Quotes of the Day:

“The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth..” 

- Ezra Pound

“I cannot help, fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation, as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.” 

- Alexis de Tocqueville.

"Take anything and everything seriously except yourselves." 

- Rudyard Kipling

1.  Army Making a Mistake in Cuts to Special Operations Forces

2. A Toast to the United States of America by David Cohen

3. Inter Populum: The Journal of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations

4. Ten Surprising Lessons for Special Operations Forces from the First 20 Months of Putin’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

5. What Is Happening on College Campuses Is Not Free Speech

6. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 3, 2023

7. Iran Update, November 3, 2023

8. Ukraine appears to be pulling off the 'Anaconda Plan'

9. Media's In-House Critics to Reporters: Quit Quoting Palestinians About Civilian Deaths - FAIR

10. Hezbollah tells Hamas to be ‘realistic’: Terrorist allies don't want to expand Israel war

11. Hamas Has Deadlier Weapons Than the Last Time Israel Invaded Gaza

12. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, November 2, 2023

13. Secret Skunk Works Spy Drone Delivered To Air Force: Report

14. The World at War's unbearable poignancy

15. The next 9/11 is a question of when, not if

16. Ukraine’s Civilians Training for War, Private Sector Fills Growing Demand for Infantry Skills

17. China’s Male Leaders Signal to Women That Their Place Is in the Home

18. Israeli officials: Oxygen concentrators for Gaza tunnels found hidden in aid shipment

19. China's disinfo campaign shows growing unease about Philippines' WPS actions

20. Chief Priority! Ignite a Renaissance in Military Scholarship and Writing

21. By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy (Book Review)

1. Army Making a Mistake in Cuts to Special Operations Forces

A unified joint combatant command for Special Operations Forces exists only because of Congress (Senators Nunn and Cohen). Congress has long been the champion of SOF. SOF has traditionally been slashed after wars – re: OSS after WWII – and huge cuts (and RIFs of officers) after Vietnam. But in 1987 that changed with the Nunn-Cohen Amendment which established USSOCOM and ASD SO/LIC - with the intent to have a unified joint command of all SOF (against the wishes of all the services (except Secretary of the Army John O. Marsh) and to have one agency/organization responsible for low intensity conflict (which can be equated to today's irregular warfare).

However, the situation is quite different following the withdrawal of Afghanistan and the perceived end of the two decades of the GWOT (though of course there is no end to terrorism). But with the end of large scale operations in Afghanistan and Iraq there is a perception among some that we should cut SOF because the growth of SOF during the GWOT was only for the GWOT. That would be wrong.  

We have to recognize that we face some significant challenges ahead in all the services with maintaining the current force structure. Budgetary and more importantly recruiting pressures are creating significant manning problems (in all but the USMC but even they are having challenges in some areas). The Army in particular is facing challenges and has to make some tough decisions. The Services and SOCOM relationship is unique because the services provide personnel as well as service common equipment (especially important in the Army for Army SOF). Interestingly, between 2006 and 2013 USASOC tried to grow Special Forces by adding a 4th battalion to each active duty Special Forces Group.  We were unable to grow from the authorized (but not fully manned) 270 ODAs at 9-11 to the authorized 360 ODAs. We just could not grow the force and this was at the height of "patriotic fervor" with young people volunteering to join the military to defend America. When it was determined that we could not make the numbers, USASOC took some creative steps and recognized the 4th battalions making them capable of conducting advanced special operations in support or irregular and unconventional warfare. USASOC turned back force structure that it could not fill to the Army. And therein lies a way ahead for the current challenges.  

We in SOF have a knee-jerk reaction (like any bureaucracy which unfortunately SOCOM has become) to protect the force structure at all costs (and the costs are going to be quite high now). I know it is sacrilege to consider any kind of cut. I do not want to cut the force, but I do think we should look at this as an opportunity to organize and create some new organizations that have capabilities that we really need in SOF. I also think there is also an opportunity to divest some extraneous tasks and requirements for SOF. But rather than try to justify the current forces structure and circle the wagons and fill the moat and man the walls of the castle to defend against the attacks, we should examine creative ways to make the force do what it needs to do for our nation.  

We also suffer from some problems with analysis. Analyzing forces structure for large scale combat operations, e.g., conventional warfare, lends itself well to scientific analysis. Given a certain type of war, certain threats, the required mission to be able to protect our nation, we can determine what forces structure we need to accomplish the mission. That is not so simple from an irregular warfare and special operations perspective (although Irregular warfare does not belong exclusively to SOF). Some make the assumption that if you can train for LSCO then you can adapt for the :lesser mission" of IW. But the new Joint Pub 1, warfighting makes the point that conventional warfare and irregular warfare should be considered as equals. The challenge is we cannot analyze irregular warfare with the same precision as we can for LSCO. On the other hand it is incumbent upon SOF to provide analytics that will explain the requirements for SOF rather than simply use anecdotes (as I do entirely too often). I do not think the analytic models of CAPE or the Army really apply in ways that truly take into account the missions of SOF and the effects achieved (especially when many of the effects are long term). We need to explain why SOF needs the extensive interagency liaison requirements, why it needs strong organic intelligence, communications, and logistic capabilities, why Army logistics and communications elements are needed to support other Services' SOF, why Army rotary wing assets need to support other Services' SOF. Of course the SOF community says that SOF is inherently joint and that all SOF assets are organized to support the mission and not organized simply along Service lines of support. That is one thing that I do ont think fits into the CAPE or Army models. When you analyze Army SOF and its requirements along Service lines only you may arrive at X number. However if you analyze Joint SOF requirements and only look at available capabilities irrespective of Service alignment you may arrive at Y number. This is just one area that should be examined - CAPE and Service analytic modls may not be sufficient for analyzing SOF. But It may be that SOF does not have any SOF unique analytic models that are acceptable to the Services and CAPE.

Now Congressman Mike Waltz (a Special Forces Colonel in the National Guard) is weighing in on the cuts. While I strongly agree with most all of his points about SOF, IW, and China, and mission and capabilities I fear that the desire to "protect" SOF will have blowback. It is very possible Congress could weigh in to fence Army SOF from any of the 3000 cuts that the Army must make. While we in the SOF community will cheer and thank Congress for its benevolence we will be in violation of one of the SOF imperatives: recognize political implications. While we consider this in terms of the international environment we should recognize it within our military service. We could win the forces structure battle in the short timer but lose the war in the long term.  

If I were able to direct work on the analytic problem I would include analytic criteria that incorporate the SOF imperatives to recognize that one size analytic models of CAPE and the Services do not fit all. Criteria should be derived from this list to justify SOF force structure. (I have pasted the details of the SOF imperatives below (as I have done in previous messages). Lastly I think in terms of creative recognition the tradeoff reducing the numbers should be ease of authorizations for new MTO&Es for new organizations that we know are needed to support modern IW as well as to support the GCCs in LSCO (win which SOF will still play a major role). Think models such as the OSS, MACV-SOG, and some of the unique organizations we have created that may be very relevant in the gray zone of strategic competition where political and irregular warfare are being conducted on a daily basis around the world.

The bottom line is we all have to give way together in these complex times that will have increasingly austere resources (and people are the most austere of all).

- Understand the operational environment

- Recognize political implications

- Facilitate interagency activities

- Engage the threat discriminately

- Consider long-term effects

- Ensure legitimacy and credibility of Special Operations

- Anticipate and control psychological effects

- Apply capabilities indirectly

- Develop multiple options

- Ensure long-term sustainment

- Provide sufficient intelligence

- Balance security and synchronization

Army Making a Mistake in Cuts to Special Operations Forces

military.com · by 3 Nov 2023 Military.com | By Rep. Mike Waltz · November 3, 2023

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

The United States is at an inflection point in our national defense planning. China's growing military strength presents us with a peer adversary for the first time since the Cold War that can threaten our air superiority, compete with us technologically, and deny or even control our traditional blue water spaces. It is contesting American influence across almost all domains, especially the military one.

In this competition, the vital task of our military leaders is guessing what the next war might look like. Unfortunately, too many of them are guessing wrong. In Iraq and Afghanistan, in Georgia and the Persian Gulf, our adversaries have gained immense advantage with gray zone warfare, irregular and unconventional operations below the threshold of conventional war, complicating legal questions and policy responses.

American special operations forces (SOF) and their enablers remain custom-built for this kind of warfare. Through building partner militaries, conducting psychological warfare, and collecting high-risk intelligence, these forces conduct missions that we need to blunt our adversaries' most successful means of attack.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has made public comments in favor of cuts to Army special operations and other forces she sees as "parts of our formations that were purpose-designed for those kinds of fights [traditional SOF missions] where we may not need quite as much capacity going forward." In the 2024 annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), U.S. Special Operations Command lost around 700 billets. Now, for the 2025 NDAA, the Army alone is pressing for a cut of more than 3,000 SOF and enablers. Unfortunately, it looks like Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has approved these cuts. That is a mistake, and one that Congress should rectify.

During the Georgia war in 2008, Russia used South Ossetian proxies to gradually increase the pressure on Georgia's conventional forces until Tbilisi acted and earned the opprobrium for seeming to start the war. In Iraq, Iranian proxy militias have infiltrated and pressured U.S. and Iraqi actors alike to achieve near-total control over the Iraqi state apparatus, without a conventional Iranian military action. And in Afghanistan, Pakistan used the power of proxies like the Haqqani Network to push the United States into a humiliating withdrawal, mostly without suffering consequences as a result. These strategies work, and our adversaries and competitors -- especially near-peer ones -- will not abandon them because we want them to.

One of the key operational breakthroughs in the Global War on Terror came from the development of the Find, Fix, Finish and Exploit doctrine, which directed the rapid collection and exploitation of intelligence to enable operators to conduct multiple raids in a single night.

These operations were vital to taking down terrorist networks before they could react. With the proposed cuts to U.S. Army SOF, and to enablers most of all, those key procedures and achievements are at risk of being lost.

The SOF community and its enablers are unique in the military. They are more senior, more trained and generally stay in service for a longer period of time to put their skills to work. Those capabilities cannot be rebuilt overnight, and cutting them risks a tremendous strategic loss.

The enemy is not static: They watch how we fight and see what works. Beijing wants Taiwan just as much as Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine, but it has no desire to pay the price. It is now trying to assess Russia's conventional arms debacle in Ukraine, which is very different from the hybrid wars Moscow has waged in the past 20 years. Russia's invasion of Ukraine filled television screens with images of long columns of tanks and armored vehicles heading toward Kiev, but that invasion was blunted. Whatever gains Russia is left with, if any, are not worth nearly the cost it has paid.

Given the choice, China wants to achieve domination of Asia without military conflict -- certainly not at the price Russia has paid in Ukraine, and most likely through the kind of gray zone warfare that has worked for Moscow and others in the past.

The odds that China's warfare in the future will feature the kind of mass conventional arms attacks of World War II and not the hybrid operations of the Georgia war or insurgency of Afghanistan are slim.

America must rebuild its conventional deterrent, including its blue water Navy and submarine force, and especially its manufacturing industrial base. But sacrificing the best capabilities the U.S. developed in the last war, the forces that achieved the only real victories, is foolhardy and invites disaster.

-- Mike Waltz represents Florida's 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a member of the Armed Services Committee, a retired Green Beret and National Guard colonel, a former White House counterterrorism policy adviser, and a defense policy director for secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.

military.com · by 3 Nov 2023 Military.com | By Rep. Mike Waltz · November 3, 2023

SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES IMPERATIVES

ADRP 3-05 Special Operations 31 August 2012

1-75. SOF imperatives are the foundation for planning and executing SO in concert with other forces, interagency partners, and foreign organizations. Although the imperatives may not apply to all SOF operations, ARSOF commanders must include the applicable imperatives in their mission planning and execution:

Understand the operational environment. SO cannot shape the operational environment without first gaining a clear understanding of the theater of operations, to include civilian influence and enemy and friendly capabilities. SOF achieve objectives by understanding the political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time variables within the specific operational environment, and develop plans to act within the realities of specific operational environments. ARSOF must identify the friendly and hostile decisionmakers, their objectives and strategies, and the ways in which they interact. The conditions of conflict can change, and ARSOF must anticipate these changes in the operational environment and exploit fleeting opportunities.

Recognize political implications. Many SO are conducted to advance critical political objectives. ARSOF must understand that their actions can have international consequences. Whether conducting operations independently or in coordination with partners, SOF must consider the political effects of their actions. SOF must anticipate ambiguous strategic and operational environments where military factors are not the only concern. SO frequently create conditions

for nonmilitary activities to occur within indigenous populations and for civil institutions to achieve U.S. and HN objectives. The advancement of the political objective may take precedence over the military disadvantages.

Facilitate interagency activities. Most SO occur in an interagency environment where the U.S. Government departments and agencies are working toward common national objectives as part of a country team effort. ARSOF must actively and continuously coordinate their activities with all relevant parties—U.S. and foreign military and nonmilitary organizations to ensure efficient use of all available resources and maintain unity of effort.

Engage the threat discriminately. SO missions often have sensitive political implications. Therefore, commanders must carefully select when, where, and how to employ ARSOF. SO may be applied with precision to minimize collateral effects and in a concealed or clandestine manner (or through the actions of indigenous military or other security forces) so that only the effects are detectable.

Anticipate long-term effects. ARSOF must consider the broader political, economic, informational, and military effects when faced with dilemmas because the solutions will have broad, far-reaching effects. These forces must accept legal and political constraints to avoid strategic failure while achieving tactical success. SOF must not jeopardize the success of national and geographic combatant commander long-term objectives with a desire for immediate or short-term effects. SO policies, plans, and operations must be consistent with the national and theater of operations priorities and objectives they support. Inconsistency can lead to a loss of legitimacy and credibility at the national level.

Ensure legitimacy and credibility. Significant legal and policy considerations apply to many SO activities. Legitimacy is the most crucial factor in developing and maintaining internal and international support. The United States cannot sustain its assistance to a foreign power without this legitimacy. Commanders, staffs, and subordinates foster legitimacy and credibility through decisions and actions that comply with applicable U.S., international, and, in some cases, HN laws and regulations. Commanders at all levels ensure their Soldiers operate in accordance with the law of war and the ROE. However, the concept of legitimacy is broader than the strict

adherence to law. The concept also includes the moral and political legitimacy of a government or resistance organization. The people of the nation and the international community determine its legitimacy based on collective perception of the credibility of its cause and methods. Without legitimacy and credibility, ARSOF will not receive the support of the indigenous elements that are essential to success.

Anticipate and control psychological effects. All SO have significant psychological effects that are often amplified by an increasingly pervasive electronic media environment and the growing influence of social media. Some actions may be conducted specifically to produce a desired behavioral change or response from a selected target audience. Commanders must consider and incorporate the potential psychological effects and impacts of messages and actions into all their activities, anticipating and countering adversary information, as needed, to allow for maximum control of the environment.

Operate with and through others. The primary role of ARSOF in multinational operations is to advise, train, and assist indigenous military and paramilitary forces. The supported non-U.S. forces then serve as force multipliers in the pursuit of mutual security objectives with minimum

U.S. visibility, risk, and cost. ARSOF also operate with and through indigenous government and civil society leaders to shape the operational environment. The long-term self-sufficiency of the partner nation forces and entities must assume primary authority and accept responsibility for the success or failure of the mission. All U.S. efforts must reinforce and enhance the effectiveness, legitimacy, and credibility of the supported foreign government or group.

Overview of Special Operations

Develop multiple options. SOF must maintain their operational flexibility by developing a broad range of options and contingency plans. They must be able to shift from one option to another before and during mission execution, or apply two or more simultaneously, to provide flexible national and regional options while achieving the desired effects.

Ensure long-term engagement. ARSOF must demonstrate continuity of effort when dealing with political, economic, informational, and military programs. They must not begin programs that

are beyond the economic, technological, or sociocultural capabilities of the HN to maintain without further U.S. assistance. Such efforts are counterproductive. SO policy, strategy, and programs must, therefore, be durable, consistent, and sustainable.

Provide sufficient intelligence. Success for SOF missions dictates that uncertainty associated with the threat and other aspects of the operational environment must be minimized through the application of intelligence operations and procedures. Because of the needed detailed intelligence, ARSOF typically must also access theater of operations and national systems to alleviate shortfalls and to ensure that timely, relevant, accurate, and predictive intelligence is provided. Human intelligence (HUMINT) is often the only source that can satisfy critical SOF intelligence requirements, whether from overt or controlled sources. The key to effective intelligence support is for SO to fully use the entire intelligence support system and architecture. ARSOF units also provide intelligence through area assessments, SR, and post-operational debriefing of units.

Balance security and synchronization. Insufficient security may compromise a mission. Excessive security may cause the mission to fail because of inadequate coordination. SOF commanders must resolve these conflicting demands on mission planning and execution. 

2. A Toast to the United States of America by David Cohen

The was a toast to America given at the recent OSS Society William J. Donovan Award Dinner. It is worth four minutes of your time to hear a powerful summary of American history.

A Toast to the United States of America by David Cohen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90sW8QESJI4

The OSS Society

4.51K subscribers

3. Inter Populum: The Journal of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations

A new publication at Arizona State University from the Competitive Statecraft Initiative. This seems to be a foreshadowing of the future John S. McCain III Center for Security Studies in Irregular Warfare which is the vision of Senators Mark Kelly and Lindsey Graham. See their vision here: OP-ED: Senators Kelly and Graham Press DOD to Execute Vision of McCain Irregular Warfare Center https://www.kelly.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/op-ed-senators-kelly-and-graham-press-dod-to-execute-vision-of-mccain-irregular-warfare-center/

From the Editor Dr. Christopher Marsh on social media:

Excited to announce the publication of Vol. 1, No. 1 of Inter Populum: The Journal of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations, published by Arizona State University. We are not only proud to present the issue and its five articles and seven book reviews, but we are also happy to consider submissions to future issues of the journal. Find out more at our website at www.interpopulum.org

Download Volume 1 at this link: https://interpopulumjo.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/TJIWSO_V1N1_FINAL.pdf

Editor's letter, Editorial board members, and table of contents for the first volume are below

Letter from the Editors

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Inter Populum: The Journal of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations. A product of the Competitive Statecraft Initiative at Arizona State University, this publication aims to be a central voice in the scholarly literature on issues related to special operations, irregular warfare (IW), and importantly, the intersection between the two. Inter Populum is a peer-reviewed academic journal for the scholar and practitioner—a place to explore everything from lessons learned through historical case studies, to current best practices, to the nature of future conflict. We are very excited to introduce what we hope will become the central medium for discussion, debate, and the collegial exchange of ideas among the IW and special operations communities of interest.

Inter Populum is Latin for “among the people.” In 2005, General Rupert Smith coined a phrase when he postulated that rather than large-scale, interstate wars between nation- states, the twenty-first century would be dominated by “wars among the people.”¹ Of course, there have been wars among the people as long as there have been people, and it remains to be seen whether we can avoid a great power war in this century, but the human domain is the principal concern of both IW and special operations, and is therefore the particular focus of this journal.

U.S. doctrine has long recognized that the defining feature of IW is the struggle for control over or support of relevant populations. Most recently, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff define IW as “a struggle among state and non-state actors to influence populations and affect legitimacy.”² The 2020 Summary of the Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy emphasized the relevance of IW in great power competition as well as its economical aspect, and committed the Department of Defense (DOD) to mastering it as a core competency.³ A more expansive definition of IW, one perhaps better suited to current and future strategic competition, is offered by defense expert Seth Jones. He states that IW “refers to activities short of conventional and nuclear warfare that are designed to expand a country’s influence and legitimacy, as well as to weaken its adversaries.”⁴ We encourage and look forward to vigorous debate on the scope and continually evolving character of IW in future issues of Inter Populum.

Special operations—from direct, time-sensitive, and discrete “surgical strikes” to indirect, longer-term “special warfare”—have long been considered critical to conducting or countering IW. However, as the Summary of the Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy⁵ made abundantly clear, one myth in need of shattering is that IW is coterminous with counterterrorism (CT), that Special Operations Forces (SOF) own the CT mission, and therefore SOF are the only ones who can play a meaningful role in IW. Nothing could be further from the truth. CT is only one of the military missions under the IW umbrella, and conventional forces play a critical role in all of them. More broadly, IW can be considered the military contribution to competitive statecraft, which demands a coordinated and synchronized whole-of-government/whole-of-society approach in which interagency and cross-sector partners play a central and, in many cases, leading role. Thus, Inter Populum intends to focus on the nexus between IW and special operations, as well as

the integration of these military activities with those of other government agencies, civil society, and the private sector. In doing so, Inter Populum will drive the analysis, reflection, and conversations necessary to reconceptualize IW for an era of strategic competition.

Inter Populum will publish two online issues per year, with both issues combined into one printed volume annually. Copies will be made available across the DOD, to other government agencies, academic institutions, and many other stakeholders.

We look forward to establishing Inter Populum as the locus of professional exploration, discussion, and debate on IW, special operations, and their role in strategic competition. But we cannot do it without support from readers and contributors. Please consider submitting your own work for publication in an upcoming issue. Thank you, and welcome to the discussion.

Christopher Marsh, Fort Liberty, NC James Kiras, Maxwell AFB, AL Ryan Shaw, Tempe, AZ

Endnotes

1 Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2005).

2 Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Warfighting: Reference Copy, JP 1, Volume 1 (Washington, D.C.: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2020), GL-4.

3 Department of Defense, Summary of the Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy

(Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 2020), 1.

4 Seth Jones, Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare (New York: W.W. Norton, 2021), 11.

5 Department of Defense, Summary of the Irregular Warfare Annex.

INTER POPULUM:

The Journal of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations

Inter Populum: The Journal of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations, published by Arizona State University, is an academically rigorous, peer reviewed publication focused on furthering studies, thought, and discussion on special operations and irregular warfare topics. It is published once a year in print (ISSN: 2836-5496), and twice a year online (ISSN: 2836-6034).

To request a printed copy or inquire about publication consideration, contact our team at interpopulum@asu.edu.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editors:

Christopher Marsh, U.S. National Defense University, christopher.marsh.civ@ndu.edu James Kiras, U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, james.kiras@us.af.mil Ryan Shaw, Arizona State University, Ryan.Shaw.1@asu.edu

Managing Editor:

Lisa Sheldon

Book Review Editor:

Mark Grzegorzewski, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, grzegorm@erau.edu

Editorial Board

interpopulum.org

Leo Blanken, Naval Postgraduate School

Patricia Blocksome, Joint Special Operations University

Paul Brister, U.S. Naval War College

Carolyne Davidson, U.S. National Defense University

David Ellis, New College of Florida

Nikolas Gvosdev, U.S. Naval War College

Will Irwin, Joint Special Operations University

Jaroslaw Jablonski, Joint Special Operations University

Martijn Kitzen, Netherlands Defence Academy

Nina Kollars, U.S. Naval War College

Jeffrey Kubiak, Arizona State University

Ken Gleiman, Arizona State University

David Maxwell, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Mark Moyar, Hillsdale College

Aleksandra Nesic, U.S. Department of State

David Oakley, University of South Florida

Ulrica Pettersson, Swedish Defence University

Linda Robinson, RAND Corporation

Richard Schultz, Fletcher School, Tufts University

Kalev Sepp, Naval Postgraduate School

Emily Stranger, Indiana University-Bloomington

interpopulum.org

Table of Contents

Articles

Like a Bolt from the Blue: Relative Superiority and the Coup de Main

Assault on the Caen Canal and River Orne Bridges, 6 June 1944

by Michael J. Mooney........................................................................................ 1

Ten Surprising Lessons for Special Operations Forces from the First Eighteen Months of Putin’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

by Thomas R. Searle, Christopher Marsh, and Brian Petit.................................. 41

Special Operations in the 21st Century: Revisiting the Falklands War

by Matthew Miller........................................................................................... 57

Fighting Danger at Sea: The Quest for Speed in Special Operations

by Rikke Haugegaard....................................................................................... 69

Dynamic Ethical Decision-Making and its Importance to Special Operations

by Robert M. Mitchell...................................................................................... 93

Counterterrorism is Strategic Competition

by Thomas R. Searle....................................................................................... 101

Book Reviews

Phoenix Rising: From the Ashes of Desert One to the Rebirth of U.S. Special Operations by Keith M. Nightingale

Reviewed by William “Stone” Holden............................................................. 111

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

Reviewed by Luke Talian............................................................................... 115

Special Forces Interpreter: An Afghan on Operations with the Coalition

by Eddie Idrees

Reviewed by Laura Stenger............................................................................ 119

Airpower in the War Against ISIS by Benjamin S. Lambeth

Reviewed by James Kiras............................................................................... 123

The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence

by Douglas London

Reviewed by David P. Oakley......................................................................... 125

Military Reconnaissance: The Eyes and Ears of the Army

by Alexander Stilwell

Reviewed by Hugh Sutherland........................................................................ 127

Death in the Highlands: The Siege of Special Forces Camp Plei Mei

by J. Keith Saliba

Reviewed by Timothy Heck........................................................................... 131

Grey Wars: A Contemporary History of U.S. Special Operations

by N.W. Collins

Reviewed by Angelica Vallario....................................................................... 133

The RAF and Tribal Control: Airpower and Irregular Warfare Between the World Wars by Richard D. Newton

Reviewed by Joseph Whittington.................................................................... 137

4. Ten Surprising Lessons for Special Operations Forces from the First 20 Months of Putin’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

The 10 (preliminary) lessons:

Lesson 1: The Gray Zone is back (or the Gray way is still the best way).

Lesson 2: The SOF/Counter-SOF fight is decisive in the initial phase of a large-scale conventional war.

Lesson 3: Resistance can be decisive even before occupation.

Lesson 4: Traditional SOF raids are still viable against the homeland of a great power.

Lesson 5: There will be political limitations on SOF raids inside the homeland of a great power.

Lesson 6: Misuse of SOF is still a problem well into the twenty-first century.

Lesson 7: Traditional resistance activities are politically vital and remain viable in the twenty-first century.

Lesson 8: Preplanned resistance requires more secrecy than normal government activities.

Lesson 9: Frogs can be boiled.

