To Be, Or Not To Be

I've long worried--since 2003--that attack helicopters are running out of room to be effective on the battlefield for deep strike because of greatly improved ground-based air defense weapons. One means of overcoming that threat is increasing the range of helicopter weapons. We have turned that dial to 11.

Huh:

Weapons manufacturer Anduril developed a new drone weapon for the Apache attack helicopter in only six months. This weapon was tested when an AH-64 launched this drone for the first time. It flew 457 kilometers and had an impact similar to a Hellfire missile.

That's great for existing helicopters. And we already started down that path. I suspect this much effort is made because for the Army, when you can't be with the one you love, love the one you are with.

But in the long run, why can't cheap trucks carry that Anduril weapon? Or other weapons.

Still, despite my worry I accept that counter-measures plus different weapons and tactics could preserve the helicopter's role. But is the cost worth the result?

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!

Ah Yes, I Remember It Well

Europeans need to defeat Russia's invasion of Ukraine to protect themselves. But beware a failure to repeat the smooth victory over Hitler in 1945 and transition to peace with victor and vanquished clear? Are we talking about the same era?

Apparently, defeating Russia's war to conquer Ukraine won't be as clear as the end of World War II when the guns fall silent:

Yet it won’t be over even when it’s over. Unlike on VE Day 1945, we won’t know who has won at the moment the shooting stops. The arrival of “peace”—most likely in the form of a ceasefire that becomes a longer-lasting freezing of hostilities along the current frontline—will be another moment of danger for Ukraine. Internally, all the social differences and traumas accumulated in years of war could explode in an angry presidential election campaign and highly divisive subsequent politics.

An angry election campaign, eh? The horror.

So very sad that the clarity of victory and smooth transition to peace after World War II won't be repeated:

Imagine a world without institutions. it is a world where borders between countries seem to have dissolved, leaving a single, endless landscape over which people travel in search of communities that no longer exist. ...

Nothing is made here: the great factories and businesses that used to exist have all been destroyed or dismantled, as have most of the other buildings. There ar no tools, save what can be dug out of the rubble. There is no food.

Law and order are virtually non-existent, because there is no police force and no judiciary. In some areas there no longer seems to be any clear sense of what is right and what is wrong. People help themselves to whatever they want without regard to ownership--indeed, the sense of ownership itself has largely disappeared.

Oh. 

That was the reality of the "clarity" of winning World War II that led to internal chaos and shifted right into the Cold War--avoiding this path! 

Be careful what you wish for.

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!

More Complicated Drones Needed

Russia redirects Ukrainian long-range strike drones into NATO countries.

Live by the sword, die by the sword: 

[They thought they were under aerial attack, but] drones buzzing over Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland were not launched by an enemy: they were Ukrainian drones hijacked and redirected by Russia towards Nato, opening up a new phase of war.

Clever of the Russians. 

And now Ukraine's cheap long-range strike drones will need to add counter-measures to prevent that, making them more expensive. Pretty soon as the race to attack and protect such drones continues, they won't be so cheap and maybe not so numerous.

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: "Missed it by that much" for those unfamiliar with Agent 86.

Shiny Objects and Ninja War

A round of shooting between Iran and Israel obscures the real war being waged quietly to defeat the Iranian mullah regime.

America continues to squeeze the mullah regime in Iran: 

On June 2, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) tightened its controls on Iranian dark-fleet activities by designating Iran's leading crypto trader, Nobitex, and the three next largest firms (Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex) operating in Iran. The move will not only complicate Iranian attempts to conduct financial transactions for its dark-fleet oil-trading activities, but also make it harder for the Iranian authorities to receive payments from shipowners seeking to use Iranian channels to enter and leave the Gulf using the so-called Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA).

Iran struck Israel with ballistic missiles and Israel has struck back, providing the shiny kinetic object to distract everybody:

US President Donald Trump earlier on Monday told both Iran and key ally Israel to stop fighting, against the background of reports of an increasingly testy relationship between the US leader and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Iran fired dozens of missiles at Israel overnight and Israel responded by targeting military sites in the Islamic republic, sparking fears the escalation could usher in a new full-scale conflict after the April 8 truce.

