Quotes of the Day:

“I never got to the point where I lost faith in my country and my Constitution,” he said. “I just lost faith in some people who I thought were talking out of both sides of their mouths.” 

– Willie Merkerson

"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have."

- President Reagan 

"Perfection of means and confusion of ends seems to characterize our age."

- Albert Einstein

Although a day after our Independence Day Celebration the 4 minutes spent watching David Cohen giving his toast to America will still be time well spent.

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

​1. IN THE KILL ZONE: The Life and Times of Willie Merkerson (Part 3)

2. AI Drones Threaten U.S. Forces

3. A tell-tale sign that China could be preparing for war

4. Air Force Ospreys in Japan resume flight ops

5. He got $30K to leave the military when it needed to downsize. Now the government wants that money back.

6. U.S. and Israel Voice New Optimism About Cease-Fire as Gaza Talks Resume

7. Report to Congress on Navy Distributed Maritime Operations

8. Naval Special Warfare Units Merge Combat Tactics With Attack Submarines

9. Aircraft Carriers: Still Indispensable

​10. New Pentagon Data Sharing Effort Will Showcase U.S. Military As Viable Career Path For High Schoolers

11. ‘Toxic’ politics increase terrorism, extremism risk, DHS official says

12. Pentagon sending advanced fighters to Japan as part of force upgrade

13. DARPA wants to use AI to find new rare minerals

14. This Medal of Honor recipient’s heroism didn’t end with his war

15. The Surprising National Security Role of America’s “Best Idea”

16. Is the precision revolution in warfare fading away?

17. Different makes us stronger: American diversity is a national security asset

18. An American Insurgency

19. Can Starmer Save Britain?

20. When America and China Collided

21. China Is Finally Starting to Do Something About the U.S. Fentanyl Crisis

22. The Glorious Cause of America

1. IN THE KILL ZONE: The Life and Times of Willie Merkerson (Part 3)

More on this great American who should be an inspiration to us all. I am looking forward to Part 4.

Thanks to Sean Naylor and Jack Murphy for doing this gerat research.

IN THE KILL ZONE: The Life and Times of Willie Merkerson (Part 3)

https://thehighside.substack.com/p/in-the-kill-zone-the-life-and-times-d04?utm

Part 3: Behind Enemy Lines

SEAN D. NAYLOR AND JACK MURPHY

JUL 05, 2024

∙ PAID

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A 1968 photo of NVA troops using a B40 rocket-propelled grenade launcher, which was the North Vietnamese version of the Soviet RPG-2. (U.S. Army)

Deep behind enemy lines, Wille Merkerson’s reconnaissance team was in trouble.

The three Americans and a handful of Montagnards had already crawled on their stomachs for a couple thousand meters to escape one effort to surround them. But now they were caught again, squeezed between North Vietnamese Army trackers behind them and another NVA force ahead.

The U.S. Army would later state that they were operating “in the Republic of Vietnam.” But that was a lie.

Outnumbered and outgunned, they had been forced to abandon their original mission to monitor enemy traffic on a nearby highway. Now their goal was simply to escape with their lives.

Staying low, Merkerson was firing at NVA targets ahead of him when he registered movement in his peripheral vision. He turned quickly to engage the threat, just in time to see a rocket-propelled grenade flying toward him.

“If you’re captured, your ass is out there.”

June 1969 saw Merkerson, by now a captain, leave 10^th Group on good terms and return voluntarily to Vietnam for his third tour, this time as commander of 4^th Infantry Division’s Company K (Ranger), 75^th Infantry Regiment, the division’s renamed long-range patrol unit. But he soon became dissatisfied with the conditions under which he was being forced to work.

“They had no equipment and all they were doing was putting little kids into harm’s way … with no protection,” Merkerson said. “So we had a meeting of the minds and I told them I wanted to go back to Special Forces.”

Merkerson got his wish. He was reassigned to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group, the blandly named but highly secretive special operations organization that conducted extraordinarily risky cross-border missions into Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam.

The insignia of MACV-SOG, the special operations organization that ran secret missions behind enemy lines in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Headquartered in Saigon, MACV-SOG was organized by region: Command and Control North; Command and Control South; and Command and Control Central, to which Merkerson was assigned. Command and Control Central was based in Kontum, about 260 miles northeast of Saigon. Merkerson was given command of a reconnaissance company, responsible for ten American-led and six Vietnamese-led teams, totaling 168 troops.

Regular South Vietnamese army commandos ran the Vietnamese-led teams, but the rank-and-file troops were “mercenary Montagnards and/or Vietnamese,” Merkerson said. Although the Montagnards were part of a different program than those he’d led on his previous tours, they were still “under our control” and not considered part of South Vietnam’s army, he added.

The American-led teams consisted of three-to-five Americans (usually, but not exclusively, Green Berets) and ten-to-15 indigenous fighters, Merkerson said. “Some of those teams had Cambodians,” who were mostly ethnic Cambodians recruited in Vietnam, augmented by recruits from inside Cambodia, he added. All the recon teams out of Kontum were named after states – RT California, RT Texas, and so on.

From Kontum, Merkerson’s company ran numerous Brightlight missions – on-call search-and-rescue operations for downed pilots and aircrews – and many recon missions into Laos and Cambodia.

When Merkerson and his teammates launched those cross-border missions, they did so “always sterile,” he said. “We never wore anything U.S. except for weapons [and] a lot of teams didn’t even carry American weapons … Shoes, clothes, everything – sterile. No passport, no identification card.” To ensure everyone obeyed this rule, the troops were searched twice – once at base camp and one at the final launch point – before crossing the border, according to Merkerson.

In the event of capture, “our cover story is that we’re flying a mission into Vietnam, and because sometimes magnetic compasses get thrown off, we veered off course and we landed at the wrong place,” he said. “If you’re captured, your ass is out there … We had over 100 percent casualties.”

Capt. Willie Merkerson inspects a Montagnard recon team in early 1970 with Col. Daniel Schungel, head of MACV-SOG’s Operations Project 35, which ran the ground reconnaissance missions into Laos and Cambodia. Both Merkerson and Schungel were Distinguished Service Cross recipients. (Courtesy of the Merkerson family)

After being selected to command the company, in late 1969 Merkerson attended MACV-SOG’s recon team leader course in Long Thanh, just east of Saigon. Although attending the school was not a requirement for him, Merkerson did it “so I could walk, talk and eat the way everyone else did who was familiar with the environment,” he said.

But Merkerson was also curious to see whether he was joining a sharper outfit than the one he had just left. “I wanted to go because coming out of the Ranger unit, they didn’t have shit, they didn’t get the proper experience,” he said. “I wanted to see how MACV-SOG did it, and if they did it differently.”

The course lasted several weeks and taught Green Berets, SEALs and Australian Special Air Service Regiment operators how to conduct cross-border direct action, reconnaissance, and sabotage missions, as well as operations to rescue allied prisoners of war.

The final exercise was a patrol in a combat zone in the Australian area of operations near Long Thanh air base. “The Australians gave us carte blanche authority to operate in that area,” Merkerson said.

After inserting by helicopter, Merkerson and his classmates found themselves in combat for five straight days, relying on AC-130 and AC-47 gunship fire to keep the enemy at bay. “We were running the whole time,” he said.

Like all classes at the course (often called the “One-Zero School” because each MACV-SOG U.S. team leader was referred to as the “one-zero”), Merkerson’s was small – he estimated there were “12 to 14” students. But as was often the case during his Army career, he distinguished himself and emerged at the head of the class as the honor graduate.

“I’m really proud of that,” he told The High Side.” (Decades later, CIA colleagues would sometimes refer to Merkerson as “One-Zero” in recognition of his achievements in Vietnam, according to Ed King, a retired Special Forces officer and former agency friend of Merkerson.)

Into Laos with RT Illinois

Merkerson would need all the tactical know-how he gained at One-Zero School a few weeks later, in January 1970, when he volunteered to accompany one of his team leaders on an RT Illinois mission into Laos to monitor NVA truck traffic on Route 110. That highway connected Cambodia and South Vietnam via southeastern Laos, forming a southern branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that the Americans called the Sihanouk Trail.

Route 110’s path (in red) from Cambodia into Laos and South Vietnam.

This account of the mission is based on interviews with Merkerson, award citations provided by Steve Sherman, a Special Forces veteran who served with Merkerson in Vietnam and who runs a website dedicated to the histories of SF camps in Vietnam, and a description in the book “Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines With the Elite Warriors of SOG,” by John L. Plaster, another Green Beret-turned-historian. Plaster served in Merkerson’s MACV-SOG company but was not on the mission.

The operation began on Jan. 12, 1970, when a helicopter carrying the team, which was led by “One-Zero” Staff Sgt. Ron Weems, accompanied by Merkerson and Staff Sgt. Wendell Glass, plus a complement of Montagnards, flew across the border and deposited them inside Laos.

(It was not unusual in MACV-SOG for the team leader, or “one-zero,” to be outranked by a “straphanger” on the mission. While Merkerson had previously been on helicopters that flew into Laotian airspace, this would be his first cross-border mission on the ground.)

“We inserted about six or seven kilometers [roughly four miles] away from the objective,” Merkerson said. He and his comrades had to be extremely careful on the infiltration because they knew of at least two anti-aircraft guns in the area, which they hoped to spot and call in fire on, he said.

At about 2.20 pm, the team had patrolled to within “a stone’s throw” of Route 110 and had halted to rest when the last man in the patrol spotted an NVA counter-reconnaissance tracker, said Merkerson. “We just got too close to the road and were compromised.”

The team’s hopes of remaining undetected had evaporated. Now they had to eliminate threats as they appeared, starting with the tracker who had found them.

“Our tail gunner engaged him before he could get away, killed him, and then we moved away from that area,” Merkerson said. Nonetheless, the NVA maintained contact with the team and attacked them again. “These guys were professionals,” he said.

By then “it was just about last light,” Merkerson said, so the team followed standard operational procedure in such circumstances, which was to find a thicket of trees and bed down for the night after surrounding the position with claymore mines – anti-personnel devices that fired 700 steel balls in a wide arc when detonated. “So if anyone tried to invade you in that RON – remain overnight – spot, they’re going to lose a whole lot of people, because we had 360 degrees of claymores,” he said.

When triggered, a Claymore mine would fire 700 steel balls in a wide, lethal arc of destruction. (U.S. Army)

The NVA trackers were familiar enough with MACV-SOG tactics to know the team would have put claymores out. Throughout the night, instead of assaulting the team’s well-defended position, they threw stones toward the thicket, hoping to get the team to fire back, so that they could identify their locations from the muzzle flashes.

“We wouldn’t fire back,” Merkerson said. “They just kept throwing stones.” But from the movement the team members could hear around them, they knew the NVA had them encircled.

Before dawn, led by Weems, the members of the recon team quietly collected their claymores and crawled away from the thicket, slithering on their stomachs for “maybe two or three kilometers,” Merkerson recalled. For two hours the team moved slowly away from their overnight position before taking a break.

“We thought we were free,” Merkerson said. “We were going to continue the mission.”

But then they heard the NVA trackers breaking through the bamboo. “When we pulled over for a rest, they ambushed us,” Merkerson said.

Weems engaged a dozen NVA troops, killing two and disrupting the enemy’s attempt to surround the team, which was now in a fighting retreat.

Willie Merkerson works on a piece of equipment in an undated photograph courtesy of Jason Hardy, whose book series “MAC V SOG: Team History of a Clandestine Army” is available here: https://thedogtag.com/product/mac-v-sog-team-history-of-a-clandestine-army-vol-4/

Pursued by the NVA trackers, according to Plaster, the team again approached Route 110. But then they saw several trucks approaching. The team paused, hoping the trucks would continue down the highway.

No such luck. This wasn’t a random convoy, but an NVA relief column that the trackers had called up for support. The trucks stopped and about 40 troops jumped out and assaulted the reconnaissance team with B40 rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifle fire.

Merkerson was firing back. “Out of peripheral vision I picked up movement and I turned to engage it,” he said. The “movement” he’d seen was an NVA soldier firing a rocket-propelled grenade at his position.

“The RPG round landed right in front of me,” Merkerson said. “Fortunately, I was down [low] enough [that] … it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.” But he did not escape unscathed. Shrapnel from the blast “blew my hands open” while also hitting his head, neck, and chest, he said.

Nonetheless, Merkerson was lucky compared with the Montagnard next to him. “The guy in front of me was completely disintegrated,” he said.

Despite his wounds, Merkerson moved to an exposed spot from which he placed what an official account described as “a withering volume of fire” on the NVA position, suppressing the fire that threatened the team as it withdrew.

“Throughout the entire engagement, Captain Merkerson continued to maintain his exposed position and place effective fire upon the enemy,” states the citation for the award he would later receive. “Although bleeding profusely and receiving heavy return fire, he waited until the very last moment before attempting to rejoin the patrol.”

The man killed in the explosion that wounded Merkerson was the patrol’s point man, one of two Montagnards to die in the firefight, according to Plaster. The other was the team’s interpreter, also killed by an RPG.

As an already-wounded Glass rushed to aid the fallen Montagnards and to retrieve their weapons, he was blown off his feet and wounded again by an incoming rocket-propelled grenade. With Weems also bleeding heavily from leg and arm injuries, all three Americans – and all the surviving Montagnards – were now wounded.

Forced to abandon the bodies of the two dead Montagnards, and with Glass providing covering fire, the badly mauled team was eventually able to pull back and make a “Prairie Fire” radio call, which Plaster describes as MACV-SOG code “for a team in such terrible straits that they were about to be overrun.” That call was answered by a forward air controller and the Special Forces NCO – called a Covey, or “cubbie,” rider – who flew with him in the same light plane.

“The cubbie said, ‘I’m coming in hot with some jet fire,’” Merkerson recalled. As the team hid in some woods, “he worked the jets all around our area, and then they called in [a helicopter] for the extraction.”

“It was a miracle anyone got out,” writes Plaster.

Glass was awarded a Silver Star and Merkerson and Weems each received a Bronze Star with “V” (for valor) device for their actions. In keeping with the U.S. government’s efforts to hide U.S. military operations in Laos from the American public, the citations for all three awards state that the action occurred “in the Republic of Vietnam.”

Lt. Col. Robert “Bob” Leites awards Willie Merkerson the Bronze Star with “V” (for valor) device in Kontum for his actions on a MACV-SOG mission behind enemy lines in Laos. (Courtesy of the Merkerson family)

A reluctant return

With his tour at MACV-SOG due to end in mid-1970, Merkerson was scheming to stay in south-east Asia. He volunteered for “a new project in Thailand called Project 400,” an unconventional warfare campaign that he described as “a spin-off of MACV-SOG.”

By this point, thanks to his team’s successes, Merkerson was well known to a lot of Project 400 personnel. “So, they said, ‘Okay, when you get done in Nha Trang, tell them to slide you on over here to Bangkok,’” he said.

But at Nha Trang, the headquarters of 5^th Special Forces Group, which controlled all Special Forces missions in Vietnam, Merkerson was told he couldn’t go to Thailand because the Army was insisting that he attend the officer advanced course – a rite of passage for captains – or risk losing out on career options. As a result, he reluctantly returned to the United States in July 1970.

By then Merkerson had been in the Army for 13 years, including three combat tours in Vietnam, during which he’d been wounded and seen numerous colleagues killed. Leaving the service, however, didn’t cross his mind.

“Many people could have walked away from it, but he didn’t,” Mel Gamble, who became friends with Merkerson when they were both at the CIA, told the International Spy Museum’s Spycast podcast. “He loved his country and he wanted to do the best.”

Part of the reason for staying in was that he was more than halfway to retirement and a pension, but that wasn’t the deciding factor, according to Merkerson. “It might sound weird, but I was enjoying it,” he said.

“Never put tanks in reserve”

Two years after receiving his commission as an engineer officer, Merkerson had switched his branch to infantry. But in a repeat of his experience with officer candidate school, Merkerson was forced to attend the Armor Officers Advanced Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, because no slots were available at the infantry equivalent at Benning. He showed up at Knox with about a dozen other infantry captains, who were left in no doubt by the instructors about where they stood in the pecking order.

“They called us all together and said, ‘Okay, you infantry guys, this is a tank,’” Merkerson recalled. “’Two things you need to know about the tank: Don’t you ever get in there and think you’re going to drive it, because you’re not … You’re not smart enough to drive a tank, so stay away from them, [we] don’t want you wrecking our tanks; Secondly, in your studies and exams … never put tanks in reserve.’”

The instructors weren’t kidding, according to Merkerson. “They were serious as a heart attack: ‘Don’t put tanks in reserve or you will flunk each test,’” he said. “So that’s all I remember from that school.”

However, being back in the classroom meant Merkerson “got back into the mindset of learning,” he said. With his zeal for education rekindled, Merkerson, who had joined the Army with only a high school diploma but was now on track to become a field-grade officer, decided to get a college degree.

“While I was at the Armor Course I also enrolled in the University of Kentucky and I did pretty good there,” Merkerson said, referring to evening and weekend classes that he took. In fact, he did so well that the Army offered him what he called “the chance of a lifetime.” The service told him that, with the credits he’d already amassed, it would pay for him to get a four-year college degree in two calendar years at any school for which he qualified.

“I applied to two – Hofstra University in Long Island and Columbia University in New York City – and Hofstra came back first so I accepted that,” he said.

After a period at Knox on the staff of then-Brig. Gen. George Patton IV (the assistant commandant of the Armor School and son of the legendary World War II commander), Merkerson began attending Hofstra as a full-time undergraduate student majoring in economics and sociology. (Columbia’s letter of acceptance arrived just as Merkerson was starting classes at Hofstra. With his family already settled, he decided to pass up the opportunity to switch to the Ivy League school.)

As usual, he was determined to cram more into his time at Hofstra than seemed possible.

“I decided to do the whole college thing the way a 17-year-old would do it,” said Merkerson, who was in his early thirties when he attended Hofstra. However, he may be giving too much credit to 17-year-olds, few of whom can combine Merkerson’s extraordinary appetite for hard work with his intellect and time-management skills.

By taking double the number of classes that most other students took, Merkerson earned two bachelor’s degrees in his two years at Hofstra, one (cum laude) in sociology and the other in economics, despite also playing varsity football (as a linebacker and defensive end) and representing the university’s track and field team in the shot put, javelin and discus. (Merkerson is listed as a letterman in Hofstra’s football program for the 1972 season.)

In his second year at Hofstra Merkerson took additional classes in teacher preparation. “I was a student teacher … at the New York Institute of Technology,” he said. “I was teaching sociology and economics – my majors.”

The Merkerson family remained in New York for Willie’s next assignment, as assistant professor of military science and commandant of cadets at Polytechnic Institute of New York in Brooklyn. For three years beginning in 1973, he taught the school’s ROTC cadets in subjects that ranged from drill and ceremony to the art of leadership. He also obtained a master of arts in African history in 1975 from St. John’s University in New York.

Merkerson was considering a move to the Defense Intelligence Agency when the Army offered him a spot at the Foreign Area Officer course at Bragg. The highly competitive FAO program takes a select group of officers and immerses them in a foreign language and culture, creating a group of regional experts whose assignments are supposed to take their newfound expertise into account. But after completing the course, the Army assigned Merkerson to be an instructor in the Special Forces Officer Qualification Course, also at Bragg, where he served as a guerrilla chief during the Robin Sage field exercise that is the climax of the qualification course for both officers and NCOs.

One of Merkerson’s students was Ron Johnson, a first lieutenant would go on to command 7^th Special Forces Group before retiring as a colonel and joining the CIA. “I found him to be very professional, always very calm,” Johnson told The High Side. “He never raised his voice at any of the students, but he was able to teach the students quite a bit in a calm demeanor – a cool-guy demeanor – by saying, ‘Well, you tried something your way and it didn’t work, next time why don’t you try doing it the way we told you to.’”

While at Bragg, Merkerson found himself working for Col. “Chargin’” Charlie Beckwith, the commandant of the Special Warfare School, who was soon to establish 1^st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, better known as Delta Force. It was also during this period that he became friends with Medal of Honor recipient Robert Howard, who had replaced him – but only once Merkerson had returned to the United States – as the recon company commander in MACV-SOG’s Command and Control Central in 1970.

Laura Lee Merkerson watches as her husband Willie is promoted to major at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1977. (Courtesy of the Merkerson family)

Catching the station chief’s eye

After attending Marine Corps Command and Staff College at Quantico, Virginia, newly-promoted Maj. Merkerson had to sidestep the Army’s attempt to send him to Pakistan, where, having developed an expertise on Africa, he had little interest in going.

“I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go to Pakistan. I’m an officer and I’m in the military, I’ll follow orders, but I won’t volunteer for the language [course],’” Merkerson recalled. “Then they backed off, because they wanted a guy that was language qualified.”

Instead, Merkerson became assistant U.S. Army attache in Nigeria’s then capital, Lagos. In doing so, he told The High Side, he saved the Army some time and money and himself “some pain and suffering.”

There are usually three pillars to creating a foreign area officer: language training, a master’s degree in a subject appropriate to the region in which the officer is specializing, and a lengthy tour of that region. Merkerson already had the degree, did not go on the tour, and the Army never got around to sending him to language training.

In his first embassy posting, Merkerson proved as adept at negotiating an African capital’s corridors of power as he was at fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

The Merkerson family’s July 1978 arrival in Lagos coincided with a period of great political change in Nigeria, as the military junta that had been running the country for the previous 12 years was preparing to hand over power to an elected civilian government. Because the Nigerian army was at the center of this transition, the Army attache’s office had a key role to play in keeping the United States informed on whether any Nigerian military leaders planned to oppose the shift to democracy.

As a young CIA officer working undercover in the consular office, Mel Gamble was able to observe how Merkerson’s ability to quickly and easily build relationships paid huge dividends when it came to intelligence collection. “Willie knew everybody in the [Nigerian] military,” Gamble told The High Side. “He was probably the most valuable asset to the defense attache’s office … He provided us with information that was helpful and also facilitated the introduction of military people … whom we would look at to recruit as sources.”