Lesson 10: SFA and SOF are vital parts of integrated deterrence because they can defeat competitors even when nuclear and conventional deterrence are abandoned.

Preliminary Conclusions

It is risky to announce lessons from the current Russo-Ukraine War, since it will continue to evolve, but the ten lessons above will likely stand the test of time and be joined, rather than replaced or overturned, by any additional lessons as the war continues. Assessing the direct impact of a multi-year, force and institution-building engagement strategy is difficult. The importance of SFA can easily be overstated or mistakenly overlooked. U.S. SOF investments in Ukraine were based on the persistent presence of a light footprint and focused on Ukrainian SOF within a larger defense reform effort. That larger effort inculcated NATO-compatible methods, practices, and perspectives with an emphasis on Ukrainian homeland security. These investments represent a major success for U.S. SOF in strategic competition and a way—though not the only way—for U.S. SOF to contribute to integrated deterrence. U.S. SOF brought lessons to Ukraine on national resistance and took home Ukrainian views on contesting Russian regulars and irregulars, thus benefiting both nations at great expense to our adversaries.

Ten Surprising Lessons for Special Operations Forces from the First 20 Months of Putin’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

interpopulum.org · by ByThomas R. Searle, Christopher Marsh, and Brian Petit · October 15, 2023

Thomas R. Searle, Christopher Marsh, and Brian Petit

ABSTRACT

This article provides ten surprising lessons for Special Operations Forces (SOF) from the first year-and-a-half of Russia’s criminal and ill-advised full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These lessons range from the tactical to the grand strategic, and collectively help explain how Ukraine and NATO managed to “boil Putin’s frog” in the years between 2014 and 2022. This strategic success does not change the fact that tragic mistakes have been made and that SOF continue to be misused despite all the efforts to learn from previous misuse of SOF and prevent the repeat of earlier mistakes. These lessons also explain why, paradoxically, the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945 has made future large-scale combat operations by conventional forces less likely and gray zone operations by SOF more strategically relevant than ever before.

The 20 months since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has been full of surprises and there will doubtlessly be more surprises in the months and years to come, as this conflict is far from over. Certain lessons are starting to emerge, however, especially for U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF). While these lessons can be drawn both from Ukraine’s successes and failures, the extraordinary performance of the Ukrainian people and their armed forces are worthy of acknowledgement; Ukrainians are the true heroes of the current war. Yes, Kyiv has received training and assistance from many of its allies and partners, but the lion’s share of the credit for thwarting Putin’s war goes to the people of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s successes have taken place within the context of a systematic, long-term effort to assist this nation—an effort that began in earnest after Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea. This effort included the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s (DSCA) Minister of Defense Advisor (MoD-A) program, which helped train and educate the Ukrainian armed forces on everything from NATO doctrine to operational art and strategy. More specifically to the discussion here, U.S. SOF committed top-tier forces to assist Ukraine, including Army Special Forces, civil affairs, and psychological operations soldiers, as well as U.S. Navy SEALs and other SOF elements. These forces were deployed and employed by Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) with rotational forces that executed a “365” engagement model measured in years, not months. U.S. SOF were not employed forward into the then-static conflict zone of the Donbas in a combatant role. Instead, as described by the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Commanding General in his Congressional testimony, the U.S. SOF effort focused on the professionalization of Ukrainian SOF defined as the steady arc of building a special operations capability, culture, and joint warfighting organization. Furthermore, the U.S. SOF investment was orchestrated by select U.S. SOF personnel, on long-term assignments, acting as ministerial-level advisors who assisted in crafting Ukraine’s national security methods—again often with the assistance of DSCA’s MoD-A advisors. This effort included working with Ukraine on Black Sea appropriate applications of the Resistance Operating Concept which is a doctrine-like roadmap for pre-building a national resilience and resistance effort.

Finally, U.S. SOF and select NATO SOF have worked within a larger, multinational effort to reform the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Nothing stimulates reform quite like failure, and Ukraine’s military failure when Russia attacked in 2014 provided an enormous stimulus to Ukrainian armed forces to reflect and rebuild. U.S. SOF played a key role in this larger reform effort. On 29 July 2021, seven months before the invasion, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law, “On the Foundations of National Resistance.” He signed this law on the compound of the Ukrainian SOF to signal, legislatively and emotionally, that Ukrainian SOF would be one of the leading organizations for in extremis citizen resistance operations. Indeed, less than seven months after the signing ceremony, Ukrainian SOF were launched on that very role: plan, lead, direct, and conduct special operations both in conventionally contested areas as well as in enemy rear areas. U.S. SOF had a direct hand in developing the tactical skills, warfighting methods, and doctrinal outlines that prepared Ukrainian forces to conduct guerilla-style warfare. Ukraine, with its history of partisan warfare and experience in combatting Russian regulars and proxies from 2014 to 2022, benefited from this training and conversely imparted to U.S. SOF Ukrainian experiences and lessons.

Each of the ten lessons that follow came as a surprise to U.S. SOF and need to be incorporated into future SOF plans and operations.

Lesson 1: The Gray Zone is back (or the Gray way is still the best way).

When thousands of Russian tanks stormed across the Ukrainian border, it looked like the definitive end of the post-9/11 focus on special operations and the explosive beginning of a new era focused on large-scale conventional combat operations. If Putin had succeeded, it might have been the beginning of a new era, but Putin’s spectacular, catastrophic, and undeniable failure will send rogue and revisionist states back to the gray zone.

The comparison between Russian gray zone tactics against Ukraine in 2014 and its large-scale conventional combat operations against the same adversary in 2022 is unavoidable and the lessons are stark. In 2014, using gray zone tactics, Putin grabbed Crimea at almost no cost, and then he grabbed half of the Donbas, at a very low cost, and he might have held them indefinitely. This time around, using large-scale conventional combat operations, Putin has grabbed a bit more terrain than he did in 2014. But it isn’t clear how much he can hold, or for how long. More importantly, unlike 2014, Putin’s 2022 land-grab has been astronomically expensive in terms of Russian blood and treasure, expanding and unifying NATO, shattering the reputations of Putin and the Russian military inside and outside Russia, causing heretofore unimaginable open criticism of Putin’s leadership inside Russia. And the situation gets worse every day as Ukraine’s armed forces continue to improve and Russia resorts to ever more desperate measures to stay in the fight. When he relied on gray zone tactics and techniques, Putin rose to the height of his power, but after resorting to large-scale conventional combat operations, he will be lucky to keep his position and hold the Russian Federation together.

Gray zone activities don’t always succeed, but sometimes they do. And when they succeed, they provide an impressive return on investment. If they fail, gray zone tactics do so at low cost in terms of lives and treasure, and they can be denied, lowering the political and reputational cost of failure. On the other hand, large-scale conventional combat operations don’t always succeed either, but when they fail, the costs are enormous, and deniability is out of the question.

Conventional invasions will still be cost-effective against small, unprotected neighbors like the Republic of Georgia was when Russia invaded it in 2008 (Georgia had no allies and a population of under 4 million). But against nations of any significant size or with great power allies—like the Baltic states—conventional invasion will not be cost effective for Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, or any other revisionist power, and they are rapidly realizing it. None of them will likely repeat Putin’s 2022 mistake anytime soon. Instead, they are much more likely to pursue their goals in the gray zone, and U.S. SOF need to be ready to counter them there.

Lesson 2: The SOF/Counter-SOF fight is decisive in the initial phase of a large-scale conventional war.

The sheer size of large-scale combat operations seemed to eclipse SOF and special operations as decisive factors in major conventional wars, but SOF proved to be decisive in the initial—and arguably most important—phase of the current war, as we will see by examining the war first in the south, and then in the north.

Special Operations Success in the South

The initial stage of Putin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion focused on a northern offensive from Belarus south toward Kyiv, and a southern offensive from the Crimean Peninsula north through Kherson toward Mykolaiv and Odesa. Ukraine knew these were possible invasion routes and had defensive plans to oppose both Russian axes of advance by (among other things) blowing up bridges and opening dams to create impassable water obstacles for Russian forces. In the south, the routes north from Crimea are few and narrow, and the Dnipro River is an enormous obstacle, but the Russians were spectacularly successful. This appears to have been due to successful operations by Russian SOF (including the Federal Security Service, the GRU [Russia’s military intelligence agency], and the SVR [Russian Foreign Intelligence Service), in preventing the destruction of bridges and dams. In U.S. military doctrine such operations are called Operational Preparation of the Environment (OPE) and can include direct action (DA). The exact mix of bribes, intimidation, deception, and DA used by Russian SOF and intelligence units to clear the way for follow-on conventional forces is not clear, but the results were spectacular with Russian troops breaking out of Crimea, driving 100 km north, crossing the Dnipro, and entering the city of Kherson on the first day of the invasion. The one exception to Russian success in the south was the bridge near Henichesk where a Ukrainian sapper, Vitaly Skakun, became a national hero when he died while blowing the bridge.

The city of Kherson fell, and the Russians entered Mykolaiv before the Ukrainian forces regrouped, recovered, stopped the Russian advance, and started pushing the Russians back. The damage, however, was done. Ukraine has spent eighteen months and thousands of lives struggling to recapture a small part of the ground it lost in a few days due to Russian SOF’s ability to prevent bridges and dams from being blown. Ukraine may never liberate all the land it lost in the south during the first few days of the invasion. Even if those areas are liberated, it will require years of hard fighting and tens of thousands of additional Ukrainian casualties. Those rapid and perhaps irreversible Russian successes in the south were only possible due to OPE by Russian SOF and may represent Russia’s greatest (and certainly its cheapest) strategic successes in all of 2022.

Counter-SOF Success in the North

The situation in the north was completely different. Russian SOF failed in their efforts to capture or kill key Ukrainian targets, like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the opening minutes, hours, and days of the invasion. The potential water obstacles on the road to Kyiv were unimpressive compared to the ones in the south, but the bridges and dams were blown, as planned, stranding the Russian invasion force in the famous forty-mile-long convoy and allowing Ukrainian forces to pick them off over a period of days. The exact role of Ukrainian SOF (including Ukrainian intelligence services) in Ukraine’s successful counter-SOF campaign in the north has not been revealed, and the role of U.S. and NATO advice and assistance may never be fully declassified, but the results are obvious: Russian forces failed to enter Kyiv or capture any major cities in the north.

The success of Russian OPE in the south is a reminder of what might have happened in the north and the decisive role SOF can play in large-scale conventional combat operations. The successful Ukrainian counter-SOF campaign in the north reminds us that countering enemy SOF is still a critical task and one in which U.S. SOF advice can be essential.

Lesson 3: Resistance can be decisive even before occupation.

We usually think of capital-R Resistance, such as the French Resistance, starting after the conventional fight is lost, when foreign occupation forces are trying to control the population. That was the vision for the Resistance Operating Concept and predecessor documents developed by and for SOCEUR and used when U.S. and NATO SOF advised Ukrainians before the February invasion. However, the Russian forces that swept through northern and north-eastern Ukraine never got the chance to establish themselves as traditional occupation forces because Ukrainian resistance made their occupation untenable almost before it started.

In preparing the Ukrainian public to resist an occupying power, the Ukrainian government (with years of advice and assistance from U.S. and NATO SOF) helped citizens develop the skills and mindset for small-unit (even individual and two-person) guerrilla warfare in their local urban and rural environments. These were the places Ukrainians lived and worked and where they had an enormous advantage over the invaders in knowing the human and physical terrain. The net effect was that as Russian forces dashed toward Kyiv from the north and east, their long supply lines exposed Russian supply trucks to guerrilla attacks by Ukrainians. Destroyed Russian tanks generated the best photos, but without the trucks the tanks cannot survive, and the trucks had to drive hundreds of miles every day, whereas the tanks could hunker-down in defensive positions. This helped make Ukrainian guerrilla attacks on Russian trucks decisively effective against the Russian invaders.

By mid-March the Russian offensive toward Kyiv had pushed deep into Ukraine but had stalled along every axis of advance and Ukrainian forces were counterattacking. The Russians still held a substantial advantage in quantity and quality of military equipment, since High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and other high end Western equipment would not arrive for months. Most outside observers expected the Russians to defend their gains and the Ukrainians certainly had not assembled the conventional forces necessary to drive the Russians out. Instead, Russia abandoned all the territory in the north and northeast that it had grabbed in the first few weeks of the war—some 45,000 sq km—without a fight and redeployed its forces to reinforce offensives elsewhere.

The redeployment did allow Russia to make gains elsewhere, but it certainly appears that guerrilla attacks on Russian supply lines—conducted by irregular local forces and by Ukrainian SOF and conventional forces operating as guerrillas—made the Russian position in the north and northeast untenable. Long before Ukraine had assembled the conventional forces and heavy equipment necessary to conduct a major conventional counter offensive, 45,000 sq km of Ukraine were liberated because guerrilla attacks on Russian supply lines made the Russian position shaky. Thus, infantry weapons and small-unit tactics by a large number of local civilians and reservists with a resistance/resilience mindset and limited assistance from professional forces can have strategic offensive effects operating behind enemy lines against enemy logistics.

Lesson 4: Traditional SOF raids are still viable against the homeland of a great power.

In the twenty-first century, authoritarian great powers have become extremely hard targets for traditional SOF raids. Air, maritime, and ground defenses around their military facilities and critical infrastructure appeared so comprehensive and technologically advanced that traditional SOF raids looked, to some, like suicide missions. That is, until Ukraine successfully executed such missions inside Russia and Crimea.

Russia has some of the most sophisticated air defense systems in the world and both China and Iran rely heavily on Russian-made air defense systems. And yet, Ukraine was able to conduct a successful strike with attack helicopters 35 km inside Russia to destroy a key logistics hub at Belgorod, and Ukrainian drone strikes have repeatedly hit Russian air bases, Moscow, and even the Kremlin itself. These successes indicate that SOF helicopters and drones can successfully penetrate the home airspace of a great power in wartime to conduct strikes or insert troops.

Even more impressive were Ukrainian attacks (presumably SOF raids) on Russian military installations in Crimea that destroyed nine Russian fighter jets on the ground and several ammunition storage sites. In addition to state-of-the-art air and maritime defenses in Crimea, Russia had eight years to implement the most advanced and intrusive population control measures to prevent insurgent activity and catch any Ukrainian SOF who try to infiltrate Crimea. Ukraine’s most spectacular strategic success in its raids on Russian infrastructure was the destruction of the Kerch bridge between Crimea and Russia on 8 October 2022. At the time of this writing in June 2023, Ukrainian forces continue successful sabotage operations against Russian rail lines inside Russia and in Crimea and other Russian occupied areas of Ukraine proving that after eighteen months of war Russia still cannot prevent these SOF raids.

It is now clear that traditional SOF infiltration is still possible against state-of-the-art countermeasures by a great power in wartime. It is worth noting that, except at the very beginning of the invasion, Russian SOF have not been able to conduct comparable DA strikes on Ukrainian military installations. The superior capabilities of Ukrainian SOF are a testament to their skill and courage, but also to the advice and assistance Ukrainian SOF have received from U.S. and NATO SOF.

In an unclassified forum it is inappropriate to reveal how much of Ukraine’s capability in Crimea and elsewhere comes from Ukrainian SOF infiltrated after February 2022, how much from partisans who were already in Crimea and elsewhere before February 2022, how much comes from Russian agents and saboteurs working for Ukraine, and how much comes from other sources. It is also inappropriate to discuss technological details of these operations. But it is fair to point out that Ukraine, with a pre-invasion annual defense budget of about $6 billion, has relied on mastery of fundamentals like planning, training, and tradecraft, rather than exotic technology. It is also noteworthy that the early attacks focused on targets such as ammunition storage, where flames or a small number of explosives could have a large effect. With the attack on the Kerch bridge, Ukraine also demonstrated the capability to deliver large explosives via SOF techniques to critical infrastructure targets.

It is also worth noting that Ukraine is using SOF raids to compensate for the long-range air and missile strike capabilities it lacks. A nation like the U.S. that has such capabilities could combine SOF raids with other long-range strike capabilities to create gaps in Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2AD) systems and produce exponentially greater effects.

Lesson 5: There will be political limitations on SOF raids inside the homeland of a great power.

Before February 2022, concern about the feasibility of SOF raids inside the A2AD bubble of a great power caused SOF to focus on overcoming those challenges. As the previous lesson indicates, the practical problems were overcome. However, while SOF were developing tactics, techniques, and procedures to conduct SOF raids deep inside the homeland of a great power, SOF were not studying the political risks of such operations.

Large-scale combat operations against nuclear powers armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles always run the risk of escalation to nuclear war and to areas outside the current theater of armed conflict. Escalation risks must therefore be considered when approving SOF raids deep inside the homeland of a great power. Furthermore, it is difficult to motivate Russian soldiers or mobilize the Russian nation in support of an obvious war of aggression like Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, attacks deep inside the Russian homeland risk reframing the war as one in defense of Russia and necessary to eliminate an unacceptable threat to the safety of both Russia and individual Russians. Without the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government would have found it difficult to mobilize the nation for a war against Japan, but after the attack, both political parties and the vast majority of American’s were fully committed to do whatever was necessary to defeat Japan. SOF raids deep inside the homeland of a great power need to consider the risk of a Pearl Harbor effect when the goal is merely to force the enemy to abandon his war of aggression.

Prior to February 2022, U.S. SOF did not routinely consider the risk of escalation or the risk of a backfire Pearl Harbor effect when considering DA raids deep inside the homeland of a great power. In the future these strategic risks will need to be considered because the authorities who approve such missions will need to be confident the risks are manageable, and the SOF briefers will need to be prepared to answer their questions.

Lesson 6: Misuse of SOF is still a problem well into the twenty-first century.

After the end of the Cold War, and particularly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the position of SOF dramatically improved within the military hierarchies of many nations. There has been a global proliferation of headquarters, vaguely analogous to that of USSOCOM, with Ukraine and even Russia creating a Special Operations Forces Commands (KSSO).

The new SOF prominence was intended to get better strategic results from these forces but also provided reason to hope the routine misuse of SOF that had been so common during the twentieth century would be coming to an end. The fighting in Ukraine shows those hopes to have been premature since both Russia and Ukraine seem to have misused their SOF more often than they should have. While exact casualty figures for both sides are closely guarded secrets, available information suggests that SOF on both sides have suffered great and that these heavy losses have been suffered when SOF were used as conventional forces.

This is a repetition of past mistakes that a more prominent role for senior SOF leaders was supposed to prevent. SOF have exceptional small unit tactical skills, but they typically lack the firepower, armor protection, and ground mobility of conventional forces, and as a result, they suffer excessive losses when used as assault forces or in static defensive positions. Excessive losses among SOF personnel are a serious problem in a long-term war of attrition like the one underway in Ukraine because competent SOF require a much longer training period than conventional forces so losses can only be replaced slowly. Furthermore, excessive losses among pre-war SOF can leave the force without the mid-level leaders needed to lead and mentor the new SOF personnel recruited and trained after the heavy fighting began. Without these mid-level leaders, the force may never regain its pre-war levels of effectiveness. Hopefully the Ukrainians have learned from their earlier mistakes and built up sufficient conventional forces to meet their conventional needs without throwing SOF into the line and will limit SOF operations to those that only SOF can do while keeping SOF casualty rates within sustainable limits, but the experience in the early stages of the war indicate that crisis situations—like that facing Ukraine in the early stages of the full-scale invasion—will still encourage senior leaders to waste SOF even when there is a Special Operations Forces Command available to recommend otherwise.

Lesson 7: Traditional resistance activities are politically vital and remain viable in the twenty-first century.

Before Putin’s war, it was not clear that traditional resistance was still viable. The lack of effective Ukrainian resistance in Crimea and the occupied portions of the Donbas since 2014, and China’s apparent success in crushing resistance in Hong Kong after 2020 suggested that twenty-first century authoritarian great powers could prevent or crush traditional resistance movements. The ongoing success of Ukrainian resistance, 20 months into the occupation, suggests that traditional resistance is still possible and strategically effective today.

Putin has expanded the Russian Federation by annexing foreign regions controlled by Russian troops (as he did in Crimea) and by recognizing and protecting contested regions of foreign countries that declare independence or autonomy (as he did in Georgia, Moldova, and the Donbas region of Ukraine immediately before he launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022). In contested regions, a vital aspect of this expansion technique is the installation of hand-picked pro-Moscow leaders and governing cliques who can pose as legitimate governments entitled to declare independence. Annexation is legitimized through a referendum that, no matter how dishonestly conducted, appears to prove the local population has freely chosen to join the Russian Federation.

In newly occupied portions of Ukraine, resistance forces have successfully conducted traditional resistance activities including intimidation and assassination of local officials who support the occupiers, attacks on occupation forces, attacks on occupier logistics, sabotage of various kinds, and anti-occupation propaganda. While the official website of the Ukrainian Resistance would have been new to the members of the French Resistance, most of Ukraine’s resistance in occupied areas would look very familiar to them.

Ukrainian resistance activities have achieved strategic effects by severely disrupting governance in occupied areas. Most importantly, resistance activities forced the Russians to postpone referenda legitimizing Russian occupation due to security concerns. The Kremlin eventually rushed through sham referenda, but Ukrainian resistance delayed them for months. That action continues to cast doubt on the validity of those votes and helps justify Ukraine’s continued efforts to liberate occupied areas. These are high strategic priorities for Ukraine and its supporters, and the. However, one important caveat is that resistance infrastructure has been more effective facilitating attacks by Ukrainian SOF than by conducting attacks themselves because SOF usually conduct more effective attacks and resistance cells are more likely to be captured after an attack, they conduct themselves than after a SOF attack they facilitate.

Lesson 8: Preplanned resistance requires more secrecy than normal government activities.

In anticipation of a potential Russian invasion, Ukraine developed an extensive resistance infrastructure before the 2022 full-scale invasion. Unfortunately, lists of resistance personnel were in local government databases and therefore captured when the Russians overran towns and cities in southern Ukraine. The Russian intelligence services also worked hard to find traitors within the Ukrainian government and resistance organizations who could provide the Russians with lists of names. Thus, when Russian occupation forces implemented filtration operations in occupied Ukraine modeled on those used by Stalin, the Russians had the benefit of more extensive kill-lists than they should have had. This lesson needs to be learned by every nation developing a resistance infrastructure. Pre-invasion resistance-organizing activities need extraordinary security measures that sacrifice some government transparency and accountability to protect against the threat of traitors and captured databases.

Lesson 9: Frogs can be boiled.

There is a story that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog will realize the danger and immediately jump out. But if you drop the frog in a pot of cool water it will sit there, and you can slowly heat the pot and boil the frog without it noticing the gradual change in temperature until it’s too late. Essentially, Ukraine, NATO and the U.S. were trying to use this method to “cook” Putin’s military domination over Ukraine. By the time the frog (Putin) noticed he was getting boiled and jumped to a full-scale invasion, it was too late.

Recall that in 2014 the Russian military was vastly superior to the Ukrainian military and could easily stop a Ukrainian offensive in the Donbas with a few thousand troops who Russia claimed were not active-duty soldiers and were simply on vacation. Ukraine responded to this humiliation by reforming and rebuilding its military with the intention of creating a force that could defeat, or at least deter, a full-scale Russian invasion. NATO and the U.S. supported Ukraine in this effort, but all three parties saw rebuilding the Ukrainian military as a long-term project that must proceed slowly so as not to provoke an overwhelming Russian response. The U.S. and NATO were very careful to “boil the frog” slowly by strictly limiting the weapons they provided to Ukraine. Instead, NATO and the U.S. focused on training, education, and reform efforts that were less visible and hence more likely to escape Russian notice or raise Moscow’s ire, like IMET (eventually training Ukrainian soldiers at some of the West’s premier professional military education [PME] institutions and training schools such as SAMS and Special Forces Qualification course). They also emphasized concepts like resistance that might deter a Russian invasion but posed no offensive threat to Russia, and hence were less likely to provoke an invasion.

Putin, the “frog,” eventually noticed the temperature was rising and realized he could not stop it from rising further. Putin saw Ukraine shifting toward the West and his ability to intimidate Ukraine slipping away. He decided to jump out of the pot and re-establish his dominance over Ukraine through a full-scale invasion while he still had the chance. The results indicate that he waited too long. Putin’s frog in Ukraine was already boiled and it jumped out of the pot and into the fire, losing not only the ability to influence and intimidate Ukraine but risking the ability to influence and intimidate Russians, as he gradually loses control of Russia itself.

Putin’s response to gradual failure has important implications for SOF because SOF are a premier frog-boiling force. Other forms of Security Force Assistance (SFA), such as selling F-16s or HIMARS to a partner nation, are highly visible and provide the recipient with obvious offensive capabilities. This makes them poor choices for slowly boiling a frog. On the other hand, long-term, small-footprint, unpublicized SOF engagement is an excellent way to increase the temperature without being noticed by the enemy. Based on Putin’s response to the slow boil technique, SOF planners need to remember that no matter how slowly you raise the temperature, the frog will eventually notice the rising temperature in the pot. However, if SFA is done carefully and correctly, the frog will notice too late, as Putin did.

Lesson 10: SFA and SOF are vital parts of integrated deterrence because they can defeat competitors even when nuclear and conventional deterrence are abandoned.

As Russia prepared for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO took their nuclear and conventional forces off the table by announcing that the U.S. and NATO would not participate in direct combat operations against Russia in Ukraine. However, both the U.S. and NATO indicated that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine would lead to a dramatic increase in SFA to Ukraine and support to various forms of resistance by Ukraine’s population.

Vladimir Putin was not impressed, but he should have been. When he launched his invasion against Ukraine, he was confident the Russian military would rapidly and completely defeat Ukraine’s armed forces, that Russian security services could cope with whatever resistance might later emerge, that NATO and U.S. assistance to Ukraine would not make a difference, and finally, that Ukrainian special operations would not make a difference either. He was mistaken on every point.

