service member to resist and escape captivity.

There are also highly classified programs that fall within the category of the personnel recovery mission set, the existence of which only a few in the entire Department of Defense (DOD) are aware. The U.S. military takes the PR mission very seriously, as we want our military to keep faith with the individual service members and make every effort to bring them home.

U.S. Marines with, Bravo Company, 1st Bn., 1st Marines and Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 465 (HMH-465) discuss plans before boarding a CH-53E Super Stallion in order to conduct a tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel (TRAP) mission during exercise desert scimitar (DS-14) held at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, CA, May 12, 2014. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jorge A. Dimmer 3d MAW COMCAM/RELEASED)

The various components of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) can all play a role in the PR mission, as required. For example, when Army PFC Jessica Lynch was injured and captured in Iraq, she was rescued by a combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, with support from the Marines. Similarly, when wounded Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell was forced to escape and evade following compromise by enemy forces in Afghanistan, he was rescued by a contingent of U.S. Army Rangers and Afghan National Army soldiers. Both operations are good examples of the PR mission as executed by U.S. SOF combined with conventional forces.

Further, PR missions are almost always supported by the U.S. intelligence community through the provision of on-the-ground human and technical intelligence reporting, as well as satellite imagery and other methods of support. The whole U.S. national security and defense structure in a given theatre, in other words, becomes involved in trying to bring home a lost or captured service member.

Here, it is worth placing a special emphasis on the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and its unique role in the PR mission. AFSOC’s Special Tactics Pararescuemen (PJs) are widely considered the premier force in the U.S. military when it comes to rescuing lost service members (in particular, downed U.S. pilots). The PJs are in fact the only DOD force specifically trained to conduct both conventional and unconventional rescue operations. Their primary function is to be personnel recovery specialists.

Soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 214th Air Ambulance (Medevac), now with the 42nd Combat Aviation Brigade, conduct a personnel recovery exercise simulating a down aircraft on May 14, 2014, in the Arabian Gulf. The Medevac is deployed to Kuwait in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, and conducts both operational missions and exercises in the region. (NY Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class Harley Jelis/Released)

What differentiates the PJs from other SOF units that also conduct PR missions is both the advanced medical training they receive, as well as the broad range of technical rescue disciplines on which they train. These techniques range from technical extrication of trapped personnel from damaged/wrecked airframes, to rope rescues and water rescues, and everything in between. Therefore, PJs are of special importance when it comes to personnel recovery.

In contrast, a Navy SEAL element, for example, would primarily act as a direct action force in a combat PR mission. Similar to the Lynch and Luttrell rescues, the SEAL element would essentially be assigned to raid a target location, neutralize any on-scene enemies, and effect the rescue of the U.S. service member. Ofte a PJ contingent of one or two personnel will accompany a SEAL or other SOF element on such a raid, to take primary control of the possibly wounded U.S. service member who has just been rescued. The PJs would then be the primary responsible party for treating, packaging, and transporting the patient through the exfiltration process.

The PR mission is a complex and difficult one, and a mission that requires integration across different U.S. military components – both conventional and unconventional – as well as other parts of the larger U.S. government. Diplomacy could be involved, and both intelligence collection and special activities are also almost always required. Few operations will focus the mind in a combat zone like the rescue of missing U.S. personnel. Such missions become an “all hands” effort and are carried out with a sense of purpose and urgency that differentiates them from other more run-of-the-mill operations.

Soldiers Are Getting Burned Out. Army Leadership Knows It's a Problem.

military.com · by Steve Beynon · October 16, 2023

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth knows her force is overworked despite there being no major ongoing conflict involving American troops. She's balancing a tough dichotomy: Keep soldiers trained for war while nurturing the force's quality of life. She's also hoping that a force that feels taken care of will stay in and hypothetically recommend service to others, helping a dire recruiting situation.

"We are looking at where we can take things off soldiers' plates," Wormuth told Military.com in an interview last week. "We have to message to our leaders that quality of life and making [operational] tempo manageable is important."