Merkerson’s ability to connect with people caught the eye of the CIA station chief in Lagos, Philip Cherry, who suggested that he join the agency. With 23 years in the Army, Merkerson was eligible for a military pension, so in August 1980, after passing the required polygraph tests, he returned to the United States, retired from the Army on a Friday and on the following Monday signed in at the CIA.

To be continued in Part 4: Disappearing in Plain Sight

Editor’s Note: This series contains Amazon hyperlinks for books. If you buy the books after clicking on the links, as part of the Amazon Affiliates program, The High Side will earn a small commission.

​2. AI Drones Threaten U.S. Forces

This excerpt challenges our strategic thinking.

Excerpts:

When it comes to weapons, the Pentagon favors quality over quantity. The theory is that expensive high technology is superior to mass production. For 30 years this was supported by battlefield evidence.

Then America’s adversaries reduced costs and scaled drones. The kamikaze drone has emerged as the most startling change in warfare in decades, disproving the Pentagon’s thesis. Ukraine set a target to manufacture a million drones this year to keep up with Chinese and Iranian supplies to Russia—and it’s telling that Russia replaced its defense minister with an economist fixated on drones.

AI Drones Threaten U.S. Forces

Swarms of cheap versions of a technology we invented could overrun the American military.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-drones-threaten-u-s-forces-weapons-manufacturing-defense-national-security-ccd89396?mod=latest_headlines

By Owen West

July 4, 2024 3:25 pm ET

A U.S. Marine Corps Hero-400 loitering munition drone is staged before flight on San Clemente Island, Calif., May 25, 2022. PHOTO: U.S. MARINE CORPS

When it comes to weapons, the Pentagon favors quality over quantity. The theory is that expensive high technology is superior to mass production. For 30 years this was supported by battlefield evidence.

Then America’s adversaries reduced costs and scaled drones. The kamikaze drone has emerged as the most startling change in warfare in decades, disproving the Pentagon’s thesis. Ukraine set a target to manufacture a million drones this year to keep up with Chinese and Iranian supplies to Russia—and it’s telling that Russia replaced its defense minister with an economist fixated on drones.

Cheap drones will soon be equipped with artificial intelligence, boosting their effectiveness. This improvement represents an opportunity for the U.S., which has superior AI engineers and a wide global technical lead over the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the Pentagon hasn’t adapted. The nation is facing a capital squeeze, with debt service set to exceed the defense budget, but the military is also paralyzed by its obsolete business model. Most of its procurement budget is rigidly dedicated to a defense oligopoly that can’t produce at low cost.

In the two decades following 9/11, half of the Fortune 500 disappeared. The free market produces creative destruction. In contrast, the defense industry remains unchallenged. In 2000 the top U.S. military contractor, Lockheed Martin, reported a loss in commercial telecommunications. In 2001, after winning the F-35 program, it divested from telecom. Rather than compete against innovators, Lockheed decided it was more profitable to use the enormous barriers to entry in military supply, focusing on government contracts that covered all costs plus a regulated profit. Two decades later, the $2 trillion F-35 is one of the costliest defense programs in U.S. history.

The military’s five prime contractors resemble power utilities. Having mastered a complex regulatory system, they maximize profit when production costs are highest, stuffing fees into obscure line items. Asked why a bag of bolts costs $90,000, the Air Force secretary said in April that overpricing was a “systemic issue.”

The military has expressed some interest in producing cheap AI drones. The flagship effort is called Replicator, capitalized with less than 0.2% of the defense investment budget. Replicator’s self-described “poster child” is a loitering bomb that is estimated to exceed $100,000 to build. There aren’t sufficient funds to mass produce at that price.

Change will require three steps. First, the defense secretary must insist that a million cheap AI drones are vital, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates did when he declared “war on the Pentagon” to spend more than $40 billion on armored trucks. Drone scale can be achieved by shifting $20 billion over three years to new entrants.

Second, reallocation must be guided by an investment committee. This is standard procedure in major corporations, and the secretary of defense has an in-house equivalent, led by the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office. The problem is, the military doubts CAPE’s ability to optimize the portfolio, and Congress is openly hostile. CAPE must be empowered to make strategic decisions.

Third, Congress must authorize the secretary of defense to pivot on spending. Modern enterprise management is stymied by more than 1,000 regulations added since 9/11. Congress has additionally upended the budget with more than 50 continuing resolutions since 2010, creating a “use it or lose it” environment that handicaps new initiatives.

AI drones will put our forces at risk, from ships to infantry. Just as the armored blitzkrieg caught Europe off-guard in World War II, so has the proliferation of drone munitions today. America holds a distinct advantage in AI, but harnessing that advantage requires investment risk. That can happen only if generals and the defense secretary acknowledge that America’s expensive military machines risk being overrun by swarms of cheap versions of a technology that we invented.

Mr. West is a former Marine and partner of Goldman Sachs. He served as assistant defense secretary for special operations, 2017-19.

Appeared in the July 5, 2024, print edition as 'AI Drones Threaten U.S. Forces'.

​3. A tell-tale sign that China could be preparing for war

Don't we all stockpile our resources?  

But what is happening with the US strategic oil reserves?

A tell-tale sign that China could be preparing for war

https://m.economictimes.com/news/defence/a-tell-tale-sign-that-china-could-be-preparing-for-war/amp_articleshow/111436845.cms

A Chinese fighter jet. China's mineral stockpiling, akin to historical war strategies, raise concerns

Synopsis

A notable parallel has been observed between Germany's pre-1939 invasion preparations and China's current actions, such as stockpiling resources. The focus on mineral hoarding signifies China's readiness for regional conflicts, echoing past wartime actions. Former US intelligence director Mike Studeman suggested this is part of Xi Jinping’s strategy to prepare for potential conflict.

By ET Online

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Last Updated: Jul 04, 2024, 12:49:00 PM IST

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A telling similarity has been noticed between what Germany was doing before it invaded Poland in September 1939 and what China is doing now - stockpiling resources and raw materials. In the eastern Chinese port of Dongying, the start of 2024 has often seen several tankers docked simultaneously discharging Russian crude oil into a new 31.5 million barrel storage facility completed late last year, Reuters had reported in April. Traders said it was all part of a concerted and deliberate Chinese effort to build up strategic stockpiles for a perhaps uncertain future.

In a piece for international affairs and conflict blogging site "War on the Rocks" published April 17, Mike Studeman, former commander of the US Office of Naval Intelligence and intelligence and director of the US Indo-Pacific Command, argued that this was part of a much wider process. "Xi Jinping is preparing his country for a showdown," he wrote, describing the Chinese leader as "militarising Chinese society and steeling his country for a potential high-intensity war."

Part of that, he suggested, included building up strategic stockpiles of essential goods and resources, protecting China against the kind of sanctions imposed on Russia after its Ukraine invasion - or, indeed, a militarily enforced blockade as part of a regional or global war.

Now more experts think China is stockpiling resources and raw materials to prepare itself for a war, most likely an invasion of Taiwan which can embroil it into a long-drawn war.

The unusual stockpiling

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), which was created by the United States Congress, conducted a hearing this month during which experts pointed at China's unusual stockpiling activities.

The Chinese central government stockpiling minerals is one potential indicator that it may be preparing to invade Taiwan, a report by the USCC said. The National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration oversees China’s stockpile, which reportedly contains large volumes of minerals like aluminum, cobalt, and copper. Three specific indicators that China may be stockpiling for strategic reasons, like an invasion of Taiwan, are (1) stockpiling when domestic mineral producers do not face profitability issues, (2) high apparent mineral consumption relative to real mineral consumption, and (3) spiking mineral imports. Indicators 2 and 3 also assess Germany’s mineral stockpiling activities before it invaded Poland in September 1939.

China does not disclose the list and quantity of minerals stockpiled, but its stockpile reportedly includes aluminum, antimony, cadmium, cobalt, copper, gallium, germanium, indium, molybdenum, rare earth elements, tantalum, tin, tungsten, zinc, and zirconium, the report said.

Parallels with World War II and the Cold War

The USCC report has drawn parallels between China's stockpiling activity and that of Germany and Japan during World War II as well as with Russia's during the Cold War​.

Germany stockpiled significant copper volumes in 1938 and 1939, and when it invaded Poland in September 1939, Germany had enough copper stocks to cover almost nine months of estimated wartime consumption, the report said.

Similarly, Japan began stockpiling minerals like tin after 1936, and when it launched attacks across the Pacific in December 1941, it had accumulated significant mineral stockpiles, including enough bauxite stocks to cover nine months of Japanese demand at 1941 consumption levels.

During the Cold War too, mineral stockpiling by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact states was an indicator of possible preparation for a military attack. In 1979, the RAND Corporation said that the Soviet Union’s preparation for war could include mineral stockpiling by both the military and industry, as well as spiking mineral imports.

The report says that along with monitoring China’s mineral stockpiling, other mineral-related indicators should also be monitored to better inform whether China is preparing to invade Taiwan.

4. Air Force Ospreys in Japan resume flight ops

Air Force Ospreys in Japan resume flight ops

airforcetimes.com · by Courtney Mabeus-Brown · July 3, 2024

U.S. Air Force crews from the Japan-based 353rd Special Operations Wing started flying the CV-22 Osprey once again Tuesday, seven months after one of the aircraft crashed during a training mission, killing all eight airmen on board.

The return to flying followed a “multi-phased” approach to ensure the readiness of crews and follows a “meticulous and data-driven approach” that includes the development of added safety controls, the Air Force said in a news release.

RELATED

Osprey fleet won’t return to full flight operations until 2025

The U.S. military's V-22 Osprey enterprise will be slow to return to full operations as a wide-ranging review of its training and resources continues.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to ensuring the safety of the men and women who operate our aircraft and the safety of our community both on base and in Japan,” 21st Special Operations Squadron Commander Lt. Col. Matthew Davis said in a statement. “These safety mitigation measures have been taken seriously, and we would not fly this aircraft without full confidence in the measures, the maintenance professionals implementing them, and the skilled professionals who fly it.”

The U.S. military has said it doesn’t expect its fleet of more than 400 tiltrotor Osprey aircraft to return to full flying operations until at least mid-2025. Naval Air Systems Command, which leads the joint program office overseeing the aircraft, began allowing the Osprey to fly again in March after a three-month grounding was lifted but with added restrictions.

Ospreys can be flown like an airplane and take off and land like a helicopter. Its vertical take offs and landings make it useful for carrier landings as well as for special operators operating in austere environments. The controversial aircraft has suffered a string of fatal crashes since being introduced into special operations more than two decades ago with four mishaps responsible for the deaths of 20 service members in the last two years.

RELATED

V-22 Osprey fleet will fly again, with no fixes but renewed training

The V-22 is allowed to fly again, and the services will each implement their own training and maintenance protocols to get the fleet back to operations.

The military grounded the Ospreys in 2022 and again in 2023, after a series of “hard clutch engagements” that occurred when the input quill assembly, which attaches the Osprey’s engine to its proprotor gear box, wore out earlier than expected. A redesigned clutch is expected to begin testing with fielding anticipated mid-2025. Testing is also underway on a vibration sensing system upgrade to identify complements that need to replaced and a proprotor gearbox pinion bearing redesign is awaiting production and installation.

The military has said the Nov. 29 crash of GUNDAM 22 was the result of a material failure that hadn’t been seen before on the Osprey. An investigation into that crash is nearing completion.

The Marine Corps, which operates hundreds of the aircraft, used them in Sweden as part of Exercise Baltic Operations with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which last week conducted flight operations with the Osprey from the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp in the Mediterranean Sea. The Navy, which owns about 30 of the aircraft, is sidelined from using them in its carrier support mission and remains barred from flying them more than 30 minutes from an airfield where they could land in an emergency.

The Air Force owns about 50 Ospreys. While the 353rd resumes flying, crews from the 27th Special Operations Wing, based at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, have also resumed limited flying operations based on aircraft availability after spending months keeping up their proficiency in simulator training, something Japan-based crews have also done while preparing to return to the air. That includes putting pilots and flight engineers through a specific return-to-flight simulator syllabus, Capt. Paul Danielson, a flight commander and Osprey pilot with the Cannon-based 20th Special Operations Squadron, told Air Force Times.

Cannon-based maintainers continued sustainment necessary on the CV-22s during the stand down and were trained on maintenance protocols directed by NAVAIR to return to fly, 20th Special Operations Maintenance Squadron Commander Maj. Shelby Olivera said, adding that they’re also completing rigorous inspections. Squadrons are progressing through those protocols based on aircraft maintenance needs and personnel experience levels, she said.

As the 20th Special Operations Squadron focuses on reaching basic proficiency, the unit is first focusing on getting flight instructors back in the air. Pilots and maintainers look are looking forward to getting Ospreys flying once again, Danielson and Olivera said.

“The morale of the squadron, I think, has gone up just seeing people fly,” Danielson said. “There’s also a good balance of understanding from the the crews that aren’t flying, understanding that the leadership is doing what is best just ensure safety moving forward.”

Courtney Mabeus-Brown is the senior reporter at Air Force Times. She is an award-winning journalist who previously covered the military for Navy Times and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where she first set foot on an aircraft carrier. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and more.

5.

Excerpts:

Thousands have found themselves in Reffitt’s position due to a little-known law that prohibits veterans from receiving both disability and special separation pay. Under the law, the VA has to recoup special separation benefits from veterans before those eligible can begin receiving disability payments.

The law has forced at least 79,000 veterans to repay different types of separation benefits between 2013 and 2020, according to a study published in 2022 by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research group. The actual number of affected veterans is likely much higher because researchers were not able to access data prior to 2013 due to VA system changes, Stephanie Rennane, the study’s lead author, said.

In 2023 alone, the VA said it had to recoup separation pay from nearly 9,300 veterans.

He got $30K to leave the military when it needed to downsize. Now the government wants that money back.

A federal law has forced thousands of disabled veterans to return the separation incentives they received, throwing many into sudden hardship.

NBC News · by Melissa Chan

Vernon Reffitt got $30,000 to leave the Army in 1992. It was a one-time, lump-sum special separation benefit offered to service members when the U.S. had to reduce its active-duty force.

Now, more than 30 years later, the federal government wants that money back.

In May, the Department of Veterans Affairs began withholding the monthly disability compensation payments that Reffitt had been receiving for three decades until he repays the $30,000. It would take the 62-year-old nearly 15 years to do so.

"That’s wrong," said Reffitt, who lives in Twin City, Georgia. "You can’t just up and take it back."

Vernon Reffitt was deployed to Panama and Honduras and did two tours in Germany during his service as a military policeman from 1979 to 1992.Courtesy Vernon Reffitt

Thousands have found themselves in Reffitt’s position due to a little-known law that prohibits veterans from receiving both disability and special separation pay. Under the law, the VA has to recoup special separation benefits from veterans before those eligible can begin receiving disability payments.

The law has forced at least 79,000 veterans to repay different types of separation benefits between 2013 and 2020, according to a study published in 2022 by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research group. The actual number of affected veterans is likely much higher because researchers were not able to access data prior to 2013 due to VA system changes, Stephanie Rennane, the study’s lead author, said.

In 2023 alone, the VA said it had to recoup separation pay from nearly 9,300 veterans.

"I think it’s likely that we’re missing a good number of people," Rennane said. "We don’t have any way of knowing how big it is."

In Reffitt’s case, the VA erroneously allowed him to receive both benefits without penalty for more than 30 years. In a statement, the agency said it was "unaware of the amount" of Reffitt’s special separation benefit when he began receiving disability compensation in 1992.

The VA said it should have followed up on attempts to determine the separation amount and initiated recoupment earlier. It said it caught the error recently when Reffitt filed a claim under the PACT Act, a law enacted in 2022 that expanded benefits to millions of veterans exposed to toxic substances.

'Two separate buckets of money'

Certain types of separation payments were offered to active-duty service members in an effort to reduce manpower in certain career fields. The Special Separation Benefit (SSB) that Reffitt received was primarily offered during the 1990s, officials said.

When veterans apply for disability compensation, the VA said the form they use states that separation pay may be recouped from VA benefits. But it’s too late by then, said Reffitt and two other veterans who spoke to NBC News. The veterans said they were not aware of the law that prohibits both benefits when they took the payout.

Army veteran Daphne Young said she would not have taken the separation pay had she known.

Daphne Young served as an ammunition specialist and combat medic for the Army. Courtesy Daphne Young

Young, 36, who lives in Columbus, Georgia, said she did not particularly need the extra money when she left the military in 2016. She said the $15,000 lump sum allowed her to take a break from working and volunteer with the Red Cross for eight months.

The shock came in April when the VA notified Young that it would begin withholding her monthly, untaxed disability payment of about $3,700 until she recoups her separation pay.

Young, who is now fully disabled and does not work, crumpled at the thought of losing her only income, which she had been receiving for years.

Young, far right, left the military in 2016. Courtesy Daphne Young

"It was agonizing," said Young, a former Army ammunition specialist and combat medic who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Advocates say the law not only blindsides veterans, but it robs them of earned benefits that should not be linked financially.

While special separation pay is based on a service member’s military career, disability pay solely relates to illnesses or injuries sustained during service, according to Marquis Barefield, an assistant national legislative director with DAV, an advocacy group formerly known as Disabled American Veterans.

"The two payments have nothing to do with each other," Barefield said. "They are two separate buckets of money."

Veterans have had an average of $19,700 to $53,000 withheld for recoupment, the RAND study found. The recoupment amounts are the lump sums received after taxes.

It took the legs from right underneath me.

Shane Collins, a Marine veteran

Shane Collins said it took him about 36 months to repay the roughly $33,000 separation benefit he received in 2014 when he left the Marines and when his son was born. "It took the legs from right underneath me," he said.

Collins, 41, of Twin Falls, Idaho, said he worked at the Pentagon in 2012, focusing on personnel administration, including paperwork and pay. He said he was so familiar with the Defense Department’s manual that he called it his Bible.

Still, he said he did not know he would have to repay his separation benefit if he was granted disability. "I thought they were completely separate, and that’s how it was explained to me as well," he said.

In 2022, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., introduced a bill that would change the recoupment law. The VA said it does not comment on pending legislation.

While the RAND study published that year was required by Congress following concerns for veterans, the legislative progress has been slow.

"It is costly," Gallego said, "and that’s kind of been the biggest hindrance of why I can’t get it through."

Under the law, veterans have a chance to pursue a waiver of their recoupment responsibilities for voluntary separation pay, but the standards are high. To get a waiver, the VA said the secretary of the applicable branch of service must determine that "recovery would be against equity and good conscience or would be contrary to the best interests of the United States."

Young did not receive a waiver. But with the help of the DAV advocacy group, she was able to reduce the monthly amount withheld, although that means it will take her longer to repay the VA.

"There has to be a better way," she said.

Reffitt, who was deployed to Panama and Honduras and did two tours in Germany during his service as a military policeman from 1979 to 1992, is still working out a plan.

In the meantime, Reffitt, who also supports his wife, has tightened his budget by reducing the number of medical appointments he used to have regularly scheduled to manage his mental health, knee injury and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

"I’ve already canceled a couple appointments," he said.

NBC News · by Melissa Chan

6. U.S. and Israel Voice New Optimism About Cease-Fire as Gaza Talks Resume

I hope calling it a breakthrough does not jinx a possible deal.

U.S. and Israel Voice New Optimism About Cease-Fire as Gaza Talks Resume

A senior White House official called progress in talks with Hamas “a breakthrough,” while Israel was more restrained, and both said major obstacles to a truce remained.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-cease-fire-proposal.html

Debris covered streets in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday.Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Aaron Boxerman, Michael D. Shear and Thomas Fuller

Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem, Michael D. Shear from Washington and Thomas Fuller from San Francisco.

July 4, 2024

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

American and Israeli officials on Thursday expressed renewed optimism over a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas revised its position and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel then told President Biden that he was sending a new delegation of negotiators to the stalled talks.

White House officials said they believed new progress in the talks amounted to what one repeatedly called “a breakthrough” in the monthslong negotiations, though they said that it would take some time to work out the many steps involved in implementing the truce. Israeli and other officials involved in the talks agreed that there had been progress but described it in more cautious terms.

The discussions are based on a three-stage framework deal publicized by President Biden in late May and endorsed by the United Nations. If carried out, the agreement would ultimately stipulate an end to the war, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and for Hamas and its allies to release the remaining 120 living and dead hostages in Gaza for Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

A senior Biden administration official directly involved in the talks said that there was broad agreement now about the steps required to transition from phase one, a temporary cease-fire, to phase two, a permanent end to the fighting and a release of the remaining living hostages.

The official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivities of the negotiations, compared the current situation to the deal that was eventually reached in November that led to a cease-fire for several weeks and the release of some 105 hostages. He said a “framework is now in place” for a new truce but that there was still more to do to reach a final deal.

The shift followed Hamas’s announcement on Wednesday that it had “exchanged some ideas” with the mediators on the cease-fire deal after weeks of deadlock. An Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said on Wednesday night that wide gaps between the sides remained but that Hamas’s revised position left potential to move forward in the talks.

David Barnea, the head of the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, will lead the Israeli negotiating team in Qatar as soon as Friday, said a second Israeli official and another official familiar with the talks.

Many obstacles remain, including the question of whether Mr. Netanyahu will risk his right-wing coalition in agreeing to a cease-fire with Hamas. Two of his far-right coalition partners have insisted that the war against Hamas continue, potentially forcing Mr. Netanyahu to choose between a deal that ends the war and frees the hostages, and the survival of his government.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister reiterated in his call with Mr. Biden on Thursday evening that Israel would end the war “only after achieving its goals.” Israel’s stated goals include destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in the Gaza Strip, and ensuring that the Palestinian enclave cannot again pose a threat. Both aims could still take substantial time to achieve, if at all.

The cease-fire talks had ground to a halt in June. After Mr. Biden announced the proposal, Hamas demanded amendments, leading Israel to quickly declare that Hamas had rejected the deal. The Biden administration said that some of Hamas’s demands were unworkable.