Putin built an impressive military force through the “New Look” reforms he initiated in the aftermath of Russia’s August 2008 attack on Georgia, but that force is being devoured by a Ukrainian military Putin held in contempt. Ukrainian courage and competence have been a major factor in Ukraine’s success, but Western assistance, training, and advice helped build Ukrainian competence and courage before the full-scale invasion and have bolstered them since. Putin readily admits that Western SFA is preventing him from achieving his goals. He claims Western SFA is merely delaying the inevitable, but everyone can see that SFA is also dramatically increasing the cost to Russia and decreasing the chance of an outcome in Russia’s favor.

When the West made SFA, in all its SOF and non-SOF forms, the main effort to assist Ukraine and thwart Russia, Putin scoffed. He should have been deterred. Western SFA has radically changed the costs and benefits of invading Ukraine. Putin was not deterred, but future aggressors will have his grim example to ponder. For example, the Chinese Communist Party and President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping held the Russian military in high regard at the end of 2021 and had little-to-no respect for the Ukrainian military. However, they can see that NATO and U.S. SFA transformed the battlefield from one where Russian victory seemed assured, to one where Russian forces are being destroyed while failing to achieve any of their strategic goals, despite repeated declarations by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to the contrary.

Putin’s misfortune stands as a warning to other would-be aggressors that the U.S. and Western SFA can decisively flip the correlation of forces against an aggressor. As a result, SFA should join nuclear and conventional deterrence as a key part of integrated deterrence in the future. Deterrence theorists should take note.

Preliminary Conclusions

It is risky to announce lessons from the current Russo-Ukraine War, since it will continue to evolve, but the ten lessons above will likely stand the test of time and be joined, rather than replaced or overturned, by any additional lessons as the war continues. Assessing the direct impact of a multi-year, force and institution-building engagement strategy is difficult. The importance of SFA can easily be overstated or mistakenly overlooked. U.S. SOF investments in Ukraine were based on the persistent presence of a light footprint and focused on Ukrainian SOF within a larger defense reform effort. That larger effort inculcated NATO-compatible methods, practices, and perspectives with an emphasis on Ukrainian homeland security. These investments represent a major success for U.S. SOF in strategic competition and a way—though not the only way—for U.S. SOF to contribute to integrated deterrence. U.S. SOF brought lessons to Ukraine on national resistance and took home Ukrainian views on contesting Russian regulars and irregulars, thus benefiting both nations at great expense to our adversaries.

11 APR Statement of General Richard D. Clarke, USA, Commander, United States Special Operations Command before the 117th Congress House Committee on appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, 7 April 2022.

Walter Pincus, “USSOCOM has history with Ukraine Special Operations Forces,” 12 April 2022, The Cipher Brief.

Davis Winkie, “How the US and Europe helped Ukraine prep for insurgency,” Army Times, 7 March 2022; https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2022/03/07/how-the-us-and-europe-helped-ukraine-prep-for-insurgency/.

“President signed laws on national resistance and increasing the number of the armed forces,” President of Ukraine Official Website, 29 July 2021.

Andrew White, “Europe’s Special Operators are watching Ukraine closely for lessons learned,” Breaking Defense website, posted 29 April 2022; accessed at https://breakingdefense.com/2022/04/europes-special-operators-are-watching-ukraine-closely-for-lessons-learned/.

Brian Petit, Interviews and interfacing with UKRSOF senior and tactical leaders in 2020 and 2021 in Ukraine on behalf of the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) and in support of Special Operations Command Europe.

In his remarks at an on-line Forum on 13 September 2022, David Kilcullen claimed that Chinese military publications are already noting that a lesson from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was that gray zone operations were more effective than large-scale conventional combat operations.

Christopher Marsh, Developments in Russian Special Operations, (Ottawa: CANSOF Education and Research Center, 2017), https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/mdn-dnd/D4-10-21-2017-eng.pdf.

“Joint Pub 3-05: Special Operations,” Department of Defense, 16 July 2014, https://irp.fas.org/doddir/dod/jp3_05.pdf.

Mason Clark, George Barros, and Kateryna Stepanenko, “Russia-Ukraine Warning Update: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, 25 February 2022,” Institute for the Study of War, February 25, 2023, https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia-ukraine-warning-update-russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-25-2022.

Mansur Mirovalev, “Ukrainians question the ease of Russian capture of Kherson,” Al Jazeera, 27 May 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/27/residents-question-ease-of-russian-capture-of-ukraines-kherson.

Carlos Barria, “Flood saves Ukrainian village from Russian occupation,” Reuters, 16 May 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/flood-saves-ukrainian-village-russian-occupation-2022-05-15.

Otto Fiala, Kirk Smith, Anders Löfberg, “Resistance Operating Concept (ROC),” (Tampa, FL: JSOU Press, 2020), https://www.jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/25.

Dan Sabbagh, “Uneasy wait in Kyiv continues as Russian advance appears to have stalled,” The Guardian, 16 March 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/16/uneasy-wait-in-kyiv-continues-as-russian-advance-appears-stalled.

Paul D. Shinkman, “Russia Begins Retreat from Kyiv in ‘Major Strategy Shift’: U.S. General,” U.S. News, 29 March 2022, https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2022-03-29/russia-begins-retreat-from-kyiv-in-major-strategy-shift-u-s-general.

Franz-Stefan Gady, “Chinese PLA Personnel Complete Training for S-400 Air Defense System in Russia,” The Diplomat, 31 July 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/07/chinese-pla-personnel-completes-training-for-s-400-air-defense-system-in-russia/.

“Russia alleges Ukrainian helicopters struck Belgorod fuel depot,” Al Jazeera, 1 Apr 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/1/russia-alleges-ukrainian-helicopters-struck-belgorod-fuel-depot.

Julian E. Barnes, Adam Entous, Eric Schmitt, and Anton Troianovski, “Ukrainians Were Likely Behind Kremlin Drone Attack,” New York Times, 24 May 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/us/politics/ukraine-kremlin-drone-attack.html.

“Ukraine Strikes Again in Crimea Posing New Challenges for Putin,” New York Times, 16 August 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/16/world/europe/crimea-russia-ukraine-explosions.html.

James Glanz and Marco Hernandez, “How Ukraine Blew Up a Key Russian Bridge,” New York Times, 17 November 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/17/world/europe/crimea-bridge-collapse.html.

“Ukrainian saboteurs strike successfully in occupied territory,” NV The New Voice of Ukraine, 19 June 2023, https://english.nv.ua/nation/saboteurs-working-to-damage-russian-supply-lines-behind-front-line-ukraine-news-50332996.html.

Erik Kramer And Paul Schneider, “What The Ukrainian Armed Forces Need To Do To Win,” War on The Rocks, 2 June 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/06/what-the-ukrainian-armed-forces-need-to-do-to-win/.

“Russian-appointed official in occupied Kherson killed in blast,” Al Jazeera, 24 June 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/24/russian-appointed-official-killed-blast-ukraine-occupied-kherson.

Mykola Vorobiov, “Ukraine Launches Sabotage Operations on Occupied Territories and Inside Russia,” Jamestown Foundation, 16 May 2023, https://jamestown.org/program/ukraine-launches-sabotage-operations-on-occupied-territories-and-inside-russia/.

Steven Watson, “‘We created our own weapon’: the anti-invasion magazines defying Putin in Ukraine,” The Guardian, 27 April 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/27/

magazines-art-photography-war-ukraine-russia.

“National Resistance Center of Ukraine,” official website, accessed 21 August 2023, https://sprotyv.mod.gov.ua/en/.

Murray Brewster, “How a delayed vote spells trouble for Moscow’s bid to absorb occupied Ukraine,” CBC News, 7 September 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-russia-kherson-crimea-referendum-1.6574030.

Kurt Vandenplas, NATO Special Operations Headquarters Lessons Learned Bulletin, Issue 18, May 2023, 6-9.

.

“Putin accuses US of trying to ‘drag out’ war in Ukraine: The Russian leader says Washington is ‘using the people of Ukraine as cannon fodder’ as he lashed out at the US for supplying weapons to Kyiv.,” 16 August 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/16/putin-accuses-us-of-trying-to-drag-out-war-in-ukraine.

Brian Petit, Observations based on academic work on Ukraine national defense in Ukraine in 2020 and 2021.

interpopulum.org · by ByThomas R. Searle, Christopher Marsh, and Brian Petit · October 15, 2023

5. What Is Happening on College Campuses Is Not Free Speech

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

What Is Happening on College Campuses Is Not Free Speech

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/opinion/antisemitism-jews-campus.html

Nov. 3, 2023

Credit...Photo Illustration by The New York Times; photographs by Luis Sinco and KeithBinns/Getty

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By Gabriel Diamond, Talia Dror and Jillian Lederman

Mr. Diamond is a senior at Yale University. Ms. Dror is a junior at Cornell University. Ms. Lederman is a senior at Brown University.

Want the latest stories related to Israel and West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for the newsletter Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send them to your inbox.

Since the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, campus life in the United States has imploded into a daily trial of intimidation and insult for Jewish students. A hostile environment that began with statements from pro-Palestinian student organizations justifying terrorism has now rapidly spiraled into death threats and physical attacks, leaving Jewish students alarmed and vulnerable.

On an online discussion forum last weekend, Jewish students at Cornell were called “excrement on the face of the earth,” threatened with rape and beheading and bombarded with demands like “eliminate Jewish living from Cornell campus.” (A 21-year-old junior at Cornell has been charged with posting violent threats.) This horror must end.

Free speech, open debate and heterodox views lie at the core of academic life. They are fundamental to educating future leaders to think and act morally. The reality on some college campuses today is the opposite: open intimidation of Jewish students. Mob harassment must not be confused with free speech.

Universities need to get back to first principles and understand that they have the rules on hand to end intimidation of Jewish students. We need to hold professors and students to a higher standard.

The targeting of Jewish students didn’t stop at Cornell: Jewish students at Cooper Union huddled in the library to escape an angry crowd pounding on the doors; a protester at a rally near New York University carried a sign calling for the world to be kept “clean” of Jews; messages like “glory to our martyrs” were projected onto a George Washington University building.

This most recent wave of hate began with prejudiced comments obscured by seemingly righteous language. Following the Oct. 7 attacks, more than 30 student groups at Harvard signed on to a statement that read, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” There was no mention of Hamas. The university issued such a tepid response, it almost felt like an invitation.

Days later, at a pro-Palestinian rally, the Cornell associate professor Russell Rickford said he was “exhilarated” by Hamas’s terrorist attack. (He later apologized and was granted a leave of absence.) In an article, a Columbia professor, Joseph Massad, seemed to relish the “awesome” scenes of “Palestinian resistance fighters” storming into Israel. Most recently, over 100 Columbia and Barnard professors signed a letter defending students who blamed Israel for Hamas’s attacks. To the best of our knowledge, none of these professors have received meaningful discipline, much less dismissal. Another green light.

Over these last few weeks, dozens of anti-Israel protests have been hosted on or near college campuses. Many of these demonstrations had threatening features: Masked students have chanted slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which many view as a call for the destruction of Israel. Others have shouted, “There is only one solution, intifada revolution.” The word “intifada” has a gruesome history: During the Aqsa intifada of the early 2000s, hundreds of Israeli civilians were killed in attacks.

On at least one occasion, these student protests have even interrupted candlelight vigils for the victims of Oct. 7. And they haven’t been condemned by the leadership at enough universities. In recent days, some universities, including Cornell, have released statements denouncing antisemitism on campus. Harvard also announced the creation of an advisory group to combat antisemitism.

The terms “Zionist” and “colonizer” have evolved into epithets used against Jewish students like us. These labels have been spit at some of us and our friends in dining halls, dorm common rooms, outside classes and at parties.

Failure by any university to affirm that taunts and intimidation have no place on campus legitimizes more violent behaviors. We are seeing it play out before our eyes.

At Columbia, an Israeli student was physically assaulted on campus. Near Tulane, a Jewish student’s head was bashed with the pole of a Palestinian flag after he attempted to stop protesters from burning an Israeli flag. And students at Cornell live in fear that their peers will actualize antisemitic threats.

All students have sacred rights to hold events, teach-ins and protests. And university faculty members must present arguments that make students uncomfortable. University campuses are unique hubs of intellectual discovery and debate, designed to teach students how to act within a free society. But free inquiry is not possible in an environment of intimidation. Harassment and intimidation fly in the face of the purpose of a university.

The codes of ethics of universities across the country condemn intimidation and hold students and faculty to standards of dignity and respect for others. Campuses are at a crossroads: The leadership can either enforce these ethics or these places of learning will succumb to mob rule by their most radical voices, risking the continuation of actual violence.

Simply affirming that taunts and intimidation have no place on campus isn’t enough. Professors violating these rules should be disciplined or dismissed. Student groups that incite or justify violence should not be given university funds to conduct activity on campus.

Furthermore, in line with anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies, established university initiatives that protect minority groups must also include Jews. Universities should adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, as a mechanism for properly identifying and eliminating anti-Jewish hate.

No students should be subject to discrimination, let alone outright threats and hostility, on the basis of their identity. This standard must be applied to Jewish students, too.

Finally, it is vital that individual campus community members — students, professors, alumni, staff members and parents — act against intimidation and incivility. Stand with your Jewish friends at peaceful assemblies. Call on universities via letters and petitions to restore civility on campus.

Although one may think antisemitism has an impact only on Jews, history shows it poisons society at large. Universities have a moral responsibility to counter hateful violence in all its forms. When they fail to do so, they fail us all.

More on antisemitism on campus

Opinion | Matthew Bronfman

What Jewish Students Need From University Leaders Right Now

June 24, 2021

Opinion | Blake Flayton

On the Frontlines of Progressive Anti-Semitism

Nov. 14, 2019

Opinion | Mark Oppenheimer

The Meaning of Stanford’s Apology to Jews

Nov. 2, 2022

Gabriel Diamond is a senior at Yale University studying political science. Talia Dror is a junior at Cornell University studying industrial and labor relations and business. Jillian Lederman is a senior at Brown University studying political science and economics.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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6. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 3, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-3-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces conducted a notably larger series of drone strikes throughout Ukraine on November 3.
• The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced new military aid packages to Ukraine on November 3, primarily aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses.
• Russian milbloggers continued to criticize the Russian military command for failing to establish long-term training capabilities because it is keeping skilled commanders and soldiers at the front and leaving inexperienced careerists to train new recruits and officers.
• Alleged long-time allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin are reportedly financing two Russian Ministry of Defense–subordinated private military companies that have subsumed former Wagner Group operations in Africa.
• Wagner elements in Syria will reportedly transfer Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense systems that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to provide to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah.
• Dagestani officials claimed they would punish those who participate in and organize alleged future demonstrations, in contrast to calls for leniency for those participating in the October 29 antisemitic riots.
• Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov’s continued appeals to Chechen nationalists likely aim to solidify domestic support without disrupting his appearance as a steadfast supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, near Vuhledar, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
• Kremlin-affiliated milbloggers began advertising recruitment into an “elite regiment” in Moscow Oblast and offering recruits one-million-ruble (about $10,900) salaries.
• Kremlin-appointed Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova continued attempts to discredit information about Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Nov 3, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 3, 2023

Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, and Frederick W. Kagan

November 3, 2023, 6:35pm ET

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

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1pm ET on November 3. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the November 4 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian forces conducted a notably larger series of drone strikes throughout Ukraine on November 3. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched four dozen Shahed-131/-136 drones from Kursk Oblast and Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai, and a Kh-59 cruise missile from occupied Kherson Oblast at targets in Ukraine.[1] The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Ukrainian air defenses shot down the Kh-59 cruise missile and 24 of the Shahed drones.[2] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukrainian forces intercepted over half of the roughly 40 drones that Russian forces launched at Ukraine.[3] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces struck targets in Kharkiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Odesa oblasts, and Zelensky stated that Ukrainian air defenses activated in Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, and Lviv oblasts.[4] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces primarily struck civil infrastructure, and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Military Administration Head Svitlana Onyshchuk stated that Russian forces struck an unspecified military facility in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.[5] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces launched small groups of Shaheds to identify the locations of Ukrainian air defenses and then launched several waves of drones to complicate the Ukrainian response.[6] Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky, stated that Russian forces plan to launch more damaging strikes throughout Ukraine as winter approaches.[7]

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced new military aid packages to Ukraine on November 3, primarily aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses. The US DoD announced an aid package of military materiel support for Ukraine valued at $125 million, including munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and HIMARS; 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds; Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) anti-tank missiles; Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems; and over three million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenades.[8] The US DoD will also allocate $300 million to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses over the long term. The US DoD will provide Ukraine laser-guided munitions to counter UAVs under USAI.

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 3. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Bakhmut and Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) directions.[9] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled eight Ukrainian assaults in western Zaporizhia Oblast and several Ukrainian attacks near Bakhmut from October 28 to November 3.[10]

Russian milbloggers continued to criticize the Russian military command for failing to establish long-term training capabilities because it is keeping skilled commanders and soldiers at the front and leaving inexperienced careerists to train new recruits and officers. One Russian milblogger claimed that Russia continues to only learn from its mistakes at the cost of significant losses and that the Russian military command fails to teach effective tactics employed by competent commanders and servicemen to new personnel.[11] The milblogger claimed that the Russian military command commits the most capable commanders and servicemen to the most dangerous frontlines in Ukraine instead of using them to train the incoming class of Russian soldiers. The milblogger added that Russia needs to resolve this problem on a systemic level, otherwise newly formed units will repeat prior Russian mistakes on the frontline. Another Russian milblogger responded to the milblogger’s critiques, noting that Russia needs to have experienced servicemen teach graduating classes at Russian military schools since graduates only study theory and do not receive any practice in modern warfare.[12] The milblogger implied that there are problems with Russian military theory and a lack of proper officer training because generals and officers who receive teaching positions do not have combat experience and only care about their own career growth. The milblogger concluded that the poor command of Russian operations in the Avdiivka direction and near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) indicates that Russian generals do not think about the wellbeing of the Russian Armed Forces in the long-term.

Alleged long-time allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin are reportedly financing two Russian Ministry of Defense–subordinated private military companies that have subsumed former Wagner Group operations in Africa. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on November 3 that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), including Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and members of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU), is continuing efforts to subsume Wagner Group activities in Africa under the MoD-subordinated Redut and Convoy private military companies (PMCs).[13] WSJ reported that Arkady Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko, two Russian billionaires who have known Putin for decades and are in Putin’s inner circle, are financing Convoy and Redut, respectively. This decision is likely an attempt to prevent a single PMC and single financier from again gaining the power and influence to potentially threaten Putin and the Russian central leadership. ISW has previously assessed that Putin routinely appoints people to positions such that no one figure amasses too much political influence.[14] WSJ also reported that Konstantin Pikalov leads Convoy PMC and that Konstantin Mirzayants leads Redut PMC. Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartopolov stated on November 3 that Wagner has “completely disbanded” and that some Wagner fighters continue to operate in Africa but under a “different brand” under the Russian MoD.[15]

Wagner elements in Syria will reportedly transfer Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense systems that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to provide to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah. (NOTE: This text also appeared in the Critical Threats Project’s (CTP) November 3 Iran Update) CNN reported on November 3 that two people familiar with US intelligence stated that Assad agreed to provide the Russian air defense systems to Hezbollah and tasked Wagner with their delivery during joint conversations between the three actors.[16] WSJ reported on November 2 that US intelligence indicated that Wagner itself would give the Russian air defense systems to Hezbollah.[17] Israel frequently conducts airstrikes on Iranian weapons shipments into and through Syria, and Assad may have asked Wagner to deliver the air defense systems to Hezbollah to act as a deterrent to potential Israeli interdiction efforts.[18] CTP-ISW has previously assessed that Russia may be able to facilitate weapons shipments in Syria without risking Israeli airstrikes, and the Kremlin may believe that this Israeli reluctance will extend to Wagner.[19] Russia and Israel have a complex relationship in Syria, as Israel has historically relied on Russia to curb Iranian activities in Syria.[20]

Dagestani officials claimed they would punish those who participate in and organize alleged future demonstrations, in contrast to calls for leniency for those participating in the October 29 antisemitic riots. The office of the Mayor of Makhachkala called on local residents to refrain from participating in unauthorized rallies, including one allegedly planned for November 5, and preemptively threatened that participants and "those who provoke the population” will face “serious consequences.”[21] Russian milbloggers similarly claimed that Telegram channels continue to call on Dagestani residents to attend a November 5 demonstration to demand the release of those detained for the October 29 antisemitic riots.[22] A Russian milblogger continued to criticize the weak official response to the recent riots, stating that “to have mercy means to show weakness.”[23]

Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov’s continued appeals to Chechen nationalists likely aim to solidify domestic support without disrupting his appearance as a steadfast supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kadyrov announced on November 3 that Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree assigning original Chechen names to eight Chechen villages that suffered from Stalin-era deportations and that Soviet authorities disbanded.[24] Russian officials have increasingly suppressed acknowledgements of Stalinist deportations, yet the Kremlin’s support for reversing Stalin’s 1944 order disbanding these Chechen villages suggests that Kadyrov is coordinating his rhetorical appeals with the Kremlin.[25] This likely rhetorical overture follows similar allusions to Chechen national history from Kadyrov, who recently named two new Chechen volunteer battalions after 18th and 19th Century Chechen fighters who resisted Russian imperial rule.[26] These allusions to Chechen national history are a low stakes approach to currying favor with Chechen nationalists who may have negative attitudes towards the Kremlin and Kadyrov’s avowed support of Putin. Kadyrov’s rhetorical support for historical Chechen nationalism diverts conversations away from his current support of the increasingly ultranationalist Kremlin, while only drawing temporary ire from select Russian ultranationalists.[27]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces conducted a notably larger series of drone strikes throughout Ukraine on November 3.
• The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced new military aid packages to Ukraine on November 3, primarily aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses.
• Russian milbloggers continued to criticize the Russian military command for failing to establish long-term training capabilities because it is keeping skilled commanders and soldiers at the front and leaving inexperienced careerists to train new recruits and officers.
• Alleged long-time allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin are reportedly financing two Russian Ministry of Defense–subordinated private military companies that have subsumed former Wagner Group operations in Africa.
• Wagner elements in Syria will reportedly transfer Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense systems that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to provide to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah.
• Dagestani officials claimed they would punish those who participate in and organize alleged future demonstrations, in contrast to calls for leniency for those participating in the October 29 antisemitic riots.
• Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov’s continued appeals to Chechen nationalists likely aim to solidify domestic support without disrupting his appearance as a steadfast supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, near Vuhledar, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
• Kremlin-affiliated milbloggers began advertising recruitment into an “elite regiment” in Moscow Oblast and offering recruits one-million-ruble (about $10,900) salaries.
• Kremlin-appointed Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova continued attempts to discredit information about Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children.