Her top officer, Gen. Randy George, agrees, telling reporters at a press conference last week, "The big thing is training management, and part of training management is saying 'no,' and that needs to happen at every level."

But those wishes are just that -- hopes that commanders across the force will maybe do one less gunnery or expert badge event. Subordinate commanders, however, are unlikely to say no to the idea of training goals sent down from uniformed leadership. Officers' careers live and die by metrics, something that isn't measured with time off, and every ounce of training tends to help buoy those numbers for evaluations.

After the end of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, troops might have had reason to be optimistic their operational tempo would become more manageable and that they would get to spend more time with their family and on themselves.

But that never happened. In many cases, soldiers are spending more time away from home now than during the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The issue isn't just deployments abroad, it's near-constant training exercises at home, and commanders insisting on filling in empty days on their training calendars, typically referred to as white space.

Many of the soldiers currently in leadership positions came of age during that era of frantic schedules, a fact that has normalized an unrelenting pace of responsibilities bundled under the term operational tempo, or op tempo.

Planners have a delicate balance to achieve. The service has taken on a workload spreading the Army thin around the globe to deter two contemporary threats, Russia and China, while also continuing legacy missions from the Global War on Terrorism era.

Recent years have seen dedicated missions in Djibouti, Syria, Somalia and Kosovo, to name a few, with 20,000 National Guard soldiers serving overseas. Meanwhile, another 13,000 troops are in Poland and Romania as part of NATO's commitment to bolster its front lines amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"We are large enough to do what the national defense strategy calls us to do and what the [secretary of defense] and what the president has called us to do," Wormuth said. "That said, our op tempo now is pretty much as high as it's been during the Global War on Terrorism."

Time away from home comes with serving in the military. But soldiers and families have grown increasingly wary of extended time away when there isn't a major war to prosecute.

And even if soldiers aren't sent overseas, in some cases the constant training while at home can be very taxing.

"Those times were some of the toughest times," Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer told Military.com in an interview. "When you're gone, you're gone. But when I was home and I was working nights, because we train to fight at night, it was actually a little bit more disruptive."

At the center of the operational tempo concern is Combat Training Center, or CTC, rotations. Those three-week wargame exercises are broadly seen as the gold standard for ground combat training, which is where the Army gets as close as it can to mimicking a combat deployment. Wormuth doesn't foresee any downscaling of those events. Those rotations, which cost up to $25 million each, involve a lot of advance training that can chew up months of a unit's schedule and are seen by commanders as sacrosanct.

But time at home can be about safety: Fatal tactical vehicle incidents have often been correlated with sleep deprivation, a lack of maintenance or a lack of training in favor of large-scale field exercises. Some commanders and noncommissioned officers have also linked suicides in the ranks with harsh schedules.

"Units heading toward a CTC experience an uptick in suicidal ideations and attempts," Command Sgt. Maj. Nema Mobar, the top enlisted leader of the 10th Mountain Division, told Military.com in a June interview, citing data not reviewed by the publication.

Wormuth said there are no plans to reduce CTC rotations. But in the meantime, on the margins, Army planners aim to tweak maintenance schedules for ground vehicles and reduce how many items are in a unit's inventory in a bid to cut the clerical time units have to spend.

"We're being asked to do a lot," Weimer said. "We've got tons of exercises going on. But how many is too many? It's human nature, as a leader, you see white space and you feel like [a] need to fill it because I've been told to engage, be engaged. We have to do some subtraction somewhere. Frankly, you need some downtime with your family."

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on X @StevenBeynon.

military.com · by Steve Beynon · October 16, 2023

26. Five ideas to counter Hamas’ lawfare strategy…and why

Important analsyis and recommendations.

The five:

1. Understand Hamas’ strategy is intended to goad overreactions.

2. Educate the world, but especially Israeli forces, as to Hamas’ lawfare strategy.

3. Emphasize – repeatedly – that Hamas wants Palestinians to die and is intentionally choosing to sacrifice the men, women and children in Gaza in their attempt to achieve their terrorist goals.