Image

Israeli soldiers peer from the top of a tank near the Israeli-Gaza border last week.Credit...Leo Correa/Associated Press

The White House, in a statement on Thursday, said that Mr. Biden “welcomed the prime minister’s decision to authorize his negotiators to engage with U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators in an effort to close out the deal,” but made no mention of Israeli caveats.

Efforts to revive the negotiations came amid simmering tensions along Israel’s northern border, with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah launching an unusually large rocket and drone attack toward Israel on Wednesday and an even bigger one on Thursday, in retaliation for Israel’s killing of a Hezbollah commander on Wednesday. The rocket barrage killed one Israeli reservist officer and sparked wildfires along Israel’s northern border.

The main stumbling blocks in the Gaza talks have been related to a fundamental dispute: Hamas wants guarantees that the deal would lead to an end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces, while Israeli leaders have vowed to keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed and to keep postwar security control of Gaza in Israeli hands.

According to two senior officials briefed on the talks, recent disagreements had largely centered on two paragraphs in the proposed agreement, both related to negotiations on a permanent truce. Those negotiations would take place during the first phase of the deal, a proposed six-week cease-fire, during which some hostages would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas wanted to limit those talks to the number and identity of Palestinian prisoners to be released for each remaining hostage, while Israel wanted to leave it open-ended, so more topics could be added into the discussions, according to the two senior officials.

Image

Anti-government protesters demonstrate against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and demand the immediate release of the hostages, outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, on Thursday.Credit...Ammar Awad/Reuters

Hamas feared Israel might torpedo the talks by expanding them to deal with other, effectively unresolvable issues, which would allow Israel to continue the war, the officials said. Qatari negotiators offered Hamas three potential alternatives last week, according to the two senior officials, though they did not give further details.

The proposal also stipulates that if Israel and Hamas cannot reach a deal on a permanent cease-fire before the six-week truce expires, negotiations will continue until they do. The two senior officials said Hamas wanted language that guaranteed Israel could not unilaterally declare that the talks had collapsed and return to battle.

Some influential members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition government have expressed opposition to a potential deal with Hamas.

“Now is not the time to stop, it is entirely the opposite: It is the time to bring in more forces and increase our military pressure,” Bezalel Smotrich, the country’s far-right finance minister, said on Tuesday. “It would be absurd if we were to stop just a moment before success — the end, total victory over Hamas.”

The Biden administration hopes that a truce in Gaza will allow Israel and Hezbollah, which has been firing at Israel in solidarity with Hamas, to reach a diplomatic settlement as well.

On Thursday, Hezbollah launched one of the largest attacks on northern Israel since the war in Gaza began, triggering air-raid sirens across the area for over an hour and sending thousands running for fortified shelters. Roughly 200 rockets and mortars and 20 drones were launched into northern Israel, according to the Israeli military.

Image

Smoke rising above the Upper Galilee region of Israel, near the border with Lebanon, on Thursday.Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Hezbollah, the politically powerful Lebanese armed group, has repeatedly attacked northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, prompting Israeli strikes in Lebanon. More than 150,000 people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have fled, with little idea of when they might return home.

Hezbollah said Thursday’s barrage was partly a response to Israel’s assassination of a senior Hezbollah military commander the previous day in the region of Tyre in southern Lebanon. But the Hezbollah munitions were mostly fired on border areas, avoiding a broader attack on Israel’s heartland that would most likely have provoked a more severe response.

Hezbollah has said that its forces will not stop their attacks until Israel ends its military campaign in Gaza. At the same time, Israeli officials have voiced increasingly bellicose threats of a potential invasion of Lebanon to push Hezbollah away from the border.

Ronen Bergman contributed reporting from Tel Aviv, and Johnatan Reiss and Myra Noveck from Jerusalem.

Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporting fellow with a focus on international news. More about Aaron Boxerman

Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The New York Times, covering President Biden and his administration. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years. More about Michael D. Shear

Thomas Fuller, a Page One Correspondent for The Times, writes and rewrites stories for the front page. More about Thomas Fuller

A version of this article appears in print on July 5, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Breakthrough’ Is Seen in Renewed Talks for Cease-Fire in Gaza. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

7. Report to Congress on Navy Distributed Maritime Operations

Download the report here: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24791432/defense-primer-navy-distributed-maritime-operations-dmo-concept-july-3-2024.pdf

Report to Congress on Navy Distributed Maritime Operations - USNI News

news.usni.org · by U.S. Naval Institute Staff · July 4, 2024

The following is the July 3, 2024, Congressional Research Service In Focus report, Defense Primer: Navy Distributed Maritime Operations Concept.

From the report

Introduction

Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is the operating concept of the Department of the Navy (or DON, which includes the Navy and Marine Corps) for using U.S. naval (i.e., Navy and Marine Corps) forces in combat operations against an adversary, particularly China, that has substantial capabilities for detecting and attacking U.S. Navy surface ships with anti-ship missiles and other weapons. An issue for Congress is whether Congress has sufficient information about DMO to assess its merits, and whether DON has adequately aligned its programs and budget with DMO.

Terminology: Operating Concept

An operating concept is a general idea for how to use certain military forces (in this case, U.S. naval forces) to conduct operations, particularly in combat situations. An operating concept can support the implementation of a strategy or war plan for fighting a specific conflict, and the tactics used by individual military units (such as Navy ships and aircraft) can reflect an operating concept.

DMO: A Brief Description

A 2022 document from the Chief of Naval Operations refers to DMO as “the Navy’s foundational operating concept” (Chief of Naval Operations, Navigation Plan 2022, p. 8). DON has not released a detailed unclassified description of DMO. Statements by DON officials indicate that a key aim of DMO is to improve the ability of U.S. naval forces to counter China’s maritime anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems (i.e., its capabilities for detecting and attacking U.S. Navy surface ships and aircraft) and thereby permit U.S. naval forces to operate effectively during a conflict with China in waters that are within range of China’s A2/AD systems. Key features of DMO appear to include the following:

• • Dispersing Navy units over a larger area within the theater of operations, so as to make it harder for an adversary to detect and target Navy units, while still permitting Navy units to support one another and concentrate their fires on adversary targets.
• • Spreading the Navy’s sensors and weapons across a wider array of ships and aircraft, so as to reduce the fraction of the Navy’s sensors and weapons that would be lost due to the destruction of any one Navy ship or aircraft (i.e., avoid “putting too many eggs into one basket”).
• • Making greater use of longer-ranged weapons, unmanned vessels, and unmanned aircraft in support of the previous two points.
• • Using resilient communication links and networking technologies to knit the resulting widely dispersed force of manned and unmanned ships and aircraft into a coordinated battle force that can withstand and adapt to enemy attacks on Navy communications and networks.

One observer writing about DMO (see the first Filipoff citation in the Other Resources box below) states that “the concept suffers from a wide variety of interpretations across the service and needs more specificity regarding what warfighting approaches it is concentrating on. While the concept describes mass fires and decision advantage as core themes, DMO lacks sufficient coherence and concrete focus to effectively guide the Navy’s development.”

Other U.S. Military Service Operating Concepts

Other U.S. military services have operating concepts for conducting their own operations in potential future conflicts. The Air Force concept is Agile Combat Employment (ACE), and the Army concept is Multi-Domain Operations (MDO). Within DON, the Marine Corps has a concept called Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) that is complementary to DMO. The services’ operating concepts have certain elements in common, including increased use of unmanned systems and the use of communications and networking technology to knit dispersed units together into coordinated battle forces. For more on these concepts, see the CRS Products box below.

Some Navy Acquisition Programs Associated with DMO

Some examples of Navy acquisition programs that appear associated with DMO include the following:

• Programs for acquiring longer-ranged weapons, such as the Maritime Strike Tomahawk (a new anti-ship variant of the Tomahawk cruise missile) and the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM).
• The Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV), which is to be equipped with a Vertical Launch System (VLS) for storing and firing anti-ship missiles and other weapons. LUSVs are intended to act as adjunct missile magazines for manned Navy surface combatants.
• The Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV), which is to be equipped with radars or other sensors. MUSVs are intended to help form a distributed sensor network for supporting Navy operations.

Download the report here.

Related

news.usni.org · by U.S. Naval Institute Staff · July 4, 2024

8. Naval Special Warfare Units Merge Combat Tactics With Attack Submarines

Naval Special Warfare Units Merge Combat Tactics With Attack Submarines

The training featured collaborative efforts between the Commander, U.S. Naval Air Forces, and the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Greeneville

https://warriormaven.com/sea/naval-special-warfare-units-merge-combat-tactics-with-attack-submarines?mc_cid=880e79107c&mc_eid=70bf478f36

• OLAWALE ABAIRE, WARRIOR CONTRIBUTORUPDATED:13 HOURS AGOORIGINAL:13 HOURS AGO

By Olawale Abaire, Warrior Editorial Fellow

Naval Special Warfare (NSW) units, based on the West Coast, recently engaged in intensive fleet interoperability training off the coast of Southern California. This exercise, conducted on June 24, emphasized enhancing warfighting capabilities within the maritime domain. The training featured collaborative efforts between the Commander, U.S. Naval Air Forces, and the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Greeneville (SSN 772), which operates under the aegis of Commander Submarine Squadron 11 (CSS-11).

The primary objective of this comprehensive training session was to integrate NSW operators with submarine warfare units, creating a seamless operational environment that leverages the strengths of both forces. Captain Kenneth Douglas, Commander of Submarine Squadron 11, highlighted the significance of such exercises: “This training opportunity provided the submarine warfighters aboard USS Greeneville the chance to practice a unique capability. Expanding joint interoperability capabilities effectively demonstrates our asymmetric advantage on and under the world’s oceans, and I look forward to continued training events with our Naval Special Warfare operators.”

During the exercise, NSW operators executed a series of complex maneuvers, including military freefall jumps and the airborne deployment of combat rubber raiding crafts (CRRC). These operations were carried out with precision off the coast of Southern California. Following the airborne deployment, NSW teams rendezvoused with the USS Greeneville at a predetermined location, showcasing their ability to integrate seamlessly with submarine operations before returning to shore.

Captain Blake L. Chaney, Commander of Naval Special Warfare Group 1, underscored the critical nature of these operations: “Undertaking an operation of this caliber highlights the indispensable role that NSW and the submarine force play within the joint force. By synchronizing our operations, activities, and investments, we not only bolster fleet lethality but also provide substantial value in securing access to either denied or contested areas.”

The collaborative training between NSW and CSS-11 is a testament to the U.S. Navy’s commitment to maintaining a robust and versatile maritime force. This joint exercise reflects the Navy’s strategic focus on enhancing fleet lethality through coordinated and multifaceted training initiatives.

Mr. Young Bang, Principal Deputy, Asst. Sec of the Army Acquisition, Logistics & Talks to Warrior About AI

CSS-11’s fleet, comprising five Los Angeles-class fast attack submarines, plays a crucial role in various mission profiles, including anti-submarine warfare, anti-ship warfare, strike warfare, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations. The ability to seamlessly integrate NSW operators into these mission profiles significantly enhances the operational flexibility and effectiveness of the submarine force.

The Los Angeles-class attack submarines, exemplified by the USS Greeneville, are pivotal assets within the U.S. Navy’s arsenal. These submarines are designed for stealth, agility, and endurance, capable of conducting prolonged operations in contested waters. Equipped with advanced sonar systems, torpedoes, and cruise missiles, Los Angeles-class submarines can engage a wide range of targets with precision and lethality.

The integration of NSW operators with these submarines presents unique operational advantages. NSW’s ability to deploy from submarines via freefall and CRRC insertions adds an unconventional layer to submarine operations, enabling stealthy infiltration and exfiltration in hostile environments. This capability is particularly valuable in scenarios where access to contested areas is restricted, and traditional surface operations may be compromised.

When compared to other naval special operations forces globally, the U.S. Naval Special Warfare community stands out due to its extensive integration with conventional naval forces. This interoperability is not only a force multiplier but also a strategic advantage in multi-domain operations. For instance, the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Service (SBS) and Russia’s Spetsnaz Naval units possess significant maritime capabilities, but their level of integration with submarine forces and the breadth of their joint training exercises are not as extensively documented as those of the U.S. Navy.

Naval Special Warfare has been the nation’s premier maritime special operations force for 60 years—with a legacy dating to World War II—and to maintain that title, NSW leadership believes fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion is a critical factor to current and future success. NSW photo

The emphasis on joint training and interoperability within the U.S. Navy ensures that NSW operators are not only proficient in their specialized skills but are also capable of operating seamlessly within larger naval and joint force constructs. This holistic approach to training and operations sets the U.S. Naval Special Warfare community apart, enhancing its effectiveness and adaptability in diverse operational environments.

The recent fleet interoperability training involving Naval Special Warfare and Submarine Squadron 11 underscores the U.S. Navy’s commitment to maintaining a lethal, versatile, and integrated maritime force. By combining the elite capabilities of NSW operators with the advanced technology and firepower of Los Angeles-class submarines, the Navy ensures its readiness to face the challenges of a dynamic and competitive maritime environment.

In an era where maritime security challenges are increasingly sophisticated and multifaceted, the integration of Naval Special Warfare and Submarine Squadron 11 represents a powerful combination. This collaboration not only enhances the U.S. Navy’s operational capabilities but also reaffirms its position as a dominant force in global maritime security.

BY OLAWALE ABAIRE, WARRIOR CONTRIBUTOR

OLAWALE ABAIRE is a Warrior researcher, writer and analyst who has written over 75 nonfiction books

9. Aircraft Carriers: Still Indispensable

Aircraft Carriers: Still Indispensable

The joint and combined force is a latticework of capabilities, but nothing compares with the mobility, mass, and fires capacity of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

By Admiral S. J. Paparo, U.S. Navy

July 2024 Proceedings Vol. 150/7/1,457

usni.org · July 1, 2024

Aircraft carriers are indispensable combat platforms. With their air wings, these mighty, mobile, maritime air bases offer a unique combination of versatility and force, enabling the nation to project air power across the globe without the constraints of basing rights and geopolitical borders. Naval aviation and aircraft carriers are critical capabilities within a system of joint, combined, all-domain warfighting. They can generate high sortie rates for strike warfare and air superiority. They have tremendous value in campaigning and crisis response. While they are inherently defensible because of their mobility, there is a strategic necessity to continue to invest in countertargeting capabilities and layered defenses to protect them. Most of all, there is an imperative for today’s naval aviation community to continue to innovate—just as our forebears have done since Eugene Ely first launched from and landed on a ship more than 110 years ago.

Start With The Why

Fires is the king of battle—and an aircraft carrier is the king of kings in capacity and range. Gerald R. Ford and Nimitz-class carriers (CVNs) can generate up to 125 strike sorties per day at surge rates and engage up to six precision aimpoints per sortie. Compare that with the fires generation rate of any platform—air-, land-, or sea-based, fixed or mobile. Rates will vary according to the combat environment, but the CVN’s unique at-sea reloadability via the combat logistics force, coupled with the immense weapons capacity in its magazines, make it an efficient platform to launch a high number of strike, air superiority, and antisubmarine warfare sorties.1 This high volume of sorties is crucial in modern warfare, in which air dominance and the capacity to strike at the heart of enemy operations can decisively influence the outcome of conflict.

Aircraft carriers are power projection platforms with high-capacity magazines. Here, an aviation ordnanceman moves Mk 80-series bombs within a magazine on board the USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77). U.S. Navy (Brian Read Castillo)

Aircraft carriers can be positioned anywhere in international waters, enabling them to respond swiftly to various threats or operational requirements, without the need for host nation support. The mobility of aircraft carriers provides inherent defensibility.

Unlike fixed airfields, which are always vulnerable to attack and require significant effort to defend, aircraft carriers can maneuver across the oceans, making them a challenging target. Mobility allows carriers to operate in areas where they can maximize their effectiveness while minimizing their vulnerability to attack.

Mobility is not a carrier’s only defense, but its ability to reposition rapidly complicates adversaries’ attack planning and execution. Potential adversaries, most notably the People’s Liberation Army, must work hard at finding carriers—and they are working hard and investing heavily in advanced missile systems designed to target ships at long ranges and in submarines and aircraft equipped with antiship weapons. The threat landscape is continuously evolving. But the targeting solution for fixed points on land was complete the night the earth cooled. The reason U.S. adversaries are working so hard to find the carriers is because of their incredible capability to maneuver and inflict damage.

This targeting and countertargeting dynamic demands a perpetual cycle of innovation and adaptation. Carrier strike groups (CSGs) work continually to enhance their defenses and operational tactics to counter emerging threats, while adversaries seek new methods to challenge this dominance. Though the specifics are classified, methods for CSGs to project power and protect themselves include countertargeting, exoatmospheric ballistic-missile defense, and medium- and short-range air and missile defense. Through the combination of countertargeting, mobility, deception, electronic warfare, directed energy, and kinetic kill, a layered approach can provide defense-in-depth against and across enemy kill chains.

Some critics point to the new warfighting concepts of other services as negating the need for carriers. The Marine Corps’ expeditionary advanced base operations and Marine littoral regiments, the Army’s multidomain operations/multidomain task forces, and the Air Force’s agile combat employment concepts are important, laudable contributions to joint, distributed, high-end warfare, but they cannot replace the contributions of the Navy’s aircraft carriers. As Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, I am a zealous advocate of these dynamic and innovative joint concepts and capabilities. But I am also the nation’s most ardent advocate of defending and sustaining the capabilities CSGs provide. It is not an either/or choice—it is a matter of yes, and.

The constantly evolving aircraft in the carrier air wing provides tremendous versatility during a carrier’s 50-year life span. Here, an F/A-18E Super Hornet from VFA-11—the Red Rippers—prepares to launch from the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75). U.S. Navy (Matthew Nass)

The joint and combined force is a latticework of dynamic capabilities that maneuver in the physical and spectral spaces and deliver fires and effects in all domains, to present dilemmas at faster cycles than our potential enemies and along wide and disorienting geography and dimensions. An aircraft carrier’s ability to maneuver dynamically, conduct strike warfare, and provide air superiority and sea control to defend and sustain joint stand-in forces render it indispensable. The former commander, U.S. Central Command, Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie Jr., bluntly describes the impact of not having a CSG in theater in 2019 when Iran was planning a series of escalatory attacks:

“We also knew that the Iranians had been emboldened by a series of recent decisions to greatly reduce U.S. force presence. . . . Most significantly, we no longer had the continuous presence of an aircraft carrier and its accompanying ships. Aircraft carriers are unique icons, powerful symbols of U.S. commitment and power, and the Iranians carefully noted when they were and were not in the theater.”2

Campaigning And Crisis Response

Carrier strike groups also play a crucial role in reassuring allies and partners. A CSG’s presence in a region sends a strong message of commitment and support to U.S. allies and partners. It provides a visible, tangible demonstration of military capability and readiness. It not only reassures allies of U.S. commitment to their security, but also signals and deters potential adversaries. In addition, the diplomatic impact of a visiting carrier, with its 5,000 emissaries of good will—its sailors and Marines—has immeasurable value in cementing people-to-people ties.

Mobile C2

A CSG’s mobile command center allows a flag-level headquarters to command task forces and, under some circumstances, even numbered fleets—the naval equivalent to divisions and corps. The ability to host commanders and staffs, enabling them to build a tactical picture and command battlespace, and support a full battle rhythm across seven joint functions represents unique versatility. Carriers do all this without ever requiring the assent of a host nation, while always moving.

Humanitarian Assistance And Disaster Relief

While amphibious ready groups and their embarked Marine expeditionary units often get the first call to respond to natural disasters and humanitarian crises—and they do excellent work—the speed and capacity of carriers means they can be immensely helpful in crisis response, too. A carrier’s aircraft can conduct search-and-rescue missions, provide medical care, deliver supplies and resources, and support evacuation efforts. In December 2004, when a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated parts of Indonesia and other nations in the Indian Ocean, the Abraham Lincoln CSG was the first force on scene to render assistance.3 Six years later, in 2011, another massive earthquake and tsunami destroyed part of Japan and caused a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) served as an afloat staging base for relief supplies and refueled Japan Self-Defense Force helicopters for weeks.4

Platforms For Innovation

A carrier’s embarked helicopters conduct a range of missions that includes: maritime scouting; antisurface and antisubmarine warfare, search-and-rescue, and logistics. U.S. Navy (Nicholas Rodriguez)

Sortie generation from aircraft carriers is not just about the quantity but also the quality and versatility of missions. From precision strikes against high-value targets to providing periodic to sustained air superiority, carrier-based aircraft provide a flexible range of capabilities. This versatility is further enhanced by the continuous evolution of naval aviation technology, including the development of more capable and versatile aircraft, which ensures that CSGs remain at the forefront of military operational capability. Consider the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). In her 51 years of service, the aircraft that flew from her deck spanned propeller-driven AD-1 Skyraiders and S-2F trackers to F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

The carrier air wing’s evolution reflects a military reality: We are always in contests of overmatch with adversaries. China’s fourth- and fifth-generation fighters and long-range weapons profoundly challenge U.S. capability. We must continue to overcome with ingenuity and creativity for the order of battle ahead. The Navy cannot afford to lose time on the next generation of systems for these missions. Fully adopting fifth-generation aircraft by getting the Ford class certified for F-35C operations and expediting development of Next Generation Air Dominance are imperatives.

The Enterprise also exemplifies the carrier as an enduring platform for the spiral development of information-age capabilities. Unmanned, autonomous, and hypersonic systems, additive manufacturing, directed energy, and nanotechnology are the future avenues of innovation in warfare. The carrier’s space, weight-carrying capacity, and the power of its two nuclear reactors provide capability unlike that of any other platform. There are obstacles that must be overcome to bring this about, but the ongoing air defense operations in the Red Sea demonstrate the need for directed-energy weapons.5 3D printers and materials should provide the capability to manufacture and launch hundreds, if not thousands, of attritable UAVs and weapons, around the clock. The space, weight, and power capacity of CVNs make both scenarios possible.