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

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian 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 along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 3 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks in the Kupyansk direction near Synkivka (7km northeast of Kupyansk), Petropavlivka (5km northeast of Kupyansk), and Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) and in the Svatove area near Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove).[28] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that elements of the Russian Western Grouping of Forces improved their positions near Kupyansk.[29] One prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced southwest of Pershotravneve (24km east of Kupyansk), and another milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced near Petropavlivka and Synkivka and are making progress near Makiivka (20km southwest of Svatove).[30] Russian sources posted footage purporting to show Russian aviation striking Ukrainian crossings across the Oskil River in the Kupyansk direction with FAB-500 glide bombs.[31] The Ukrainian State Border Guard Service posted footage of Ukrainian border guards repelling a small Russian infantry attack near Svatove.[32] A Russian milblogger posted footage purportedly of Russian airborne (VDV) snipers operating in the forest areas near Kreminna.[33]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 3. Russian Western Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Sergei Zybinsky claimed that elements of the Russian Western Grouping of Forces repelled a Ukrainian assault near Synkivka.[34] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that elements of the Russian Western Grouping of Forces repelled 24 Ukrainian assaults in the Kupyansk direction and that elements of the Russian Central Grouping of Forces repelled 20 Ukrainian assaults in the Lyman direction between October 28 and November 3.[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)

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on November 3 but did not make any claimed or confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations south of Bakhmut.[36] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that elements of the Russian Southern Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian assaults near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut) between October 28 and November 3.[37]

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations near Bakhmut on November 3 but did not make any confirmed or claimed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled more than 10 Russian assaults near Bohdanivka (7km northwest of Bakhmut), Khromove (immediately west of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut), and Pivdenne (21km southwest of Bakhmut).[38]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Avdiivka on November 3 and made confirmed gains on Avdiivka’s northern flank. Geolocated footage published on November 3 indicates that Russian forces advanced southwest of Krasnohorivka (4km north of Avdiivka) towards the railway line north of Avdiivka.[39] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued to resist Russian advances near Avdiivka and repelled more than 17 Russian assaults near Stepove (3km north of Avdiivka), Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka), Tonenke (7km west of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka).[40] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun later stated that there were no active combat engagements near Avdiivka but that Ukrainian forces expect ”the situation to worsen” in the area.[41] Avdiivka City Military Administration Head Vitaliy Barabash stated that Russian forces are heavily shelling Ukrainian positions in Avdiivka and that infantry battles are ongoing north and south of the settlement.[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces made unspecified advances southeast of Avdiivka as of November 3.[43] Russian sources claimed on November 2 and 3 that Russian forces advanced north and west of Krasnohorivka, towards Novokalynove (8km northwest of Bakhmut), and near Stepove and pushed through Ukrainian defenses near Vesele (4km northeast of Avdiivka).[44] Russian milbloggers claimed that fighting continued near the Avdiivka Coke Plant, Avdiivka’s southern and southwestern outskirts, and Opytne (4km south of Avdiivka).[45] A Ukrainian military observer stated that Russian forces are quickly constructing fortifications in the rear areas close to the areas of intended advance in the Avdiivka area so that they can more quickly commit reserves to combat.[46]

Ukrainian officials and Russian sources reported that Russian forces are preparing for a third series of larger assaults near Avdiivka. Barabash stated that Russian forces are concentrating manpower and equipment for a third massive assault on Avdiivka and that Russian forces would likely focus their offensive operations on the Avdiivka Coke Plant in northern Avdiivka.[47] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces near Avdiivka are conducting a tactical regrouping and similarly highlighted the Avdiivka Coke Plant as the objective of potential future Russian offensive operations.[48] Barabash stated that Russian forces will renew larger offensive operations when the ground near Avdiivka dries after several recent days of heavy rain.[49]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked near Avdiivka on November 3 but did not advance. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are constantly conducting counterattacks near Avdiivka.[50] A prominent milblogger claimed on November 2 that Ukrainian counterattacks have failed to prevent Russian advances on Avdiivka’s southern and northern flanks.[51] A Russian media aggregator claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked north of the Avdiivka Coke Plant on November 2 but did not specify an outcome.[52]

Russian forces continued offensive operations west and southwest of Donetsk City on November 3 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled more than 20 Russian assaults near Marinka (immediately southwest of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (11km southwest of Donetsk City).[53]

The Russian MoD (MoD) claimed that elements of the Russian Southern Grouping of Forces repelled several Ukrainian assaults near Marinka between October 28 and November 3.[54]

Ukrainian forces repelled mechanized Russian assaults near Vuhledar on November 2. Geolocated footage published on November 2 shows Ukrainian forces striking a column of Russian armored vehicles during a Russian assault on the eastern outskirts Mykilske (4km southeast of Vuhledar).[55] Shtupun stated on November 3 that Ukrainian forces recently destroyed dozens of Russian military vehicles and stopped a Russian attack near Vuhledar.[56] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky similarly stated on November 2 that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults in the general Vuhledar direction and that Russian forces lost dozens of military vehicles during the attacks.[57]

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

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) in the past week.[58]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not make any confirmed gains on November 3. A Russian milblogger claimed on November 2 that Russian forces advanced along the Pryyutne-Staromayorske line (9km south to 16km southwest of Veylka Novosilka) in recent weeks and that elements of the Russian 394th Motorized Rifle Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division, 5th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) recently advanced north of the Hrusheva gully northeast of Pryyutne (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[59] Another Russian milblogger claimed on November 3 that Russian forces attacked from Pryyutne but Ukrainian forces held their positions.[60] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Staromayorske and Prechystivka (18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[61] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 2 that Russian forces counterattacked west of Staromayorske.[62]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on November 3. Russian milbloggers claimed on November 2 and 3 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv), Kopani (5km northwest of Robotyne), Novoprokopivka (2km south of Robotyne), and Verbove (9km east of Robotyne).[63] The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Verbove and Robotyne in the past week.[64]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on November 3. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Robotyne.[65] Russian sources, including the Russian MoD, reported that elements of the Russian 7th Airborne (VDV) Division are operating near Robotyne and Verbove.[66]

Ukrainian and Russian forces reportedly conducted ground attacks on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast. Russian sources claimed on November 2 and 3 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Poyma (10km southeast of Kherson City and 4km from the Dnipro River) and Krynky.[67] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 2 and 3 that Russian forces conducted assaults in Krynky (30km northeast of Kherson Oblast and 2km from the Dnipro River) and pushed Ukrainian forces to the center of the settlement.[68] The milblogger noted that Ukrainian artillery and drone activity are complicating Russian attempts to recapture Krynky.[69]

Russian forces continued airstrikes with glide bombs against targets on the west (right) bank of Kherson Oblast on November 3. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces launched 18 glide bombs at targets in Kherson and Beryslav raions over the past day.[70]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a missile strike on Russian rear areas in occupied Kherson Oblast on November 3. Russian occupation officials and milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces launched six missiles on Chaplynka and that Russian air defenses intercepted four of the missiles.[71]

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

Kremlin-affiliated milbloggers began advertising recruitment into an “elite regiment” in Moscow Oblast that offered recruits one-million-ruble (about $10,900) salaries.[72] Milbloggers claimed that recruitment into the unnamed elite regiment is ongoing until November 25.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Siberian service reportedly uncovered the largest Wagner Group burial ground in eastern Russia.[73] RFE/RL reported that one of the local Novosibirsk cemeteries is a burial ground for at least 368 Wagner servicemen, of whom most died between January and March 2023 during Wagner’s assault on Bakhmut.

Russian field commanders are reportedly selling mobilized personnel into service with Russian private military companies (PMCs). Russian investigative outlet Vazhnye Istorii (iStories) spoke to a mother of a Russian mobilized serviceman who had been reportedly sold to “Redut” private military company (PMC) for 25,000 rubles ($272).[74] The mother claimed that Russian Colonel “Kozhanov” sold one of his mobilized fighters assigned to two military units, the 1440thMobilized Regiment (unit 29593) and unit 29303, to the ”Veterany” separate sabotage assault brigade (Redut PMC). Relatives of servicemen in the 1440thMobilized Regiment previously complained in May 2023 that the Russian command transferred elements of the regiment to the “Veterany” brigade.[75]

Relatives of Russian mobilized servicemen continue to appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to order rotations on the frontline. Wives and mothers of mobilized personnel from Novorossiysk in unit 61756 asked Putin to send the mobilized personnel to the rear or give them a break after fighting on the frontline for a year.[76]

The Commission on Demography, Protection of Family, Children and Traditional Values of the Russian Civic Chamber proposed to issue “paternity capital” in the sum of one million rubles for the birth or adoption of a third child.[77] The sum is almost twice as much as the maternity capital. The Russian Civic Chamber believes that “paternity capital” will improve the demographic situation in Russia.

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

Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov claimed on November 3 that Chechnya established drone production assembly facilities at the Russian Spetsnaz University in Gudermes.[78] Kadyrov claimed that future FPV-drone operators will also train at the university and that Chechnya will produce more than 100 drones in November to use on the frontlines in Ukraine.

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)

Kremlin-appointed Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova continued attempts to discredit information about Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children. Lvova-Belova announced on November 3 that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a press conference with foreign journalists and promoted the “Day After Tomorrow” program through which Russian authorities illegally deport Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine to Russia under the guise of vacations and educational programs.[79]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated long-standing Kremlin narratives during a meeting with the Russian Civic Chamber on November 3.[80] Putin continued to deny Ukraine’s historical existence and blamed the West for its role in the Ukraine crisis. Putin also accused Ukraine of selling weapons to the Taliban and accused the West and Ukraine of trying to organize “Jewish pogroms” in Russia. Putin repeated boilerplate rhetoric about Russia’s war effort in Ukraine as being part of its alleged need to protect Russian history, culture, and language in Ukraine.

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

A Pro-Wagner Russian milblogger amplified footage on November 3 purporting to show Wagner Group personnel conducting intensive combat training with unspecified Belarusian special forces units at the Volovshchina training center in Minsk Oblast.[81]

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

7. Iran Update, November 3, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-3-2023

Key Takeaways:

1. Palestinian militias targeted IDF ground forces with small arms, anti-tank fire, and indirect fire in the northern Gaza Strip.
2. Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted indirect fire attacks into Israeli territory, primarily in Southern Israel.
3. Palestinian militants engaged Israeli forces in small arms and IED attacks in the Jenin refugee camp overnight on November 2-3 amid Israeli arrest raids.
4. Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and other Axis of Resistance militias conducted three attacks from southern Lebanon into Israel on November 3, including one attack using a one-way attack drone.
5. LH Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s November 3 speech supports a long-running Iranian and Axis of Resistance information operation that claims Israeli actions are an extension of US policy.
6. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed two attacks inside Israel on October 3, the group’s first time attacking outside Iraq and Syria. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq also claimed responsibility for a one-way drone attack targeting US forces in Iraq on November 3.
7. Wagner elements in Syria will reportedly transfer Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense systems that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to provide to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah.
8. Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is continuing to coordinate politically with senior Hamas leadership.

IRAN UPDATE, NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Nov 3, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, November 3, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Andie Parry, Brian Carter, Annika Ganzeveld, Kathryn Tyson, Sydney White, Riley Bailey and Frederick W. Kagan

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST

Contributor: James Cary

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 and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

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

Key Takeaways:

1. Palestinian militias targeted IDF ground forces with small arms, anti-tank fire, and indirect fire in the northern Gaza Strip.
2. Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted indirect fire attacks into Israeli territory, primarily in Southern Israel.
3. Palestinian militants engaged Israeli forces in small arms and IED attacks in the Jenin refugee camp overnight on November 2-3 amid Israeli arrest raids.
4. Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and other Axis of Resistance militias conducted three attacks from southern Lebanon into Israel on November 3, including one attack using a one-way attack drone.
5. LH Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s November 3 speech supports a long-running Iranian and Axis of Resistance information operation that claims Israeli actions are an extension of US policy.
6. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed two attacks inside Israel on October 3, the group’s first time attacking outside Iraq and Syria. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq also claimed responsibility for a one-way drone attack targeting US forces in Iraq on November 3.
7. Wagner elements in Syria will reportedly transfer Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense systems that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to provide to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah.
8. Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is continuing to coordinate politically with senior Hamas leadership.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Israeli Clearing Operations

Palestinian militias targeted IDF ground forces with small arms, anti-tank fire, and indirect fire in the northern Gaza Strip. IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that the IDF is encircling Gaza City from the air land, and sea.[1] Fighting continued behind the Israeli forward line of advance in the central Gaza Strip, however. The al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—claimed responsibility for attacking IDF forces in the northwest, northeast, and south of Gaza City.[2] The al Qassem Brigades used anti-tank munitions and their intricate network of tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip to ambush IDF forces.[3] They also used rockets and mortars to attack IDF vehicles and infantry near the Erez military checkpoint on the northern border.[4] The al Quds Brigades—the militant wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—claimed to fire artillery at advancing IDF vehicles along the coast.[5] The al Quds Brigades military spokesmen said his fighters fired anti-tank munitions at Israeli vehicles and thwarted a maritime landing attempt west of Gaza City.[6] A Palestinian journalist reported clashes in the Zaytoun and Shujaia neighborhoods southeast of Gaza City on November 3.[7] Palestinian militias have attacked IDF forces and vehicles in Zaytoun neighborhood since October 30 as the IDF attempts to clear territory south of the city.[8]

Hamas and PIJ are coordinating attacks on IDF ground forces in the Gaza Strip. The al Qassem Brigades conducted an attack against IDF ground forces northwest of Gaza City on November 3 with artillery support from the al Quds Brigades.[9] Hamas and PIJ leadership have coordinated throughout the war in bilateral planning meetings. [10] The tactical coordination on the ground and coordination at the senior level is consistent with the reality that the IDF is facing a coalition of several Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip.

The IDF said its forces recently took over a Hamas military stronghold used by Nukhba–a naval special forces unit of Hamas’ militant wing–and Hamas’ operational intelligence headquarters in Jabaliya.[11] The Assistant to the Israeli director of military intelligence said that Jabaliya is a hub of Hamas’ tunnel network used for weapons stockpiles, rocket firing positions, and tunnels leading to the coast.[12] The IDF is degrading Hamas’ naval capabilities, which Hamas could use to target Israeli gas rigs and other infrastructure, according to an Israeli journalist.[13] Palestinian militants continued to operate in Jabaliya. The al Quds Brigades claimed to engage IDF forces at a “close distance” east of Jabaliya.[14]

Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted indirect fire attacks into Israeli territory, primarily in Southern Israel. Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted indirect fire attacks into Israel at a decreased rate on November 3. The al Qassem Brigades claimed responsibility for four indirect fire attacks.[15] The al Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for another four indirect fire attacks. The al Quds Brigades’ indirect fire targeted Israeli military concentrations in three locations adjacent to the Gaza Strip.[16] The National Resistance Brigades—the militant wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—claimed one indirect fire attack into southern Israel.[17]

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

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

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

CTP-ISW recorded 12 separate clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in the West Bank on November 3. CTP-ISW also recorded 10 instances of IED attacks against Israeli forces in the West Bank, which is an increase compared with the daily average of IED attacks in the area over the past week. The Tulkarm Battalion of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed IED attacks against Israeli forces in four locations in Tulkarm on November 3.[18] The Tulkarm Battalion of the al Quds Brigades engaged Israeli forces with small arms and IEDs in Tulkarm at the same time as the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades’ attack on November 3, indicating possible coordination between the groups.[19] The al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and al Quds Brigades previously conducted combined attacks in Tulkarm on October 30.[20]

Palestinian militants engaged Israeli forces in small arms and IED attacks in the Jenin refugee camp overnight on November 2-3 amid Israeli arrest raids.[21] The Jenin Brigade of the al Quds Brigades claimed it conducted small arms and IED attacks on Israeli forces on November 3, presumably in Jenin, though the brigade did not indicate where the attacks occurred.[22] The IDF conducted an airstrike which it said killed multiple militants in the Jenin refugee camp on November 3.[23] The IDF also dropped leaflets calling for West Bank residents not to work with Hamas and other militant groups.[24] The attacks came after West Bank residents in Jenin and Tulkarm broadcasted a speech by al Qassem Brigades spokesperson Abu Obaida on November 2, who said its fighters would ”make the enemy pay.”[25]

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

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Lebanese Hezbollah and other Axis of Resistance militias conducted three attacks from southern Lebanon into Israel on November 3, including one attack using a one-way attack drone. LH claimed two attacks, including a one-way attack drone targeting Israeli forces near Mt. Dov.[26] The IDF reported that the drone attack wounded two soldiers, and that the IDF targeted an LH military position with an airstrike in response.[27] Unspecified militants also fired an anti-tank guided missile targeting an Israeli military site near Manara.[28]

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

LH Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s November 3 speech supports a long-running Iranian and Axis of Resistance information operation that claims Israeli actions are an extension of US policy.[29] Nasrallah said that the United States is “completely responsible" for Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip.[30] He added that to avert US involvement in the war, Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip must cease.[31] Nasrallah also threatened that if the war expands, the United States will suffer the most and “endure the greatest losses.”[32] This information operation is implicitly threatening that LH will expand the war if the United States does not constrain Israeli ground operations. Nasrallah’s threats and the information operation are consistent with Iran's and its so-called Axis of Resistance’s objectives. We assess these objectives to be (1) deter Israel from trying to destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip, (2) prevent Israel from destroying Hamas if deterrence fails, and (3) deter the United States from providing military support for Israel’s ground operation in the Gaza Strip.[33]

Nasrallah also identified halting the fighting in Gaza and securing a victory for Hamas in the region as LH’s two primary objectives as part of his justification for failing to increase support to Hamas. Nasrallah said that LH seeks to halt the fighting in Gaza and secure a victory for Hamas, which he claims would further the interests of the people of the region.[34]  Nasrallah justified the relatively low-level of support that LH has provided for Hamas by arguing that LH has successfully fixed large numbers of Israeli forces on the Israel-Lebanon border.[35] Nasrallah noted that any further LH actions depend on Israeli operations in Gaza, adding that ”all options are on the table.”[36] These statements are consistent with CTP’s assessment of LH’s activity on the Israel-Lebanon border, which aims to draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel while setting conditions for successive campaigns into Israel.[37]

Iranian state media widely covered Nasrallah’s speech on November 3.

• State-controlled outlets primarily focused on Nasrallah’s threats to US assets and forces in the region, warnings about the expansion of the war to new fronts, and claims that the Al Aqsa Flood Operation was “100 percent” a Palestinian initiative.[38] The Iranian regime, like Nasrallah, has in recent weeks accused the United States of being directly involved in the war.[39] The regime has additionally set informational conditions to blame the United States and Israel for any further escalation of the war, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[40]
• IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency framed Nasrallah’s speech as marking the opening of a new front against Israel that can “inflict a final blow on the Israeli military and government.”[41] This framing differed from other Iranian media coverage of Nasrallah’s speech in that it framed the speech itself as an escalation, rather than as a warning of future escalation. Fars notably published this statement approximately 10 minutes after the conclusion of Nasrallah’s speech.
• Iranian officials and media emphasized Israel’s “fear” of Nasrallah and LH on November 3. Tabriz, East Azerbaijan Friday Prayer Leader Mohammad Ali al Hashim stated that Nasrallah “terrifies” Israel, which he described as a “victory.”[42] Al Hashim added that Israel’s “fear” of Nasrallah underscores the “high importance of Nasrallah in equations in West Asia and even in the world.” Iranian media separately recirculated Israeli reporting that LH is waging a “psychological war” against Israel and that the IDF had been in “full alert” and “on standby” ahead of Nasrallah’s speech.[43]
• Iranian media highlighted Iranians’ support for Nasrallah. Raisi administration-affiliated IRNA reported that “thousands” of Iranians gathered in Tehran on November 3 to support Palestinians and watch Nasrallah’s speech.[44] Fars similarly reported that university students gathered near the former US Embassy in Tehran to watch Nasrallah’s speech.[45] Various state-controlled outlets livestreamed Nasrallah’s speech on November 3.

Harakat Hezbollah al Nubja (HHN) leader Akram al Kaabi released a statement on November 3 in reaction to Nasrallah’s speech stating that the Iraqi resistance is ready to participate in the Israel-Hamas war with ground forces.[46] Kaabi said Iraqi ground forces can take on Israel side-by-side with Palestinian and Lebanese militias. Kaabi also affirmed that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq’s battle with American forces is an existential battle and will not end without total liberation. Kaabi previously announced on November 1 that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq would liberate Iraq by military force and to expect greater attacks.[47]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed two attacks inside Israel on October 3, the group’s first time attacking outside Iraq and Syria. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed to attack vital Israeli infrastructure on the coast on the Dead Sea with unspecified weapons.[48] The group also claimed an unspecified attack on the Israeli Red Sea city of Eilat in response to Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians.[49] The Al Qassem Brigades reposted the Islamic Resistance in Iraq’s Eilat claim.[50] Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it would start a new phase of confrontation next week that will be more severe and wider across the region.[51]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq also claimed responsibility for a one-way drone attack targeting US forces in Iraq on November 3. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed it launched two drones targeting US forces near the Erbil International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan and achieved “direct hits.”[52] Reuters cited two security sources reporting that US forces shot down two drones targeting the al Harir base, which is a separate location thirty miles north of Erbil International Airport.[53] The US Department of Defense stated on November 2 that there had been 28 attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria since October 17.[54]

An Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)-linked Mahan Air flight purportedly transporting shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADs) landed at the Russian Hmeimim military airport in northern Syria from Tehran on November 2.[55] Israeli media said that the airplane carried five tons of weapons and arrived at the airport, which it said appears to provide a safe cover for the IRGC.[56] Four trucks carried the plane’s cargo to central and southern Syria, according to local opposition media.[57] CTP-ISW cannot corroborate or verify these claims. Sources at Hmeimim Airport reported to opposition media that Russia agreed to let Iran use its military airport in Syria for weapons transfers.[58] This claim is consistent with a report from Kuwaiti newspaper al Jarida on October 2 that LH would provide weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine in exchange for Russian forces transporting Iranian weapons through Syria to LH in Lebanon. CTP-ISW previously reported on this supposed Iran-LH-Syria-Russia deal in detail on October 2.[59] Russia may be able to facilitate weapons shipments without risking Israeli airstrikes interdicting them. Russia and Israel have a complex relationship in Syria, as Israel has historically relied on Russia to curb Iranian activities in Syria.[60] Israel has stopped giving Russian forces advanced warning of its strikes into Israel, however.[61]

Wagner elements in Syria will reportedly transfer Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense systems that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to provide to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah. (NOTE: This text also appeared in the Institute for the Study of War’s November 3 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment) CNN reported on November 3 that two people familiar with US intelligence stated that Assad agreed to provide the Russian air defense systems to Hezbollah and tasked Wagner with their delivery during joint conversations between the three actors.[62] The Wall Street Journal reported on November 2 that US intelligence indicated that Wagner itself would give the Russian air defense systems to Hezbollah.[63] Israel frequently conducts airstrikes on Iranian weapons shipments into and through Syria, and Assad may have asked Wagner to deliver the air defense systems to Hezbollah to act as a deterrent to potential Israeli interdiction efforts.[64] CTP-ISW has previously assessed that Russia may be able to facilitate weapons shipments in Syria without risking Israeli airstrikes, and the Kremlin may believe that this Israeli reticence will extend to Wagner.[65] Russia and Israel have a complex relationship in Syria, as Israel has historically relied on Russia to curb Iranian activities in Syria.[66]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian held separate phone calls with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on November 3.[67] Abdollahian emphasized the readiness of Axis of Resistance members to act against Israel during his meeting with Mekdad.[68] These phone calls follow Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Special Representative for Syrian Affairs Alexander Lavrentiev in Tehran on November 2.[69] Iranian media additionally recirculated on November 3 Western reporting that Israel is not giving Russian forces advanced warning of its strikes into Syria.[70]

Iraqi Prime Minister Shia al Sudani removed two professional, experienced military commanders on November 1, possibly due to pressure from the Iranian-backed Shia Coordination Framework. Sudani removed Counter-Terrorism Service commander LTG Abdul Wahhab al Saadi and Baghdad Operations Commander LTG Ahmed Salim Bahjat, replacing them with experienced CTS LTG Karim Abboud Mohammed and former Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki-linked MG Walid Khalifa al Tamimi respectively.[71] An Iraqi political analyst said that the sackings were due to “political influences,“ adding that the Shia Coordination Framework fears the CTS after it conducted raids targeting Iranian-backed factions under former Prime Minister Mustafa al Kadhimi.[72] The analyst added that the Framework is attempting to ”control” the CTS and that ”those in power” are fearful of a CTS-led coup.[73]

The Secretary General of the Iraqi Defense Ministry issued instructions to the Iraqi Army Chief of Staff on October 28 to ensure troop and materiel readiness on account of the rapidly changing security situation.[74] The leaked letter instructed forces to protect weapons and ammunition depots, to repair all military equipment and weapons, and secure barracks and bases, and advised additional intelligence collection against future threats.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is continuing to coordinate politically with senior Hamas leadership. Abdollahian held a phone call with Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh on November 2, marking the fourth time Abdollahian and Haniyeh have discussed the Israel-Hamas war since October 7.[75] Iranian media did not provide details of what Abdollahian and Haniyeh discussed. Their phone call notably comes amid IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari’s November 2 announcement that Haniyeh is slated to travel to Tehran.[76] Iranian diaspora and anti-regime media recirculated Hagari’s announcement, although state-controlled outlets have not responded to or denied the announcement.[77]

Anti-regime outlet Iran International claimed on November 3 that senior Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba (HHN) commanders are in Tehran.[78] CTP cannot independently verify this claim, although it is entirely plausible that HHN commanders are coordinating their actions vis-à-vis the Israel-Hamas war with Iranian officials. HHN has previously attacked US forces in Iraq and is affiliated with the Iranian-backed militia Asaib Ahl al Haq, which is a member of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.[79] HHN was one of three Iranian-backed militias that released a statement on November 1 signaling that they may escalate against US forces in Iraq and Syria, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[80]

8. Ukraine appears to be pulling off the 'Anaconda Plan'

Ukraine appears to be pulling off the 'Anaconda Plan'

news.yahoo.com · by Logan NyeNovember 3, 2023 at 8:01 PM·5 min read132Link Copied

Ukraine isn't making the fast progress across Russian lines that many had hoped. Last year, during their first major counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces advanced miles on some days. But now, getting a few dozen meters through a Russian minefield represents a great day. It's not fun to watch, and it leaves thousands of Ukrainian families in harm's way. But Ukraine's recent strikes on the Black Sea Fleet, advances toward the M14, and repeated hits on Russian bridges are starting to look like America's Anaconda Plan from the Civil War. You remember, the slow, grinding strategy that cut off the Confederacy from re-supply and led to U.S. victory in the war?

It won't result in flashy, cathartic seizures of territory, but it could still result in victory, especially near Crimea.

The original Anaconda Plan and Ukraine parallels

General Winfield Scott proposed and enacted his "Anaconda Plan" at the start of the Civil War. Most Northerners expected a quick victory, but Scott knew it was unlikely. He thought the best way to win as fast as possible was to dig in for the long fight from the start.

As the Library of Congress puts it:

Scott’s Great Snake, published at the outset of the Civil War, humorously portrays General Winfield Scott’s “Anaconda Plan” to strangle the southern states by cutting off any imported supplies and halting cotton exports. Blockading fleets were also used on inland rivers to assist Union military operations. The Anaconda Plan emerged out of Scott’s understanding that the war would be long and slow, frustrating Northerners who thought a quick capture of Richmond would bring the rebellion to a sudden end.

Places in Civil War History: The Anaconda Plan and Union Victories in Tennessee

Ukraine, like the United States at the start of its campaign against rebellious forces, would love a fast victory. But it appears to have decided that a large, complicated, NATO-style attack against Russian defenses won't work. Since NATO and especially U.S. tactics assume air parity or superiority against an enemy, it makes sense that Ukraine needs a different plan.

Ukraine attempted the big, sweeping mechanized moves early in the counteroffensive. But their armored vehicles got bogged down and targeted by artillery. And so they switched to a slow strategy of chipping away at the defensive lines with small teams of infantry.

But at the same time, Ukraine has ramped up attacks on the Black Sea Fleet, continued to attack Russian bridges into Crimea, and now has struck Berdiansk–a crucial part of the land bridge–all developments that could choke southern Ukraine like it's being constricted by an anaconda.

1861 cartoon map of Scott's plan with caricatures.

Still, this might not be an anaconda play

It's important to note: Ukraine may not be attempting an isolation play.

Their attacks on the Black Sea Fleet include a direct hit on a Russian LST that limits seaborne resupply. But hitting high-dollar ships is valuable regardless. And hitting the Black Sea Fleet might just be a way to demonstrate capabilities while the ground war is so static.

Ukrainian strikes against bridges to Crimea could be more about hitting Putin's prestige projects more than about isolating the peninsula.

The severing of the land bridge is definitely an isolation play, but it could be about just breaking apart the enemy lines rather than concerted strangulation. Putting pressure on the land bridge also degrades morale and prevents Russian unit rotations. And it, of course, would allow for the liberation of cities like Melitopol.

What Ukraine needs for the potential play to be successful

But if Ukraine is enacting an Anaconda Plan against Kherson, Crimea, and Zaporizhzhia, it would look exactly like what Ukraine is currently doing. To be successful, it needs to further degrade the Black Sea fleet, do more damage to the road and rail bridges over the Kerch Strait, and most importantly, sever the land bridge that connects Russia to its most southerly formations in the Kherson Oblast and Crimea. Near Tokmak and Robotyne, that land bridge is almost down to just the M14 highway.