4. Provide detailed rebuttals to false and/or misleading allegations.

5. Mitigate impacts on civilians.

Five ideas to counter Hamas’ lawfare strategy…and why

https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2023/10/15/five-ideas-to-counter-hamas-lawfare-strategy-and-why/

BY CHARLIE DUNLAP, J.D. · 15 OCTOBER 2023

On October 7 the world witnessed yet another horrific tragedy when the terrorist organization Hamas conducted a savage surprise attack on Israel. The casualties have been substantial. NBC News says that as of October 15:

More than 2,450 people have been killed in Gaza and 9,200 have been injured. In Israel, 1,400 people have been killed and 3,500 have been wounded. The death toll for Americans from Hamas’ attack on Israel and the subsequent war stands at 30, a State Department spokesperson said today.

Many of those killed died as a result of Hamas indiscriminately firing more than 5,000 missiles into Israel (where, incidentally, almost 200,000 Americans live). In addition, it is thought that at least 126 people were taken hostage (including as many as 14 Americans). As a result, Israel has formally declared war on Hamas, conducted hundreds of airstrikes into Gaza, and appears poised to launch a major land operation into the disputed territory.

This post will outline the legal environment, analyze Hamas’ strategy—which I contend is essentially a lawfare one—and then discuss some ideas as to how it might be countered.

Let’s begin by briefly reviewing what happened.

Context

In his October 10 statement about the attack President Biden rightly condemned it as a “sickening” expression of “pure, unadulterated evil.” He shared these gruesome details:

Parents butchered using their bodies to try to protect their children. Stomach-turning reports of being — babies being killed. Entire families slain. Young people massacred while attending a musical festival to celebrate peace.

Women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies. Families hid their fear for hours and hours, desperately trying to keep their children quiet to avoid drawing attention. And thousands of wounded, alive but carrying with them the bullet holes and the shrapnel wounds and the memory of what they endured.

Though directly contrary to international law, Hamas took hostages, and the President described the victims this way: “Infants in their mothers’ arms, grandparents in wheelchairs, Holocaust survivors abducted and held hostage — hostages whom Hamas has now threatened to execute in violation of every code of human morality.”

The President also said – correctly – that: “Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond — indeed has a duty to respond — to these vicious attacks.” Further, he cited Hamas’ genocidal purpose;

Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people.

Notably, the President also pointed out Hamas’ war crimes against Palestinian civilians by using them as human shields: “They use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Hamas offers nothing but terror and bloodshed with no regard to who pays the price.” Hamas’ indifference to Palestinian deaths is something to which we’ll return later in this post.

The legal architecture

Here are a few basics about the legal situation:

Hamas

Hamas is a non-state armed group that has controlled Gaza since 2006. The “U.S., the U.K, Israel, Australia,Japan and the European Union are among other countries and regional blocs that have officially designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.”

As will be discussed in more detail in future posts, the U.S.’s designation of Hamas as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1997 triggers that application of 18 U.S.C. § 2339A and § 2339B which makes a rather wide range of activities amounting to “material support” of Hamas serious felonies with penalties that include, under certain circumstances, death.

This is especially relevant given the number of Americans known to have been killed in Hamas attacks, as well as the number still missing – at least some of whom are believed to be held hostage by Hamas. (Hostage taking is also not just an international crime, but is also another serious felony under 18 U.S. Code § 1203. That statute says that “if the death of any person results, [hostage taking] shall be punished by death or life imprisonment.”

Rationale for attack

The history of Israel’s ongoing conflict with Hamas is complex, but CBS News supplies a good summary of Hamas’ claim as to the most recent attacks:

Hamas has said it was motivated to launch the attack essentially as the culmination of long-building anger over Israeli policy, including recent outbreaks of violence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, but more generally over the treatment of Palestinians and the expansion of Israeli settlements.

Israel and the U.S. have made it clear that both governments believe there’s no “moral equivalence” to draw between Hamas’ attacks on Israeli citizens — including the slaughter of families in their homes and hundreds of young people at a music festival — and the measures the Jewish state says it has had to take to defend itself from terrorism.

