China's Robotic Wave Assault

American defenders at Guam (and other bases) cannot simply dismiss the threat of massed Chinese aerial drone attacks as fighting in the shade.

China will rely on numbers:

China has been adapting the Iranian Shaheed drone, known as the Sunflower-200, to attack American targets in Guam and the Western Pacific. China is obtaining or making one million OWA/One Way Attack drones for a constant million drone swarm campaign. The objective is to destroy or suppress American /Taiwan/allied military logistics and bases from Guam to the China coast for at least ten weeks throughout a Taiwan invasion. These would crush defenses like a modern Pearl Harbor-style strike, turning bases into what 1940 Philippines ports looked like, by day three.

As I've often observed:

I think people miss the point that China doesn’t have to defeat America to win the war. China has to defeat Taiwan. China only needs to delay the American intervention long enough to beat Taiwan.  

If hammering our bases works to keep America pinned down long enough, China will fling an army across the Taiwan Strait with a constellation of means--including support offshore--to build a bridgehead. 

And even if China doesn't buy enough time to advance on Taipei, just getting a secure bridgehead is a major step to ultimately conquering all of Taiwan.

The air raid sirens are figuratively wailing. Will we act before they are real? 

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: I made the illustration with Bing.

Aligning America and India

America wants strong partners to hold Eurasia and to strengthen rather than undermine the Western Hemisphere. The Quad gathering in India was a good opportunity to play up the newest member, India.

The American secretary of state visited India:

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held talks with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Saturday, as the two sides discussed the Middle ‌East, trade, visas, maritime security and energy supplies, while Washington cited progress on efforts to resolve the ‌Iran conflict.

Rubio treated India as a great power:

Rubio said the range of issues discussed underscored that India was "an important strategic partner of the United States, ‌one of our most important strategic partners in the world." 

India seemingly is happy with American rather than Russian energy imports:

Jaishankar said ​the United States had emerged as a reliable energy source for India. 

China, of course, is the driving force to push closer alignment of India and America. 

Along with Japan and Australia, more broadly. Details of the subsequent Quad meeting include:

The Quad partners launched the first ever Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration (IPMSC) initiative to leverage Quad country maritime surveillance in the Indo-Pacific, enhancing information sharing and maritime domain awareness capacity with an initial focus on the Indian Ocean Region as well as through subject matter expert exchanges and tabletop exercises.

It is interesting that when America was the only super power after the collapse of the USSR, no major realignment of global powers took place to counter America. Allies remained allies. And no, frenemies China and Russia don't count. They were always our enemies. And I can't see them truly allying with each other. Today, rising China pushes powers to align to contain China's ambitions. Russia may come to its senses yet.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Photo from the initial article. 

Make Combined Arms Great Again

As diverse forms of counter-UAV systems start to arrive, one can see the decline of the silver bullet suicide FPV drone beginning. The chance for mobile, protected firepower to resume its central role in combined arms warfare is here.

At the risk of appearing to be a dinosaur, huzzah!

[Tanks,] if sufficiently upgraded with advanced networking, unmanned systems, improved active protection, drone launch capability and high-fidelity sensing, main battle tanks are clearly here to stay. There is little to no replacement for the main battle tank when it comes to moving to contact, closing with an enemy, penetrating defenses and “holding” territory in warfare.  

And all armored combat vehicles, of course. Not just tanks.

But tanks can again be the apex predator. Although as we upgrade tanks with the features noted above, we also have to define what else much change on tanks--even if they don't look anything like today's main battle tanks. 

But we have a way to go to end the small drone panty-flinging. 

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Photo by Spc. Jensen Guillory - https://www.dvidshub.net/image/6432856/m2-bradley-infantry-fighting-vehicles-northeast-syria, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101900535

Precision on Demand

Will the Army need nearly as many FPV drones for support for close combat when it has automated precision firepower for its companies?

FPV drones aren't the only way to deliver small warheads with precision on the battlefield:

When responding to a call for fire, mortar crews have to verbally yell out deflection, charge, and elevation before dropping a round in the tube, but a new mortar system being developed for the Army and Marine Corps could automate much of that process. 

The Scorpion Light 81mm mobile mortar system allows crews to use a map-like device to digitally enter the information needed to hit targets, and then the tube is moved into firing position automatically[.]

Once, the Mk. I eyeball and experience provided platoons with well-aimed fire support. I went into discussing how precision was being pushed down the table of organization. Now, mobile and automated precision gets to the company level. Put it in a Black Box of Effects and I'll be happy.

I think long counter-insurgencies interrupted this trend when we faced bigger problems than the need for speed in Army organic fire support for troops in contact. And in Ukraine, FPV drones filled the need in the absence of other capabilities.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Photo from the article.

Flashy Drones Get the Credit

A SINKEX provides useful information on weapons performance. It is not a tactical exercise. Yet the drone fever continues to burn and can only be quenched with more cowbell!

So drones were used to sink an old warship in multinational exercises last fall:

A U.S. warship used aerial and maritime drones to help sink a decommissioned frigate last fall, Fourth Fleet officials have confirmed, adding that the experience is now shaping how the Navy will go into future battles.

An old, stationary American frigate. That wasn't defending itself. Or maneuvering. Or even moving, it seems. Or conducting damage control. 

Also, the air and sea drones were employed to "help" sink the ship. Again:

The robot formation executed three kinetic strikes against the Simpson as part of live-fire attacks ...