And Ukraine has already reached rocket range of the M14 highway. And recently, it actually struck a target along with M14 with ATACMS.

Russia appears to know how vulnerable it will be without the land bridge. It simply doesn't have the logistics capability to provide for the tens of thousands of troops in the south if it loses the land bridge. And it's using increased air strikes, deployments of the Russian Airborne Forces, and more to try to hold Ukraine away from Tokmak and Polohy.

The supply of American ATACMS make it much easier for Ukraine to isolate those forces. But if the HIMARS are range-limited as is reported or if America only donates cluster variants of the missile, it would still be quite hard for Ukraine to use the weapons effectively against the Black Sea Fleet or bridges. (The German Taurus missile, which Germany says it won't send, would be perfect against ships and bridges.)

But even if Ukraine is successful, it will take months for cut-off Russian units to surrender or become degraded enough for Ukraine to easily defeat. Anaconda Plans are not fast. But lasting success is more important than quick victory.

news.yahoo.com · by Logan NyeNovember 3, 2023 at 8:01 PM·5 min read132Link Copied

9. Media's In-House Critics to Reporters: Quit Quoting Palestinians About Civilian Deaths - FAIR

Graphics at the link: https://fair.org/home/medias-in-house-critics-to-reporters-quit-quoting-palestinians-about-civilian-deaths/

Excerpts:

But the articles that chided media for being overly credulous toward Gazan authorities themselves failed to critically examine the claims they relied on. In fact, the rebukes of news outlets for citing Gazan officials were based on dubious or ambiguous evidence, and were cherry-picked to present a case that absolved Israel. This one-way skepticism suggests less a concern for careful, accurate journalism than it does a worry that, at a time when a US-allied government is inflicting mass civilian casualties, the institutions of the targeted population will be treated as credible sources.

For example, commentators prominently cited audio offered by an Israeli military spokesperson as authoritative evidence. “Israel released what it said were recordings of Hamas operatives discussing the blast as the misfire of a rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” the Atlantic wrote, adding only, “The group has denied this version of events.”

Media's In-House Critics to Reporters: Quit Quoting Palestinians About Civilian Deaths - FAIR

fair.org · by Jim Naureckas, Ari Paul · November 3, 2023

Articles like the Atlantic‘s (10/23/23) that took media to task for supposedly credulous reporting of the Gaza hospital blast actually demonstrated less skepticism of their sources than the initial coverage they complained about.

The devastating explosion at a Gaza hospital on October 17 provoked soul-searching in US corporate media—over the willingness of press outlets to quote Gaza officials who attributed the calamity to an Israeli airstrike.

“News Outlets Backtrack on Gaza Blast After Relying on Hamas as Key Source,” NPR (10/24/23) reported. “The initial coverage of a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital last week offers a fresh reminder of how hard it can be to get the news right—and what happens when it goes awry,” wrote NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.

“How the Media Got the Hospital Explosion Wrong” was the headline of an Atlantic article by Yascha Mounk (10/23/23), which asserted:

As more details about the blast emerged, the initial claims so credulously repeated by the world’s leading news outlets came to look untenable….

The cause of the tragedy, it appears, is the opposite of what news outlets around the world first reported. Rather than having been an Israeli attack on civilians, the balance of evidence suggests that it was a result of terrorists’ disregard for the lives of the people on whose behalf they claim to be fighting.

The New York Times (10/23/23) offered an editorial mea culpa, saying its initial coverage “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified.”

(What seems to be the New York Times‘ first mention of the blast—posted on its live feed on the “Israel/Hamas War” at 4:41 pm EDT on October 17—was headed “Hundreds Die in an Explosion at a Gaza Hospital, Setting Off Exchanges of Blame.” The first paragraph concluded, “The authorities blamed an Israeli airstrike, but the assertion was disputed by the Israel Defense Forces, which blamed an errant rocket fired by an armed Palestinian faction.” By 7:32 that evening, the feed was headed, “Israelis and Palestinians Blame Each Other for Blast at Gaza Hospital That Killed Hundreds.”)

CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy (10/26/23) demanded that numerous outlets retract their reporting—mainly because “Israel and the US have assessed that the rocket originated in Gaza, not Israel.”

CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy (10/26/23) took to task numerous outlets, including AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal and his own network for their “negligent reporting” that “amplified Hamas’s claims” on the blast. “Did these outlets stand by their initial reporting?” he asked them. “Was there any regret repeating claims from the terrorist group?” With the exceptions of the New York Times and the BBC, they “declin[ed] to explain to their audiences how they initially got an important story of such great magnitude so wrong.”

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post (10/18/23) heaped scorn on “Media Suckered by Hamas’s Hospital Lie,” saying, “We’re not sure why any reputable journo ever believed Hamas in the first place.” “Hard evidence shows that…the rocket was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Israel,” the tabloid confidently asserted.

A dubious recording

But the articles that chided media for being overly credulous toward Gazan authorities themselves failed to critically examine the claims they relied on. In fact, the rebukes of news outlets for citing Gazan officials were based on dubious or ambiguous evidence, and were cherry-picked to present a case that absolved Israel. This one-way skepticism suggests less a concern for careful, accurate journalism than it does a worry that, at a time when a US-allied government is inflicting mass civilian casualties, the institutions of the targeted population will be treated as credible sources.

For example, commentators prominently cited audio offered by an Israeli military spokesperson as authoritative evidence. “Israel released what it said were recordings of Hamas operatives discussing the blast as the misfire of a rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” the Atlantic wrote, adding only, “The group has denied this version of events.”

“Don’t take our word for it!” the New York Post (10/18/23) said—instead take the word of a dodgy tape provided by Israel that audio investigators say was doctored.

“Don’t take our word for it!” the New York Post insisted. “The IDF has released audio of two Hamas operatives saying, quite literally, that the rocket is ‘from us’ (i.e. Islamist combatants trying to destroy Israel).”

What these outlets didn’t note is that serious questions have been raised about the authenticity of this audio. Alex Thomson of Britain’s Channel 4 (10/18/23) reported:

Hamas call this an obvious fabrication. Two independent Arab journalists told us the same thing, because of the language, accent, dialect, syntax and tone, none of which is, they say, credible.

The London Daily Mail (10/18/23) likewise reported that “Hamas and independent experts…said the tone, syntax, accent and idiom were ‘absurd.’”

Channel 4 (10/20/23) later reported on a forensic analysis of the tape conducted by Earshot, a nonprofit audio analysis group, which determined that the

recording is made up of two separate channels, and demonstrates that these two voices have been recorded independently. These two independent recordings have then been edited together in a digital audio work station.

As a general rule, journalists should be particularly skeptical of intercepts that say precisely what the interceptors would want them to say—as with the hospital tape, in which one of the participants says, “That’s why we are saying it belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

Cherry-picking video analysis

An Al Jazeera video analysis (10/19/23) found that “Israeli statements seem to have misinterpreted the evidence to build a story that one of the flashes recorded by several sources was a rocket misfire.”

There was also considerable weight placed on video showing an airborne object bursting into flames around the time of the hospital explosion, with Israel asserting that this was the Islamic Jihad rocket that struck the hospital. Wrote the Atlantic:

A live video transmission from Al Jazeera appeared to show that a projectile rose from inside Gaza before changing course and exploding in the vicinity of the hospital; the Israel Defense Forces have claimed that this was one of several rockets fired from Palestinian territory. Subsequent analysis by the Associated Press has substantially corroborated this.

It’s true that an AP report (10/21/23) endorsed the Israeli scenario:

AP’s analysis shows that the rocket that broke up in the air was fired from within Palestinian territory, and that the hospital explosion was most likely caused when part of that rocket crashed to the ground.

But AP‘s was not the only in-depth examination of the video evidence, and not necessarily the most convincing. An investigation by Al Jazeera itself (10/19/23) combined the network’s own footage with video captured simultaneously by a camera near Tel Aviv. The Qatar-based outlet reported:

At 18:59:35, we can see a single rocket launched from Gaza. This is the rocket in question. This rocket can also be seen on the Israeli video.

Fifteen seconds later, Al Jazeera‘s live feed shows that the same rocket was intercepted at exactly 18:59:50. This interception has the same afterglow seen in previous interceptions.

A closer look at the video captured by the Al Jazeera live feed shows the rocket being completely destroyed and broken apart in the sky. According to all feeds and videos analyzed, this rocket was intercepted, and was the last one launched from Gaza before the bombing of the hospital.

After tracing the fields of vision of various cameras that captured the object that was said to be the misfiring rocket that caused the hospital blast, the New York Times (10/24/23) indicated that this munition was actually fired from Israel, well away from the hospital.

Al Jazeera also reported that it

was able to identify four Israeli airstrikes on Gaza targeting the area near the hospital, starting at 18:54:28, then 18:55:03, then 18:57:42, and then 18:58:04.

The hospital explosion happened at 18:59:55, in line with the sequence of Israeli airstrikes in the vicinity identified by Al Jazeera. The fact that Israel had been bombing the neighborhood immediately before the blast was left out of the articles bashing news outlets for quoting the Gaza Health Ministry.

Another analysis of the video evidence conducted by the New York Times (10/24/23) also cast doubt on the Israeli account. By tracing the sightlines of the available videos, the Times determined that the object that Israeli military spokespeople had pointed to as being the supposed “misfired rocket that caused the explosion” at the hospital was actually “launched from Israel, not Gaza, and appears to have exploded above the Israeli/Gaza border, at least two miles away from the hospital.”

This analysis was published the day after the Times‘ editorial apology for its hospital bombing coverage, but does not seem to have provoked any re-re-evaluation of the paper’s coverage. (It does feature in round-up of evidence by the Times‘ David Leonhardt—11/3/23—which is otherwise mostly accepting of the official line.)

Channel 4 (10/20/23) had earlier reported on an audio analysis of the sound of the explosion, which indicated that the munition had approached from the east rather than the west; that would make the Israeli account of a rocket fired from within Gaza less plausible.

Damage points east, not west

Britain’s Channel 4 (10/20/23) noted that independent forensic investigators were pointing to evidence that undermined the Israeli account.

Another piece of evidence in-house critics offered in favor of Israel’s denial was the condition of the blast site. This—aside from the assessments of “Israel and the US”—was the whole of the argument CNN‘s Darcy (10/26/23) advanced to declare the entirety of the coverage hopelessly wrong: “Independent forensic experts…have indicated that the available evidence from the blast was inconsistent with the damage one would expect to see from an Israeli strike.”

It is true that the relatively small impact crater contrasts with the large cavities left by the bombs Israel typically uses; however, other outlets have noted that this doesn’t rule out other Israeli munitions (Al Jazeera, 10/20/23; BBC, 10/27/23). Channel 4 (10/20/23) reported that a London University analysis of the impact site found a shallow channel of the sort an incoming missile would leave leading to the site from the northeast, while shrapnel splash marks fanned out to the southwest—again, opposite to the directions that the Israeli account would predict.

While the Israeli government insists that the hospital was never a target, it does admit that the “hospital administration had received at least three warnings from the Israeli military to evacuate its wards” prior to the blast (New York Times, 10/18/23); Israel had “hit Al-Ahli Arab Hospital with an illumination artillery shell three days earlier, according to video evidence” (New York Times, 10/24/23). This circumstantial evidence was not included in the discussion of the supposed failure of media to be sufficiently skeptical of Palestinian allegations.

US not a disinterested party

The primary reason NPR (10/24/23) offered for decreeing that coverage of the hospital blast “fell short” was that “Israel’s stance has since been backed by US and Canadian intelligence assessments.”

Perhaps the factor that seemed to most impel media’s own media critics to rebuke outlets for the initial coverage of the hospital bombing was that the US government supported the Israeli version of events. The Atlantic wrote:

By evening, US security agencies had analyzed the available evidence and come to an even more certain verdict: “We feel confident that the explosion was the result of a failed rocket launch by militant terrorists and not the result of an Israeli airstrike,” Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on X.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board (10/18/23), which usually urges readers not to trust the Biden administration (1/13/22, 9/7/23, 10/13/23), presented the White House take as definitive:

We can now have confidence that the initial story was false. A White House National Security Council spokesman confirms that its “current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza.”

The only reason the Times apologia offered for giving more credence to Israeli than to Palestinian assertions was that the former were US-endorsed: “American and other international officials have said their evidence indicates that the rocket came from Palestinian fighter positions.”

Likewise, the first reason that NPR offered for judging that coverage by “illustrious” news outlets “fell short” was that “Israel’s stance has since been backed by US and Canadian intelligence assessments.” The outlet added that “Other outside institutions”—unnamed—”have cast increasing doubt upon the validity of Hamas’ allegations, although it’s still not clear what actually happened.”

The Atlantic, too, said that “a number of observers who are critical of Israel and had at first condemned the attack subsequently acknowledged that initial reports had likely been mistaken”—without giving any indications which observers those were.

Of course, a government that is the main supplier of weaponry to another government accused of committing a war crime is not an objective analyst; the US exoneration of Israel (which was also a self-exoneration) should not have been treated as particularly compelling evidence, let alone a definitive judgment.

Quoting is the problem

This is the caliber of media critic NPR‘s David Folkenflik (10/24/23) outsourced his media analysis to—one who objects to reporting any claim by a Palestinian official, because all Palestinian officials are “Hamas.”

If it does turn out that Israel was not involved in the destruction at the hospital—which, given the fragmentary evidence, has to be considered a possibility—that does not mean that media were derelict in initially quoting Gaza authorities. NPR (10/24/23) outsourced its media analysis on this issue to Drew Holden of the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, who published a Twitter thread on October 18 that (in NPR‘s words)

documented a series of prominent news outlets…that appeared to rely on Hamas’ claims as authoritative with little or scant acknowledgement of how little had been verified before publication.

Among the headlines that Holden singled out as particularly bad:

• “At Least 500 Killed in Israeli Airstrike on Gaza City Hospital, Health Ministry Says” (PBS NewsHour, 10/17/23)
• “Hundreds Feared Dead or Injured in Israeli Air Strike on Hospital in Gaza, Palestinian Officials Say” (BBC, 10/17/23)
• “Palestinian Health Ministry Says 200 to 300 People May Have Been Killed in Israeli Strike on Hospital in Gaza” (CNN, 10/17/23)
• “The Gaza Health Ministry Says at Least 500 People Killed in an Explosion at a Hospital That It Says Was Caused by an Israeli Airstrike” (AP, 10/17/23)

The Atlantic‘s Mounk acknowledged “that news outlets ascribed these details to Palestinian authorities, thereby doing the minimum to ensure that their readers would understand where the claims originated.” But simply by quoting them, they “led reasonable readers to conclude that these statements must basically be true.” Above all, they failed to stress “that the health authorities—and all other authorities—in Gaza are controlled by Hamas.”

One of the first AP stories (10/17/23) on the hospital blast is the kind of coverage critics say didn’t happen enough; the accompanying story uses the phrase “run by Hamas” twice in the first two paragraphs. But it’s inaccurate; the Gaza Health Ministry actually answers to Fatah.

(Mounk did not acknowledge—as AP did, in an October 26 explainer, that “the United Nations and other international institutions and experts…say the Gaza ministry has long made a good-faith effort to account for the dead under the most difficult conditions,” or that “in previous wars, the ministry’s counts have held up to UN scrutiny, independent investigations and even Israel’s tallies.” Nor did Mounk note, as Reuters did—10/27/23— that the Gaza Health Ministry actually reports to the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Hamas’s rival Fatah.)

If 500 people were killed in an explosion in Kyiv, and Ukrainian officials blamed Russia, a subsequent revelation that the carnage was actually caused by friendly fire would not likely lead outlets to regret headlines that read “Hundreds Killed by Russian Airstrike, Ukraine Says.” After all, the vast majority of civilian deaths in Kyiv are caused by Russia—just as the vast majority of civilians killed in Gaza are killed by Israel.

It’s only when an official enemy like Hamas is involved that reporting straightforward claims that something that has happened many times before has happened again becomes problematic.

The rectified version

The lesson the New York Times (1/11/23) seems to have drawn from the hospital blast episode is not to be skeptical of everyone, but to be more skeptical of Palestinians and less skeptical of Israel.

On October 31, Israel bombed a Gaza refugee camp, killing more than 110 people, according to local doctors (Washington Post, 11/1/23). The lead story on the front page of the New York Times print edition the next day began:

An airstrike that Israel said was targeting Hamas militants caused widespread damage in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza on Tuesday. Hamas and hospital officials said numerous people were killed and wounded.

Two paragraphs down, the story reported that

Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, and local doctors said hundreds of people had been killed or wounded at the Jabaliya refugee camp. Independent verification of the claim was not possible, but Israel itself described the strike as a “wide-scale” attack.

The story leads with Israel’s professed justification, goes out of its way to bring up Hamas even while citing medical sources, gives no specific estimates of deaths and stresses the impossibility of independent verification. The headline over the article, “Fatal Strike in Dense Area as Israelis Aim at Hamas,” turned Israel’s claim into an attack.

This sort of obfuscation is what critics of the coverage of the hospital blast wanted. It’s not the kind of reporting that victims of mass slaughter need.

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fair.org · by Jim Naureckas, Ari Paul · November 3, 2023

10. Hezbollah tells Hamas to be ‘realistic’: Terrorist allies don't want to expand Israel war

Hezbollah tells Hamas to be ‘realistic’: Terrorist allies don't want to expand Israel war

by Joel Gehrke, Foreign Affairs Reporter November 03, 2023 05:46 PM

Washington Examiner · November 3, 2023

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel against “carrying out a preemptive attack” on his terrorist forces in Lebanon while signaling his hesitance to widen the war on behalf of Hamas.

“We have been fighting a war of fortitude, we haven't reached a knock-out victory. We still need time, to be more realistic,” Nasrallah said Friday in a much-anticipated speech, according to an Al Jazeera interpreter. “We are winning victory by points, not [a] knockout victory.”

SAM BANKMAN-FRIED FOUND GUILTY OF FRAUD: FTX FOUNDER FACING 100 YEARS IN PRISON

The terrorist warlord’s boxing metaphor punctuated an elaborate justification of Hezbollah’s posture during the war. A senior Hamas official argued last month that “greater things are needed” from Hezbollah, but the Lebanon-based militant used his first major commentary on the war to distance his organization from the planning of the attack and rebuff pressure to intervene while striking a supportive tone.

“Those who claim that Hezbollah should engage swiftly in an all-out war with the enemy might see what's taking place on the border as minimal,” Nasrallah said. “But if we look at what's taking place on our border, objectively, we will find it sizeable. Yet, I assure you, this will not be the end.”

Hamas responded by renewing its demand for more involvement.

“His words about the importance of stopping the attack on Gaza and the importance of Hamas’s victory in Gaza are clear and important," said Osama Hamdan, one of the top Hamas officials in Lebanon. "Hezbollah’s commitment to these two goals [now] requires action on the ground."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah greets his supporters via video link.

(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Hezbollah has moved a militia brigade to the Lebanese border region with Israel, according to the Israel Defense Forces, following weeks of intermittent rocket attacks that have drawn counterstrikes from the Israeli military.

"All these operations force the Israeli enemy to maintain their personnel on the border lines with Lebanon, if not deploy further reinforcement,” the Hezbollah secretary-general said. “They are now deployed on the Lebanese border lines. This means our operations on the border line for the Israeli enemy to concentrate their personnel and forces and equipment on our borders, which were supposed to deploy to Gaza.”

Hamas politburo member Khaled Mashad has insisted that “the scope of the battle” necessitates a pan-Islamic military intervention. His call has drawn mockery inside Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. Mashad broke with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in 2012, in contrast to Iran’s choice to deploy military and Lebanese Hezbollah militias into the Syrian civil war in support of the embattled dictator.

"Mashad intervened in the Arab Spring, the destructive spring which wanted to ruin and weaken the Arab world,” said Lebanese politician Wiam Wahhab, who is reputedly close to Hezbollah and talked last year of “sustainable peace” with Israel. “If Khaled Mashal has 30 billion dollars, let him give it to us, and then maybe we can join the war.”

Nasrallah did hold out the possibility of an escalation if Israel does not agree to a ceasefire. "You, the Americans, can stop the aggression against Gaza because it is your aggression," he said. "Whoever wants to prevent a regional war, and I am talking to the Americans, must quickly halt the aggression on Gaza."

Still, the overall tenor of his remarks, after weeks of silence, underscored Hezbollah's desire to avoid a major clash with the IDF.

"You don't call for a ceasefire if you want to enter war. If you want to beat Israel and prevail victoriously, you wouldn't be asking for a ceasefire," Foundation for Defense of Democracies research fellow Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a U.S.-based analyst from Lebanon, told the Washington Examiner. "I'm happy, as someone whose parents live in Lebanon, I'm happy that ... he didn't declare war to start with."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Nasrallah to remain on the sidelines. “We are determined that there not be a second or third front opened in this conflict,” he said. “And we’ve backed up those words not only with work that we’ve done with many partners in the region to reinforce that message, but with practical deeds, including the deployment of two aircraft carriers battlegroups to the region ... We remain absolutely determined in that effort.”

President Joe Biden’s team in Washington underscored that warning with an ominous invocation of the devastation wrought during Israel’s last war in Lebanon.

"This has the potential of becoming a bloodier war between Israel and Lebanon than 2006,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday. "The United States does not want to see this conflict expand into Lebanon. The likely devastation for Lebanon and its people would be unimaginable and is avoidable.”

Nasrallah, for his part, claimed Hamas carried out the Oct. 7 attack without the knowledge of anyone outside Gaza, including Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“The Palestinians have kept it secret even from their fellow Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza, let alone other resistance factions across the resistance,” he said, referring to the “resistance” against the existence of the state of Israel.

“This move taken by Hamas … precluded all the enemies and hypocrites to raise any false claims, especially when they speak about the relations between the resistance regional resistance factions,” the Hezbollah chief continued. "At any point of time, when there is that battle, they start to speak about the Iranian nuclear program, the U.S.-Iran negotiations to serve the Iranian interests or agenda in the region. False claims. [The Oct. 7 attack] was 100 percent Palestinian in terms of decision and execution.”

Washington Examiner · November 3, 2023

11. Hamas Has Deadlier Weapons Than the Last Time Israel Invaded Gaza

Maps, graphics, and photos at the link.

Hamas Has Deadlier Weapons Than the Last Time Israel Invaded Gaza

Militant group returned in force with drones, homegrown missiles and fortified tunnels; ‘armed to the teeth’

By Benoit FauconFollow and Sune Engel RasmussenFollow

Updated Nov. 4, 2023 12:01 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-weapons-israel-invasion-gaza-aff4247d

The last time Israel invaded the Gaza Strip nearly a decade ago, its troops pummeled an overmatched Hamas fighting force. They destroyed tunnel systems and sealed off smuggling routes, costing the Islamist group two-thirds of its missiles by the time they withdrew. 

Now, as Israel steps up a new invasion, it faces a more-potent enemy that has rebuilt its arsenal with help from Iran. Since the operation started on Oct. 27, Hamas has attacked the Israeli army with explosive-laden drones, anti-tank missiles and high-impact rockets—the sorts of weapons that have transformed the battlefield in Ukraine.

With 26 fatalities in a week of operation, Israelis are dying at more than twice the rate as in 2014, when 67 lost their lives during a seven-week campaign.

At the heart of Hamas’ ability to respond to the invasion is the group’s longstanding relationship with Iran, which has continued to support the Palestinian militants with money and technical expertise. In the months leading up to the Oct. 7 attack, hundreds of Hamas fighters went to Iran for military training, The Wall Street Journal has reported.   

Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official, said that while he expects Israel to ultimately triumph, the sophisticated arsenal meant Israel would have to brace for a long-haul struggle. “Hamas is a military power that is significant thanks to Iran,” said Melamed. “They are armed to the teeth.”

Updated Arsenal

Hamas ‘Zouari’ suicide drone

Ababil-2 Iranian Tactical UAV

Width: Approx. 7 ft.

Length: Approx. 5 ft.

Width: 10.7 ft.

Length: 9.4 ft.

AK-103-2

Misagh-1

Has burst-fire setting

Engagement

Altitude: 0.2 to 2.5 miles

Engagement range: 0.3 to 3.1 miles

RAAD-T

Range: 0.25 to 1.86 miles

High explosive-fragmentation warhead

Note: Zouari legless design requires stand and rail launcher to become airborne

Sources: Army Recognition, OE Data Integration Network; DroneSec

Jemal R Brinson and Adrienne Tong/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Islamist group has used the expertise to develop local skills in arms manufacturing, cobbling together weapons from materials available in the Gaza Strip, despite an Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the territory, weapons it is now using to fight the Israeli army. 

Some analysts say that even if Israel manages to deplete Hamas’ military capabilities, the destruction wrought to achieve that goal may prompt a lengthy insurgency once the campaign is over. 

An Israeli tank maneuvers next to the Gaza Strip on Nov. 1. PHOTO: ATEF SAFADI/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

The U.S. fought several wars against militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban, only to face lengthy and stubborn insurgencies. Eradicating Hamas will perhaps be even harder, analysts say.

“Hamas has very, very deep roots, and that’s different from al Qaeda, which was smaller,” said Dan Byman, senior fellow and expert in counterterrorism with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. 

Even if a defeat for Hamas deters Palestinians from joining the group, the Israeli offensive will fuel anger among Palestinians, who might join other armed groups. Israel hasn’t offered any indication of what comes after the military operation. It likely won’t maintain a permanent ground troop presence in the strip, and there are no settler communities that appear willing to live there. Crucially, Byman said, even the U.S. had tangible support in the populations where it fought insurgencies. 

“The U.S. had advantages, a lot of Iraqis and Afghans who wanted to work with them,” he said. “There are no Palestinians eager to work with Israelis in Gaza.” 

Marwan Abdel-Al, a senior official in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Syria-based secular armed group with operations in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, said in an interview in Lebanon that Hamas and its allies are better equipped to respond to an Israeli ground invasion than in the past.

“Today, it’s totally different from 2014,” he said, pointing to drones, as well as the type of advanced guerrilla methods developed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Russian Wagner mercenary group.