In one of a series of excellent articles about the current conflict, Prof Mike Schmitt contends that notwithstanding some claims to the contrary:

[T]here is no “right” on the part of a non-State group or individuals to [use force] except when unlawful violence is being used against them directly and immediately, as in a specific case of acts of ethnic cleansing that are underway. At the time of Hamas’s attack, Israel was not employing unlawful violence directly against any individual in Gaza. Nor were Hamas’ actions crafted to directly defend against any particular unlawful acts of violence.

For these and other reasons, Prof Schmitt concludes that “Hamas had no international law right to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, while Israel was entirely within its rights to mount Operation Swords of Iron.” (Mike does says that his conclusion is “subject to reasonable disagreement or qualification.”)

In my view, there is no construct under international law that can justify Hamas’ vicious attack. Period.

Nevertheless, as horrific and illegal as Hamas’ attack may be, the international law of armed conflict (LOAC) still governs the response. (The terms “law of armed conflict”; the “law of war” and “international humanitarian law” are virtually interchangeable).

Put another way, the LOAC “will apply regardless of the cause of a conflict.” Furthermore, as the Department of Defense Law of War Manual noted (¶ 2.6.2.1) “parties to the conflict must accept that the right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.” This is true irrespective of how the conflict is characterized. (see below).

Israel does not dispute the application of international law. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said it “remains committed to the law of armed conflict in the war with Hamas.” As will be discussed in more detail below, it is vitally important that this commitment be unambiguously communicated to the troops.

Conflict characterization

The characterization of a conflict can influence the applicable legal architecture. The international law of armed conflict (LOAC) characterizes belligerencies in two ways, each having similar but sometimes differing legal regimes. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) distinguishes them as:

international armed conflicts [IAC], opposing two or more States, and
non-international armed conflicts, between governmental forces and non-governmental armed groups, or between such groups only.

There is some disagreement among commentators as to which category the current conflict belongs (see e.g., here). More than a decade ago the Israelis expressed a nuanced perspective with respect to Hamas.

Specifically, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in its July 2009 report on Operation in Cast Lead that “[a]t the end of the day, classification of the armed conflict between Hamas and Israel as international or non-international in the current context is largely of theoretical concern, as many similar norms and principles govern both types of conflicts.”

The report also indicated:

In particular, Israel‘s High Court of Justice has confirmed that in the ongoing armed conflict with Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Israel must adhere to the rules and principles in (a) the Fourth Geneva Convention, (b) the Regulations annexed to the Fourth Hague Convention (which reflect customary international law), and (c) the customary international law principles reflected in certain provisions of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions on 1949. Israel is not a party to the Additional Protocol I but accepts that some of its provisions accurately reflect customary international law.

Nevertheless, focusing on the current conflict, I agree with Mike Schmitt that:

The better argument would be that Hamas is conducting its own campaign in a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) against Israel, especially after it forcibly expelled Fatah from Gaza in 2007 (Fatah is the most significant political/military element of the Palestinian Authority, which represents the Palestinian people in fora like the United Nations).

Law applicable to non-international armed conflicts (NIACs)

Surprising to some, the bulk of the Geneva Conventions do not apply to NIACs; they mostly only apply to IACs. One exception is Common Article 3 to the Conventions. Here’s a key part of it:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed ‘hors de combat’ by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

Beyond Common Article 3, there is a dearth of applicable treaty law. However, there is a body of customary international law. This is law that reflects:

International obligations arising from established international practices, as opposed to obligations arising from formal written conventions and treaties. Customary international law results from a general and consistent practice of states that they follow from a sense of legal obligation.

In 2006 an influential private organization–The International Institute of Humanitarian Law—produced The Manual on the Law of Non-International Armed Conflict. This effort sought to identify all the rules of customary international law applicable to NIACs. It does a good job and, impressively, identifies some of the instances where the U.S. interpretation differs. However, those seeking the most current U.S. perspective should crosscheck with the July 2023 edition of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual.