What else helped as part of the UNITAS 25 live-fire attacks? Oh:

The Simpson was thus a floating “magnet” that missiles, guns, and torpedoes could hit and sink. The first “hits” were made by MH-60R and MH-60S helicopters flying from the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS Arlington. There was also an attack helicopter launched from the  Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Thomas Hudner (DDG-116).  

So we know drone-carried explosives can  help sink ships. Shocking. Welcome to the anti-ship party, pal. Don't fling panties at a new weapon in the belief that they're a silver bullet for all our military problems.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Image from this article about the exercise. I don't think it is a photo from the UNITAS 25 exercise, however. 

The Winter War of 2022 Seeks the Holy Grail of Battle-Hardened Soldiers

Is Russia gearing up for a summer offensive? Or is what we see what they've got? I keep hearing that the Russian ground forces are now combat experienced. But I see an exhausted ground force.

The war goes on.

Russia's ground war has faltered:

Russian forces are performing poorly on the battlefield and failing to make operationally significant advances in their ongoing spring-summer 2026 campaign, as Ukrainian forces continue to counterattack and comprehensively strike Russian mid–range targets and deep in the Russian rear.

 Russian war supporters wonder why Russia hits symbolic targets in their air war:

Russian milbloggers heavily criticized the May 24 strikes as expensive but not militarily useful and that the Oreshnik strike against Bila Tserkva did not have a clear militarily significant target. Milbloggers further criticized the strikes as expensive and as not contributing to the Russian war effort, while Russian forces are under-resourced and unable to advance on the frontline. 

The appearance of success with missile strikes may now rely on aerial attacks in the absence of a ground war that provides that. You can only pretend to have taken a town from the Ukrainians so many times before people start to notice.

Recall that there were those who claimed the U.S. Army was "broken" by its campaign in Iraq after it suffered perhaps a thousand KIA per year there. I thought that was ridiculous:

Our Army is stressed. And we need to take actions to counter and eventually relieve that stress. So far, we seem to be doing that successfully. Don't confuse this, as Korb seems to do, with the other problem of being unbalanced--so focused on counter-insurgency that we are slighting conventional warfighting skills. But once Iraq deployments slow after victory, the problems of both stress and balance will be resolved. And we will retain the combat experienced troops for a generation.

Yet Russia with deaths in over four years of combat (nearly 500,000 according to Britain's GCHQ director) a couple orders of magnitude greater than America's 4,500 deaths in Iraq over about 6-1/2 years of combat missions is combat-hardened with hard-won experience against Ukraine? What survivors will make Russian ground forces better in the next war?

Call me skeptical about seeing bloodied and battered Russian ground force elements and thinking "none shall pass" that awesome array of experienced combat power!

Still, Russia's ground forces have power in the positional war of attrition they are optimized to fight now. Fighting that sort of war against Russia would not be ideal. As long as their troops are willing to die in large numbers, of course. Are we just seeing a pause in Russia's advance? Or has Russia lost the ability to attack. If the latter, can Ukraine exploit it before Russian ground forces can recover? 

Ukraine has a six-month window in which to seize the battlefield initiative from Russia and strengthen its hand for peace talks, a senior commander told Reuters, predicting a “turning point” was imminent after more than four years of war. 

Can Russian ground forces recover? Will a much-discussed Russian mobilization make or break the troops in the field?

UPDATE (Monday): The war is shifting. Will a ceasefire by the result?

The mood among Ukrainian commanders, however, has changed. Russian attacks are putting less pressure on their units than they did in previous years. Although drone strikes and shelling remain constant, Russian combat performance is waning. In Kyiv, there is a growing optimism that Ukraine can fight Russia to a cease-fire.

Ukraine’s mood shift is not the result of a radical transformation of how the war is being fought but rather stems from a subtle turn in several trends that together point to a major change in the war’s trajectory. 

Indeed. I did say in March that things seemed ... different ... this year. 

Would Russia use a ceasefire to rearm to continue its bizarre war against Ukraine and NATO beyond it?

Or to pivot to face China's power and potential threat to Russia's Far East and Central Asia influence? 

NOTE: ISW updates continue here. 

NOTE: Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump on Substack. You may read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.

Weekend Data Dump

The Weekend Data Dump is a compilation of short entries about the previous week’s defense and national security news that I found interesting. I couldn’t possibly comment on everything in my news flow or delve into everything that interests me. So most news that interests me doesn’t make the cut for a post. The rest go in the data dump. Enjoy!

HOP ON OVER AND READ IT! On the bright side, you can comment on Substack!

In case you missed it on Substack: The NATO Force Model Shrinks

In case you missed it on Substack: Operation Epic Criticism

In case you missed it on Substack: Baby UGV Steps in North Africa

In case you missed it on Substack: To the Shores of Taiwan

Help me out by subscribing on Substack and by liking and sharing posts. I occasionally post short data dump-type items (or not-so-short) on my Substack "Notes" section.

The Air Force Taunts the Army

The Air Force deigned to provide special forces with dedicated ground support aircraft. The Army can continue to pound sand.

Well that’s nice for special forces: 

The Air Force now has 18 new light attack aircraft that are designed to support special operations forces on the ground, and it expects to receive “a handful more” by October, said Lt. Col. Robert Wilson, of Air Force Special Operations Command, or AFSOC.

The single-engine turboprop OA-1K Skyraider II is “essentially a Swiss Army Knife of airborne capability,” that can fly armed reconnaissance, close air support, and precision strike missions, said Wilson, AFSOC’s armed overwatch requirements branch chief.

But this plane is a flashy distraction from the refusal to have a dedicated close air support plane for the Army's maneuver forces.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Photo from the article.