The Front said it participated in the Oct. 7 attacks and that it continues to lob missiles into Israel from Gaza.

A Palestinian group representing several militant factions released photographs in December showing what it says was training for a “raid behind enemy lines” at an unknown location. PHOTO: REUTERS

View of what Hamas described as a anti-armor shells fired toward Israeli tanks and vehicles in Gaza this month. PHOTO: HAMAS MILITARY WING/REUTERS

Abdel-Al warned Israel will get bogged down, like Germany did in Russia during World War II or the U.S. in Vietnam. “The guys there, on the ground,” he said, “they are ready.”

Hamas has been manufacturing rockets for more than two decades. The first generation of Qassam rockets, cheap sugar-fueled rockets that Hamas began producing during the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada, around 2001, had a range of 2 to 3 miles. The third generation, Qassam 3, had a range of about 10. Now, Hamas has shown missiles with a range of up to 150 miles, covering basically all of Israel. 

In the past, Iran produced rockets in Sudan and smuggled them into Gaza via tunnels from Sinai with the help of Egyptian Bedouins. That has largely been stopped now, since Egypt flooded the tunnels and Sudan initiated a rapprochement with Israel and distanced itself from Iran. Instead, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have moved to indigenous production and are manufacturing both explosives and the weapon from raw materials, according to analysts. 

To manufacture rockets, Hamas has used steel piping for metal in motors and warhead casings. It has used unexploded Israeli artillery heads for explosives. Other elements, like the fusion system and fins are easy to build and weld together, and fuel for the rocket’s propellant can be smuggled in. 

Gaza’s Air Attack

A look at some of the key rockets and their estimated ranges in the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad group's arsenals.

Rockets launched from Gaza

107mm

Range: 5 miles

Heavier warhead than most other Palestinian rockets; limited range

Badr 3

8 miles

First used by Hamas in 2012; twice as long of range as previous Hamas rockets

Fajr 5

47 miles

R-160

99 miles

Ayyash 250

155 miles

Long range; lower accuracy

LEBANON

0

20

40

60

80

100 miles

GOLAN

HEIGHTS

SYRIA

Mediterranean Sea

Tel Aviv

WEST BANK

Jerusalem

ISRAEL

JORDAN

GAZA STRIP

EGYPT

Note: Badr 3's range is at least 8 miles; its max range is unknown.

Source: Wilson Center (rocket ranges and info); GlobalSecurity.org (Fajr 5 info)

Peter Champelli/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Hamas’ most-potent defense may be its extensive tunnel network that runs beneath Gaza like an underground city, storing fighters, fuel, weapons and, since Oct. 7., hostages. 

“The tunnels really change everything,” said Daphné Richemond-Barak, professor at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, and author of a book on underground warfare. “The tunnels neutralize any military advantage.” 

Hamas’ tunnels have been extended and reinforced since the 2014 war, likely with counsel from Iran, which keeps some of its own military facilities underground, Richemond-Barak said, adding that Hamas has also been inspired by Islamic State’s use of similar tunnels.

A still image taken from a video released by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas shows a tunnel in a location given as Beit Hanoun, Gaza, obtained November 3, 2023. PHOTO: HAMAS MILITARY WING/REUTERS

“This is probably the most sophisticated network of tunnels seen in any type of war,” she said.

The tunnels also run to the sea, which can be used for smuggling, to launch unmanned underwater vehicles and as conduits for Hamas frogmen, according to Lenny Ben-David, an expert in Hamas weaponry with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a think tank. 

The central role of the tunnels partly explains the scale of the Israeli bombardments. Israel says Hamas stores weapons and command centers under civilian buildings, including hospitals. Israel has also deployed a special-forces unit specialized in searching and destroying tunnels, called Yahalom. 

To get to Hamas’ weapons, the Israeli military must “peel off the top layer of Gaza,” Ben-David said. 

Israel says it has hit more than 11,000 targets in Gaza, population two million, using missiles, bombs and artillery. 

The campaign has taken a tremendous toll on Palestinians in the Strip, killing more than 9,200, the majority women and children, according to health authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza. The toll, which couldn’t be independently verified, doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians. An estimated 1.5 million people have been displaced, many of them fleeing south or taking shelter in schools, hospitals and international aid facilities.

Earlier this week, repeated Israeli airstrikes targeted Jabalia, a refugee camp that has become a warren of permanent homes. Gaza hospital officials said hundreds of people were killed and injured in the strike. The Israeli military said it had struck an underground bunker killing dozens of militants, including a senior Hamas commander who played a key role in the Oct. 7 massacre. 

Smoke rises following Israeli strikes on the Tal Al Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City. PHOTO: MOHAMMED SABER/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

Palestinians search for bodies and survivors among the rubble following Israeli airstrikes on Al Falouja in Jabalia town, northern Gaza. PHOTO: MOHAMMED SABER/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

Privately, Hamas has expressed confidence it can sustain a long-term campaign before it runs out of arms, according to officials in the region. A few days after the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas told Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian the militants “can continue for months on their own,” Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said in an interview.

Back in 2014, Hamas mostly relied on Soviet-era projectiles with no guidance system that dated as far back as 1969, according to a United Nations report published the following year. Drones were a rarity in Hamas’ hands and were generally crude models with limited strike capabilities.

In this war, Hamas has published videos of targeting Israeli troops with munitions dropped from drones, a Ukraine-style battlefield innovation, and damaged two tanks and several military vehicles.

Israeli forces have also faced attackers equipped with North Korea-made F-7 High-Explosive Fragmentation rockets; Kornet man-portable anti-tank guided missile, a model developed in Russia but often copied by Iran; and locally-produced “Al-Yassin” Tandem anti-tank rockets.

A Palestinian fighter from the armed wing of Hamas takes part in a military exhibition in July marking the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel. PHOTO: AHMED ZAKOT/SOPA IMAGES/ZUMA PRESS

A new addition to the battlefield has been paragliders, which Hamas used to penetrate Israel on Oct. 7 as a form of airborne infantry. To avoid detection in Gaza, Hamas fighters received training in paragliding in Iran, according to people familiar with the matter.

This week, Hamas published a video displaying a guided underwater vehicle called Al-Asef described by Hamas as a “torpedo,” which appears similar to an underwater drone that Israel in 2021 said the militant group had tried to fire at one of its vessels.

Hamas has acquired these weapons despite attempts by Israel and Egypt in the aftermath of the 2014 war to reduce the flow of weapons going through tunnels connected to Gaza with the Sinai. Over time, some of those routes were rebuilt and smuggling resumed, according to Middle-East security officials. 

More importantly, Israel failed to seal off access by sea to Gaza’s 25 miles of coastline. Smuggling by sea, especially via fishing boats used by local Gazans, has been much more difficult to monitor for the Israeli military. 

The sea route may explain the presence of specialty assault rifles that turned up on the bodies of dead militants on Oct. 7. The AK-103-2 were initially manufactured by a Russian government factory and exclusively bought by Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi following the lifting of an arms embargo in 2003, said Adam Rousselle, a researcher at the Militant Wire, a network of experts that examines weapons used by non-state actors. 

Suspected North Korean-made F-7 rocket-propelled grenades, many with a distinctive red stripe on their warhead, were captured by the Israeli military. PHOTO: ALON BERNSTEIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Automatic weapons, magazines, and flak jackets are displayed after Hamas militants attacked a kibbutz days earlier near the border of Gaza. PHOTO: ALEXI J. ROSENFELD/GETTY IMAGES

A team of Hamas operatives exported large amounts of weapons sent from Libya to Gaza possibly as recently as 2017, according to a Libyan prosecutor’s file reviewed by the Journal. The group received the assistance of the two former leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an al-Qaeda affiliate, said a Libyan security official.

During its rampage at Kibbutz Holit, a rural settlement 1.2 miles from the Gaza Strip, Hamas used Iranian made man-portable surface-to-air missiles, according to Calibre Obscura, an open source analyst that specializes in identifying weapons used by non-state actors. The armed branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad posted a video of an attack on the settlement with anti-tank guided missiles. Both weapons were produced by subsidiaries of the Iranian ministry of defense in the 1990s.

Hamas has also developed a robust domestic weapons-manufacturing capability that partly relies on Iranian technology transfers.  

It has built a drone called Ababil, developed after Iranian design. Hamas also has a domestically produced drone called the Zouari, named after a Tunisian engineer, Mohammed al-Zawari, who helped develop the weapons and was assassinated in Tunisia in 2016, a killing Hamas blamed on Israeli intelligence. 

“We have to destroy these places and not allow them to be built again,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser and now senior fellow at the conservative Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, referring to Hamas’ military infrastructure. “That’s why the IDF after the war will maintain freedom of action in Gaza, whether with airstrikes or troops on the ground.” 

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com

Appeared in the November 4, 2023, print edition as 'Hamas Rebuilt Its Arsenal With Iran’s Help'

12. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, November 2, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-november-2-2023

Key Takeaways

1. The Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) agreed to cooperation in the legislative elections and will likely form a joint presidential ticket before the January 13 presidential election.
2. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is interfering in the Taiwanese election in order to harm the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) chances of victory in the January 13 presidential and legislative elections.
3. High-level meetings between PRC and United States officials are unlikely to mitigate People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military coercion targeting Taiwan.
4. The PRC is shaping the information environment to blame the United States for potential future geopolitical incidents in the South China Sea.
5. The PRC is using the Israel-Hamas War to enhance its image as an international mediator in the Middle East.

CHINA-TAIWAN WEEKLY UPDATE, NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Nov 2, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, November 2, 2023

Authors: Nils Peterson, Matthew Sperzel, and Daniel Shats of the Institute for the Study of War 

Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute 

Data Cutoff: November 1 at 5pm ET 

The China–Taiwan Weekly Update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s paths to controlling Taiwan and relevant cross–Taiwan Strait developments. 

Key Takeaways

1. The Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) agreed to cooperation in the legislative elections and will likely form a joint presidential ticket before the January 13 presidential election.
2. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is interfering in the Taiwanese election in order to harm the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) chances of victory in the January 13 presidential and legislative elections.
3. High-level meetings between PRC and United States officials are unlikely to mitigate People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military coercion targeting Taiwan.
4. The PRC is shaping the information environment to blame the United States for potential future geopolitical incidents in the South China Sea.
5. The PRC is using the Israel-Hamas War to enhance its image as an international mediator in the Middle East.

Taiwanese Presidential Election 

The Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) agreed to cooperation in the legislative elections and will likely form a joint presidential ticket before the January 13 presidential election. TPP presidential candidate Ko Wen-je and KMT chairman Eric Chu agreed on October 30 to inter-party cooperation for the January 13 legislative elections.[1] KMT presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih previously stated on October 26 that there was no longer time to conduct a national primary or poll to determine the lead of a hypothetical joint KMT-TPP presidential ticket. Hou and Ko agreed that day to enter into party-to-party negotiations in the unspecified future to decide on whether to form a joint presidential ticket.[2] This rendered moot the prior sticking point between the parties on deciding whether to use a primary or poll to determine the composition of the presidential ticket. Ko, Hou, and Chu held an initial meeting to start the party-to-party negotiations on October 31.[3] These meetings are tangible progress towards the forming of a joint ticket. The progress of future meetings will be the basis for future assessments. There is majority support among the KMT and TPP bases for a joint ticket, according to the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation. [4] This further incentivizes the candidates to form a joint ticket.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is interfering in the Taiwanese election in order to harm the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) chances of victory in the January 13 presidential and legislative elections. The CCP interferes in the Taiwanese election to prevent DPP presidential candidate Lai Ching-te from winning and prevent the DPP from retaining its majority in the Legislative Yuan. The CCP views Lai and the DPP as “separatists” that threaten the status quo. [5]

DPP spokesperson Chang Chih-hao alleged that the CCP manipulated polls, used tax inspection and land survey investigations, forced Taiwanese businesspeople to express pro-PRC political positions, subsidized airfare for Taiwanese pro-China figures to return to Taiwan, and employed other forms of economic and military coercion to interfere in the election.[6] “Tax inspections and land survey investigations” refer to the October 22 PRC probes into Foxconn, the company founded by independent presidential candidate Terry Gou.[7] These probes create a financial incentive for Gou to comply with CCP objectives in order to placate the investigators. The PRC state media outlet Global Times criticized Terry Gou for being a spoiler candidate and dividing the anti-DPP opposition on multiple occasions. An October 22 Global Times article that disclosed the Foxconn probes reiterated this point about Gou and implicitly linked the probes to the election.[8] The Republic of China’s (ROC) Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) also seized NT$11.5 billion (US$354.6 million) in illegal inward remittances and warned that unspecified foreign actors are using remote funding, internet betting, and cognitive warfare to influence the January 2024 presidential and legislative elections. The MJIB did not specify the origin of the illegal remittances but said it would increase monitoring of PRC nationals coming to Taiwan on the pretext of “social interaction.” The MJIB said unspecified organizations use offshore funding from remittances to make donations to political candidates via Taiwanese businesspeople.[9]

An unnamed Taiwanese “senior government official” said on October 29 that the Executive Yuan had established a task force to combat election disinformation by the PRC. The official said that the PRC has built a network within Taiwan’s religious communities and that disinformation proliferated through these communities.[10] Members of Taiwanese Buddhist organizations like Fo Guang Shan and Mazu-worshiping organizations like the Taiwan Matsu Fellowship have met with officials from the PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office and United Front Work Department at various cross-strait exchanges.[11]

Sino-American Relations

High-level meetings between PRC and United States officials are unlikely to mitigate People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military coercion targeting Taiwan. PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on October 26 and President Joe Biden on October 27.[12] Reuters reported on October 31 that the meetings led to an agreement in principle for Xi and Biden to meet in San Francisco in November.[13] PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesman Wang Wenbin stated on October 30 that the “road to San Francisco will not be a smooth journey,” indicating persisting friction points in Sino-American relations such as the United States’ regional military presence.[14] Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia struck a similar tone on October 30 at the Xiangshan Forum on International Security when he accused the United States of “meddling in regional affairs.”[15] He also declared the Chinese military would “never show mercy” to those who want to separate Taiwan from China.[16] The meetings preceded unannounced October 31 PLA drills to Taiwan’s southeast by the Shandong aircraft carrier strike group.[17] The Shandong’s deployment on October 26 and subsequent commencement of drills corresponded to spikes in Taiwan ADIZ violations by People’s Liberation Army Air Force aircraft.[18] The PRC rhetoric in conjunction with the ongoing unannounced military drills indicates that high-level Sino-American diplomatic engagement will not translate to easing military pressure on Taiwan.

The PRC is shaping the information environment to blame the United States for potential future geopolitical incidents in the South China Sea. The PRC state-controlled China Global Television Network (CGTN) aired an October 29 interview with Lieutenant General He Lei accusing the United States of arrogantly interfering in the Sino-Philippines territorial disputes in the South China Sea.[19] This echoes PRC MFA spokeswoman Mao Ning’s condemnation of United States “interference” in the South China Sea amidst Sino-Philippines territorial disputes.[20] Her comments occurred after the PRC Coast Guard rammed Philippine ships near the Second Thomas Shoal on October 22.[21] This PRC aggression extends to a growing trend of People’s Liberation Army Air Force planes dangerously operating near United States aircraft in the East and South China Sea since 2021, according to images declassified by the United States Department of Defense.[22] The China Military Power Report stated the United States has documented in excess of 180 such instances since 2021.[23] The CCP inaccurately placing blame on the United States for interfering in the South China Sea indicates that the party’s false rhetoric aims to provide cover for coercive People’s Liberation Army military activity. This activity aims to degrade the American-led security architecture.

Israel-Hamas War

The PRC is using the Israel-Hamas War to enhance its image as an international mediator in the Middle East. The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and state propaganda outlets repeatedly condemned violence between Palestine and Israel since October 7 but never condemned Hamas.[24] The PRC Special Envoy for Middle East Affairs Zhai Jun emphasized the necessity of a two-state solution during an October 29 interview with the radio station Voice of Palestine. He stated that the root cause of the conflict was the lack of a Palestinian state.[25] Zhai also called for a ceasefire while meeting with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi on October 30.[26] This messaging indicates that the PRC supports the Palestinian cause in order to gain diplomatic influence among Middle Eastern countries sympathetic to Palestine.

The PRC's messaging on the Israel-Hamas War also aims to enhance its status as leader of the Global South. The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs and state-affiliated Global Times portrayed the PRC as listening to the Arab and Palestinian people in alleged contrast to the hypocritical United States on October 19.[27] This portrayal came after the United States vetoed an October 18 United Nations Security Council resolution on the war in the Middle East put forth by Brazil.[28] The CCP routinely frames the PRC as a developing country and says that Chinese-led institutions, such as BRICS, represent the Global South on the international stage.[29] The CCP’s call for a ceasefire and implementation of the two-state solution amidst the Israel-Hamas War supports the party’s messaging that it is the leader of the Global South.

13. Secret Skunk Works Spy Drone Delivered To Air Force: Report

Photos at the link: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/secret-skunk-works-spy-drone-delivered-to-air-force-report

Secret Skunk Works Spy Drone Delivered To Air Force: Report

A mysterious cutting-edge Lockheed Martin spy drone is claimed to be flying after the program survived the threat of cancelation.

BYTHOMAS NEWDICK|PUBLISHED NOV 3, 2023 5:43 PM EDT

thedrive.com · by Thomas Newdick · November 3, 2023

We have explored the possibilities related to the existence of a high-altitude, long-endurance stealth drone, the so-called 'RQ-180,' and how it’s likely poised to eclipse the crewed U-2S Dragon Lady and uncrewed RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance platforms and become one of the most important military aircraft of a generation. Now, there are intriguing indications that a complementary platform or perhaps even a successor to the RQ-180 is not only being developed by Lockheed Martin’s legendary Skunk Works, but that this even more advanced spy drone has already been delivered.

These potential revelations come from the latest episode of the Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast, hosted by editor-in-chief Vago Muradian, joined by regular guest J.J. Gertler, director of The Defense Concepts Organization and senior analyst at the Teal Group. For the time being, we have no kind of confirmation about these statements, but they are certainly highly interesting, considering what we do know about related programs and emerging requirements.

Speaking about the mysterious new spy drone from the Skunk Works, Muradian explains this is a “much more capable reconnaissance aircraft” than the RQ-180 and that “there are articles that have already been delivered,” although no indication of how many or at what stage the program is at.

Muradian adds that “there have been challenges with that program [and] some speculation that it had been canceled.” He continues: “My understanding is that the program was re-scoped because it is that ambitious a capability that [it] required a little bit of re-scoping in order to be able to get to the next block of aircraft."

Notional RQ-180 concept rendering. Hangar B Productions

The podcast also provides what it says is some of the backstory to the Skunk Works drone, the name of which is so far unknown. This suggests that the Air Force essentially came to a deal with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman about how to supersede the U-2 and the RQ-4 now in use, as well as what would come after the RQ-180.

The implication here is that Northrop Grumman was broadly happy to not challenge the announced retirement of the RQ-4 since it was already engaged in developing the RQ-180 that would replace it (and the U-2). At the same time, it seems that Lockheed Martin was willing to see the U-2 head into retirement, after almost seven decades of service, since it was given the task of building a successor to the RQ-180 or another aircraft that at least complements it.

An RQ-4 Global Hawk in the foreground on a taxiway at Beale Air Force Base in California, with a two-seat TU-2S Dragon Lady trainer seen coming in to land in the background. U.S. Air Force

Muradian does add, however, that there are “combatant commanders and a lot of people in the ecosystem who want the U-2 to stay around as long as possible because it gives a tremendous amount of capability,” something that we have talked about in the past, too.

Whatever form this new Skunk Works drone takes, it’s worth recalling first that even the RQ-180 remains highly secretive. Even the designation is only presumed, based on an extrapolation from Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel, another flying wing design, although a much smaller tactical reconnaissance aircraft.

An RQ-170 Sentinel. USAF via FOIA USAF via FOIA

When it comes to the RQ-180, it is possible that the airframe supports more than just reconnaissance, with networking and electronic warfare being other potential functions, although they may be hosted in various combinations. Regardless, the RQ-180 is clearly designed to penetrate into and persist deep into contested airspace and directly over or very near highly contested locales. This implies a large, twin-engine, flying wing design that incorporates highly advanced, all-aspect, broadband, very low-observable (stealth) features. It is expected to fly at very high altitudes for very long periods of time without the enemy being able to engage it, and hopefully, detect it at all.

While the RQ-180’s supposed design concept remains shadowy, we know even less about the Skunk Works drone that the Air Force is apparently already lining up as a complement, if not an outright successor to the RQ-180.

We have no idea, for example, if the new drone will broadly follow the same high-flying stealthy flying-wing design as the RQ-180, or if it will be something altogether different. There have certainly been repeated sightings of mysterious flying-wing-type drones in recent years.

For its part, in years past, Lockheed repeatedly dropped hints that it was working on a proposed SR-72 uncrewed hypersonic aircraft, which would be a conceptual successor to the Cold War-era SR-71 crewed spy plane, although with a strike component. Interestingly enough, the SR-72 program then went quiet, before a mysterious SR-72-like aircraft named Darkstar appeared in the movie Top Gun: Maverick, a fact that Lockheed was more than happy to capitalize upon. The firm continuously referenced that the aircraft was not science fiction and was instead based on capabilities that are real and obtainable today. In some ways, Darkstar became a fictional surrogate for the SR-72, perhaps suggesting that the real-world program had gone into the black world, as we posited was the case.

The fictional Darkstar hypersonic aircraft that appeared in the movie Top Gun: Maverick. Lockheed Martin via Twitter

Well before the release of Maverick, we had suggested that the secretive SR-72 program could be much further advanced in terms of its development than Lockheed had ever previously acknowledged.

From as early as 2016, Lockheed was openly discussing the possibility of building a demonstrator aircraft, roughly the size of an F-22 Raptor, to help prove the technologies that would underpin the SR-72’s hypersonic design. It was predicted that a demonstrator of this kind would cost less than $1 billion to produce and could take to the air within just a few years of the program being launched.

Of course, innumerable questions remain, most importantly, whether the new Skunk Works drone has any kind of relationship with the SR-72 or other potential hypersonic designs. Lockheed Martin is known to be heavily invested currently in hypersonic projects, but the publicly acknowledged work it is doing is primarily centered on the developmental hypersonic missiles.

Meanwhile, there are indications the Air Force is increasingly interested in high-end hypersonic space planes in this class, with the service having awarded a contract to Leidos to develop a new hypersonic air vehicle as part of its secretive Mayhem program. Information about this is limited but points to an experimental design to demonstrate an ability to carry various payloads to support strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, and could lead to an operational platform.

Concept artwork of a hypersonic air vehicle from Leidos, as part of the Mayhem program. Leidos

Moreover, we cannot say for sure if the supposed new drone is intended to complement the RQ-180 or fully replace it. If the latter, it would raise questions about how long the RQ-180 is even expected to serve. Perhaps more likely is that the RQ-180 and the new Skunk Works drone represent two entirely separate capabilities, with the first being persistent penetrating reconnaissance, networking, and electronic warfare, and the other being optimized for hypersonic strike and reconnaissance. That would also seem to tie in better with what we know about the Air Force’s hypersonic aircraft requirements.

Without a doubt, there is a huge amount that we still don’t know when it comes to the Air Force’s future strategic reconnaissance aircraft, not just about the new Skunk Works spy drone, but also about the RQ-180. But we are clearly at a very interesting juncture right now, with more than one program taking shape within different companies that have no shortage of expertise in the field.

The same is the case for the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) stealth sixth-generation crewed tactical jet program, another initiative that the Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast shed some more light on.

Concept artwork from Lockheed Martin showing a notional sixth-generation fighter. Lockheed Martin

It’s worth recalling that it was the same podcast that revealed, in June this year, that the Air Force had reportedly narrowed the NGAD combat jet program down to two prime contractors or teams of contractors. Arguably even most intriguingly, the podcast claimed that there are no fewer than three NGAD demonstrators now in existence.

As we have discussed at length in the past, NGAD as referred to in the podcast denotes the crewed sixth-generation combat jet that will be at the center of a much wider program, one that also includes efforts focused on the development of advanced drones with high degrees of autonomy, as well as new jet engines, weapons, electronic warfare suites, sensors, networking ecosystems, battle management capabilities, and more.

A Lockheed Martin rendering of a manned fighter from the NGAD ‘system of systems’ refueling from a tanker. Lockheed Martin

In its latest episode, the podcast reports that, following Northrop Grumman’s withdrawal from the NGAD combat jet program, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are offering what sounds like two very different future fighter proposals.

Northrop Grumman, for its part, is thought to now be focusing instead on the Navy’s F/A-XX, a sixth-generation combat aircraft program analogous to the Air Force’s NGAD and which, confusingly, is also referred to as NGAD. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are both also competing for F/A-XX.

As to the Air Force NGAD, the podcast states that Lockheed’s proposal “is an evolutionary aircraft bringing in the DNA of the F-22 and certainly the F-35.” As expected, the aircraft will be bigger and offer greater range, endurance, and payload capacity than the F-22 — among other advanced capabilities. Muradian surmises that “Lockheed Martin is looking at maybe a more sustainability edge, which is another important parameter of [the NGAD program] and again, evolutionary, given the tight timeline for NGAD to deliver capability.”

A composite image showing a notional sixth-generation fighter alongside an F-22 Raptor. U.S. Air Force photo by Tommie Horton/Lockheed Martin

U.S. Air Force photo by Tommie Horton/Lockheed Martin

On the other hand, it seems that Boeing has gone for a different and altogether more radical approach. Very few details are provided beyond the description of this design being a “fresher … cleaner sheet” proposal and one that some within the Air Force consider “really intriguing,” perhaps giving it an edge over the more conventional Lockheed design.

There are also industrial aspects at play here, as Muradian and Gertler explain.

There are pros and cons attached to awarding the NGAD fighter contract to either of those contractors.

In Boeing’s case, the contract is badly needed “from an industrial base perspective,” and without it, the company could drop out of the fighter-building game altogether, before too long. As Muradian says, “You don’t want to put all of your combat aviation or at least fighter aviation eggs in one Lockheed Martin basket.”