As already suggested, the legal regimes applicable to IACs and NIAC are frequently similar but there are still important differences. As the ICRC puts it:

The rules for NIACs remain less detailed than those for IACs. For instance, there is no combatant or prisoner-of-war status in the rules governing NIACs. That is because States have not been willing to grant members of organized non-State armed groups immunity from prosecution under domestic law for taking up arms.

The ICRC believes –and I agree- that the “important gap between treaty rules applying in IACs and those applying in NIACs is gradually being filled by customary law rules.”

Hamas’ strategy: the lawfare threat

In my view, Hamas’ probably recognizes that however much their recent attack represents a marked increase in their capabilities, it still doesn’t match up well with the IDF, and could not militarily defeat it. Consequently, I believe lawfare is a central tenet of their strategy.

I’ve thought this for some time. In reaction to an earlier clash between Hamas and Israel, I wrote in 2014 about the Gaza war underway at that time that:

In the current Gaza conflict, the adversaries are employing very different strategies to achieve their operational objectives. srael is executing a robust military strategy. By striking rocket launch capabilities, as well as tunnel complexes, Israel is conducting what the generals calls a “strategy of denial,” that is, operations that aim to “deny” its adversary the physical capability to wage war.

Hamas’ strategy is, however, quite different. Lobbing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli population centers along with engaging in a few firefights in an effort to kill at least some Israelis is not, militarily speaking, a meaningful warfighting effort.

Rather, Hamas is employing a “lawfare” strategy. A lawfare strategy uses (or misuses) law essentially as a substitute for traditional military means; it is employing law much like any “weapon” to create effects or obtain results in an armed conflict that can be indistinguishable from those typically produced by kinetic methods.

Regrettably, in nearly a decade since writing that, little has changed in terms of Hamas’ strategy. It continues to seek “victory” via lawfare and violence. As I said in the 2014 post:

There are many versions of lawfare, but in this case Hamas is attempting to use the fact of Palestinian civilian casualties to cast Israelis as war criminals. In doing so it seems that Hamas is hoping to achieve their aims not by defeating Israelis on a Gaza battlefield, but rather by delegitimizing Israel in the eyes of the world community by establishing them as lawbreakers in an era when adherence to the rule of law is so important to democracies.

As an analyst of the 2014 Gaza war concluded:

Even though Hamas, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, violated international laws by using civilians as human shields, Hamas has shed enough public doubt on Israel’s conduct to advance a “both sides are guilty” argument. The specter of this gives Hamas perpetual victim status and deters Israel from exercising the full range of its options against the group, one of which is its destruction. While not a triumph for Hamas, it gives them time to renew their resources and regroup.

Obviously, Hamas did regroup and, again, it appears that its lawfare strategy remains virtually unchanged the same.

Why urban combat facilitates a lawfare strategy.

Although Gaza is not, as the nation’s top urban warfare John Spencer points out, “one of the most densely populated territories on Earth” (it doesn’t make the top 50), combat operations there would still be very difficult, as is the case with most urban battlespaces.

In a 2017 blogpost about operations to oust the Islamic State (ISIS) from the Iraqi city of Mosul, I said:

Retaking a densely-populated city like Mosul is extraordinarily difficult. Indeed, chaotic urban combat is one of the toughest challenges for any military, as enemy fighters can take advantage of a city’s labyrinths to infest battlespaces with booby-traps and ambushes, and – most malevolently – it allows them to readily hide among civilians. This and more is exactly what is happening in Mosul. A coalition spokesman explained that ISIS was using “inhuman tactics [of] terrorizing civilians, using human shields, and fighting from protected sites such as schools, hospitals, religious sites and civilian neighborhoods.”

Sadly, we can expect very much the same—or worse—ruthlessness from Hamas in Gaza. Indeed, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who once commanded US forces battling ISIS said he “believes the Hamas terror group’s activities are worse than what he witnessed carried out by the notorious Islamic State terror group a decade ago.”