Necessary Tools In A Dangerous World

This year’s Hook Symposium theme is “Be Ready”—an appropriate dictum to the entire joint force. We face an increasingly chaotic and disordered world. It is not what Francis Fukuyama predicted in The End of History and the Last Man—a peaceful post–Cold War world in which all nations would evolve toward liberal democracy. Rather, the behaviors exhibited today by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and violent extremists more resemble Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. The United States would be wise to remember Huntington’s May 1954 Proceedings article, “National Policy and the Transoceanic Navy.” In that article, he wrote, “[The Navy’s] purpose now is not to acquire command of the sea but rather to utilize its command of the sea to achieve supremacy on the land. More specifically, it is to apply naval power to that decisive strip of littoral encircling the Eurasian continent.” He continued, “The basic weapons of the new Navy are those which make it possible to project naval power far inland. These . . . take primarily three forms . . . [the first of which is] carrier based naval air power.”6

Seventy years after Huntington wrote those words, naval aviation and aircraft carriers remain indispensable elements of the 21st-century military. The United States’ would-be enemies are working hard to target them because they fear them. We must not oblige those adversaries by quitting on or reducing this capability. As the global strategic landscape continues to evolve, the role of naval aviation and aircraft carriers will remain at the forefront of U.S. military power projection and maritime power—essential and integral to the joint and combined force. But for the nation to retain these unique capabilities, we must pace our adversaries’ ability to thwart them.

The challenges are manifest. We must build a robust countertargeting capability to dazzle, deceive, and destroy the enemy’s ability to see, understand, and act. The main battery of the carrier—the air wing and the weapons in its magazines—must pace the information age with increasing range, speed, accuracy, and lethality. We must quicken the pace with which we adopt and field unmanned systems. And we must take advantage of the space, weight, and power inherent in the CVN to bring directed-energy weapons and additive manufacturing to the battlespace. We have the talent and the energy to face these challenges. Speed. Angels. Fight’s On.

usni.org · July 1, 2024

10. New Pentagon Data Sharing Effort Will Showcase U.S. Military As Viable Career Path For High Schoolers

I hope this is an effective use of data that will have a positive influence and outcome.

Excerpts:

While it may sound like a bureaucratic turn of the screw, this bi-partisan effort has a lot of winners—high schoolers and their parents will get more insight on the military as a meaningful career path, school systems will know how well they are preparing students for those careers and the armed forces could get a much-needed boost on recruitment goals.

...

“Our priority is to ensure that all high school graduates in our states are ready for college and career success. When students decide to pursue a career in the military, we hope that —and would like to know if— they are succeeding in that career choice. Our efforts as a state education system are only improved when we know how our students are doing,” they said.

This isn’t the first time that school districts have attempted to gather information on military enlistment of their student populations. After passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, 10 states planned to use military service as one of their indicators of student success. But lacking an effective way to collect that data, that fell by the wayside.

New Pentagon Data Sharing Effort Will Showcase U.S. Military As Viable Career Path For High Schoolers

Forbes · by Jim Cowen · July 4, 2024

Jim Cowen

ContributorOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

I write about education and getting kids ready for college or careers

Following

Jul 3, 2024,09:12am EDT

... [+]Getty Images

In response to a grassroots push by U.S. state education chiefs, the Department of Defense (DoD) is moving forward with a plan to share data with states on how service members are succeeding in their military careers.

The Department of Defense “is committed to providing data on military service to state officials, including identifying standard requirements for all the states and establishing a central data repository for data sharing,” Ashish S. Vazirani, acting under secretary for personnel and readiness in the Department of Defense, recently wrote.

The DoD is establishing “a cross-agency working group to create a standardized agreement and data-sharing protocol on military service with state officials,” he wrote Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, a member of the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee and a champion of the data sharing effort on Capitol Hill.

Moran and several co-sponsors introduced legislation in the Senate that would codify the data sharing arrangement.

While it may sound like a bureaucratic turn of the screw, this bi-partisan effort has a lot of winners—high schoolers and their parents will get more insight on the military as a meaningful career path, school systems will know how well they are preparing students for those careers and the armed forces could get a much-needed boost on recruitment goals.

“As state leaders, we are dedicated to ensuring all students leave high school ready for success in college or careers, and we believe that serving our country is one viable pathway a student might choose to pursue,” education leaders in more than half of U.S states wrote to the Department of Defense last year. “Unfortunately, the lack of selective, verifiable data on military enlistment and persistence makes it almost impossible for states to consider military service as a successful post-high school outcome and to confirm if students were successfully prepared to serve.”

“Our priority is to ensure that all high school graduates in our states are ready for college and career success. When students decide to pursue a career in the military, we hope that —and would like to know if— they are succeeding in that career choice. Our efforts as a state education system are only improved when we know how our students are doing,” they said.

This isn’t the first time that school districts have attempted to gather information on military enlistment of their student populations. After passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, 10 states planned to use military service as one of their indicators of student success. But lacking an effective way to collect that data, that fell by the wayside.

This time around, state education leaders are proposing development of a data sharing agreement enabling any state to partner with DoD to add state-specific enlistment and service data into their respective longitudinal data systems.

“Allowing state education agencies to connect their data with military enlistment information would open the door for states to consider military service as a successful post-high school outcome. This could lead to an increased number of the 3.7 million high school graduates each year considering the military as a viable career option,” they wrote.

Vazirani said the Department of Defense and the working group will finalize the the goals and objectives of the data sharing by the end of the year and begin providing the data to the states by the 2026-2027 school year.

Dr. Randy Watson, the Kansas Commissioner of Education and an early driver of this initiative told me, “Kansas is dedicated to ensuring that every student leaves high school with a clear and informed path to success, whether that’s to college or a career. In a rapidly evolving job market, having accurate and current data on military careers will help bridge the gap between education and employment, offering students a clearer picture of the possibilities that lie ahead in the armed forces.”

Sen. Moran stressed the importance to the military of having the data sharing arrangement in place in recent comments to Military.com.

"The military offers a wide array of career options, from combat medics, to chefs, to engineers and much more. Accurate, current and readily available information on career opportunities and outcomes will better enable state education systems to inform students of military career options post high school,” Moran said. “This legislation will open doors for students to pursue their interests through well-paid, meaningful careers in the military.”

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Jim Cowen

11. ‘Toxic’ politics increase terrorism, extremism risk, DHS official says

I fear this will be interpreted as partisan.

Excerpts:

Nicholas Rasmussen, the DHS counterterrorism coordinator, blamed prominent voices in the political arena that frame politics as zero-sum, encouraging the belief that one political party’s gain is the other’s loss.

That type of framing leads to extreme political views, some of which gain footing among military and veteran communities, and increases the chance that people will be prompted to commit violence, Rasmussen said. The DHS labels that type of threat as domestic violent extremism.

‘Toxic’ politics increase terrorism, extremism risk, DHS official says

militarytimes.com · by Nikki Wentling · July 3, 2024

A “toxic political environment” has made the United States more vulnerable to acts of violence that threaten the country’s social fabric, a Department of Homeland Security official warned last week.

Nicholas Rasmussen, the DHS counterterrorism coordinator, blamed prominent voices in the political arena that frame politics as zero-sum, encouraging the belief that one political party’s gain is the other’s loss.

That type of framing leads to extreme political views, some of which gain footing among military and veteran communities, and increases the chance that people will be prompted to commit violence, Rasmussen said. The DHS labels that type of threat as domestic violent extremism.

“The toxic political environment in which we live as Americans right now, and the existentialist ways in which voices in our public square frame our politics — not only zero sum terms, but the worst kind of zero sum terms — all of that leaves us far more vulnerable than ever to targeted violence here,” Rasmussen said.

The FBI and DHS categorize extremism into four subtypes: racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism, animal rights or environmental violent extremism and abortion-related violent extremism.

Of those, Rasmussen said he is most concerned about racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, which “continues to grow in scope and scale.”

The conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip exacerbated those risks, putting both Jewish and Muslim communities in the U.S. at greater risk of being targeted in attacks, he explained.

While other types of threats are currently more pressing, domestic violent extremism “has the potential to be more undermining of our social fabric than any other form of terrorism threat we face,” he added.

Domestic extremists who plot or commit mass killings often share characteristics, such as histories of mental health and criminal issues. But the most common thread is a record of military service, according to research by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, which analyzed three decades of attacks in the U.S.

The findings illustrate a “small numbers, high impact” problem, said Ellen Gustafson, co-founder of We the Veterans, a non-partisan nonprofit that focuses on preserving and strengthening democracy.

“Seeing that there’s a potentially deadly outcome of more involvement by veterans in these extremist groups, it is imperative for us as a group of concerned citizens and also members of the veteran and military family community to try to do something about it,” Gustafson said when the research was released last year.

Mauricio Garcia, a man with longstanding neo-Nazi views, killed eight people in a mass shooting at a mall in Allen, Texas, in 2023. (Tony Gutierrez/AP)

Rasmussen outlined the threats facing the U.S. during a speech in Omaha, Nebraska, where counterterrorism experts gathered for a conference hosted by the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center.

Threats of violence are “more challenging, more complex and more complicated” than ever because of increasing risks of domestic violent extremism, combined with concerns of terrorist networks gaining entry to the country through the U.S.-Mexico border, he told the crowd.

“I’ve often been called upon to articulate the details of the threat environment and to try to make sense of what we should be most worried about,” Rasmussen said. “It’s harder now, today, here in this moment, than it’s ever been before. We face more challenges, harder challenges.”

Highest on Rasmussen’s list of priorities are vulnerabilities at the southern border, where the U.S. has struggled to manage a record number of migrants over the past year. Tensions between state and federal authorities peaked in January amid record levels of unauthorized border crossings, during which the Texas National Guard and state troopers blocked U.S. Border Patrol agents from a 2.5-mile stretch of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas.

During the feud, the Texas Military Department posted a photo to its official X account, showing a flag from the Texas Revolution flying above its headquarters in Austin.

Renae Eze, a spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, said at the time that the state was using multiple tactics to deter people from crossing and blamed President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

“Texas will continue to deploy Texas National Guard soldiers, [Texas Department of Public Safety] troopers, and more barriers, utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to President Biden’s ongoing border crisis,” Eze said at the time.

A DHS official warned Thursday that terrorist networks could exploit vulnerabilities at the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)

Migrants continue to travel from all over the world to seek asylum, and while DHS tries to vet them for ties to terrorist networks, the agency isn’t always successful, Rasmussen said.

Earlier this month, the FBI arrested eight Tajik men with ties to the Islamic State who entered the country through the southern border, the New York Times reported. It’s unclear whether the men were planning a terror attack.

Rasmussen argued against the notion that terrorists are “streaming” across the border. However, the immigration crisis does increase the country’s vulnerability to attacks, he said.

“DHS employs rigorous screening and vetting of those arriving migrants to try to identify any individual who may present a terrorism-related threat to the homeland,” Rasmussen said. “Even in the midst of all of that work, we find ourselves facing a situation in which individual migrants or travelers do arrive here ... and we subsequently learn that they in fact have some form of potential threat. When that happens, we work ... closely with the FBI and local law enforcement around the country to deal with and mitigate that threat.”

In addition to border issues and threats of domestic violent extremism, homegrown violent extremists present another challenge for DHS, Rasmussen said.

Such threats, which come from longterm U.S. residents inspired by foreign terror organizations to reject Western culture and commit violence, comprise a significant share of the U.S.’ threat profile, he added.

According to data from START, approximately 15% of individuals with military backgrounds who were charged with plotting or committing mass killings during the past three decades were inspired by or linked to foreign Islamist extremist groups, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

Rasmussen speaks during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in November 2017. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

DHS needs more resources to address these threats, Rasmussen said. The agency warned earlier this year that it faced a budget shortfall, and it urged Congress to approve a bipartisan immigration deal that would provide more than $15 billion to DHS to bolster security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Senate Republicans blocked the deal for a second time in May after former President Donald Trump described the measure as a “gift” for Democrats and Biden’s reelection chances.

Because of the funding shortfall, DHS is relying on the intelligence community, as well as academic and private-sector counterterrorism researchers, to help it prioritize threats, Rasmussen said.

“We are today a counterterrorism community of finite resources. Not something I ever thought I would say in the post-9/11 environment, but it’s true,” Rasmussen said. “We must make choices and deal most urgently with the most threatening things on our worry list. We can’t treat every problem as a top priority.”

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

About Nikki Wentling

Nikki Wentling covers disinformation and extremism for Military Times. She's reported on veterans and military communities for eight years and has also covered technology, politics, health care and crime. Her work has earned multiple honors from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors and others.

12. Pentagon sending advanced fighters to Japan as part of force upgrade

Pentagon sending advanced fighters to Japan as part of force upgrade

Stars and Stripes · by Brian McElhiney · July 4, 2024

Two new F-15EX Eagle fighter jets, EX3 and EX4, arrive at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on Dec. 20, 2023. (Blake Wiles/U.S. Air Force)

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — The Air Force will permanently deploy 36 F-15EX Eagles to Okinawa as part of a broader plan to station more advanced U.S. fighter aircraft across Japan over the next several years, the Defense Department announced Wednesday.

The F-15EX fighters are “part of a planned divestment and modernization” and the permanent replacements for 48 F-15C/Ds previously stationed at Kadena Air Base, according to a DOD news release. The Air Force will continue to rotate squadrons of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters through Kadena until the transition is complete, according to the Pentagon.

As part of the broader effort, the Air Force will also deploy 48 F-35A Lightning II fighters to Misawa Air Base to replace 36 F-16 Fighting Falcons. The Marine Corps will “modify the number of F-35B aircraft” at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni as part of its ongoing force design modernization.

The 18th Wing at Kadena and Pacific Air Forces referred further questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which referred to the news release. The Okinawa Times first reported the deployment Tuesday, citing multiple, unnamed U.S. officials.

The modernization plan, coordinated with the Japanese government, “reflects over $10 billion of capability investments to enhance the U.S.-Japan Alliance, bolster regional deterrence, and strengthen peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” the release states.

Tensions throughout the region in recent years have steadily increased between the U.S. and China, which the Pentagon identified as a global “pacing challenge” and an aggressive presence in the East and South China seas in the 2022 National Defense Strategy.

“The Department’s plan to station the Joint Force’s most advanced tactical aircraft in Japan demonstrates the ironclad U.S. commitment to the defense of Japan and both countries’ shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” the statement said.

In December, the Air Force informed lawmakers on Capitol Hill that it planned to permanently deploy the F-15EX fighters to Kadena to replace two squadrons of aging F-15C/D fighters previously stationed there, Nikkei Asia reported at the time.

The multi-role F-15EX, derived from the F-15E Strike Eagle, could be bolstered by unmanned drones. The F-15EX, while not stealthy, does carry some next-generation avionics and networking capability, is faster and carries more payload with longer range than other fighters, according to its maker, Boeing.

The Air Force has rotated fighter squadrons of more advanced warplanes through Kadena to guarantee coverage at a base it calls the “keystone of the Pacific,” situated northeast of Taiwan on the eastern edge of the East China Sea.

Since December 2022, when Kadena officially bid farewell to its F-15s, squadrons of F-35As from Alaska and Utah, F-16CM Fighting Falcons from Germany, F-15Cs from California and Louisiana and F-15E Strike Eagles from North Carolina and Idaho have served at the base. Most recently, six F-22 Raptors from the 27th Fighter Squadron at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., arrived in April, joining the 199th and 19th Fighter Squadrons that arrived in March.

Kadena is home to approximately 8,000 airmen from the 18th Wing and combat-ready aircraft that provide air superiority, aerial refueling and combat search and rescue, according to the wing website. More than 100 aircraft are positioned at Kadena, either deployed or permanently stationed, all performing a wide range of functions.

Brian McElhiney

Brian McElhiney

Brian McElhiney is a reporter for Stars and Stripes based in Okinawa, Japan. He has worked as a music reporter and editor for publications in New Hampshire, Vermont, New York and Oregon. One of his earliest journalistic inspirations came from reading Stars and Stripes as a kid growing up in Okinawa.

Stars and Stripes · by Brian McElhiney · July 4, 2024

13. DARPA wants to use AI to find new rare minerals

DARPA wants to use AI to find new rare minerals

With spectral analysis, it’s possible to “tell the difference [between] cocaine that came from one cartel’s area of Colombia versus another.”

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

The Mountain Pass Mine in the Mojave Desert in California. It hosts one of the largest and highest-grade rare earth element metal deposits in the world, treated to show clay and iron deposits. Maxar, processed by Exploration Mapping Group, Inc., courtesy of ESRI

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With spectral analysis, it’s possible to “tell the difference [between] cocaine that came from one cartel’s area of Colombia versus another.”

|

July 3, 2024

• Space
• Artificial Intelligence
• Supply Chain

By Patrick Tucker

Science & Technology Editor, Defense One

July 3, 2024

• Space
• Artificial Intelligence
• Supply Chain

Secure access to rare Earth minerals is a critical national security issue, as the entire United States' economy is highly dependent on minerals—and the majority of them discovered so far are in China. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has partnered with a company called HyperSpectral that applies artificial intelligence to spectroscopic data, which could be key to using satellites or drones to find minerals that would be difficult to detect otherwise.

HyperSpectral CEO Matt Thereur explained how it works in an exclusive interview with Defense One. Spectroscopy is the study of how matter interacts with light or other forms of radiation across different wavelengths. The solar radiation a specific mineral or substance emits, due to its unique molecular makeup, is a unique signifier.

The company until now has focused on food safety. Want to find out if large shipments of raw food are carrying deadly pathogens? Want to know about the new breakout of medication-resistant strep? Spectroscopy can help find the bacteria the eye can’t see.

“The processing used today takes a couple of days for someone to be able to tell the difference between [drug-resistant and drug-sensitive staphylococcus bacteria], because they actually have to plate and grow the bacteria and then apply antibiotics to it to see which ones kill it, if any. Versus now we're talking about a swab, say from a wound, and we're typically turning results around in a couple of minutes versus several days.”

Where does AI come in? Thereur explained, “Pure samples don't exist in nature. Nature is a very noisy place. So what we're doing with artificial intelligence when we build these models is looking for all the relationships that can sometimes be obscured by the noise [such as] if you've got one section of the spectrum being confounded by some other substance within it.”

There are also multiple types of spectroscopic analysis that aren’t easily combined together in a single data picture, which is also where AI helps. The auditory data that comes from human speech is very different from text data related to what combinations of letters and words are most likely to show up together. But combining them together is what makes AI-driven transcription and translation possible. In theory, spectroscopic data from a wide variety of sources could be just as useful.

“Whether it's absorbance, or reflectance or [Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy] or Raman and or surface-enhanced Raman, it's all about understanding the spectrographic response of those materials and being able to differentiate between different materials,” Thereur said.

What can it reveal? Thereur said the DEA, used a similar technique and, “was able to tell the difference of cocaine that came from one cartel’s area of Colombia versus another.”

The cooperative agreement with DARPA is in its very early stages, Thereur said, and the Defense Department applications for better understanding where different materials might be are vast. Spectroscopy can be done with a few specific satellites, which makes it potentially useful for intelligence collection—such as finding the existence of specific materials used in enemy or adversary equipment or vehicles.

The Pentagon is keen on not only getting better access to rare Earth material, but also moving the building of key weapons and supplies much closer to the front lines, rather than rely on supply lines that would be very hard to defend in the Pacific.

“There is a tremendous amount of applicability and use cases for analysis of spectral data. Yes, there's a tremendous amount,” Thereur said.

14. This Medal of Honor recipient’s heroism didn’t end with his war

Stories of the life of another great American.

This Medal of Honor recipient’s heroism didn’t end with his war

militarytimes.com · by Todd South · July 4, 2024

A new book detailing the life of Army Master Sgt. Roy Perez Benavidez examines the complicated legacy of a man who could trace his ancestry back to Texas before it was a state and who faced discrimination even after receiving the nation’s highest award for military valor.

William Sturkey, an associate history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has focused much of his research and writing on marginalized communities. He found Benavidez’s story, one that bridged major racial shifts in the United States during the tumultuous 20th Century, as emblematic of the Latino community’s struggle for acceptance and success in America.

Sturkey’s book, “The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero,” published in June by Basic Books, dives into the Medal of Honor recipient’s life before, during and after his service and what Sturkey thinks it says about wider issues within marginalized populations.

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Graphic novel spotlights actions of Medal of Honor recipient who, even in a body bag, refused to die

Benavidez was not one to be deterred by gun shot, shrapnel, or stab wounds.

On May 2, 1968, Benavidez was serving with the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam when a 12-man reconnaissance team was inserted by helicopter along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Disaster struck almost immediately.

Shortly after they landed, the team was raked by heavy fire from North Vietnamese Army units. During the ambush, three helicopters attempted to reach the cut-off recon unit but were unable to.

Listening to the battle from a nearby post, Benavidez watched as the helicopters returned, and then immediately ran to jump aboard as they made another attempt to relieve the patrol. As his helicopter hovered, Benavidez leaped to the ground and ran 75 meters under heavy fire to reach the team. As he did so, he was struck by enemy fire and shrapnel in his right leg, face and head.

Once he reached the team, he found that nearly all of them were wounded, and others were dead. Despite his injuries, Benavidez took command of the survivors. Throwing smoke canisters to identify their position to friendly forces, he dragged and carried half of the wounded to an incoming medevac chopper himself. As the wounded were loaded aboard, Benavidez moved to retrieve the body of the team’s leader, who had been killed. As he did, the helicopter’s pilot was struck by incoming fire and killed, and the aircraft crashed.

Once again, Benavidez raced to where he was needed and began pulling the wounded from the wreck. He then called in tactical airstrikes and was wounded again. Throughout it all, he continued to fight for his men until another helicopter finally arrived and extracted the team. For his actions that day, Benavidez was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, on Feb. 24, 1981.