The F-35 production line at Fort Worth, Texas. Alexander H. Groves/Lockheed Martin

At the same time, Boeing has had significant challenges with its KC-46 Pegasus tanker, T-7 Red Hawk trainer, and its VC-25B presidential aircraft programs.

While those issues might seem to give Lockheed an edge, that company has also struggled to get the F-35 program on track, with delays and budget overruns on the Block 4 version of the stealth fighter, in particular.

Finally, there is the question of how the contract award for the Navy’s F/A-XX could affect the outcome of the Air Force NGAD competition. As it stands, we know there is at least some crossover between the two programs, but we don’t know how much. However, with the Navy set to pick its F/A-XX candidate before the Air Force decides on its NGAD, there is scope for losers of the Navy tender to contribute to the Air Force program. After all, it was always expected that different contractors would enter teaming arrangements when it comes to building NGAD and some of these relationships may already have been established.

Once again, despite the paucity of information available about these various highly advanced aerospace programs, we are obviously at something of a pivotal point for U.S. airpower. With previous claims from the Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast of at least three NGAD demonstrators and one new spy drone reportedly out there, already being tested, now is certainly a very intriguing time for aerospace observers.

Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com

thedrive.com · by Thomas Newdick · November 3, 2023

14. The World at War's unbearable poignancy

For weekend reflection. I recall wathcing World at War in my younger days.

The World at War's unbearable poignancy

The genius of the World at War

As the series marks its 50th anniversary, another conflict is breaking out

BY ARIS ROUSSINOS

unherd.com · by Aris Roussinos · October 30, 2023

In one of the opening scenes of Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms, the central character Guy Crouchback vacates his Italian castle in 1939 once the approaching conflagration can no longer be ignored. “He expected his country to go to war in a panic, for the wrong reasons or for no reason at all, with the wrong allies, in pitiful weakness,” Waugh writes of his honourable, fallible stand-in. “But now, splendidly, everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms.” The looming catastrophe was, in all its awful novelty, the birth pangs of our own age.

No wonder our society returns obsessively to what we still call “the war”, like an adoptee, severed from his roots, searching for meaning. But of all the explorations since, in film and fiction and popular history, one treatment cannot be bettered. It was 50 years ago this week that Thames TV broadcast what has since become renowned as the greatest documentary series ever made: The World at War. It is impossible to imagine ITV making it now, but then, it is impossible to imagine today’s BBC making it either.

The intellectual gulf between, say, 1997’s The Nazis: A Warning from History (a documentary about the rise of National Socialism) and 2019’s The Rise of the Nazis (a parable about Trump and Brexit, featuring Ash Sarkar and Sir Mike Jackson, doubtless the fruit of a researcher’s Twitter search for a communist and a general) is unbridgeable. It is, simply, unthinkable that any television station today would spend two years and vast sums of revenue hauling out unseen footage from state archives for 26 hours of prime-time history programming, nor present the results with such intellectual and moral sophistication.

But even then, it was prestige television: with an eye to international sales, Laurence Olivier was drafted in to provide the voiceover, with only his eccentric pronunciation — “Shtaleen”, “the Ukryne”— breaking the illusion of an omniscient observer detailing mankind’s foibles. In tones shifting scene by scene from sardonic dismissal of the human frailties and delusions underlying war to cold contempt and sorrowful, clipped pity at the sheer waste of it all, the pathos of Olivier’s narration is central to the series’ artistic success.

From the very first lines, opening in the ruins of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, whose inhabitants were massacred by the SS, the script’s spare, cold poetry builds the frame that allows the following footage to breathe. “Down the road, on a summer’s day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now,” Olivier intones with the mournful rhythm of a funeral bell, in a script drafted by Neal Ascherson. “They were here for only a few hours. When they left, a community which had lived for over a thousand years was dead,” and Oradour left a village whose “martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, in China — in a World at War”.

Over the 26 hour-long episodes (streamable today in truncated form on UKTV Play), the Glaswegian-Jewish auteur Jeremy Isaacs produced an epic of unimaginable scope, interweaving the grand narrative of geopolitics with the personal recollections of the soldiers, diplomats and civilians involved, across campaigns reaching from the Russian steppes to the American heartland and the jungles of the Pacific. The cast list of interviewees is extraordinary: whole documentaries could surely be pieced together today from its offcuts. Where else could Admiral Doenitz pop up as a briefly-used talking head to talk us through the intricacies of Germany’s U-boat campaign, Anthony Eden (billed as Lord Avon) and Lord Mountbatten to unveil Whitehall’s thinking, Adolf Galland outline the Luftwaffe’s failings in the Battle of Britain or Arthur Harris and Curtis LeMay give us their unrepentant insights into the virtues and limitations of strategic bombing?

Thirty years after the events themselves, the series was made at just the right time for a work of history: long enough for its participants, late-middle-aged in their Seventies suits, to achieve some distance from their younger selves, but too close to have become memorialised, locked away in myth with the rest of the distant past. The passage of time alone means the series is unreplicable now: the great work of television history has become the matter of History in itself. Even the reminiscences of the less notable participants, the French and German and Italian army officers sitting in their book-lined studies recounting their war in cut-glass English accents, the cockneys sharing stories in a smoke-filled East End pub or the Royal Navy veteran matter-of-factly, almost innocently, describing his feelings of what we would now term Post-Traumatic Stress, are visions of a lost world.

The recollections of the survivors interviewed are the series’ backbone, but perhaps taken for granted is the faultless tradecraft of the researchers who tracked down and won their confidence: embedded within this work of history are moments of pure journalism at its best. Perhaps counterintuitively, for a series now coded as “male interest”, The World At War’s greatest strengths are built on the meticulous skill and craftsmanship of its little-praised female production staff. To unlock the memories of the Nazi interviewees, Isaacs wrote, “Susan McConachy, blonde and blue-eyed, was our star” finding and interviewing Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge, whose intimate recollections of the regime bunker Götterdämerung have, via the film Downfall, since entered popular mythology. McConachy’s “worst moment”, Isaacs noted, “came when Karl Wolff, Himmler’s adjutant, put his hand on her knee and confided: ‘My dear, you are just the type from whom we liked to breed.’”

Yet her discomfort brought dividends. As McConachy later wrote of the “most charming” Wolff, “After lunch I asked him to repeat the story he had told me one evening over supper about an incident at Minsk at which he had been present, when a hundred people were shot into an open grave as a demonstration for Himmler. He looked a bit surprised. He had forgotten that he had ever mentioned that. Then the film ran out. I wondered if, with time to think, he would actually tell the story again. When we were ready to go he did in fact tell it. I was relieved, not just because I’d got the story, but because he’d had the time to reflect on what the consequences of telling it might be and I could feel less responsible if he did in fact end up in court again when the programme was shown.”

The scene itself, with the mixed emotions playing across Wolff’s face as he tells the story of Himmler turning green beside the pit as his face was splashed with a victim’s brains, is extraordinary. No less powerful, or compelling in its moral complexity, is episode director Martin Smith’s interview with Albert Speer in the Holocaust episode Genocide, the single episode screened without accompanying music or advertising breaks. Hitler’s armaments minister recounts, with a sort of hesitant uncertainty as to how his testimony will be received, being warned not to visit the camps “because horrible things would happen. This, together with other hints I got, should have made — should have made my decision to go to Hitler immediately, or to Himmler, and to ask them what is going on and to take my own steps, but I didn’t do it, and not doing it was, so I think nowadays, the biggest fault in my life.” As Isaacs later noted laconically, “Albert Speer, surely, was economical with the truth,” but the episode doesn’t labour the point and moves on swiftly to the next scene: the viewer was trusted, once again, to make up his own mind.

As our distance from the war itself has increased, the more rigid and formulaic our emotional responses to it have become: it has become a moral parable, justifying all manner of political malignancies, rather than a narrative of the tragedy inherent in international politics. It is doubtful that, even if we still had access to senior Nazi officials, contemporary mores would allow them to be interviewed dispassionately as witnesses to history. While Smith restrained his personal disgust, it is all too easy to imagine Stacey Dooley storming out of an interview with Speer after giving him a piece of her mind. Yet the series did not shy away from the war’s horrors: if anything, its sheer sparseness made them more vivid, as in the episode intercutting the testimony of Holocaust survivors with the reminiscences of an SS camp guard throwing children into the gas chamber, blankly remarking that “you get used to anything in time”. The war itself has passed into myth: The World at War returns it to the realm of human memory.

When I was young, The World at War made me want to see war for myself, and record it for posterity. Rewatching it now, having experienced a decade of close combat and great human suffering in the intervening period, what strikes me most is the sheer quality of the combat footage, obtained by unnamed cameramen on all sides who may or may not have survived their labours. The intensity reminds us that even the most experienced journalist today has never seen war on such a scale: at least, not yet. The almost expressionist editing of their uncredited footage, the long periods when the voiceover and music trails off for bricolaged images of pure chaos, still pays the appropriate honour to their work.

In her finding and choosing of footage, another of Isaacs’ female production staff, the archive researcher Raye Farr, was responsible for the extraordinary vividness of the series. Realising that the propaganda newsreels of the day provided only stilted, sanitised highlights, Farr searched the state archives of Europe for unused offcuts, too strange or uncomfortable for showing at the time. In the German Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Farr pestered the director for access to uncatalogued treasures, noting later that “not until you have made a nuisance of yourself do the staff throw up their hands in exasperation and say, ‘See for yourself’ — which is what you’ve been waiting for”.

The results of her tradecraft, perhaps taken for granted by viewers, are central to the series’ success. As Isaacs later wrote, among Farr’s uncatalogued finds “was material shot behind the German lines on the Eastern Front by a gifted documentary cameraman. He appears not to have been shooting for the newsreel. Some of his footage was almost idyllic, showing soldiers at rest and leisure. Other sequences were more menacing. He filmed three German soldiers gently, almost reluctantly, but, in the end, firmly clearing a village of its people, sending the men in one direction, the women and children in another. Somehow, we know they will never see each other again.”

As we wait in 2023, hoping to evade what may be an equally great conflagration, both Crouchback’s fictional insight in Men at Arms, and The World at War’s wise and humane cataloguing of the real-world results seem unbearably poignant. The flames of war are already engulfing the world that came into being in 1945: what comes after may be better or worse, but it will be different from anything we have ever known — just as much as the proud, globe-spanning Britain of 1939 differed from the humbled, impoverished Britain of 1945.

Within nations as well as between them, the battle lines are already being drawn. Cities will be levelled, entire peoples exiled, humans killed in hi-definition video for the applause of social media spectators. Our own age is taking up arms, waiting to usher us into its cold embrace. May future generations judge us as soberly and compassionately as the makers of The World At War.

unherd.com · by Aris Roussinos · October 30, 2023

15. The next 9/11 is a question of when, not if

The next 9/11 is a question of when, not if

Porous southern border and raging gun violence make US vulnerable to a terror attack that would upend its politicsGerard Baker

Thursday November 02 2023, 9.00pm GMT, The Times

The Times · by Gerard Baker · November 4, 2023

Forgive me if this sounds a little solipsistic but sometimes the juxtaposition of world events with what the kids like to call the “lived experience” can trigger sobering thoughts about life, terrorism and geopolitics.

Last week I was enduring the familiar ordeal of a long queue at airport security (for a glimpse of the full Hobbesian horror of what bureaucratic inefficiency and insufficient physical and human capacity can achieve, you can’t beat Terminal 1 at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York).

As it always does, the same thought crossed my mind while I untied my shoelaces, attempted to disgorge a reluctant laptop from a tightly packed bag, frantically tried to remember if the little bottle of contact lens fluid in my wash kit was bigger than three fluid ounces: how grudgingly necessary but also how fundamentally futile it all is.

Twenty-two years ago, 19 homicidal Islamists armed with box cutters got lucky with sleepily inept airport security and unleashed murder and havoc, whose geopolitical consequences we are still digesting. It’s a tribute to their depraved achievement that one of its smaller consequences was the impact on travel: inconvenience and huge economic penalties, probably hundreds of billions of dollars in the direct costs of security and the indirect costs of all those latencies and inefficiencies.

The unsettling thought that always strikes me as I see some aged passenger rising from her wheelchair to shuffle shoeless through the magnetometer is this: do we really think the people who are out to commit mass murder in pursuit of their medieval objectives are going to try that again? The thing about 9/11 is that it took us by surprise. The next attack won’t come at us where we are prepared for it, where we have built layer upon layer of redundant security. The enterprising terrorist, and his well-resourced state sponsors, are seeking less hardened targets.

We know this, and yet somehow they still outwit us. This is what they did in Israel on October 7, streaming across an improbably weakly defended border and using guns, knives and grenades, not planes, to inflict an atrocity on Israelis that was, relative to the country’s population, 15 times greater than 9/11.

Another, unrelated, horror unfolded last week, further darkening the mood. At roughly the same time as I was boarding my plane, yet another deranged American man armed with yet another semi-automatic rifle and a weird grudge shot dead 18 innocent people in yet another American city, this time in Maine, more famous for bucolic beauty than feral violence. It was the 36th mass shooting, broadly defined, in the US this year. They’ve claimed 190 lives. Thousands of Americans have died in other episodes of gun violence.

Let’s add one more element. Last week, Customs and Border Protection, the federal authority charged with enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, reported that for the second fiscal year in succession (ending in September) the number of illegal border crossings by would-be immigrants to the US topped two million. Since Joe Biden came to office almost three years ago, pledging to undo his predecessor’s restrictionist approach to immigration, the total number of illegal crossings is almost six million.

Now think about those terrorists, that renewed Islamist fanaticism, those guns and that border. The US frontier with Mexico, patchily policed at best by this administration, is 1,954 miles long. The Gaza border with Israel, notionally at least one of the most tightly controlled in the world, is 37 miles long.

Among the millions trying to enter the US illegally in the last year, authorities confirm that at least 160 have identities that match names on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist. Those are just the ones the FBI knows about. You don’t have to have an overly negative view of the agency’s intelligence capabilities to estimate that the number who have actually tried to enter — many successfully — is a multiple of that.

Unlike those Hamas terrorists, these killers don’t have to be armed when they cross the border to unleash horror. Like the dozens of homegrown mass shooters, they — or their proxies — can simply walk into just about any Walmart in Texas or Oklahoma and arm themselves with enough weapons to wipe out most of a small town’s residents.

As travellers struggle through the performative security at airports, the truth is the US is spectacularly unprepared for the next terrorist attack. Leaders are scrambling to catch up. This week, as pro-Hamas students and others around the country continued to demonstrate in their thousands against Israeli military action, Christopher Wray, the FBI director, was summoned to Capitol Hill to testify about the scale of the terror challenge. He said: “The reality is that the terrorism threat has been elevated throughout 2023, but the ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole other level.”

You would have to be an unworldly optimist to think that another 9/11, another October 7, will not happen, here in the US or perhaps elsewhere in a weakened West that seems to have gone out of its way to expose its vulnerabilities to its enemies.

If — when — it happens, the consequences, as with 9/11, will be world-changing. But unlike 9/11, expect this one to intensify domestic political fury. Large numbers of Americans will see it as the inevitable consequence of the left’s regnant ideology of the past few years; one that disdains borders, embraces “multiculturalism” and tolerates voices that call for their own civilisation’s destruction. They’ll demand much more than tightened transport security.

The Times · by Gerard Baker · November 4, 2023

16. Ukraine’s Civilians Training for War, Private Sector Fills Growing Demand for Infantry Skills

Ukraine’s Civilians Training for War, Private Sector Fills Growing Demand for Infantry Skills

To the backdrop of the ongoing war, tactical training using rifles and full-on military kit has become a legitimate way to spend one’s weekend - particularly for IT sector workers.

by Stefan Korshak | November 4, 2023, 8:51 am

kyivpost.com

Before the war, Kyiv resident Leonid Trytinichenko went out on weekends shooting with his local shotgun sport club because they were a great group of guys to spend time with, and blasting clay pigeons out of the sky was something he become pretty good at, and it was fun.

On a recent weekend, Trytinchenko was again at a shooting range, but instead of yelling “pull” and later debating lucky hits and the qualities of different shotgun manufacturers over a beer, he spent his day on his belly in cold sand, wearing body armor and a helmet, practicing fire and movement, while snapping off NATO-standard 5.56mm live rounds at a man-sized target.

“There is a war on, and this is a good way to spend time,” Trytinchenko said. “The skills they train us in here I hope I never have to use, but the Russians are still in our country. It makes lots of sense to do the practice now.”

Civilians practice fire and movement at a firing range outside Kyiv, Ukraine. Oct. 28 photo by Stefan Korshak.

Across Ukraine, as the war against Russia has dragged on, the firewall between civilian life and military service has eroded. Official numbers vary but according to most estimates about one million Ukrainians are either in uniform or employed in government agencies like health and emergency response directly supporting the war effort.

One out of ten Ukrainians have become refugees as a result of the full-scale Russian invasion, military-aged men are few and far between on city streets, and a work place where a co-worker has a relative either in uniform, wounded or killed, is a rarity.

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A Nov. 3 report by the Ukraine Business Survey estimates that around three out of four small businesses in Ukraine have returned to work. But even for Ukrainians with reliable incomes in the civilian sector, the war affects everything and everyone feels it. That has translated to Ukrainian citizens practicing military tactics on their own initiative and expense, in cities and towns across the country.

Dmitry Kichati is married and a long-time Kyiv resident. He runs a successful data processing business that has manage to continue working in spite of Russia’s invasion. He and his wife never moved from the Ukrainian capital even in late February and early March 2022, when Moscow’s armored columns were less than 10 kilometers from their home. Like most Kyiv residents in those days, he volunteered to help front line troops and prepared for local self-defense. When the Russian army retreated, he went back to work, but from time to time he has a weekend free.

“I’m here, in part because it’s just good practice, it’s exercise outdoors and it’s a great group of guys,” Kichati told Kyiv Post during a break in training.

29-year-old Kipchati has never served in the military and living in greater Kyiv, where military recruiting centers get enough volunteers to meet their quotas, he is unlikely to be conscripted under current Ukrainian mobilization law. With no end to the war in sight, he sees an armed populace ready to defend their homes if the Kremlin sends its troops again as being the only realistic way of protecting his home. Paying a bit for some basic military training just makes sense, he says.

“A citizen needs to be ready to fight. It’s a responsibility,” Kipchati said.

Flags fly in a stiff 50+ kph wind over Backyard Camp, a civilian-run military training area on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. Oct. 28 photo by Stefan Korshak

The training “base” on Kyiv’s outskirts, is called Backyard Camp. It started out in the early days of the war when an ad hoc group of locals got ready to help resist the Russian invasion by training recently-armed civilians. Volunteers have set up similar facilities across Ukraine funded by donations. The motivation seems to be, not just because the Ukrainian government lacks resources and trainers, but also because formally serving in the national guard or territorial defense requires registration with the government and a commitment to mandatory training.

Civilian-run training bases teaching basic marksmanship and infantry tactics, and ready to accommodate a civilian schedule, albeit with run by individuals with varying skills. can be found near most major Ukrainian cities. Kyiv Post has identified at least a half dozen sites scattered around the capital.

Artem Semko (a pseudonym), one of the camp’s founders, said that the facility has likely trained between fifty and a hundred people a month since March 2022. Most trainees, he said, live relatively close by and often work in IT. A few are active-duty military or police looking to hone their tactical skills. In their cases the training is free.

In present-day Ukraine, Semko said, the training isn’t just about defending one’s home, the skills taught are valuable in preparing men of military age for the day they may be called to join Ukraine’s Armed Forces (AFU), either as a volunteer or a conscript. Either way, practical infantry skills are worth knowing, he said.

IT businessmen Leonid Trytinichenko shouts an order during weekend tactical training outside Kyiv, Ukraine. Oct. 28 photo by Stefan Korshak.

AFU spokesmen starting with President Zelensky have repeatedly stated no unit goes into combat without serious preparation, but, eighteen months into the war claims often occur on videos and social media that Ukrainian soldiers are sent to the front line with little useful pre-combat training.

In some cases, according to reports from both Ukrainian service members and Ukrainian POWs, Ukrainian reservists are sometimes pressed into service with less than two weeks refresher training before being sent to a combat unit.

Some new conscripts receive a roughly a month of training, part of it on infantry tactics, from NATO instructors, mostly in training camps in Britain or Germany. That preparation has also seen criticism for placing too much emphasis on marching and military discipline, and too little on battlefield skills.

Across the AFU, particularly in veteran outfits, front-line soldiers say new soldiers no matter how they got to their unit most often are hit because they don’t understand, until they are first really shot at, how lethal ignoring basic survival rules like keeping one’s head down or looking at the terrain in advance to select areas that might offer protection.

One of the weekend trainers is Robert Clark (another pseudonym), a Californian. He told Kyiv Post that he was a former member of the US Special Forces (SF)and a veteran of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. In that war, US SF on the ground, spent most of their time patrolling potentially hostile territory or raiding sites held by local resistance fighters, where ambushes and booby traps were the main threat.

The war in Ukraine for both its soldiers and their enemy is dramatically different. The main threat is from mortar rounds or artillery shells called in by a drone operator - but that doesn’t change the basics of soldiering, Clark says.

“You need to look at every bit of the ground, every little piece of it, and think every time you decide to change location,” he said. “Where do you want to go, how are you going to get there, who is going to give you covering fire when you make that move… the only way to do it right is practice.”

Civilians at a firing range outside Kyiv, Ukraine practice marksmanship. Oct. 28 photo by Stefan Korshak.

On the training ground trainees armed with M4-type rifles and at least three ammo mags line up in fire teams of two or three men, watched by Ukrainian and American instructors. They practice attacking and retreating across about 200 meters of a sand pit and despite the day being wet and viciously windy, only a few took a knee.

Most sprinted in NATO-standard 10–15-meter sprints, throwing themselves onto the sand into full-length firing positions to squeeze off a few shots before repeating the action. Section bosses yelled commands - over a sometimes, howling wind lashed by rain. Bullets punched holes into target boards. Some shots missed. A few men tripped, got up, and kept moving. Muzzle discipline (pointing down the range) was reasonably good.

Following the firing runs Clark gathered his civilian trainees, now wetter and dirtier, and talked them through what had happened, identifying key training points and highlighting errors and glitches that needed working on. He zeroed in on communicating with each other, situational awareness, and reading the ground.

Once he was happy that they’d got it, Clark then briefed them on the next drill.

kyivpost.com

17. China’s Male Leaders Signal to Women That Their Place Is in the Home

Useful for information operations? Will women's rights organizations in the international community take up this cause for women in China?

China’s Male Leaders Signal to Women That Their Place Is in the Home

nytimes.com · by Alexandra Stevenson · November 2, 2023

The Communist Party’s solution to the country’s demographic crisis and a slowing economy is to push women back into traditional roles.

Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and the state, including Xi Jinping, attending the 13th National Women’s Congress in Beijing last month.Credit...Yao Dawei/Xinhua, via Getty Images

At China’s top political gathering for women, it was mostly a man who was seen and heard.

Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, sat center stage at the opening of the National Women’s Congress. A close-up of him at the Congress was splashed on the front page of the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper the next day. From the head of a large round table, Mr. Xi lectured female delegates at the closing meeting on Monday.

“We should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture,” he said in a speech, adding that it was the role of party officials to influence young people’s views on “love and marriage, fertility and family.”

The Women’s Congress, held every five years, has long been a forum for the ruling Communist Party to demonstrate its commitment to women. The gesture, while mostly symbolic, has taken on more significance than ever this year, the first time in two decades that there are no women in the party’s executive policymaking body.

What was notable was how officials downplayed gender equality. They focused instead on using the gathering to press Mr. Xi’s goal for Chinese women: get married and have babies. In the past, officials had touched on the role women play at home as well as in the work force. But in this year’s address, Mr. Xi made no mention of women at work.

The party desperately needs women to have more babies. China has been thrust into a demographic crisis as its birthrate has plummeted, causing its population to shrink for the first time since the 1960s. The authorities are scrambling to undo what experts have said is an irreversible trend, trying one initiative after another, such as cash handouts and tax benefits to encourage more births.

Faced with a demographic crisis, a slowing economy and what it views as a stubborn rise of feminism, the party has chosen to push women back into the home, calling on them to rear the young and care for the old. The work, in the words of Mr. Xi, is essential for “China’s path to modernization.”

But to some, his vision sounds more like a worrying regression.

“Women in China have been alarmed by the trend and have been fighting back over the years,” said Yaqiu Wang, the research director for Hong Kong, China and Taiwan at Freedom House, a nonprofit based in Washington. “Many women in China are empowered and united in their fight against the twin repressions in China: the authoritarian government and the patriarchal society.”

The party has failed to address many concerns, viewing some issues raised by women as a direct challenge to its leadership. Bursts of discussion over sexual harassment, gender violence and discrimination are silenced on social media. Support for victims is often extinguished. Feminists and outspoken advocates have been jailed, and a #MeToo movement that briefly flourished in 2018 has been pushed underground.

The language used by senior officials at the Women’s Congress in Beijing was another glimpse of how the party sees the role of women. Mr. Xi has pushed a hard-line agenda to advance his vision of a stronger China that includes a revival of what he considers traditional values. At the congress, he encouraged female leaders to “tell good stories about family traditions and guide women to play their unique role in carrying forward the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation.”

In a departure from a two-decade tradition, Mr. Xi’s deputy, Ding Xuexiang, failed to mention in an opening address at the congress a standard phrase: that gender equality is a basic national policy.

And even as Mr. Xi did nod to gender equality, he spent most of his speech elaborating on family, parenting and fertility.

This stands in stark contrast to a decade ago, when top officials stressed the importance of both equality and women’s self-realization, said Hanzhang Liu, a political studies professor at Pitzer College who has examined speeches by senior officials at several congresses over the past two decades.

“Women’s work was once about women for themselves, women for women’s sake,” said Ms. Liu, referring to the party’s jargon for gender issues. “Now what they are saying is that women’s rightful place in society — where they can do the most meaningful work — is at home with the family.”

But the Women’s Congress is not where the battle for their rights is being fought. Organized by the All-China Women’s Federation, a group that works to promote party policies and is funded by the party, it tends to represent the political status quo.