The fact of the matter is that urban warfare “make[s] high civilian casualty figures almost inevitable.” Recently, University of Virginia law professor (and Lawfire^® contributor) Paul Stephan noted:

Israel faces serious challenges under the law of armed conflict because of the difficulty of distinguishing legitimate military targets from civilian objects that may not be targeted. Gaza is densely urban and Hamas fighters generally do not identify themselves as such.

Hamas’ lawfare threat today

Hamas’ lawfare strategy for Gaza is readily apparent. In Spencer’s recent (11 Oct) ‘must read’ article “These are the Challenges Awaiting Israeli Ground Forces in Gaza” he illustrates it. Consider especially this excerpt:

It is well known that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. By doing so, the group is effectively engaging in what scholars have called lawfare, using the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law—specifically their provisions on the protection of noncombatants—to restrict the actions an attacking military force can take in operations. And while Hamas has cynically used Palestinian residents of Gaza for this purpose in the past—establishing weapons caches and rocket firing points in densely populated areas—it is likely that it will also seek to use the 150 noncombatants kidnapped during the initial attacks over the weekend.

He also makes these sobering observations:

Once an urban battle commences, history makes clear that with each passing day, as civilian casualties and collateral damage mount, international pressure to cease fighting increases. In order to fully achieve the objective of destroying

Israel is very aware of the political and military challenge of time. It has fought Hamas military capability in Gaza, ground forces will require weeks, if not months. This is the unavoidable nature of clearing urban terrain.

Israel is very aware of the political and military challenge of time. It has fought almost every war of its history in a race against time, seeking to achieve its goals before international pressure forces it to stop operations.

Currently, Israel enjoys the advantage in the global narrative. Although a few nations support Hamas, many more have “condemned Hamas and decried its tactics as terrorism.” In the U.S. a recent survey “shows American voters are increasingly sympathetic to the Israeli side of the decades-long conflict with Palestinians.”

But public support can be fragile. In their 1994 book, T he Laws of War: A Comprehensive Collection of Primary Documents on International Laws Governing Armed Conflict, Michael Riesman and Chris T. Antoniou insist,

In modern popular democracies, even a limited armed conflict requires a substantial base of public support. That support can erode or even reverse itself rapidly, no matter how worthy the political objective, if people believe that the war is being conducted in an unfair, inhumane, or iniquitous way. (Emphasis added).

After 9/11, the U.S. enjoyed overwhelming global support, only to see it squandered much as a result of LOAC incidents like Abu Ghraib and abuses at Guantanamo. Once the public is seized with a narrative—legitimate or not–it is hard to shake. In a 2010 New York Times article General David Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command, explained the battlefield effects of LOAC violations: had explained during an interview how violations of the law impact what happens on the battlefield:

“Whenever we have, perhaps, taken expedient measures, they have turned around and bitten us in the backside,” [Petraeus] said. Whenever Americans have used methods that violated the Geneva Conventions or the standards of the International Committee of the Red Cross, he said: “We end up paying the price for it ultimately. Abu Ghraib and other situations like that are nonbiodegradable. They don’t go away. The enemy continues to beat you with them like a stick.” (Emphasis added).

I believe the lawfare battlespace in this conflict (and more in the future) is the most critical battlespace. It is vital for Israel’s future that it prevail in the lawfare ‘domain.’

What can be done?

As Israelis deal with their almost unimaginable grief, they must gird themselves for not just the physical battle, but also the lawfare fight. This requires organization and deliberateness akin to that devoted to any other essential warfighting function that is integrated into military planning.

A starting place might be Joel Tractman’s outstanding 2016 article, “Integrating Lawfare and Warfare.” To the right is an extract from his article showing “a list of areas in which an integrated legal component may improve strategic and tactical outcomes.”

Allow me to supplement Tractman’s list by adding some ideas specific to the current situation. Consider the following (these are in no particular order):

1. Understand Hamas’ strategy is intended to goad overreactions.

Quite simply, the main feature of Hamas’ strategy is to exploit civilian casualties…on both sides. Hamas wants to use Israeli casualties to induce overreactions, and Palestinian casualties to inflame the Arab world (and beyond) against Israel.