Sturkey spoke with Army Times about his own background with veterans and other marginalized communities and Benavidez’s story.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

The Ballad of Roy Benavidez, by William Sturkey, chronicles the Medal of Honor recipient's early life, battlefield heroism, and advocacy work. (Basic Books)

Q: Can you tell readers a little bit about your background and interest in the military?

A: I come from a place just outside Erie, Pennsylvania, which has a lot of working class young men and women who join the military. I graduated high school in 2000. Although I didn’t serve, I was part of the War on Terror generation. There were military recruiters in our high school all the time. This book is dedicated to my friend Army Spc. Donald S. Oaks Jr., who died on April 3, 2003, while serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom. I think because of that I always really pay attention to veterans’ issues.

Q: How did you come across Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez’s story and decide to write about it?

A: As a historian, I’ve always been interested in stories of marginalized people, especially working classes of color. They don’t always get the same treatment in American history as politicians and celebrities do. It was about 2005 to 2006. I was really wrestling with some of the experiences my friends in the military were having, some of their deaths both in combat and after they came home. I was thinking about what our society does when it comes to veterans. I heard about Roy’s story and how very soon after he received the Medal of Honor, he lost his social security disability benefits. It made me think: how do we balance the celebration of veterans versus how do we treat veterans in terms of public policy?

Q: Could you tell us about the racial climate for Latino and Hispanic people during Benavidez’s lifetime and especially his service?

A: Historians have been telling each other for years that Vietnam was a “poor people’s war.” The data just doesn’t really bear that out. There were a lot of Hispanic and Black people killed. There was absolutely racism, some data shows their casualties were a little higher than you’d expect, so with Roy I looked more at who were his role models growing up. Born in 1935 in Texas, he grew up in a very, very racist society. He couldn’t go to the front of restaurants. He couldn’t sit in the front rows at movie theaters. But when he was growing up, Hispanic soldiers who’d served honorably in World War II were all around. But there was a famous story in Texas of a Hispanic Americanwho died after the war and his family wasn’t allowed to bury him in a white cemetery, even though he’d served his country. So, Roy’s generation was the first generation who got to build off the legacy of those World War II soldiers. The military was an opportunity to succeed, and he would say there was more racial equality in the military because of the command structure and the urgency of the Vietnam War.

William Sturkey is the author of the 2024 book, "The Ballad of Roy Benavidez" which chronicles the life of Medal of Honor recipient Army Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez. (Basic Books)

Q: Would you share how his Medal of Honor award finally came and his life after the Army?

A: Roy’s actions took place in 1968 and he didn’t receive the medal until 1981. In the early to mid-1970s there was a lot of Vietnam War fatigue among the U.S. population. People were just sick of talking about it, certainly nobody in the military wanted to talk about it. But by the early 1980s some of that attitude had relaxed. Movies such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Deer Hunter” were now being replaced by “Rambo” and later “Top Gun.” There was more of an attitude of celebrating the military. It was a challenge because there were few witnesses to his actions. After many rejections, Roy and others finally found a survivor from the mission who could provide vital testimony to what happened that day and they were ultimately successful in getting his actions recognized. For many years he was the most recent living recipient of the Medal of Honor. Even with the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, the two soldiers received it posthumously. But in 1983 he told the media that his Social Security disability benefits and benefits for veterans were going to be cut and he testified to Congress to stop the cuts. Because he was the most recent living recipient he was involved in many veterans issues, called upon by political leaders and military groups to give speeches. He died in 1998.

Q: What was something surprising you discovered in your research?

A: Because Roy and his family were Hispanic, they often suffered discrimination and were seen as second-class citizens. But his family traced its continuous lineage back to Mexican settlers in Texas before it was part of the United States. His family fought alongside other Texans for their independence from Mexico. One of his relatives, Plácido Benavides, was known as the “Paul Revere of Texas” during the Texas Revolution. Benavides helped revolutionaries take San Antonio and was later in a unit ambushed by the Mexican Army near San Patricio. During the battle he was dispatched to Goliad to alert troops there of the Mexican Army’s approach. Despite this history, his family had to flee to Louisiana to avoid racist mob violence. When they returned to Texas, they discovered that white settlers had moved onto their land and claimed it for themselves.

About Todd South

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

​15. The Surprising National Security Role of America’s “Best Idea”

What a unique and fascinating OpEd.

Excerpt:

To counter the foreign influence campaigns of Russia, China, and Iran and ensure the United States remains united, stable, and secure, the country must find ways to more effectively foster solidarity among its diverse and spirited people. The U.S. National Park Service (NPS), a federal agency more often associated with managing bear cubs and buffalo at Yellowstone than combating malign influence operations, can help. In its own grass-roots way, the NPS cultivates and sustains unity among Americans by providing democratic educational experiences for citizens from varying backgrounds, areas of the country, and socio-economic strata.

The Surprising National Security Role of America’s “Best Idea”

By Antonette Bowman

July 04, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/07/04/the_surprising_national_security_role_of_americas_best_idea_1042286.html?mc_cid=880e79107c&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s former bodyguard, who once reportedly confronted a bear at a mountain retreat while Putin slept through the ordeal, was appointed secretary of the advisory State Council in May. Unfortunately, hostile Russian bear activity is not relegated to Moscow and its environs. The U.S. Intelligence Community warned in its 2024 Annual Threat Assessment that Russia is “a serious foreign influence threat," seeking to “sow domestic discord, including among voters inside the United States and U.S. partners around the world.” 

To counter the foreign influence campaigns of Russia, China, and Iran and ensure the United States remains united, stable, and secure, the country must find ways to more effectively foster solidarity among its diverse and spirited people. The U.S. National Park Service (NPS), a federal agency more often associated with managing bear cubs and buffalo at Yellowstone than combating malign influence operations, can help. In its own grass-roots way, the NPS cultivates and sustains unity among Americans by providing democratic educational experiences for citizens from varying backgrounds, areas of the country, and socio-economic strata.

The NPS celebrates cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity as “a hallmark of American society” and invites visitors to embark on a “Places Reflecting America’s Diverse Cultures Itinerary.” The experience “pays tribute to all of the people who have made this country a beacon of light and opportunity.” The itinerary specifically encourages visits to Ellis Island, the Lincoln Memorial where Marian Anderson performed, the Sons of Israel Synagogue, the Mother Mosque of America, and Devil’s Tower National Monument, a sacred site of Native Americans, among other places. 

Rather than encouraging separatism in an era characterized by ideological, political, and affective polarization, the NPS’s balanced approach emphasizes reconciliation and highlights how different groups of citizens have contributed to the country and forged a common identity. That, in turn, can help immunize Americans against the efforts of those intent on pitting citizens against each other. 

Amid the rising scourge of antisemitism in the United States, NPS park sites such as Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, remind visitors of the country’s commitment to liberty of conscience, an American first principle that has helped unify citizens of diverse backgrounds for generations. Visitors learn about the letter George Washington penned in 1790 to Moses Seixas, leader of the Jewish Congregation of Newport assuring that the new nation would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

Other park sites such as Independence Hall, Gettysburg, Arlington Cemetery, and the National Mall provide opportunities for Americans to learn more about their history and the sacrifices made to defend and improve the nation. That promotes a sense of shared identity, stewardship, and purpose. 

At a time when many Americans are segregating themselves by red state or blue state, the NPS continues to promote unity among Americans from different parts of the country. The agency is entrusted with the management of approximately 84,000,000 acres of land including 429 national park sites in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam. These sites serve as extraordinary educational destinations where Americans from all corners of the country often rub elbows, mingling as they admire and appreciate together America’s iconic natural and cultural wonders. 

"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section,” said Stephen Mather, NPS Director from 1917-1929, “The Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon are national properties in which every citizen has a vested interest; they belong as much to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona." 

The National Parks not only foster unity among Americans from diverse backgrounds and varying locations, but also among citizens from different socio-economic groups. The parks build cohesiveness by making the nation’s treasures accessible to all regardless of financial means. 

“This is a uniquely American idea…this is the Declaration of Independence applied to the landscape,” proclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns, director of a PBS documentary series on America’s national parks. “That for the first time in human history, land was set aside not for kings or noblemen or the very rich but for everybody and for all time. We invented it.” 

Americans can visit most sites for free. 

“What could be more democratic than owning together the most magnificent places on your continent?” asked Carl Pope, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club founded by conservationist John Muir in 1892. “In Europe, the most magnificent places, the palaces, the parks, are owned by aristocrats, by monarchs, by the wealthy,” added Pope, referring to the historical context in which America’s revolutionary idea emerged. “In America, magnificence is a common treasure. That’s the essence of our democracy.”  

As the financial divide among Americans widens, NPS’s unifying mission can help shore up societal resilience and counter adversary efforts to exploit divisions.

In a 2023 Pew Research Poll asking Americans whether they had a favorable or unfavorable view of a selection of federal agencies, the NPS topped the list with an 81% favorable rating, garnering bipartisan support from Americans in both the Republican and Democratic parties. At a time when Americans don’t agree on much, they do agree that NPS has served the nation well. 

"National parks,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and historian Wallace Stegner, “are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best.” 

Notably, the Chinese Communist Party established its own Yellowstone in October 2021 and aims to build its own version of America’s National Park system by 2030. It’s no surprise that Beijing wants to copy America’s “best idea.” But in China, the parks will be owned by the party and not the people.

America’s adversaries are attempting to weaken the United States by sowing societal discord and dissension. Americans concerned about these threats should recognize that the National Park Service is about much more than recreation and quality time with flora and fauna. Our national parks help unify Americans, ensuring our diversity remains one of our greatest assets. It turns out that the grizzlies at Yellowstone may be one of our best allies in fighting off the Russian bear. 

Antonette Bowman is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

16. Is the precision revolution in warfare fading away?

Is the precision revolution in warfare fading away? - Breaking Defense

In this op-ed, Mark Cancian of CSIS lays out how the DoD can overcome countermeasures of precision munitions.

breakingdefense.com · by Mark Cancian · July 2, 2024

A High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) from Alpha “Able” Battery, 3-321st Field Artillery Regiment (FAR) from the 18th Field Artillery Brigade (FAB) lights up the night sky on Fort Campbell, Ky., during a Large-Scale, Long-Range Air Assault as part of Operation Lethal Eagle 24.1, April 24, 2024. (Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Tverberg)

Precision munitions have given the United States a decisive combat edge for 50 years. From Desert Storm to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, “one bomb, one kill” has become the expectation. As the United States passed this capability to Ukraine for its struggle with Russia, HIMARS with GMLRS, Excalibur 155 mm artillery shells, Ground-Launched Small-Diameter Bombs, and JDAMs have had an immense impact on the battlefield.

Yet, Russia has used electronic warfare, decoys, deception, and dispersion to render some useless. And that raises a potentially destabilizing question for the US military: What if precision location and guidance are losing their battlefield dominance in the face of countermeasures? If so, the United States will need to change its concepts of operations and acquisition strategies to hedge against the possibility of operations with diminished location capabilities.

DoD defines a precision munition as “a guided weapon intended to destroy a point target and minimize collateral damage.” Precision also includes the entire range of command and control capabilities arising from automated and accurate geolocation. The focus on precision permeates guidance and doctrinal publications across the services. Outside DoD, study after study has proposed that the US expand long-range precision munitions to stay outside of adversary defensive zones. Given precision’s centrality, any failure of precision guidance and geolocation on future battlefields would be disastrous for US operations.

Countermeasures to precision munitions are not new. Precision munitions might be accurate, but they must be told where to go. Adversaries long ago realized that hiding and dispersion provided a first level of protection. But facilities can’t be moved, meaning those are easy targets for precision weapons, and as seen in both Iraq conflicts, battlefield geography does not always allow an enemy force to hide. Thus, precision remained immensely effective, even if its ability to strike mobile or concealed targets was limited.

The countermeasures now being seen in Ukraine, however, represent a leap forward. Where Iraq or Serbia had a hard time countering the apex of Western technology, Russia had been preparing to do that for decades. Further, Russia, China, and virtually every country on the planet has watched what the United States has done to its adversaries and thought about ways to blunt those attacks should US firepower be sent in their direction.

As a result, the Russians have had great success with jamming GPS signals (interfering with them so they can’t get through) and spoofing (distorting the signals so they are inaccurate). Excalibur, the precision artillery projectile, is not used anymore because its effectiveness declined below 10 percent for a munition costing $160,000 each. Similarly, JDAMs and Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) have become largely ineffective. GMLRS is struggling. That’s a major part of the US short and medium-range precision munitions, apparently rendered ineffective.

Not only are weapons affected but tracking systems have also become unreliable. For example, pilots flying near war zones find that locations in their navigation systems are scrambled and so unreliable that they turn GPS off.

The evolution of countermeasures is not surprising — there are multiple examples from both World Wars of one side making a move and the other responding. But the fact countermeasures were made does not mean the US can afford not to react. Delays are paid for in blood. Before a catastrophic wartime failure, the United States needs to implement a hedging strategy in peacetime.

One element of such a strategy would be improving munition guidance to overcome or avoid jamming. Another would be acquiring alternative kinds of munitions to cope with diminished precision. A final element would be training personnel to adapt to the environment.

GPS improvements. The defense industry has devised ways to reduce the effectiveness of jamming and spoofing, and the DoD is racing to implement them. There are special processors, antennas and signal processors to read distorted or weak signals, and there are no doubt also classified programs. With time, the most effective improvements will become ubiquitous on the battlefield. Postwar assessments of operations in Ukraine will help identify these.

Nevertheless, there are limits. At best, GPS signals are weak — the satellite is 23,000 miles away in a geosynchronous orbit. Further, not all munitions can accommodate all improvements. Artillery shells, for example, have severe limits on antennae and space.

Luckily, US GPS is not the only way to guide munitions. While none of the alternatives are as cheap or effective as GPS, they do exist. Among the options:

• Multiple GPS receivers on the munition, linking not just to the US GPS satellite constellation but to those of other countries, would be possible. The Russians have GLONASS, the Chinese have BeiDou (BDS), and the European Union has Galileo. Indeed, some cell phones already link to multiple geolocation networks. Because these are just receivers and not transmitters, they don’t have the security issues that using a Chinese 5G network does.Although all these constellations are susceptible to jamming, adversaries might be reluctant to shut them all down, including their own. For example, if the Chinese shut down their own system to thwart US munitions, they would badly disrupt their economy and civil society.
• Inertial navigation systems (INS) have sensitive sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes) that measure acceleration and direction. That data and a known starting point allow INS to determine where it is and where it needs to go. Although immune to jamming, inertial navigation is less accurate than GPS and much more expensive. It is unsuitable for artillery shells, which sustain immense acceleration forces (16,000g) when fired.
• Terrain contour matching uses sensors on the missile to identify the terrain it is flying over. It then compares that with the terrain map in its memory, using that map to navigate to the target. Terrain contour matching is more accurate than inertial navigation because it provides terminal navigation. However, it is costly and only suitable for large, long-range missiles where the extra weight and expense are not a significant problem. For example, Tomahawk missiles include this system, alongside GPS.
• Laser guidance uses a spotter to illuminate the target; the munition sees the laser and guides on it. Many of the early precision-guided munitions had such guidance. It’s effective and hard to jam but has one huge drawback: Spotters must be close to the target. For aircraft, that means getting deep inside the adversary’s defensive zone. On the ground, it requires a clear view of the target and close coordination with the shooter. The United States had a laser-guided artillery munition called Copperhead, but it was rarely used because of the coordination challenges.

Alternative munitions: If precision weapons are to be challenged, then the simplest answer may be to increase procurement for non-precision weapons.

Cluster munitions were the backbone of artillery and rocket firepower in the 1980s and into the 1990s. By spreading their explosive force over a wide area, they were much more effective than regular artillery projectiles, seven times as effective in battlefield analyses and up to 40 times as effective in tests. However, the high dud rate of bomblets led to restrictions by most global powers. The United States kept such munitions for emergencies and fielded “unitary” munitions as a replacement. Rather than spreading bomblets over a wide area, the unitary munition concentrates its explosive power in one spot. Precision guidance coupled with great improvements in target location allowed the point of impact to be directly over the target, so there was no loss of effectiveness against point targets. (There was for area targets, which are spread out, but that was accepted.)

The problem arises when guidance fails. Then, the unitary impact might not be close enough to the target to cause damage, but cluster munitions would still have an effect. Their area impact makes them resilient to a lack of precision.

For MLRS rockets, the Army has devised an alternative warhead that fires 160,000 tungsten pellets, creating a shotgun effect and replicating the effects of cluster munitions. That might be an attractive modification for some munitions, but the approach may not be technically viable for artillery shells because of their smaller size.

Another option is to use sheer mass. An astonishing outcome of the war in Ukraine has been the importance of unguided artillery munitions. Ukraine and Russia have an insatiable desire for artillery ammunition, with combined expenditures likely reaching half a million a month during intense combat.

The US Army is hedging its bets on mass and precision. As its operations field manual states, “Leaders generate firepower through direct and indirect fires, using mass, precision, or, typically, a combination of the two.” Thus, the Army is pursuing a variety of precision attack programs from the Precision Strike Missile to hypersonics. The Army is also increasing its production of “dumb” artillery shells by a factor of six, from a prewar level of 14,000 per month to 100,000 per month by 2025. It retains the artillery force structure to deliver a high volume of fires.

In contrast, the Marine Corps has emphatically rejected any reliance on mass and bet on long-range precision attack. It has eliminated most of its cannon artillery and about one-third of its airpower. Instead, it is standing up three long-range Tomahawk batteries and 14 anti-ship missile batteries.

Training and expectations. The US military depends on geolocation systems not just for munitions and firepower but also for location and coordination. As adversary countermeasures affect precision munitions, they also affect the ability of friendly forces to know where they are. By tracking friendly, neutral, and enemy forces, command and control systems enhance maneuver and reduce fratricide. They also allow individuals and units to continuously know where they are, even in the most challenging terrain.

During the regional and counterinsurgency conflicts of the last 25 years, the US military has become spoiled by its superb knowledge of the battlefield. If these automated systems go down, troops will need to revert to manual or stand-alone graphical systems. These are not technically difficult but take much practice to be effective at scale. Even simple tasks like navigating with a map require training and practice. These skills have atrophied in the military and need to be rediscovered as backups in case electronic systems become unreliable.

An evolution, not a revolution. A thought experiment is worthwhile. In 2022, CSIS ran a series of wargames that analyzed a US-Chinese conflict over Taiwan. The United States and its coalition partners could maintain an autonomous and democratic Taiwan, though at a high cost. The coalition could do that because of its large numbers of long-range precision munitions, particularly anti-ship munitions. The Chinese fleet, tethered to Taiwan because of the need to support amphibious forces, was decimated by these missile attacks. If something happened to make these missile attacks significantly less effective, then the outcome of the conflict would change dramatically, unexpectedly, and rapidly.

Precision is not going to disappear from the battlefield. No countermeasure will completely neutralize geolocation systems, and for every countermeasure, there will be a counter–countermeasure. Further, only the most sophisticated opponents can field the full array of countermeasures and keep up in a measure/countermeasure competition; Israel, for example, has not reported significant disruption in its precision attacks against Hamas. Nevertheless, every future competition will have some counter-precision capability, and operations in a great power conflict against China or Russia will face extreme countermeasures.

Thus, DoD needs to move forward with the hedges described above. The consequences of being surprised by reduced effectiveness would be devastating.

Mark Cancian is a retired Marine colonel now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

17. Different makes us stronger: American diversity is a national security asset

Conclusion:

In the emerging great power competition, technological leadership is a national security requirement, and a key to U.S. economic security. Due to intensifying worldwide strategic competition with capable near-peer adversaries, it is imperative that the United States maintain efforts to maximize production of high-quality AI and STEM talent. U.S. talent has to be better trained and more innovative than its global competitors. Untapped talent from U.S. populations typically underrepresented as stewards of technology presents a valuable asset for the country today. America’s diversity is once again poised to serve as a critical asset for U.S. national security and prosperity. In order to meet the moment, the U.S. must find a way to unleash its demographic riches.

Different makes us stronger: American diversity is a national security asset

Divisive domestic policies which counter efforts to leverage diversity are further entrenching the vulnerabilities that make these communities, and American society as a whole, susceptible to foreign adversaries.

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · July 3, 2024

There are many challenges facing the United States today that threaten the country’s global leadership and economic power. One of the most significant strategic challenges can be summed up as the Great Power Competition, where Russia represents an acute threat, and China, the premier pacing threat. Amidst these real-world challenges, the United States continues to have a special tool critical to its national security, and indeed, global leadership — the diversity of its people. The urgency that current threats pose requires U.S. policymakers to resist being drawn into self-defeating divisive politics. Instead, American diversity should be valued not only as an inherent good, but as a strategic asset.

The Great Power Competition is shaping up to be a race for technological dominance, and talent will be key to winning this race. America’s diverse untapped talent from populations typically underrepresented in technical fields presents a valuable asset that should not go unnoticed.

Historically, diverse communities have served as a core asset in advancing American dynamism and shaping American values. Decades of research shows that diverse teams build better products, diverse and inclusive companies deliver a stronger bottom line, and diverse militaries perform better on the battlefield. Indeed, uniting diverse, disparate communities as stakeholders, with shared destiny, is among the great triumphs of American culture. But persistent divisions and disparities have also left a great many communities among these same diverse populations — whether urban, rural, or tribal — vulnerable, lacking in resilience.

In today’s strategic competition, international adversaries actively seek to exploit divisions in novel and concerning ways. For instance, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report from 2019 found that Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election specifically targeted African Americans, stoking racial division in an “orchestrated effort” to drive down voter turnout.

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In the emerging great power struggle, foreign threats are not the only challenge to be considered. Divisive domestic policies which counter efforts to leverage diversity are further entrenching the vulnerabilities that make these communities, and American society as a whole, susceptible to foreign adversaries. For example, outright bans of diversity efforts on college campuses, seemingly based on dubious research, are currently sweeping the nation, following the lead of the Florida legislature. These divisive prohibitions are misguided, to say the least. To be clear, fixes may well be in order for some of the diversity efforts rolled out in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — a period widely referred to as America’s “reckoning on race.” However, bans and prohibitions targeting diversity are particularly alarming at this time. Simply put, more talent from diverse, underrepresented domestic populations is needed to maintain advantage in ongoing strategic competition with very capable near-peer adversaries.