As a result, much of the discussion this year was focused on encouraging party leaders to promote traditional family values. The language reveals the calculus that officials have made: that extolling the virtues of China’s past will inspire women to focus on family. This, they hope, will help with demographics.

Sending women back to the home and out of the work force is also convenient at a time when China faces its biggest economic challenge in four decades and the government is under pressure to improve a social welfare system that is severely underdeveloped and unable to support a rapidly aging population.

“Women have always been viewed as an instrument of the state in one way or another,” said Minglu Chen, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney who studies gender and politics in China. “But now we have to think about China’s political economy. It benefits the party to emphasize women returning to the home, where they can care for children and for the elderly.”

The trend of fewer marriages and births has been years in the making, however, and Mr. Xi is goading women into a role they have long rejected. Many young and educated women in China’s biggest cities have relished their financial independence and are wary of marriage because of the pressure on them to have children and give it all up.

Young adults have expressed ambivalence about marrying and settling down, and they worry about the future as the economy slumps and unemployment soars. China is also among the most expensive countries in the world to raise a child.

For all of Mr. Xi’s calls on women to take up the cause of having babies, the party’s efforts are unlikely to bolster the birthrate enough to reverse the country’s population decline. That is, unless it is willing to resort to more punitive measures to disadvantage or marginalize women who choose not to have children.

While unlikely, it is something that Fubing Su, a political science professor at Vassar College, said was not completely out of the question. During the “one-child” policy, the party resorted to fines, forced abortions and sterilizations in an attempt to slow population growth for decades until it ended the restrictions in 2015.

“If the party could sacrifice women’s body and birth rights for its one-child policy,” said Mr. Su, “they could impose their will on women again.”

Zixu Wang contributed research.

nytimes.com · by Alexandra Stevenson · November 2, 2023

18. Israeli officials: Oxygen concentrators for Gaza tunnels found hidden in aid shipment

Will we see any mainstream media reporting of this?

Israeli officials: Oxygen concentrators for Gaza tunnels found hidden in aid shipment

timesofisrael.com · by Jacob Magid 3 November 2023, 10:45 pm 59 Edit

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Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

A convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid enters the Gaza Strip from Egypt via the Rafah border crossing on October 21, 2023. (Eyad BABA / AFP)

Israeli inspectors earlier this week uncovered several oxygen concentrators meant to aerate the tunnels operated by terror groups in Gaza, two senior Israeli officials tell The Times of Israel.

“These weren’t for use in the hospitals, but below them. That’s why they were smuggled among boxes of cookies,” one of the senior Israeli officials says, adding that the entire truck in which the oxygen concentrators were found was barred from entering Gaza.

Neither official provided a photo of the oxygen concentrators in question and they did not disclose which organization was responsible for sending the truck.

Since Egypt opened its Rafah crossing into Gaza 11 days ago, several hundred trucks filled with humanitarian aid have been able to enter Gaza following inspections by both Egyptian and Israeli authorities.

The trucks first enter Egypt where they undergo an initial round of inspections. They then are driven into Israel through the Nitzana crossing where they are inspected by Israel’s COGAT military liaison before being sent back to Egypt and driven into Gaza through the Rafah crossing, a second Israeli official tells The Times of Israel, saying the format was agreed upon after extensive talks between Israel, Egypt and the United States.

Israel has thus far rejected growing calls to allow in fuel, expressing concerns that Hamas will divert it to power its tunnels. IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said Thursday that Israel would allow fuel to enter Gaza via the Rafah crossing should it determine that hospitals have run out of fuel.

Shortly after Halevi’s comments, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a terse statement noting only that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has not approved the entry of fuel into Gaza.”

timesofisrael.com · by Jacob Magid 3 November 2023, 10:45 pm 59 Edit

19. China's disinfo campaign shows growing unease about Philippines' WPS actions

China's disinfo campaign shows growing unease about Philippines' WPS actions

philstar.com · by Ian Laqui

Headlines

Ian Laqui - Philstar.com

November 3, 2023 | 6:11pm

This April 13, 2021 photo released by the Philippine Coast Guard shows at least six Chinese vessels remain at Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea.

PCG / Released, file

MANILA, Philippines — An expert observed that China's recent disinformation campaign has raised a growing anxiety about the Philippines' efforts in the West Philippine Sea.

In an interview with ANC's "Hot Copy" on Friday, geopolitical expert Don Mclaine Gill said that these narratives persist due to China's "discontent" with the Philippines openly asserting its sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea.

"Based on its disinformation campaigns, it makes it seem like it is in Manila's best interest not to do anything about securing its sovereign rights," Gill said.

"We are defending what is rightfully ours without provoking the status quo," he said.

Despite these indicators, the expert warned that the Philippines should remain vigilant and not become complacent.

"We have to illustrate that we are serious about this, we are steadfast in defending our sovereign rights and cooperating with like-minded partners that have similar interests at a time when the Indo-Pacific maritime security continues to face significant fluctuations," he said.

The National Security Council said that they are monitoring individuals and organizations that are parroting pro-Beijing narratives, according to a report of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism released in October.

Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela also warned about its existence citing three prominent narratives in downplaying China's aggression in the West Philippine Sea.

20. Chief Priority! Ignite a Renaissance in Military Scholarship and Writing

​Ladies and gentlemen: get to it. Start writing.

Chief Priority!

Ignite a Renaissance in Military Scholarship and Writing

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2023/Chief-Priority/

Col. Todd Schmidt, PhD, U.S. Army

Download the PDF 

Col. Todd A. Schmidt, PhD, U.S. Army

Director, Army University Press

The chief of staff of the Army (CSA) is making professional writing a top priority. To prove it, he is incentivizing professional writing through personal recognition, and Army University Press is playing a major role in achieving this important objective.

Over the past year, the team at Army University Press has been calling for a renaissance, revival, and reawakening of thought, scholarship, and writing within the community of military professionals. Contributing to the professional body of knowledge is a fundamental part of being a “professional.” Our pleas for making scholarship, writing, and intellectual engagement an Army priority have been echoed on the pages of other complementary outlets such as the Modern War Institute.1 Our call was heard, and action is now in progress.

A select group of leaders from around the Army are now preparing to meet at the U.S. Military Academy to plan a campaign that, if it meets its objectives, will have a profound impact on our Army. The chief priority of these attendees is to understand how to renew, reinvigorate, and improve professional writing and discourse across the Army enterprise.

To punctuate this priority, on Patriot’s Day, 11 September 2023, Gen. Randy George, Gen. Gary Brito, and Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer published an article calling for military professionals to make vital investments to improve our expertise through scholarship and writing. Plainly stating, “We can assure you: we do not have all the answers,” these senior leaders are calling on soldiers of all ranks to sharpen their minds, sharpen their arguments, sharpen their pencils, and engage in professional writing. They understand that this dialogue strengthens the profession.2

The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, charged with the mission of developing future leaders, will guide this effort on behalf of the Army, ensuring the allocation of resources required to meet the goals and objectives of the CSA. Requirements will include updating twentieth-century policy, providing modern capabilities, and extinguishing archaic thinking about how the Army engages the profession in the twenty-first century.

In recent articles calling for renewal of professional writing, elementary analysis utilizing descriptive statistics demonstrates a decline in professional journals across the Army. Journals and authors are publishing fewer articles less often.3 Our publishing platforms have not evolved and have been allowed to wither away. As the cost of maintaining professional editorial staffs and publishing hard-copy publications skyrockets, the transition of products from print to online products has increased exponentially. Limited resources are, or have been, redirected to other priorities, particularly over the course of the past two decades of conflict and war.

In tandem, military readers have migrated to nonmilitary sources of information. More popular, current blogs and websites offer the ability for contributors and consumers to express more opinionated writing, offer and gain near real-time feedback and commentary, and share interesting opinion pieces on other social media outlets. There is more personal gratification and less professional editorial process that can slow the exchange of ideas.

If the Army is to truly engage with twenty-first-century audiences and capabilities, we must remove antiquated, if well-meaning, barriers to utilizing safe, modern, mobile-friendly, online website platforms and social media. We must ensure the body of knowledge related to military affairs is easily accessible and optimized for internet search engines. Likewise, the Army must improve its understanding of how current and, most importantly, future military students learn; how they research, read, and write; and how to incentivize quality scholarship and professional contribution.4

In the near-term, the CSA is selecting well-written articles each month by a diverse community of authors for recognition and amplification of their scholarly work. These articles will be highlighted and promoted on the Army University Press homepage, and authors will be receiving a congratulatory a note and gift from the CSA. In 2024, other major, prestigious initiatives will be unveiled (look for an announcement in the January-February 2024 issue of Military Review).

Lt. Gen. Milford Beagle, commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, recently encouraged leaders to read the book The Disruptive Mindset by Charlene Li.5 A prominent message for leaders in the book is that if an organization such as the Army is to remain relevant, it must possess certain qualities. It must be adaptive. It must be willing to transform. It must have a healthy command climate. It must have a viable, future-focused strategy. It must focus less on where it is and more on where it needs to be in relationship to itself, its adversaries, and the Nation.

Our senior leaders today are tested warfighters who now find themselves in corporate positions, leading the Army institution in an “interwar period” characterized by great power competition. Although our Army is not directly engaged in high-intensity conflict, we are not able to lower our guard or “take a knee.” To borrow from the Navy, we still require “all hands on deck” to ensure our intellectual and human capital is invested in maintaining our relative cognitive advantage over future adversaries. Technological advancements and advantages, cornerstone capabilities of the U.S. military, are not enough. We require soldiers and leaders who can outthink the enemy at every level. This necessitates continued education, training development, and repetition, particularly as it relates to professional reading, critical thinking, and writing.

The real work will be done at the lowest levels, as soldiers engage in forums that inform the force, connecting with peers across the institution to share lessons learned, write, engage in scholarly discourse, improve military doctrine, optimize training, and achieve these objectives on platforms, outlets, and mediums that require enabling, twenty-first-century policies. At the beginning of 2023, Army University Press laid out a challenge to military professionals. That challenge is now supported by our CSA. I will end my letter for the last 2023 issue of Military Review the same way I ended the first:

I challenge those who subscribe to the moniker of military professional to write, to share, to engage, to think. Help the profession improve. Cast off and banish any hint of anti-intellectual cynicism or undertone that shames those that seek education and professional development. You can start … by working with Army University Press, submitting articles or book reviews for publication. Contact us and let us help you reach the full calling and requirement of a true military professional. Write!6

Notes

1. For example, see Matt Cavanaugh, “Follow the Yellow Brick Wall: The Reasons Why Military Officers Do Not Write,” Modern War Institute, 23 February 2016, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/follow-the-yellow-brick-wall-the-reasons-why-military-officers-do-not-write/.
2. Randy George, Gary Brito, and Michael Weimer, “Strengthening the Profession: A Call to All Army Leaders to Revitalize Our Professional Discourse,” Modern War Institute, 11 September 2023, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/strengthening-the-profession-a-call-to-all-army-leaders-to-revitalize-our-professional-discourse/.
3. Zachary Griffiths, “Bring Back Branch Magazines,” Modern War Institute, 27 April 2023, https://mwi.usma.edu/bring-back-branch-magazines/; Zachary Griffiths, “Low Crawling toward Obscurity: The Army’s Professional Journals,” Military Review 103, no. 5 (September-October 2023): 17–28, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/September-October-2023/Obscurity/.
4. Ibid.
5. Charlene Li, The Disruptive Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail (Oakton, VA: IdeaPress Publishing, 2019).
6. Todd Schmidt, “Where Have All the Warrior-Scholars Gone? A Challenge to All Military Professionals,” Military Review 103, no. 1 (January-February 2023): 1–2, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/January-February-2023/Letter-from-the-Editor/.

2023 General William E. Depuy

Special Topics Writing Competition Winners

“Implementing FM 3-0, Operations”

1st Place

“Convergence and Emission Control: Tension and Reconciliation”

Maj. Matthew Tetreau, U.S. Army

2nd Place

“FM 3-0: A Step Forward in Approaching Operational Art”

Maj. Christopher Salerno, U.S. Army

3rd Place

“Obstacles to Implementation: A Dialectic between Old and New”

Maj. McLeod Wood, Australian Army

Honorable Mentions

“The Convergence Algorithm: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Enable Multidomain Operations”

Lt. Col. Michael B. Kim, U.S. Army

“Deep Six Chapter Seven: Qualitative and Practical Analytical Arguments for Removing Chapter 7 from FM 3-0”

Lt. Col. Mohamed. B. Massaquoi, U.S. Army

“Returning Context to Our Doctrine”

Maj. Robert G. Rose, U.S. Army

“Through a Glass Clearly: An Improved Definition of LSCO”

Maj. John Dzwonczyk, U.S. Army

Maj. Clayton C. Merkley, U.S. Army

For information on the General William E. DePuy Special Topics Writing Competition, including the 2024 topic and how to submit an entry, visit https://www.armyupress.army.mil/DePuy-Writing-Competition/.

21. By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy (Book Review)

It is an excellent book and an important read.

By All Means Available

Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2023/Review-Essay/

Michael G. Vickers, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2023, 565 pages

Download the PDF 

Lt. Col. Rick Baillergeon, U.S. Army, Retired

American psychologist and author Barry Schwartz once stated, “The higher your expectations, the greater your disappointment.”1 As I have gotten older (perhaps, a little wiser), I have heeded those words somewhat and learned to temper my expectations a bit. This is especially true when it comes to books. Over the years, I have clearly had my share of disappointments when books did not measure up to my high hopes. Consequently, I was extremely careful in not placing the bar too high when I began to read Michael Vickers’s memoir By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy.

Why the high initial expectations? For me, and others (as I would surmise), it was the potential of Vickers to provide the “rest of the story” from events occurring in his long and storied career. It was a career highlighted by several high-profile positions within the Department of Defense. I would like to provide a summary of this career. I will focus on the three principal organizations he served with: U.S. Army Special Forces, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the aforementioned Department of Defense.

Vickers enlisted in the Army under the Special Forces (SF) option in June 1973. Roughly a year later, he graduated from the Special Forces Qualification Course. He rose through the enlisted ranks in the SF community and was selected to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS) in 1978. In December 1978, he graduated from OCS as an infantry officer. Because of his prior enlisted SF time, he received a direct assignment to an SF group in Panama. In 1980, he graduated from the SF Officers Course as the distinguished honor graduate. Following graduation, he commanded a classified counterterrorism unit and deployed to Latin America several times.2

In December 1982, Vickers decided to leave the Army and formally applied to the CIA’s Career Training Program. He was accepted some months later. Within his memoir, Vickers provides three reasons why serving in the CIA’s clandestine service enticed him. Firstly, he was attracted to the individual autonomy and responsibility the CIA provided its officers. Secondly, he believed that the CIA was the key element in fighting the Cold War. Lastly, he felt he would be afforded much more responsibility at an earlier age in the CIA versus the Army.3

Vickers’s tenure in the CIA was not long, but it was surely memorable. Upon graduation from the organization’s training program, he found himself as the CIA point man in the invasion of Grenada. Following this, he was selected to serve on a Special Counterterrorism Task Force in response to the Beirut bombings. These two key assignments set the stage for Vickers’s selection as the CIA’s program officer and chief strategist for the Afghanistan Covert Action Program to force the Soviet army out of the country. It was a role that Vickers cherished, and his performance was lauded by senior officials. It was the CIA’s largest and most successful covert action program, and his exploits were chronicled in both the film and New York Times bestseller Charlie Wilson’s War.4

Despite his success in these three assignments, Vickers was told his career path would now move in a direction that did not appeal to him. Consequently, after three years in the CIA, Vickers decided to leave to pursue academic and outside interests. Vickers reflected on his CIA experience in his memoir:

I’d had the adventure of a lifetime for three years. I regularly interacted with the top levels of the CIA and the chiefs and other top officials of several foreign liaison services around the world. I loved what I had done, and I loved CIA, but, perversely, it seemed that I had risen too fast and, more to the point, too unconventionally. It was my first career setback, and it was an odd win: I was being penalized for too much success. I had joined CIA not to begin a new career but to accelerate an existing one. I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, but it was clear there were still limits.5

For essentially the next twenty years, his focus was on his academic pursuits and then his venture into the “outside” world. This venture included obtaining an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, and serving as the senior vice president for strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. It was in this role that Vickers cultivated relationships with senior governmental leaders and, at times, provided President George W. Bush and his cabinet with advice on the Iraq War. It was a position that undoubtedly set the conditions for his return to government service.

In 2007, Vickers, on the recommendation of Bush, became the first and only assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities (ASD SO/LIC&IC).6 Vickers served in this role for four years (President Barack Obama asked him to stay in this position in his administration), and it presented him numerous opportunities to excel. He describes some of these opportunities in the following passage: “During my four years as an assistant secretary of defense, I spent most of my time on operations, mainly on the war with al-Qa’ida and the war in Afghanistan, but also on the war in Iraq, on counter-proliferation operations to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, on the counterinsurgency war in Colombia, and on counter-narcotics operations in Mexico.”7

In 2010, Obama nominated him to serve as the under secretary of defense for intelligence, and he was confirmed in March 2011. In this role, he exercised authority, direction, and control over the defense intelligence enterprise for the secretary of defense, overseeing the National Security Agency; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the National Reconnaissance Office; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; and the intelligence components of the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and the combatant commands.8 During his four years as the under secretary, many key events appeared on his radar. These included the Bin Laden Operation, the continuing al-Qaida fight, the Edward Snowden leaks, renewed power competition with China and Russia, and the beginnings of Russia’s covert and overt war in Ukraine.

It is obvious that Vickers has much to address and to offer in a memoir. Before I discuss how Vickers achieves this, I would like to provide you with his purpose in crafting his memoirs. Personally, I always find it interesting when an author offers this to his readers. Additionally, it is usually a good indication on the direction of the memoir.

Vickers lists three main reasons. First, he believes he had a duty to history. In particular, he feels that sharing his experience in events such as the “secret war” in defeating the Soviet army in Afghanistan and the war with al-Qaida (among many others) was important. Second, he considers writing his memoirs as a duty to the American people. He states, “As a former national security and intelligence official, I feel a great responsibility to tell my fellow Americans what I can about the critically important work our intelligence professionals, special operators, and defense and national security strategists have done and are doing today.”9 Finally, he believes it is his duty to future special operators, intelligence professionals, and national security strategists. Vickers affirms, “I feel an obligation to our country’s future operators and strategists to pass on what I have learned.”10

To accomplish the above and to effectively detail a career spanning over four decades, a sound organization is imperative. I believe Vickers has accomplished this by not getting “fancy” with his organization and sticking to the basics. He states,

The book is organized into five parts, following a chronological path for the first half, and a thematic one in the second. During the first decade of my career, I was an operator and operational strategist in the Special Forces and CIA. During the subsequent two and a half decades, I was a defense and national security strategist, a national security policy maker, and a senior intelligence official. The book follows this progression.11

Within By All Means Available, Vickers utilizes the preponderance of the first four sections of the memoir to focus specifically on his service. It is a comprehensive look that encompasses his reporting to the Special Forces Qualification Course in December 1973 to his retirement from the Department of Defense over forty years later. Within this discussion, Vickers displays a knack for dedicating just the right amount of attention to the events in his career. Consequently, readers will find expanded discussion on the events that they will undoubtably have the most interest in. I would like to address some of these below.

Vickers devotes most of the memoir’s attention to the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. During Vickers’s three years in the CIA, he was incredibly engaged in the area. As addressed earlier, he was selected as the CIA’s program officer and chief strategist for the Afghanistan Covert Action Program to force the Soviet army out of the country. In this role, no one was more involved in these actions than Vickers.

Within the memoir, Vickers discusses how he was selected for the position and the decisions he then made to transform the program. He goes into significant detail (more than I anticipated) on the program. The most beneficial portion of his discussion is a subchapter titled, “What We Won, Why We Won, What We Missed.” He provides significant analysis and is frank on his thoughts on what went right and what could have been improved. He concludes this discussion with these thoughts: “What did we get wrong after the Soviets withdrew and the war finally ended? The most important thing was our error in believing that Afghanistan had lost its strategic significance after the Red Army had been forced to withdraw and the Soviet Empire had collapsed.”12

Although the above is outstanding, I believe the highlight of these four sections is Vickers’s treatment of Operation Neptune’s Spear (the operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden). During this period, he served as the ASD SO/LIC&IC during much of the planning and as under secretary of defense for intelligence for much of the preparation and the execution. Vickers devotes two chapters to the operation and his significant role in it.

In these chapters, Vickers provides readers with exceptional detail on various aspects of the planning, preparation, and execution of the raid. This includes discussion on “finish” options, assessing the probabilities of bin Laden’s location, the ultimate decision to execute, and specifics on the numerous meetings conducted during all phases of the operation. Vickers’s discussion will add immensely to a reader’s understanding of the operation.

As Vickers indicated in his prologue, the memoir shifts from a chronological approach to a thematic approach in the book’s fourth section. In this section, he focuses on “themes” tied to his service. Consequently, readers will find subsections keyed to counterproliferation (e.g, Iran and North Korea), counter narco-insurgency (e.g., Colombia and Mexico), and the battle for the Middle East (e.g., Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya). Additionally, he addresses topics such as the Snowden leaks and turmoil in the defense intelligence agencies. In each of these, he provides his perspective as a high-ranking government official who was clearly in the “room” for all these events.

The final chapter of section, “Winning the New Cold War,” initiates a shift in the memoir. It is a swing that somewhat surprised me. Instead of focusing on the author’s career and the past, Vickers addresses the present and the future and the challenges America faces and will face. He starts this discussion by addressing China and Russia and makes the following assertation: “The New Cold War has three main causes: a failure to fully integrate China and Russia into the American-led international order, significant changes in the balance of power, and China’s and Russia’s perception that America is in terminal decline.”13

Within this chapter, Vickers provides readers with superb analysis. Unlike many who simply point out problems, Vickers offers solutions and courses of action. He organizes these into a grand strategy that he shares with readers. In his introduction to this grand strategy, he states,

America will need an effective grand strategy if it is to prevail in the New Cold War. We haven’t had a truly successful one since the end of the first Cold War. In the pages that follow, I offer what I believe is just such a strategy. A successful grand strategy, in my mind, must contain five essential elements: rebuilding our national ambition, unity, and resilience; posturing ourselves to prevail in the race for economic and technological supremacy; winning the intelligence and covert action wars; strengthening regional and global deterrence and, if required, defeating aggression; and transforming our alliances and national security institutions for our new era of great power competition.14

Vickers utilizes his final section to key on his lessons learned and relearned in the practice of intelligence, special operations, and strategy. As is the case with the entire memoir, it is filled with superb analysis and numerous “takeaways.” The highlight is his concluding subchapter on strategic leadership. In it, he offers his ten core principles focused on leadership and career development. Although some may not relate to everyone, as a group they are added value to all.

There are many strengths exhibited or utilized within the memoir that clearly enhance the experience for the reader. First, this is an incredibly readable volume. Vickers writes in a highly conversant style. You would expect this conversational tone in a memoir, but I have found that is many times not the case. This is one of those select books in which you feel you are sitting with the author listening as he speaks to you.

Tied to the above is Vickers’s candidness displayed throughout the memoir. He does not shy from critique (positive and negative) of others and himself. If he feels a poor decision was made, he lets it be known. Conversely, he is quick to praise when he believes it is warranted. Readers will find his openness refreshing, and it does not come with any sense of bias.

The final strength of the volume is the superb notes section Vickers has crafted for the memoir. He added nearly fifty pages of annotated notes, and they are a tremendous resource to the reader. These notes, at times, provide added detail, assist in understanding key points and concepts, or “tell the rest of the story.” Future readers must ensure they refer to the notes section when prompted. Don’t wait until you complete the book, as all of us have done in the past, to delve into the notes section.

Early in Vickers’s memoir, he addresses the personal objectives he had in crafting his memoir. Among these, he states,

I hope the general reader will gain significant insight into the secret worlds of intelligence, special operations, and strategy, and come away with a better understanding of the importance of individuals in driving world-changing events and how the world of today came to be. I hope readers who are very familiar with or even participated in the events described in this book will learn something new about how these operations were actually conducted and what strengths and weaknesses of the various alternatives available to us were.15

There is no question Vickers has delivered on these and all his objectives in By All Means Available. This is memoir that will appeal and benefit a very diverse group or readers. This is much more than a traditional memoir. It is a volume that relives the past, analyses the present, and provides prudent strategy for the future. After reading By All Means Available, I am no longer lowering my expectations on books. Exit Charles Schwartz and enter Charles Kettering. As Kettering stated, “High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.”16

Notes

1. Barry Schwartz is a renowned psychologist who dedicates much of his work to addressing the link between psychology and economics. He possesses a significant body of publishing work which includes numerous articles, editorials, and books. His best-known volume is The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: Ecco, 2004).
2. “Distinguished Member of the Special Forces Regiment: Honorable Michael G. Vickers, Inducted 2010,” U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, accessed 14 September 2023, https://www.swcs.mil/Portals/111/sf_vickers.pdf.
3. Michael G. Vickers, By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023), 52–53.
4. “Mike Vickers,” National Security Institute, accessed 14 September 2023, https://nationalsecurity.gmu.edu/mike-vickers/.
5. Vickers, By All Means Available, 191.
6. This position was originally created in 1987 by Congress as the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict (ASD SO/LIC). However, senior officials wanted to expand the position and added the interdependent capabilities (ASD SO/LIC&IC).
7. Vickers, By All Means Available, 225.
8. Ibid., 390.
9. Ibid., 6–7.
10. Ibid., 7.
11. Ibid., 7–8.
12. Ibid.,189.
13. Ibid., 417.
14. Ibid., 418.
15. Ibid., 8.
16. Charles Kettering (1876–1952) was a prolific American inventor and a highly regarded engineer and businessman. As an inventor, he was the holder of 186 patents and was instrumental in the development of the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. As a businessman and engineer, he was the founder of Delco and the head of research at General Motors for nearly thirty years.

Lt. Col. Rick Baillergeon, U.S. Army, retired, is a faculty member in the Department of Army Tactics at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

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