In 2001 Time Magazine wrote about Bin Laden’s strategy, and today it eerily resonates with Hamas’ version:

This guerrilla war, with women and children as collateral damage, is part of a broader military strategy to ensnare the U.S. in a larger East-West conflict. Roland Jacquard, president of the International Observatory on Terrorism in Paris, believes that bin Laden intended the Sept. 11 attack to be so “audacious, impudent and massively inhumane” as to ensure a “massive, inordinate” U.S. retaliation that would further inflame Muslim opinion against the U.S. and against the Arab regimes allied with Washington. Says Jacquard: “His design is to create sufficient instability to bring about Islamic revolution.”

Substitute “Hamas” for “Bin Laden”; “Oct 7 attack” for “Sept 11 attack”; “Israel” for ‘U.S.” and “Jerusalem” for “Washington” and Hamas’ strategy becomes clear. Moreover, just today (October 15) retired Army LTG Jim Dubik put it plainly in a insightful commentary:

The sad reality is that Hamas planned and conducted the attack with a ferocity and barbarism that they knew would trigger a significantly intense and violent Israeli reply — one that would stop any peace or normalization process in its tracks, and one that, by their own design and intent, will result in an inordinate number of civilian casualties.

In short, the potential impact of lawfare strategies just can’t be overstated.

2. Educate the world, but especially Israeli forces, as to Hamas’ lawfare strategy.

In a 2017 essay about lawfare, I contended that:

It is important to have the troops understand the “why” about lawfare. The most obvious part of this process for tactical-level units is ensuring the troops understand that battlespace discipline is more than a matter of personal character and accountability; it directly relates to operational success. Consequently, commanders and other leaders need to explain the importance of denying adversaries incidents of real or perceived misconduct that can be exploited.

I added that this is part of what I call the ‘legal preparation of the battlespace.’ At the same time, no one should underestimate the difficulty. LTG Dubik observes that one of the complications Israeli forces faces is,

…whether the Israeli military can accomplish its missions on the urban battlefield Hamas has already shaped: full of non-combatants, hostages, and normally-protected targets — mosques, schools, hospitals, homes, for example — some of which Hamas has turned into legitimate targets of war by using them for military purposes. Fighting in this kind of environment has already begun. Even for a disciplined force like the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) following the Laws of War, it will be very difficult. (Emphasis added).

Similarly, the Economist warned:

Major acts of terrorism can unmoor even the most professional armed forces. America engaged in torture after 9/11. American, Australian and British special forces have all faced allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. A video published on October 10th appears to show Israeli troops executing Palestinian gunmen who were on their knees and waving a flag of surrender. “If you send tens of thousands of conscript soldiers on a revenge mission into a dense urban area that civilians can’t leave, the results are entirely predictable,” warns Jack McDonald of the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

In addition, it would be helpful if senior Israeli leaders exercise what I would call “rhetorical discipline.” For example, emotional statements that imply that force will be used unlawfully, e.g., a declaration that Israel will impose a “mighty vengeance”, feeds into a narrative that undermines Israel’s lawful use of force (vengeance is not itself a basis for the lawful use of force under LOAC). Consider as well this report from The Economist:

On October 10th an Israeli official told a television station: “Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents. There will be no buildings.” Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson, boasted that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had been dropped on Gaza. Then, he added: “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” Neither statement can be squared with the law.

Again, rhetorical discipline is a must.

3. Emphasize – repeatedly – that Hamas wants Palestinians to die and is intentionally choosing to sacrifice the men, women and children in Gaza in their attempt to achieve their terrorist goals.

An illustration of Hamas’ strategy to intentionally put Gaza residents in peril is provided by Orde Kittrie, one of America’s top lawfare experts. He says:

“John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council spokesman, was correct today when he said that Hamas’ urging of Palestinians in Gaza to remain at home means Hamas is using these civilians as human shields. The use of human shields is a war crime. Hamas is engaging in this war crime in order to facilitate falsely accusing the Israel Defense Forces of engaging in war crimes, such as the deliberate killing of civilians.”