New data assembled by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology shows that the United States is third among STEM producing countries behind China and India. In 2019, China graduated 1.6 million undergraduate students in STEM fields, compared to the U.S.’s 412,000, and by 2025 China will produce 77,000 STEM PhD graduates per year compared to approximately 40,000 in the United States. Every year, however, the United States leaves talent behind. In order to maintain advantage in global competition, this has to change. For example, while women account for 60 percent of college graduates, they only make up 40 percent of STEM graduates, and one quarter of graduates in AI fields. Statistics for other demographic groups and rural communities show similar trends. In addition to shoring up already robust existing pipelines of talent, U.S. policymakers must seize the opportunity to capture the invaluable, underrepresented talent left on the sidelines.

As a part of the solution, broad coalitions of government, industry and academia should join forces around technology-based economic development (TBED) that builds resilience in vulnerable communities. Employing TBED to capture this untapped talent will expand the lagging U.S. STEM talent pool, and build resilience within vulnerable communities. This resilience comes in the form of economic, social and civil stability that increases national security.

A representative model for generating TBED in an underserved community can be found in the National Robotics and Engineering Center (NREC) in Pittsburgh. When Carnegie Mellon University launched the NREC around 1994, the Lawrenceville neighborhood where it is located was underserved and underinvested. Today, the NREC sits at the center of “Robotics Row,” a dense collection of world-class robotics and autonomy companies and start-ups. Lessons learned in the success of TBED in transforming Lawrenceville can be applied elsewhere in the United States while simultaneously building resiliency in vulnerable communities by accessing the broad array of talent that exists everywhere in America.

In the emerging great power competition, technological leadership is a national security requirement, and a key to U.S. economic security. Due to intensifying worldwide strategic competition with capable near-peer adversaries, it is imperative that the United States maintain efforts to maximize production of high-quality AI and STEM talent. U.S. talent has to be better trained and more innovative than its global competitors. Untapped talent from U.S. populations typically underrepresented as stewards of technology presents a valuable asset for the country today. America’s diversity is once again poised to serve as a critical asset for U.S. national security and prosperity. In order to meet the moment, the U.S. must find a way to unleash its demographic riches.

Written by Jaret Riddick

Dr. Jaret C. Riddick is a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). Prior to joining CSET, he was the Principal Director for Autonomy in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, serving as the senior DOD official for coordination, strategy, and transition of autonomy research and development. As Principal Director, he created a DOD-wide initiative on trusted autonomy, led efforts to advance autonomy for undersea warfare with allied partners, and provided strategic analysis to support development of the newest DOD university-affiliated research center (UARC).

In This Story

• diversity
• talent management

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · July 3, 2024

18. An American Insurgency

An American Insurgency - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Sean Marquis · July 4, 2024

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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2022.

Every Fourth of July, I think about the American Revolution and the soldiers of the Continental Army. Throughout most of my life I have been surrounded by the rich history of the Revolution. I grew up in New Hampshire, from where militiamen flocked to Boston following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, fighting at Bunker Hill. New Hampshire native General John Stark led troops in the Saratoga campaign and later penned the state motto “Live Free or Die.” Today, I teach at West Point, the same location Benedict Arnold attempted to sell to the British. The American Revolution surrounds our campus, with Fort Montgomery, John Jay’s homestead, and the New Windsor Cantonment all nearby.

The American Revolution is cast, in many Americans’ eyes, as a struggle between a righteous band of oppressed patriotic Americans and a tyrannical or, at best, coldhearted British government. While I wear the uniform of the United States Army, I am a direct descendant of the men and women who went to battle with what they had access to in their households and on their farms, fighting against the most powerful military on the planet who controlled operations from an ocean away. My own service in Afghanistan has an odd echo. There, I waged counterinsurgency warfare in the streets and valleys of a nation far from home against people who fought me with what they had at hand. Was I the modern-day redcoat?

So why are we reluctant to call the American Revolution an insurgency? Why are the minutemen of Lexington and Concord not framed as insurgents in our texts and staff rides? Why do we consistently view insurgents as the other side? After figuring out how many coolers I needed (the answer was two), I pondered more about the nature of conflict and the American Revolution as I loaded the truck to go to the lake. To be fair, not everyone in the Department of Defense shies away from defining or examining the American Revolution as an insurgency, but the overwhelming image is that our forefathers were not insurgents.

Defining an Insurgency

First, I needed to find a good working definition of insurgency. Being a soldier, I first turned to FM 3-24, Insurgency and Countering Insurgencies, defines an insurgency as “a struggle for control and influence, generally from a position of relative weakness, outside existing state institutions.” While a good definition, it lacks a clear framework for determining what an insurgency seeks to achieve. Joint Publication 3-24, Counterinsurgency, leads off with a stronger definition: “the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region.” To examine the American Revolution I broke JP 3-24’s definition down into three component parts:

1. Were the rebelling colonists an organized force?
2. Did they challenge political control of a region?
3. Did they use subversion and violence to achieve their ends?

The answer to all three questions is a resounding yes.

Organization

On organization there is no doubt that the colonists fit the definition. They were both politically and militarily organized for resistance. Following the passage of the Stamp Act of 1765, the Sons of Liberty formed as an entity to contest British rule. They organized various acts of local resistance to the Stamp Act—tarring and feathering tax collectors, burning down the office of a local stamp distributor, and ultimately organizing the Boston Tea Party, where members of the group raided a British merchant vessel at port in Boston, tossing its cargo into the bay.

Later, in opposition to the Coercive Acts, committees of correspondence formed in the thirteen colonies to further organize and resist. Committees agreed to send delegates to a continental congress, who set about governing the colonies, organizing foreign support, and eventually declaring independence. On June 19, 1775, the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington as commander in chief of the Continental Army. The Continental Army was similar to many other armies of the day, with a formal rank structure, standing units, and regional militia forces. The organization of a political resistance in conjunction with a military wing echoes what the Taliban did in Afghanistan, where insurgent leaders served in shadow governments or as military commanders or lobbied internationally for support.

Challenging Political Control

The colonists aligned with Washington and the Continental Congress also challenged British political control. Seeking freedom from British rule entirely was too extreme to be palatable to most colonists early on. The Sons of Liberty initially popularized their effort as a fight against taxation without representation. However, tensions between the British government and the colonists escalated over time to the point where the members of the Second Continental Congress decided to take the drastic action of declaring independence from their mother country.

Use of Violence and Subversion

Whether throwing tea into Boston Harbor or engaging in open and regular warfare at Yorktown, there can be no doubt the American patriots used violence and subversion to achieve their political objectives. From Thomas Paine’s Common Sense calling for colonial independence to Paul Revere’s propaganda print broadcasting British cruelty after the Boston Massacre, subversion took place early and often. Violence escalated over time from targeted violence against tax collectors or stamp agents to full-scale intrastate war. As countless monuments, national parks, and even the imagery of the National Guard attest, violence was indeed central to achieving colonial political goals.

Were We the Good Guys?

With the criteria needed for an insurgency so clearly met, why do we so seldom hear the colonists referred to with this label? My initial thought was that it had to do with constant conflict with insurgencies that the United States has been in over the past two decades. After all, even JP 3-24 is called Counterinsurgency. If insurgents are our current enemy, who would want to tar our own forefathers with such a dirty word? Perhaps joint leadership today, having grown and commanded in the post-9/11 world, was reluctant to linguistically tie our legacy to insurgents and an insurgency lest anyone become confused that we are the good guys. However, this reasoning falls short because histories of the American Revolution started long before our most recent counterinsurgency efforts.

Looking to the generation of my grandfathers, even then insurgencies were far from the mind of government information campaigns. World War II propaganda posters do not project the American soldier as an inheritor of an insurgent legacy. In Bernard Perlin’s famous “Americans Will Always Fight for Liberty” poster, American soldiers in 1943 march in review past a formation of Revolutionary soldiers with the date 1778 above them. Conventional contemporary troops are on parade for conventional colonial troops. In another reference to 1778, an Office of Emergency Management poster encourages Americans to save food and equipment using an image of a Continental soldier at Valley Forge. While he looks the worse for wear, the background is clearly a military encampment, complete with cannons, blockhouses, and a flagpole, all of which are far from an insurgency waged in the swamps, forests, and cities of the colonies.

Winners Write the History

Perhaps the apocryphal Winston Churchill quote, “History is written by the victors,” can shed light on the willing disassociation from an insurgent American Revolution. In this hypothesis, the United States itself does not wish its founders to be viewed as insurgents. After all, JP 3-24’s definition of does not state that the original governing authority is unjust. Instead, JP 3-24 presents a sterile definition of one entity disrupting society in a fight against the status quo. In creating a new nation, our forefathers took considerable effort to argue the morality of their decision to throw off the yoke of British oppression. On this holiday weekend, I give thanks to the insurgents, revolutionaries, patriots, freedom fighters, or whatever other titles are given to the founders for the bold actions they took to bring the country I call home into being.

Maj. Sean Marquis is an infantry officer who teaches in the Defense and Strategic Studies program at the United States Military Academy. He has served in a variety of infantry assignments, including command at the company level. He holds a BA in political science from the University of New Hampshire and an MA from Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies.

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

Image credit: Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull (1826), courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Sean Marquis · July 4, 2024

19. Can Starmer Save Britain?

Excerpts:

Starmer has to create a virtuous circle in which a radical renewal of the United Kingdom’s sclerotic democracy feeds into and is in turn fed by an energetic revival of its flaccid economy. But if there is no virtuous circle, there will be a vicious one. Political disillusionment will quickly take hold again. Over four million people voted for Farage’s far-right Reform Party, giving it 14 percent of overall party support. Although the workings of the electoral system translated this into just four Commons seats (including one for Farage himself), it gives him a solid base from which he can seek to capitalize on the Conservatives’ disarray.

If Starmer fails to turn public anger into a more long-term optimism, the sour English nationalism that Farage taps into will thrive on that hopelessness. With traditional conservatism in such deep disarray, there is the potential for the right-wing of English politics to end in a MAGA-style takeover. Not the least of its consequences will be the blocking of any moves toward taking the country back into Europe. That in turn will renew the drives toward separation in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.

Labour’s victory has given the United Kingdom a chance to save itself by remaking itself. It has sprung from a very deep pool of disenchantment with the way things work in the country—and the multiple ways in which they patently do not. If Starmer grasps the truth that his triumph is a function of the United Kingdom’s brokenness, he will have the courage to begin to fix it. If not, it will remain dangerously unfixed. And it may indeed become unfixable. The party that has dominated it for 200 years has imploded. It would be foolish to imagine that the same thing could not happen to the country.

Can Starmer Save Britain?

Why Labour’s Sweeping Victory May Not Reverse the Country’s Decline

By Fintan O’Toole

July 5, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland · July 5, 2024

Although the polls had been predicting it for many months, the result of the United Kingdom’s July 4 general election was nonetheless stunning. This was the worst performance in the 190-year history of the Conservative Party. It lost almost half of its share of the vote and 250 parliamentary seats. One former prime minister (Liz Truss), nine cabinet ministers (including the secretaries of defense, education, and justice), and other prominent Conservative figureheads were unceremoniously ejected from the House of Commons by their constituents. This was a tidal wave of anger washing over not just outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak but also the last fourteen years of Tory rule, and it made landfall with a deafening roar.

Seldom in any democracy has a governing party gone so quickly from triumph—Boris Johnson won a huge majority in 2019—to disaster. The reasons are clear: a botched exit from the European Union, stark social and economic decline, institutional decay, a revolving door of ineffective and sometimes disastrous leaders, Johnson’s anarchic antics, and Truss’s ill-fated and short-lived experiment with extreme neoliberal economics. Over the last decade and a half, the widespread feeling that the United Kingdom was on its last legs was reflected in surging English nativism and Scottish, Welsh, and Irish separatism that in different ways threatened to pull the union apart. The voters have left the world in no doubt as to whom they blame for this malaise.

On the other side of the coin, Labour leader Keir Starmer now finds his party with a projected 413 seats, a total that brings him close to repeating Tony Blair’s historic victory of 1997. From the very low state it was in when he became leader just five years ago, Labour has not only been resurrected; it has ascended into a heaven of euphoria. It has recaptured most of the “red wall” of working-class constituencies that, in 2019, it lost to Johnson’s strange charm and his promise to Get Brexit Done. It has regained its dominance in Scotland, which had seemed over the course of this century to have become the fiefdom of the pro-independence Scottish National Party. It has also won 27 of 32 seats in Wales.

The new Labour government can therefore claim to be a genuinely “British” one in ways that none of its predecessors since Blair’s could. In the short term, the threat of the country breaking up has undoubtedly receded. The United Kingdom under Johnson—who inaugurated an especially unruly series of chaotic Conservative governments—seemed to be under the same spell of performative, personality-driven reactionary politics as the United States under former President Donald Trump. Now, the accession of the pragmatic, charisma-free Starmer bucks the trend toward the far right in so many European democracies, from Italy and France to the Netherlands and Sweden. It holds out hope that the center can hold after all. The sigh of relief will be heard far beyond the shores of the United Kingdom.

And yet, as overwhelming as they are, these results come with a very large caveat. Labour’s overall share of the vote, at 34 percent, was actually quite low. It rose by less than two percent from the poor showing of 2019. The popular rage that has swept the Tories out of power is not matched by a surge of belief in Starmer’s ability to save the country. Starmer owes his huge majority to the vagaries of the first-past-the-post electoral system, which can conjure dramatic national swings in seat numbers from relatively small changes in individual constituencies. Equally, the vast sea-change in the relative fortunes of the Conservatives and Labour in just five years suggests how extremely volatile the United Kingdom remains.

Even as Starmer grasps the reins of power so firmly, the road ahead remains rocky. The deeper tremors that have slowly but inexorably been eroding the social and political foundations of the country will continue to rumble just under the surface. Although it was hardly mentioned in the campaign, the Brexit debacle is a continuing reality that will severely constrain Starmer’s frantic push for economic growth, without which his promise of renewal will quickly turn hollow. Living standards are in shocking decline, amplifying social divisions and widening the gap between southern England and the rest of the United Kingdom. And without vast new infusions of cash, the looming collapse of public and health services threatens to destroy some of the few remaining sources of a collective British identity.

Labour’s overall share of the vote was actually quite low.

None of these challenges can be met without radical reform to the basic system of government. For years now, London has shown itself to be incapable of solving large-scale problems or giving all citizens the belief that the central institutions of power belong to them. The slogan that won the Brexit referendum for the Leave side in 2016—Take Back Control—was so effective because it identified a genuine loss of faith in the promise of democracy: that the people are running the show. The wildly careening course of British politics since then has surely done nothing to restore that faith.

Nor does Starmer present himself as a man who lights fires. His public demeanor is stiff and remarkably downbeat. Despite its slogan of “change,” his party’s offering to the electorate was relentlessly risk averse. Labour has accepted the very fiscal constraints laid down by the Conservatives while largely eschewing tax increases to raise the revenue it needs if it is to shore up public services and begin to make up the deficit in investment. Given the multiplying social and economic stresses facing the country, the new leadership will be tempted to avoid bolder reforms in favor of mere crisis management.

But such a cautious approach would not really be risk free. It would in fact risk squandering a parliamentary majority of historic proportions. Either the incoming administration can seize the moment to finally shake up the system and confront the core constitutional and democratic issues on which the long-term viability of the union may depend, or it can choose to muddle through and hope for the best. For such a fractured polity, this could be the last time there is such a choice.

BACK IN THE D.D.R.

From the very start of the campaign, a sense of doom hung over the whole idea of a Conservative United Kingdom. On May 23, the day after Sunak called the unexpectedly early election, he made a campaign stop at the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, an upscale waterfront development area named after the ill-fated ocean liner that was built in shipyards nearby. Inevitably, a reporter asked the prime minister if he was the captain of a sinking ship. After all, it was hard not to predict the dramatic implosion of the Conservatives, who had returned to power under Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010 and then supplied a dizzying merry-go-round of failed leaders since 2016: Theresa May, Johnson, Truss, and finally Sunak. In a recent book, The Conservative Effect 2010–2024, the political historians Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton have concluded that “overall, it is hard to find a comparable period in the history of the Conservatives which achieved so little, or which left the country at its conclusion in a more troubling state.”

Yet the Titanic metaphor raised a less obvious but more profound question. What if the sinking ship is the United Kingdom itself? That the country is in deep trouble is not in dispute. Wage growth between 2010 and 2020 was the lowest over any ten-year period in peacetime since the Napoleonic Wars. The country’s annual growth rate in productivity since 2007 has been a minuscule 0.4 percent, its lowest over an equivalent period since 1826. It is perhaps apt that one of the country’s most popular cultural exports, the Netflix historical fantasy Bridgerton, is set in a version of the early nineteenth century—the last time the British economy was performing so sluggishly.

GDP per capita has grown by a mere 4.3 percent over the past 16 years, compared with 46 percent in the previous 16 years. Moreover, GDP growth over the past few years has been driven almost exclusively by increases in the overall size of the population—in other words, by the immigration that both main parties say they want to limit severely. Conservative governments, theoretically tax averse, have been forced to increase overall taxes to a level not seen since 1950, when the United Kingdom was still recovering from World War II. The average annual real wage has fallen about $14,000 below its level before the financial crisis of 2008. These economic trends will not simply disappear with a change in government.

Living standards in many parts of the country are in shocking decline.

Measures of social well-being are no more encouraging. The National Health Service, a source of justifiable British pride since its inception in 1948, is in crisis: in June, the nonpartisan Institute for Government described its current state as “dismal” and found that “hospital performance is arguably the worst in the NHS’s history.” There are three-quarters of a million more British children living in poverty than when the Conservatives came to power in 2010, and 4.3 million children are going hungry. Many local agencies have gone bankrupt, leading to deep cuts in basic services such as waste collection, social care, and libraries. In 2022, the Commission on the UK’s Future, an independent body chaired by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, found that on the simple measure of GDP per capita, “half the British population”—more than 30 million people— “live in areas no wealthier than the poorer parts of the former East Germany, poorer than parts of central and eastern Europe, and poorer than the U.S. states of Mississippi and West Virginia.”

A sense of decline flows through and around the land in the form of rivers and shores polluted with sewage. In March, one of the great English public rituals—the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race on the River Thames—was for the first time preceded by warnings to the rowers that because of the concentration of E. coli bacteria in the water, they should cover cuts and grazes with waterproof dressings and take care not to swallow any splashes from what used to be called the “Sweet Thames.” The British Environment Agency has found that in 2023, the companies managing the national water supply—water service was privatized by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the late 1980s—spilled more raw, untreated human effluent into the country’s rivers and seas than in any previous year on record.

Indeed, the electoral revolt against the Tories in many of their rural bastions was partly driven by the feeling even among traditional Conservative voters that what the poet William Blake called “England’s green and pleasant land” had been blighted. For many of those voters, such concerns are made worse by the awareness that they were, after all, supposed to be entering an era of uplift and optimism. Just five years ago, in his first speech in the House of Commons after he swept to power as prime minister, Johnson insisted that the years of “managed decline” were over and hailed “the beginning of a new golden age.”

Of course, the fulcrum of this transformation was supposed to be the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. The narrative spun by Johnson and his allies was that the country’s natural exuberance had been stifled for half a century by bureaucrats in Brussels and that freed from these encumbrances, the union would flourish. The cold reality is that Brexit has merely shown that the United Kingdom has no one to blame for its problems but itself. And those home-grown problems have been made worse by the folly of erecting new barriers between British exporters and their primary markets in Europe.

DON’T MENTION IT

Among the more striking features of Starmer and Labour’s campaign this spring was the utter absence of Brexit from party talking points. This silence may, in purely electoral terms, have been wise: polling now suggests that just 13 percent of voters see relations with the EU as one of the most important issues facing the country. Anand Menon, the director of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, noted during the campaign that “if you do focus groups and mention Brexit, the biggest reaction you get from voters is a yawn and an eye-roll.” Yet it is nonetheless remarkable for the opposition to decline to attack the ruling party for its single greatest policy fiasco and for voters to seem bored and irritated by their country’s most momentous political change of the last half century.

In the 2016 Brexit referendum, Johnson and his fellow advocates had persuaded a small majority of voters that breaking with Brussels would restore “Global Britain” to its natural place at the summit of prosperity and achievement. In fact, this vision was more a narrowing than an expansion of the horizons of Britishness. It was driven by an inchoate but resurgent English nationalism. It had little appeal in multicultural London, in Scotland, or in Northern Ireland, all of which voted heavily to stay in the EU, as did Welsh-speaking Wales. But enough of Johnson’s English compatriots were persuaded of this proposition to give him a massive parliamentary majority in the election of December 2019, just seven weeks before the Brexit deal was consummated.

It is hard to think of a successful political project whose luster has faded as quickly as Brexit’s. In June, in a report titled “Life in the Slow Lane,” the nonpartisan Resolution Foundation found that “since 2019, Britain’s relative performance in goods exports has tanked,” noting that it has grown at just 1.1 percent annually, a mere fifth of the average for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The reasons for this kind of collapse are not mysterious: choosing to leave the world’s largest single market has consequences. As the report boils it down in hard cash, had the United Kingdom preserved its pre-Brexit market share, its exports would have grown by $64 billion instead of shrinking by $4 billion between 2019 and 2022.

People shielding themselves with Union flag umbrellas, London, May 2024

Toby Melville / Reuters

Increasingly, the British economy is kept afloat by its export of financial, legal, technical, and advertising services, much of it driven by U.S. companies outsourcing this kind of work to British firms, and notably by private equity outfits. This is very good for bankers, lawyers, ad executives, and management consultants—but far less so for farmers, manufacturing workers, and ordinary consumers. There are many more losers than winners: in March, the Office for Budgetary Responsibility found that its prediction that Brexit would lead to a long-term four percent drop in productivity is being borne out, one of many factors contributing to the worst decline in living standards since the 1950s.

Amid these disastrous effects, few in the British political class seem willing to say the “B-word.” Given that just 18 percent of those who voted Leave in 2016 now think Brexit is going well, Sunak, an enthusiastic Brexiteer, declined to even mention it on the campaign trail. But consider Nigel Farage, the veteran anti-immigrant and anti-EU campaigner who now leads the far-right Reform Party. If Farage can reasonably be said to be the progenitor of Brexit, he now seems able to do no more than shake his head in disappointment at the way his child has turned out and issue vague admonitions that it must do better.

Starmer and Labour’s omerta may be far more telling. In the weeks before the election, Starmer hardly uttered a word about Europe; as the incoming prime minister, he will have a strong temptation to ignore not just Brexit itself but all the unresolved questions of British identity that were wrapped up in it. In part, this may be a matter of sheer expediency. Almost all the country’s public services—from health and social care to policing and prisons to water and sewage to schools and libraries and even to basic nutrition for large parts of the population—are struggling. The country urgently needs massive amounts of public investment. But Labour has accepted the fiscal restraints it has inherited from the Conservatives—government borrowing is to be limited to three percent of GDP and overall government debt is targeted to keep falling—and it has promised not to raise taxes for “working people.” Squaring that circle will be so hard that Starmer may well feel that large-scale political reforms are a luxury he cannot afford.

HOLLOW EMPIRE

But Starmer will soon confront the inescapable truth that he cannot address the country’s economic failure without also confronting the profound problems of the union itself. First, Labour will need growth to fund those urgent public services improvements it has to deliver to its newly expanded electorate. Ironically, because its trade with the rest of the world has shrunk, the United Kingdom has actually become more dependent on European markets since 2019. The solution is obvious: the government has to undo at least some of the damage it has done to its trade with the EU. Starmer has gestured broadly in this direction but has ruled out the only moves that would actually make a difference—seeking to rejoin the EU’s single market or its customs union.

Something has to give, and when it does, all the big questions that were raised by Brexit—sovereignty, the United Kingdom’s postimperial place in the world, the antiquated nature of the country’s democracy, the tensions between its individual nations—will be back on the table. It would make sense, therefore, for Starmer to address these large existential issues while his government still has the air of novelty and while the British electorate is so clearly crying out for a fresh start.

The second reason why Starmer cannot ignore the parlous state of the union is the strong connection between power and prosperity. The parts of the country with the least political power—roughly speaking, the northern region of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—are also the ones that are the most impoverished. Feelings of national and regional resentment have been channeled into different forms of separatism—independence movements in the so-called Celtic fringes; “independence” from the EU in England—but they have common roots in the realities of the country’s chasmic geographical inequalities.

According to the economist Philip McCann, the United Kingdom is “almost certainly the most interregionally unequal large high-income country” in the world. And those gaps have expanded in recent decades. In 2019, GDP per capita in London was $73,000—almost 90 percent higher than in Scotland and eastern England, where it was just $38,000. Brexit, which has depressed manufacturing exports while allowing the service economy to continue to thrive, has only exacerbated these regional inequalities; just within England itself, the wealth gap between the southeast and the languishing north is expected to reach $290,000 per person by 2030.

All the big questions raised by Brexit will be back on the table.

Even Boris Johnson recognized this. His signature domestic policy was “levelling up”—bringing all regions up to the standards of the rich southern areas. But neither he nor his successors managed to do much to achieve that goal. In March, a report by the all-party parliamentary Public Accounts Committee found that only ten percent of funding for the “levelling up agenda” had been spent and that Conservative ministers were unable to furnish “any compelling examples” of what the funding had accomplished. These failures are not merely the products of incompetence; they highlight the inability of a top-down postimperial state to devolve real power to its member nations and its neglected regions.

As an opposition party, Labour was hardly blind to these issues. In 2022, it published the findings of the Brown Commission on the UK’s Future, which made precisely this connection between the United Kingdom’s economic stagnation and its forms of government: “At the root of this failure” is “an unreformed, over-centralised way of governing that leaves millions of people complaining they are neglected, ignored, and invisible”—people who, as the commission put it, increasingly see themselves “treated as second class citizens in their own country.”

It was with this democratic deficit in mind that the Brown Commission proposed radical constitutional changes, among them the abolition of the “indefensible” House of Lords and its replacement with an elected “chamber of the nations and regions,” and greatly enhanced status and powers for the devolved Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish assemblies, as well as for cities and regions in England. It also recommended at least the beginnings of a written constitution, with a “constitutional statute guiding how political power should be shared” as well as “constitutionally protected social rights—such as the right to health care for all based on need, not ability to pay.”

At the time, Brown’s ideas were driven by his sense that this may be the last chance for the United Kingdom to right itself. Polling showed that the proposed reforms had significant voter support; they also were endorsed by Starmer. At the launch, the Labour leader predicted that people would someday look back at the report and view it as “the turning point between an old economy that was not working and a new economy that has worked for the whole of the United Kingdom.” Yet none of Brown’s proposals were featured in Labour’s hypercautious election campaign, and Starmer seems disinclined to spend his new stock of political capital on overcoming resistance to such a fundamental rethinking of the union.

FIX OR FAIL

What the incoming government needs to recognize is that the United Kingdom has already changed irreversibly. It was created and held together by huge historical forces: the development of the British Empire, the forging of a Protestant (and explicitly anti-Catholic) identity, the Industrial Revolution, the apparent invincibility of British arms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the successful invention of a “relatable” monarchy, and the building of a postwar social democracy. All these stabilizers have been kicked away. The empire is no more; the United Kingdom is no longer a majority Christian, let alone Protestant, country; its industrial base was abandoned under Thatcher; its days of military might are long gone; the monarchy, with the death of Queen Elizabeth, has lost its anchor in history; and many of the achievements of British social democracy have been destroyed by the Conservatives.

It is still, just about, possible to imagine a whole new kind of union, one that revels in the diversity of a place that has many different national, regional, and ethnic identities and plays to its potential economic strengths by reopening itself to trade and human capital from Europe and further afield. But Starmer and his government would have to begin by acknowledging that what was holding the country back was not, after all, an unaccountable Eurocracy in Brussels but rather an overcentralized government in London—one that was created to rule a far-flung empire of largely voiceless subjects and still rules over a smallish island with citizens who want to feel in control of their own lives.

Starmer will certainly try, however hesitantly at first, to rebuild the social democracy that buttressed the union in the decades when the empire was vanishing and gave ordinary people in every part of the country a tangible sense of common belonging. He seems, at least in principle, to understand that the only viable future for the United Kingdom is, in effect, as a federal democracy in which power flows to and from the nations and regions—and the people who inhabit them. He is, moreover, rather good at reinvention, having reinvented himself from his early persona as a radical left-wing human rights lawyer to a stolid technocrat and having given his party a similarly drastic makeover.

The economy will not rebound without far-reaching changes in the way the country functions.

Can Starmer go further and reinvent the union? It is not at all clear that he wants to take on that task. He seems inclined to see his own triumph across so many different parts of the country as proof that the kingdom is indeed still united and intact; that a restoration of decency, competence, and coherence to government will also serve as a restoration of pride in Britishness itself.

In the immediate term, he may well be right. Feelings of relief and renewal will certainly be widespread. But they won’t last unless communities start to see improvements in public services, reductions in poverty, and rises in productivity and wages. Those things in turn will not happen without far-reaching changes in the way the country functions, both internally and in its relations with Europe. The same political systems that got the country into such a deep hole will not suffice to get it out. They are not for the purposes they have to accomplish: bringing the United Kingdom, gradually, back to where it belongs in the EU; restoring pride in institutions such as the National Health Service; convincing people across the union that they have an equal stake in the country’s future.

Starmer has to create a virtuous circle in which a radical renewal of the United Kingdom’s sclerotic democracy feeds into and is in turn fed by an energetic revival of its flaccid economy. But if there is no virtuous circle, there will be a vicious one. Political disillusionment will quickly take hold again. Over four million people voted for Farage’s far-right Reform Party, giving it 14 percent of overall party support. Although the workings of the electoral system translated this into just four Commons seats (including one for Farage himself), it gives him a solid base from which he can seek to capitalize on the Conservatives’ disarray.

If Starmer fails to turn public anger into a more long-term optimism, the sour English nationalism that Farage taps into will thrive on that hopelessness. With traditional conservatism in such deep disarray, there is the potential for the right-wing of English politics to end in a MAGA-style takeover. Not the least of its consequences will be the blocking of any moves toward taking the country back into Europe. That in turn will renew the drives toward separation in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.

Labour’s victory has given the United Kingdom a chance to save itself by remaking itself. It has sprung from a very deep pool of disenchantment with the way things work in the country—and the multiple ways in which they patently do not. If Starmer grasps the truth that his triumph is a function of the United Kingdom’s brokenness, he will have the courage to begin to fix it. If not, it will remain dangerously unfixed. And it may indeed become unfixable. The party that has dominated it for 200 years has imploded. It would be foolish to imagine that the same thing could not happen to the country.

• FINTAN O’TOOLE is Milberg Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton. He is the author of We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland.

Foreign Affairs · by We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland · July 5, 2024

20. When America and China Collided

Excerpts:

In 2014, Beijing and Washington had adopted a memorandum of understanding that set down rules of behavior for ships and aircraft of the two sides. But former American officials involved in the document now scoff at it. Both sides have routinely flouted the rules and have referred to them only when it has been politically expedient to do so.

Given the tense relationship and the stakes, it is highly unlikely that a damaged American aircraft, especially a spy plane loaded with sensitive information, would land on Chinese territory. “I don’t think we’ll see someone from our side landing on their territory,” Charlie Brown, a former U.S. Navy officer, told me. Instead, a U.S. plane would most likely crash-land on water. The crew would eject before impact, if possible, or the plane would ditch in the water with the crew on board.

Ample scope remains for misunderstanding between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

With a U.S. military aircraft ditched in the South China Sea, a race to the crash site would unfold. The Chinese navy has more ships in the region than does the United States, and Chinese forces would likely reach the scene of the collision first; they would also block and ram U.S. vessels to make it impossible for them to reach the site. “Instead of turning this into a rescue operation, the Chinese could turn it into a sovereignty operation,” Scott Swift, the former commanding officer of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told me. The odds of a direct military confrontation would grow higher with each passing minute.

Some China observers believe the U.S. Navy should scale back its provocative reconnaissance missions near the Chinese coast, especially since much of the intelligence collected during the flights can now be gathered by other means, such as satellites. But that is an unlikely prospect, in part because the U.S. Navy is not eager to accept a diminished role for its highly trained pilots and specialized aircraft.

Still, the United States is aware that China now has the upper hand in the South China Sea. Now more than ever, Washington needs to press Beijing for substantive military-to-military talks to ensure that a crisis in the South China Sea does not escalate into conflict.

When America and China Collided

Why the Countries Are Dangerously Unprepared for a Repeat of the 2001 Crisis

By Jane Perlez

July 5, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Jane Perlez · July 5, 2024

On a sunny Sunday morning in April 2001, an American EP-3E Aries II surveillance aircraft was flying at 22,500 feet over international waters in the South China Sea when two Chinese F-8 fighter jets appeared. One of the F-8s, piloted by a lieutenant commander named Wang Wei, flew within ten feet of the spy plane’s left wing and saluted the crew before dropping back 100 feet.

Wang then approached a second time, flying within five feet and seeming to shout something at the American pilots. On a third advance, he got closer still—close enough to get pulled into one of the EP-3E’s propellers. The Chinese F-8 was sliced in half, killing Wang, whom state media would later refer to as a “revolutionary martyr.”

Shrapnel from the collision went flying in every direction, amputating the EP-3E’s nose, rupturing a wing tip, and damaging two of the four engines. The plane plummeted 8,000 feet in 30 seconds before the pilot, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Shane Osborn, managed to stabilize it.

The 24-member American crew had been halfway through a ten-hour routine reconnaissance mission when the crash occurred. Given the state of the aircraft, they could not make it back to the U.S. base in Okinawa, Japan. After briefly considering a risky water landing, Osborn chose to guide the plane 70 miles southwest to a Chinese air base on Hainan Island.

Knowing they were heading for hostile territory, the crew spent the next 40 minutes frantically trying to destroy sensitive material. Woefully unprepared for such a scenario, they futilely stomped on laptops, poured hot coffee over hard drives, and tore documents with their hands. An axe designed to destroy equipment was too blunt to use. Osborn issued a mayday call, which went unanswered. Then he issued another, and another. But there was no reply from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Hainan. With no option but to land uninvited, Osborn steered the plane toward a runway, where Chinese military trucks and some two dozen soldiers cradling AK-47s were already waiting.

The American crew members were relieved to have survived the collision, but their fate now lay in the hands of Chinese authorities. Osborn called the Pacific Fleet headquarters to report their location. Then, following orders from the soldiers, he and his compatriots exited the plane.

The Americans were bussed to accommodations on the military base, where they would be interrogated over the coming days. No one in Washington wanted to inflame the situation by saying the Americans were essentially captives. Instead, the State Department made references in statements to the press to the crew being temporarily “held,” or “detained,” and assured the American public that the U.S. military attaché in Beijing, Neal Sealock, had been granted access to the Americans.

Another collision at some point is almost certain, but a crisis need not spiral into total war.

In central Beijing, it was just past 9:00 AM when the U.S. ambassador to China, Joseph Prueher, got word of the incident from Pacific Fleet headquarters in Hawaii, where he had previously served as commander. At the time, he was walking with his wife after having attended church. He rushed back to the embassy to begin negotiations with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Chinese claimed that the lumbering EP-3E had hit the fast-flying jet. Prueher, who had been a navy pilot, explained that the laws of aerodynamics did not work that way; a slower moving plane like the EP-3E could not deliberately collide with a jet. But he did not explicitly blame the People’s Liberation Army for the collision.

Prueher, working closely with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, devised a way to deflate the tensions. They decided to make two polite apologies in a dispatch that came to be known as “the letter of the two sorries.” Washington said it was sorry for the death of the Chinese pilot and sorry that the American crew had landed in China without receiving formal permission. The ambassador’s main counterpart, Zhou Wenzhong, an English-speaking senior Chinese diplomat who would later become China’s ambassador in Washington, smoothed the way for a positive reaction to the letter from his superiors, including President Jiang Zemin.

After 11 days, Beijing released the American crew, which flew out of Hainan Island for Guam on a commercial airliner, as stipulated by the Chinese, who insisted that no U.S. military aircraft enter China. The United States sent technicians from Lockheed Martin, the aircraft’s manufacturer, to Hainan to dismantle the EP-3E; the pieces were then delivered, by way of a cargo plane, to an air base in Marietta, Georgia. How much intelligence was lost and passed into Chinese hands has never been specified. U.S. Navy investigators have deemed the losses “medium-to-low” in severity.

Today, such a smooth, swift outcome would be almost impossible. The Chinese military is many times more powerful now. Its navy has advanced hypersonic missiles and more ships than the U.S. Navy.And this May, Beijing passed a law authorizing its coast guard to detain foreign vessels and persons in “waters under Chinese jurisdiction”—which, according to the Chinese, includes almost the entire South China Sea. Another collision at some point is almost certain. But a crisis need not spiral into total war. To avoid a catastrophic escalation, Washington and Beijing must enter into serious discussions now to forestall misunderstanding.

TROUBLED WATERS AHEAD

In 2001, Beijing had more reasons to be conciliatory than it does now. China was on the cusp of joining the World Trade Organization and was close to winning its bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics; it did not want to squander these opportunities by taking an aggressive posture toward Washington. For about dozen years after the EP-3E incident, the South China Sea was relatively quiet, as Beijing capitalized on Washington’s distraction with the Iraq War to secure economic and political gains in Southeast Asia.

But in the past decade, China has become far more confident and militarily capable—and the nature of the country’s leadership has changed. It is almost unthinkable that President Xi Jinping would pursue good-faith negotiations, as Jiang did, to resolve a similar incident today. Xi has made it clear that the Indo-Pacific region is China’s home turf, where it aims to be the unchallenged military, economic, and political power. In the South China Sea, the Chinese have built seven artificial islands that serve as bases, complete with airstrips and hangars, for Chinese ships and aircraft.

President Joe Biden got a taste of Xi’s attitude when they first met in 2011, at a time when both men were serving as vice presidents. The Obama administration had sent Biden to China knowing that Xi had been tapped as China’s next leader. The two men did a photo op on a basketball court in Chengdu and went for a stroll. Two years later, during a visit to Beijing, Biden told a room full of American journalists about the contents of that first meeting. It was clear from Biden’s account that Xi’s priority was national security.

Xi had told Biden that if a similar collision happened between a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet, there would not be a happy ending. The United States, he warned, had to stop sending spy planes over Chinese waters.

The EP-3E crew at a welcome-home ceremony following their release by Chinese authorities, Honolulu, April 2001

Reuters

Biden countered that the U.S. planes were in international waters and had every right to be there, adding that if China were more open about its military operations, the United States would not be eavesdropping so much.

“If you don’t stop the flights, we will have to send our planes to chase the American planes away,” Xi said. Biden reminded Xi that the risks of such a policy were high: Chinese pilots were not skilled enough to avoid a repeat of the 2001 collision.

Today, the risks of a collision in the air over the South China Sea are many times higher than they were in 2001. Over the last two years, Chinese jets have come dangerously close to U.S. and allied aircraft nearly 300 times. The Pentagon views these reckless maneuvers as part of a centrally directed campaign of coercion designed to stop the United States from flying over international waterways. Planes from Australia and Canada flying on routine sanctions-enforcement flights against North Korea have also been tailed by Chinese military jets.

Critically, Chinese military planes routinely patrol the Taiwan Strait, the epicenter of competition between China and the United States. The regular presence of Chinese aircraft inside Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, which requires Chinese planes to identify themselves, raises the risks of an accident. When Chinese planes cross the zone, the Taiwanese military has only minutes to assess China’s intentions, creating a dangerous situation that could result in an accident.

PARLEY OR PERISH

If there were a repeat of the 2001 collision today, China would likely use the incident to bolster its claims over the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Ample scope remains for misunderstanding between the U.S. and Chinese militaries, which only resumed talks earlier this year, ending a freeze that followed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Crucially, the two militaries have no hotline to contact each other in an emergency.

In 2014, Beijing and Washington had adopted a memorandum of understanding that set down rules of behavior for ships and aircraft of the two sides. But former American officials involved in the document now scoff at it. Both sides have routinely flouted the rules and have referred to them only when it has been politically expedient to do so.

Given the tense relationship and the stakes, it is highly unlikely that a damaged American aircraft, especially a spy plane loaded with sensitive information, would land on Chinese territory. “I don’t think we’ll see someone from our side landing on their territory,” Charlie Brown, a former U.S. Navy officer, told me. Instead, a U.S. plane would most likely crash-land on water. The crew would eject before impact, if possible, or the plane would ditch in the water with the crew on board.

Ample scope remains for misunderstanding between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

With a U.S. military aircraft ditched in the South China Sea, a race to the crash site would unfold. The Chinese navy has more ships in the region than does the United States, and Chinese forces would likely reach the scene of the collision first; they would also block and ram U.S. vessels to make it impossible for them to reach the site. “Instead of turning this into a rescue operation, the Chinese could turn it into a sovereignty operation,” Scott Swift, the former commanding officer of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told me. The odds of a direct military confrontation would grow higher with each passing minute.

Some China observers believe the U.S. Navy should scale back its provocative reconnaissance missions near the Chinese coast, especially since much of the intelligence collected during the flights can now be gathered by other means, such as satellites. But that is an unlikely prospect, in part because the U.S. Navy is not eager to accept a diminished role for its highly trained pilots and specialized aircraft.

Still, the United States is aware that China now has the upper hand in the South China Sea. Now more than ever, Washington needs to press Beijing for substantive military-to-military talks to ensure that a crisis in the South China Sea does not escalate into conflict.

• JANE PERLEZ served as a New York Times correspondent and Bureau Chief in Beijing from 2012 to 2019. She is a Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the host of the podcast Face-Off: The U.S. vs. China.

Foreign Affairs · by Jane Perlez · July 5, 2024

21. China Is Finally Starting to Do Something About the U.S. Fentanyl Crisis

If they are willing to do this, what new subversion plans will replace this? (re: Unrestricted Warfare)

China Is Finally Starting to Do Something About the U.S. Fentanyl Crisis

Chinese authorities quietly shut down chemical sellers and say they will regulate other opioid precursors

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-is-finally-starting-to-do-something-about-the-u-s-fentanyl-crisis-2206dd90?mod=latest_headlines&utm

By Brian Spegele

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July 4, 2024 11:00 pm ET

BEIJING—China is taking tentative new steps to help disrupt the global supply chain fueling the opioid crisis after intensifying criticism from the U.S. that its chemical factories are partly responsible for the deadly scourge.

After a long freeze in joint counternarcotics work between the countries, President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged to resume cooperation at a summit in California last November. Since then, Chinese authorities have quietly shut down some sellers of precursor chemicals used by Mexican cartels to make fentanyl and say they are close to imposing new regulations sought by the U.S. on three additional chemicals.

Meanwhile, Chinese police, acting on U.S. intelligence, recently arrested a suspect the U.S. says was involved in money laundering for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

“We are seeing some meaningful steps,” a senior Biden administration official said. “There is a lot more to do. But we are encouraged particularly by the actions of the last couple of weeks.” 

Those measures alone won’t solve the fentanyl crisis, and U.S. officials are continuing to press China to do much more. But the steps by Beijing, together with a string of high-level meetings, are beginning to show that diplomacy between the rival superpowers can still make an impact, despite strained ties.