By attempting to demonize the IDF, Hamas advances its aim to delegitimize Israel and its efforts to defend itself. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius also explains why Hamas would want Palestinians dead:

The fear in the region is that, as Arabs watch civilian casualties, they will feel a rage similar to what Israelis felt last week after the slaughter of civilians by Hamas terrorists.

Ignatius explains that if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “conducts a war that punishes Palestinian civilians, rather than Hamas, he might lose global support and undermine his mission.”

Of course, this is what Hamas wants, and it is willing to have Palestinian civilians die to make it happen. It also explains why Hamas is trying to stop Palestinian civilians from leaving Gaza.

4. Provide detailed rebuttals to false and/or misleading allegations.

Consider this report:

Hamas attempts to use international law to promote its positions. After the attacks, it has tried to argue that the Israeli civilians in Otef Aza who were murdered or abducted were not actually civilians but combatants or that it waged its attack as a preemptive measure to a coming Israeli attack.

It is not enough to simply deny spurious allegations; facts and legal analysis do matter. A team ought to be assembled to provide just such responses (to include ‘law review’ type responses to news or other reports that misstate the law).

This also means being as transparent as possible about procedures and processes employed to avoid civilian casualties, even if military security suffers to some degree.

Further, significant effort ought to be made—perhaps with the help of the U.S. and other friendly nations—to battle the misinformation and disinformation that are proliferating on social media.

5. Mitigate impacts on civilians.

As already noted, it is virtually impossible to avoid civilian casualties in urban operations if civilians remain there. Though Israel has warned Gaza residents to leave certain areas, it should work with the U.S., Egypt, and other nations to allow particular persons to exit Gaza altogether.

Article 17 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides a listing of persons whose exit from Gaza would not comprise Israel’s operations or strategic aims. Specifically, it provides:

The Parties to the conflict shall endeavour to conclude local agreements for the removal from besieged or encircled areas, of wounded, sick, infirm, and aged persons, children and maternity cases, and for the passage of ministers of all religions, medical personnel and medical equipment on their way to such areas.

Allowing such persons to leave Gaza would not only protect them, it would deny Hamas the opportunity to exploit any deaths or injuries that could occur if they remain. Israel also could–and should–open Gaza to receive necessary medical supplies. Regarding fuel and water, efforts should be made to provide them–on a basis supervised by reliable neutral parties–to hospitals as well those persons described in Article 17 who do not evacuate from Gaza.

It is quite possible that the Israelis are already assessing (or even implementing) these and similar ideas. Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon all mlitaries of rule-of-law countries to study the phenomena of lawfare and develop counters to it (while at the same time exploring how they can use it in a lawful and ethical manner).

Concluding thoughts

There are other counters to lawfare strategies to be discussed in future posts. These could include, for example, more in-depth discussions as to how the law of NIACs applies to siege warfare as well as belligerent reprisals. Additionally, further examination is needed to explain how in this situation “direct participation in hostilities” can turn civilians into lawful targets; and even– given Hamas’ commission of serious crimes–how the international human rights law on the use of force may operate to expand the lawful target set for Israeli operations.

A caution: some may understandably believe that Israel faces what political theorist Micheal Walzer would call a “supreme emergency.” In this Walzer contends, as a scholar puts it, “that there are extreme circumstances in war in which political and military leaders are permitted (morally) to violate the normal moral and legal constraints of just war.”

Though fresh interpretations of international law may be needed given the unique circumstances of this conflict, it still isn’t necessary to abandon the “normal moral or legal constraints of just war.’ Rather, the better perspective is that offered by the Nuremberg tribunals, that is, to understand that the “law is not static, but by continual adaptation follows the needs of a changing world.” There is much work yet to be done to accomplish that adaption, but it is doable.

The point is that lawfare is a reality of modern warfare, and rule of law countries need to adapt to it.

Remember what we like to say on Lawfire: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!

Updated 16 Oct 2023

27.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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To contact John Antal, go to: johnantal.com

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