The U.S. government estimates more than 107,000 people nationally died of drug overdoses last year, including around 75,000 from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. While estimated deaths fell slightly in 2023 from the previous year, the total overdose fatality count is still roughly double what the U.S. was experiencing as recently as 2015. The drug crisis remains an election issue, including in Midwestern swing states ravaged by the effects of fentanyl.

U.S.-China cooperation on fentanyl could still fall apart. Relations have grown increasingly strained lately over a number of other thorny issues, including U.S. tariffs and American support for Taiwan. On fentanyl, China at times has viewed Washington as acting in bad faith by portraying Beijing as a cause of the drug crisis. 

China is especially upset at the U.S. for placing it on a blacklist of major drug-producing countries for the first time, alongside the likes of Mexico and Colombia. The designation, announced last September, followed a change in how the U.S. defines drug-producing countries to include those manufacturing precursor chemicals used to make illicit drugs.

President Biden and China’s Xi Jinping pledged to resume counternarcotics cooperation last year. PHOTO: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

“We think it’s absurd and ridiculous,” Wei Xiaojun, the head of the Ministry of Public Security’s narcotics-control bureau, said at a press conference in June.

The Biden administration official said Beijing was misinterpreting the U.S.’s action and stressed that China wasn’t included among a smaller subset of the list of the worst-offending countries.

The U.S., meanwhile, says China is the one undermining ties. The U.S. ambassador to China recently criticized Beijing in a Wall Street Journal interview, saying it intimidated ordinary Chinese people who took part in U.S.-organized events in China and stirred up anti-American sentiment.

Despite those tensions, the situation on counternarcotics cooperation has improved significantly since before the Biden-Xi summit, when U.S. officials fighting the opioid crisis struggled to get their Chinese counterparts to take their phone calls.

In recent months, a steady stream of senior U.S. officials have traveled to Beijing. During a June visit by Dr. Rahul Gupta, the White House’s director of National Drug Control Policy, the two sides agreed to establish a direct line of communication on emerging threats from new synthetic substances.

Private companies in China are some of the main producers of the chemical building blocks used to make fentanyl, U.S. officials say. The precursor chemicals are sold openly over the internet, including to the cartels, leading U.S. authorities to complain that Chinese authorities aren’t doing enough to police these marketplaces.

Wei Xiaojun has criticized the U.S. government’s decision to place China on a blacklist of major drug-producing countries. PHOTO: ANDY WONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Wei said at the press conference that a recent campaign against producers of fentanyl precursors led to the closure of 14 digital sales platforms and the removal of more than 1,000 online stores. The number of online advertisements for fentanyl precursors has dropped significantly as a result, Wei said. Some U.S. officials have expressed cautious optimism about these efforts by China beginning to disrupt established supply chains between the country and drug rings in North America.

The recent campaign sought to deal with precursor sellers quietly, and largely stopped short of making public arrests that would have sent a stronger signal to China’s chemicals industry. One risk of China’s softer approach is that targeted entities can simply pop up with new names in the future unless the people behind them are put in jail.

Pressed about this possibility by a reporter, Wei denied that large numbers of Chinese precursor producers were selling their products over the internet today.

“If you have specific information about these so-called large numbers of chemical entities or individuals, please let me know,” he said. “I assure you that I will absolutely deploy Chinese law enforcement authorities to carry out appropriate investigations.” 

The U.S. has long contended that China has been too slow to regulate precursor chemicals. In March 2022, at the urging of the U.S., the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted to more strictly control three precursors known as 4-AP, 1-boc-4-AP and norfentanyl. This required member states including China to implement corresponding national regulations.

For the next two years, as relations between the U.S. and China soured, China didn’t act, even as senior U.S. officials raised the issue in their bilateral meetings. Wei now says that China’s regulatory procedures for controlling the three precursors of concern to the U.S. will be completed within a few months. If China follows through, it would be a breakthrough for the U.S. that would give Chinese police a stronger legal basis to go after companies that produce precursors.

More than 107,000 people in the U.S. are estimated to have died of drug overdoses last year. PHOTO: AGNES BUN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. last year. PHOTO: JESSICA CHRISTIAN/SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/AP

Until now, the lack of regulation has served as a barrier to closer law-enforcement cooperation. In some instances when the U.S. has shared intelligence about suspected precursor producers, Chinese officials have responded that these people couldn’t be arrested since they weren’t breaking Chinese law, said one person familiar with the recent discussions. 

At the same time, China’s slow pace of regulating new precursors is likely to remain a point of contention as new chemicals constantly pop up in the market.

Chinese officials, for their part, say that endless regulation isn’t the answer to a problem they see stemming from U.S. failures to prevent and treat drug addiction. Beijing is hesitant to place too many burdensome rules on its vast chemicals industry, especially when its economy is struggling to find its footing.

The U.S. has found some of the most visible recent successes with China in combating money laundering, an issue where the countries’ interests align. China wants to stop wealthy citizens from evading its capital controls to move large sums of money out of the country while the U.S. is seeking to break up the rings that launder drug proceeds on behalf of the cartels.

These two areas intersect in China’s underground banking system, U.S. officials say, with illegal foreign-exchange operations serving both sets of clients.

Acting on intelligence from the U.S., Chinese authorities recently arrested a 27-year-old man named Tong Peiji. The U.S. said Tong was part of a money-laundering ring that was working for the Sinaloa cartel in Southern California. Tong couldn’t be reached for comment.

“Arrests are important,” the Biden administration official said. “They send a chilling effect through the entire country.”

U.S. officials met with Chinese counterparts in Beijing in June. PHOTO: NG HAN GUAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com

22. The Glorious Cause of America

Someone forwarded me this great speech that is in fact timeless.

David McCullough is a great story teller. It is very much worth listening to at this link: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/david-mccullough/glorious-cause-america/?utm. Or you can read it below.

There is so much to reflect upon in this speech and the story McCullough tells. If I knew anyone who was close to Biden and Trump I would recommend that they recommend to both men that they listen to this speech and reflect upon it. And we should all listen to this more than once.

The Glorious Cause of America

DAVID MCCULLOUGH

Award-winning Biographer

September 27, 2005

speeches.byu.edu

One of the hardest, and I think the most important, realities of history to convey to students or readers of books or viewers of television documentaries is that nothing ever had to happen the way it happened. Any great past event could have gone off in any number of different directions for any number of different reasons. We should understand that history was never on a track. It was never preordained that it would turn out as it did.

Very often we are taught history as if it were predetermined, and if that way of teaching begins early enough and is sustained through our education, we begin to think that it had to have happened as it did. We think that there had to have been a Revolutionary War, that there had to have been a Declaration of Independence, that there had to have been a Constitution, but never was that so. In history, chance plays a part again and again. Character counts over and over. Personality is often the determining factor in why things turn out the way they do.

Furthermore, nobody ever lived in the past. Jefferson, Adams, George Washington—they didn’t walk around saying, “Isn’t this fascinating living in the past? Aren’t we picturesque in our funny clothes?” They were living in the present, just as we do. The great difference is that it was their present, not ours. And just as we don’t know how things are going to turn out, they didn’t either.

We can know about the years that preceded us and about the people who preceded us. And if we love our country—if we love the blessings of a society that welcomes free speech, freedom of religion, and, most important of all, freedom to think for ourselves—then surely we ought to know how it came to be. Who was responsible? What did they do? How much did they contribute? How much did they suffer?

Abigail Adams, writing one of her many letters to her husband, John, who was off in Philadelphia working to put the Declaration of Independence through Congress, wrote, “Posterity who are to reap the blessings, will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.”<1 Alas, she was right. We do not conceive what they went through.

We tend to see them—Adams, Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, George Washington—as figures in a costume pageant; that is often the way they’re portrayed. And we tend to see them as much older than they were because we’re seeing them in the portraits by Gilbert Stuart and others when they were truly the Founding Fathers—when they were president or chief justice of the Supreme Court and their hair, if it hadn’t turned white, was powdered white. We see the awkward teeth. We see the elder statesmen.

At the time of the Revolution, they were all young. It was a young man’s–young woman’s cause. George Washington took command of the Continental Army in the summer of 1775 at the age of 43. He was the oldest of them. Adams was 40. Jefferson was all of 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Rush—who was the leader of the antislavery movement at the time, who introduced the elective system into higher education in this country, who was the first to urge the humane treatment of patients in mental hospitals—was 30 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Furthermore, none of them had any prior experience in revolutions; they weren’t experienced revolutionaries who’d come in to take part in this biggest of all events. They were winging it. They were improvising.

George Washington had never commanded an army in battle before. He’d served with some distinction in the French and Indian War with the colonial troops who were fighting with the British Army, but he’d never commanded an army in battle before. And he’d never commanded a siege, which is what he took charge of at Boston, where the rebel troops—the “rabble in arms”2 as the British called them—had the British penned in inside Boston.

Washington wasn’t chosen by his fellow members of the Continental Congress because he was a great military leader. He was chosen because they knew him; they knew the kind of man he was; they knew his character, his integrity.

George Washington is the first of our political generals—a very important point about Washington. And we’ve been very lucky in our political generals. By political generals, I don’t mean to suggest that is a derogatory or dismissive term. They are political in the sense that they understand how the system works, that they, as commander in chief, are not the boss. Washington reported to Congress. And no matter how difficult it was, how frustrating it was, how maddening it could be for Washington to get Congress to do what so obviously needed to be done to sustain his part in the fight, he never lost patience with them. He always played by the rule.

Washington was not, as were Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton, a learned man. He was not an intellectual. Nor was he a powerful speaker like his fellow Virginian Patrick Henry. What Washington was, above all, was a leader. He was a man people would follow. And as events would prove, he was a man whom some—a few—would follow through hell.

Don’t get the idea that all of those who marched off to serve under Washington were heroes. They deserted the army by the hundreds, by the thousands as time went on. When their enlistments came up, they would up and go home just as readily as can be, feeling they had served sufficiently and they needed to be back home to support their families, who in many cases were suffering tremendously for lack of income or even food. But those who stayed with him stayed because they would not abandon this good man, as some of them said.

What Washington had, it seems to me, is phenomenal courage—physical courage and moral courage. He had high intelligence; if he was not an intellectual or an educated man, he was very intelligent. He was a quick learner—and a quick learner from his mistakes. He made dreadful mistakes, particularly in the year 1776. They were almost inexcusable, inexplicable mistakes, but he always learned from them. And he never forgot what the fight was about—“the glorious cause of America,” as they called it. Washington would not give up; he would not quit.

When he took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge in the summer of 1775, Washington had probably 14,000 troops. And from those troops and from the officers who were there at the time when he arrived, he selected two men as the best he had. Here is another aspect of his leadership that must not be overlooked or underestimated: Washington was a great judge of other people’s ability and capacity to stay where the fighting was the toughest and to never give up. He picked out Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox.

Nathanael Greene was a Quaker with a limp from a childhood injury. He knew no more of the military than what he had read in books, and he was made a major general at 33 years of age. Henry Knox was 25. He was a Boston bookseller. He was a big, fat, garrulous, keenly intelligent man who, like Greene, had only about the equivalent of a fifth-grade education but had never stopped reading. He, too, knew of the military only what he had read in books. But keep in mind that this was occurring in the 18th century, their present. It was the Age of Enlightenment, an era when it was widely understood that if you wanted to know something, a good way to learn was to read books—a very radical idea to many in our day and age.

Those two men were quintessential New Englanders. Greene was from Rhode Island and Knox had grown up in Boston. Washington had discovered very soon after arriving in New England that he ardently disliked New Englanders, so to single out these two, he also overcame a personal bias.

To skip far ahead, let me point out that Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox, along with Washington, were to be the only general officers in the Revolutionary War who stayed until the very end. So Washington’s judgment could not have been better. Nathanael Greene turned out to be the best general we had, and I’m including Washington in that lineup—Greene, the Quaker with a limp, the man who knew nothing but what he had read in books, who, like Washington, learned from his mistakes.

Let’s not forget what a war it was—eight and a half years, the longest war in our history, except for Vietnam. Twenty-five thousand Americans were killed. That doesn’t sound like very much to those of us who have been bludgeoned, who have been numbed by the horrible statistics of war in the 20th or 21st centuries. This was 1 percent of the American population of 2.5 million. It was a lot. If we were to fight for our independence today and the war were equally costly, there would be more than 3 million of us killed. It was a long, bloody, costly war.

And as it wore on in the year 1776, we suffered one defeat after another. At Brooklyn—a huge battle over an area of six miles with 40,000 soldiers involved—we were soundly defeated. We were made to look foolish. We were outsmarted, outflanked, outgeneraled, outnumbered. Some of us were immensely heroic, but we never had a chance.

But then, in a miraculous escape from Brooklyn Heights on the night of Oct. 29, we got back across the East River and were saved. It was the Dunkirk of the Revolution. If the wind had been in the other direction that night or the two or three nights preceding it, there’s not much question that the war would have been over then because Washington and 9,000 American troops would have been captured. If the British had been able to bring their warships up into the East River, between Brooklyn and Manhattan, they would have had us right in the trap. But because there was a howling storm out of the northeast, they weren’t able to do that.

Washington ordered that every possible small craft be rounded up and be made ready to bring the army back to New York. It was to be done at night. An organized retreat for an experienced army is the most difficult maneuver of all when faced by a superior force. But for this amateur pick-up team, this rude, crude, un-uniformed, undisciplined, untrained American army of farm boys—some of whom had been given a musket and told to march off only a few weeks before—for that kind of an army to make a successful retreat across water at night, right in the face of the enemy without the enemy knowing, was a virtual impossibility. And yet they did it.

When they went down to the shores of the East River, right where the Brooklyn Bridge now stands, to start the crossing, the same wind that was keeping the British from bringing their fleet up was keeping the river too rough for them to make the crossing. It looked as though they weren’t going to be able to pull it off. Then, all of a sudden, almost like the parting of the waters, the wind stopped. The makeshift armada started going back and forth, back and forth, all night long, ferrying men, horses, cannon—everything—back across the river to New York. And they succeeded. Nineteen thousand men and all their equipment—horses, cannon, and the rest—were taken across the river that night without the loss of a single man and without the British ever knowing it.

I wanted to write about that event, the reality of what happened there, as much as anything else in my book 1776. It shows so much that we need to understand. First of all, it was said right away that the hand of God had intervened in behalf of the American cause. Others trying to interpret what had happened used the words Providence or chance. But it couldn’t have happened only because of chance or the hand of God. It also required people of skill and experience with the nerve to try it.

That escape was organized and led by a man named John Glover from Marblehead, Mass., and his Marblehead Mariners—fishermen, sailors who knew how to handle small boats. During the crossing—and the East River can be a treacherous place to cross, even in the best of conditions—boats were loaded down so that the gunwales were only a few inches above the water. No running lights, no motors, no cell phones to talk back and forth. And they did it. It was character and circumstance in combination that succeeded.

The men were totally demoralized. They had been defeated; they were soaking wet; they were cold; they were hungry. They lost again pathetically at Kip’s Bay. They lost again in the great battle of Fort Washington, when nearly 3,000 of our troops and all of their equipment were taken captive.

By the time Washington started his long retreat across New Jersey, they were down to only a few thousand men. Probably a quarter of the army were too sick to fight, victims of smallpox, typhoid, typhus, and, worst of all, camp fever, or epidemic dysentery. Men deserted, men defected—went over to the enemy by the hundreds. Or they just disappeared, they just went away, never heard from again. By the time Washington was halfway across New Jersey, he had all of 3,000 men.

We are taught to honor and celebrate those great men who wrote and voted for the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. But none of what they committed themselves to—their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor—none of those noble words about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, about all men being created equal, none of that would have been worth any more than the paper it was written on had it not been for those who were fighting to make it happen. We must remember them, too, and especially those who seem nameless: Jabez Fitch and Joseph Hodgkins; little John Greenwood, who was all of 16 years old; and Israel Trask, who was 10 years old. There were boys marching with the troops as fifers or drummers or messenger boys, not just Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox and John Glover and George Washington. And they were in rags—they were in worse than rags. The troops had no winter clothing. The stories of men leaving bloody footprints in the snow are true—that’s not mythology.

Washington was trying to get his army across the Delaware River, to put the river between his army and the oncoming British army, which was very well equipped, very well fed, very well trained—the best troops in the world led by an extremely able officer, Cornwallis. On they were coming, and they were going to end the war. But Washington felt that if he could just get across the river, get what men he had left over on the Pennsylvania shore on the western side, destroy any boats the British might use to come chasing across the river, that they’d have time to collect themselves and maybe get some extra support. Again they went across at night. Again it was John Glover and his men who made it happen. They lit huge bonfires on the Pennsylvania side of the river to light the crossing.

The next morning a unit from Pennsylvania rode in—militiamen, among whom was a young officer named Charles Willson Peale, the famous painter. He walked among these ragged troops of Washington’s who had made the escape across from New Jersey and wrote about it in his diary. He said he’d never seen such miserable human beings in all his life—starving, exhausted, filthy. One man in particular he thought was just the most wretched human being he had ever laid eyes on. He described how the man’s hair was all matted and how it hung down over his shoulders. The man was naked except for what they called a blanket coat. His feet were wrapped in rags, his face all covered with sores from sickness. Peale was studying him when, all of a sudden, he realized that the man was his own brother.

I think we should feel that they were all our brothers, those brave 3,000, and remember what they went through, just as Abigail Adams stressed in her letter. And that they didn’t quit!

Washington took stock, just as the British army was taking stock, of the situation, as were most every officer and all of the politicians, many of whom had fled from Philadelphia by this time. It seemed clear that the British were heading for Philadelphia and there was nothing to stop them. Most everybody concluded that the war was over and we had lost. It was the only rational conclusion one could come to. There wasn’t a chance. So Washington did what you sometimes have to do when everything is lost and all hope is gone. He attacked.

They went up the river nine miles to McKonkey’s Ferry on Christmas night. They crossed the Delaware, famously portrayed in the great painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, which as everyone knows is inaccurate in many ways. But it does portray with drama and force what was one of the most important turning points, not just in the history of the war, but in the history of our country and, consequently, of the world. He had the nerve, the courage, the faith in the cause to carry the war once more to the enemy. After the crossing, they marched nine miles back down the river on the eastern side and struck at Trenton the next morning.

The worst part of the whole night was not the crossing, as bad as it was. The worst part was the march through the night. Again a northeaster was blowing, and again that northeaster was beneficial to our cause because it muffled the noise of the crossing and the noise of the march south. But it also increased by geometric proportions the misery of the troops. It was very cold. What the wind chill factor must have been can only be imagined. It was so cold that two men froze to death on the march because they had no winter clothing.

They struck at Trenton the next morning. It was a fierce, house-to-house, savage battle. It was small in scale but very severe. It was all over in about 45 minutes, and we won. For the first time, we defeated the enemy at their own profession.

Now it wasn’t a great battle like Brooklyn. But its consequences were enormous, beyond reckoning. Because of the psychological effect, it transformed the attitude of the army and of much of the country toward the war. It was a turning point. They struck again at Princeton a few days later and won there too—again by surprise, again after marching through the night, again taking the most daring possible route, risking all and winning.

In conclusion I want to share a scene that took place on the last day of the year of 1776, Dec. 31. All the enlistments for the entire army were up. Every soldier, because of the system at the time, was free to go home as of the first day of January 1777. Washington called a large part of the troops out into formation. He appeared in front of these ragged men on his horse, and he urged them to reenlist. He said that if they would sign up for another six months, he’d give them a bonus of 10 dollars. It was an enormous amount then because that’s about what they were being paid for a month—if and when they could get paid. These were men who were desperate for pay of any kind. Their families were starving.

The drums rolled, and he asked those who would stay on to step forward. The drums kept rolling, and nobody stepped forward. Washington turned and rode away from them. Then he stopped, and he turned back and rode up to them again. This is what we know he said:

My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected, but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance.3

Again the drums rolled. This time the men began stepping forward. “God Almighty,” wrote Nathanael Greene, “inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew.”4

Now that is an amazing scene, to say the least, and it’s real. This wasn’t some contrivance of a screenwriter. However, I believe there is something very familiar about what Washington said to those troops. It was as if he was saying, “You are fortunate. You have a chance to serve your country in a way that nobody else is going to be able to, and everybody else is going to be jealous of you, and you will count this the most important decision and the most valuable service of your lives.” Now doesn’t that have a familiar ring? Isn’t it very like the speech of Henry V in Shakespeare’s play Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . And gentlemen in England now a-bed / Shall think themselves accursed they were not here”?5 Washington loved the theater; Washington loved Shakespeare. I can’t help but feel that he was greatly influenced.

He was also greatly influenced, as they all were, by the classical ideals of the Romans and the Greeks. The history they read was the history of Greece and Rome. And while Washington and Knox and Greene, not being educated men, didn’t read Greek and Latin as Adams and Jefferson did, they knew the play Cato, and they knew about Cincinnatus. They knew that Cincinnatus had stepped forward to save his country in its hour of peril and then, after the war was over, returned to the farm. Washington, the political general, had never forgotten that Congress was boss. When the war was at last over, Washington, in one of the most important events in our entire history, turned back his command to Congress—a scene portrayed in a magnificent painting by John Trumbull that hangs in the rotunda of our national Capitol. When George III heard that George Washington might do this, he said that “if he does, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

So what does this tell us? That the original decision of the Continental Congress was the wise one. They knew the man, they knew his character, and he lived up to his reputation.

I hope very much that those of you who are studying history here will pursue it avidly, with diligence, with attention. I hope you do this not just because it will make you a better citizen, and it will; not just because you will learn a great deal about human nature and about cause and effect in your own lives, as well as the life of the nation, which you will; but as a source of strength, as an example of how to conduct yourself in difficult times—and we live in very difficult times, very uncertain times. But I hope you also find history to be a source of pleasure. Read history for pleasure as you would read a great novel or poetry or go to see a great play.

And I hope when you read about the American Revolution and the reality of those people that you will never think of them again as just figures in a costume pageant or as gods. They were not perfect; they were imperfect—that’s what’s so miraculous. They rose to the occasion as very few generations ever have.

speeches.byu.edu

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