Trump can act as the "good cop" to Israel's "bad cop" because the blockade of Iran is the main effort to defeat Iran after the air campaign crippled Iran's military capabilities. And it is biting:

The Islamic Republic of Iran suffered a devastating blow in May, with the American blockade and sanctions biting deep into the regime’s bottom line. 

Sure, Iran acts like it is winning. Why wouldn't it? What else can they do? And we might fall for it and hand them victory! Yet the clock is ticking for Iran in more ways in the financial war:

The Treasury Department will use Iranian assets to help U.S. Gulf allies recover from damage caused by Tehran's regime during the Iran war[.]

My hunch is that America resumes large-scale strikes on Iran only if it looks like the regime might fall to internal resistance, including the Iranian army. I wonder how that Israeli operation is going?

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!

The Winter War of 2022 Stands at a Fork in the Road

The Winter War of 2022 seems to hang in the balance of which way the battlefield advantage could flow. Will either side be able to tip things their way to end this period of battlefield uncertainty?

Ukraine is training its troops better. And some Ukrainian corps have gotten much better at combined arms warfare:

[A] number of Ukrainian units began to better integrate infantry, uncrewed systems, artillery, and armor. On the frontlines, they were able to create periods of dominance over the Russians that allowed the rotation of troops and even offensive gains. These combined arms tactics helped Ukrainian forces make advances in Kupyansk in the fall of 2025 and in Huliaipole in the spring of 2026. More important, the Ukrainians maintained a favorable casualty exchange ratio, losing fewer soldiers than the Russians, even when they were on the offensive.

Enough to push the Russians back in some places. Can that be scaled up if more corps (really, what we'd call "divisions") improve? And Ukraine is hampering Russian logistics more effectively to hamper the ability of the Russians to attack or even mass forces on the front. ISW describes this, too:

Ukraine’s mid-range strike campaign against Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) is disrupting Russian logistics across the theater, from occupied Luhansk Oblast to Crimea.

On the other side, Russia can't replace its losses. And despite masses of troops in the theater, the troops at the pointy end of the suicidal meat assaults are thinning out as troops thicken in the rear (back to the first article):

Pay as the primary motive for service has also created an accumulation of personnel in Russian units who are eager to avoid combat. 

If the front breaks, those men are primed to run, no? This adds to the Potemkin vibe I have gotten from the Russians since last year:

I have strong doubts that Russia is managing to increase the raw numbers of its troops fighting inside Ukraine to continue its grinding offensive as long as it takes. Does Putin have a Potemkin Invasion Force? Would he even know he only has that?

Indeed, even in 2004 I began to have doubts about Russian troop strength claims, as one link shows.

And of all the reasons I gave to explain why Russia might not have an attack force in Ukraine that Putin thinks is there, it didn't even occur to me that masses of soldiers might have essentially gone AWOL in the rear areas without leaving service. But corruption seems to have done that. 

That's a brittle army that counts on being on the strategic offensive so Ukraine can't seriously exploit the brittleness. Could Ukraine deepen Russia's logistics problem, train more corps and concentrate them, and then exploit the thinner Russian front line with an offensive toward a Crimea garrison weakened by logistics difficulties and lack of combat power?

This ground war is seriously getting weird. Yet it is no declaration of Ukrainian victory. Perhaps the Russians restore their capabilities to attack. Or the Ukrainians may prove to be unable to do the things they need to mount a proper counteroffensive while Russia experiences weakness at the front.

Hell, what if China looks at the situation and decides Russia can be coerced to turn over Far East territory or grant economic and legal concessions within Russian territory for Chinese businesses in exchange for weapons or even the right to recruit in China's Xinjiang province for more cannon fodder?

That's fanciful. But is it impossible? Might Russia be that desperate? Might China be that ruthless? Anything seems possible in a war  that remains ... different. 

As I asked, when the war ends what empire ends, too?

UPDATE (Tuesday): Well that's interesting:

The Russian military command is reportedly withdrawing forces from the Kinburn Spit in Mykolaiv Oblast as Ukraine’s intermediate-range strike campaign against Russian supply lines in occupied Ukraine is rendering defenses in the area increasingly untenable.

First drip of water in the Russian frontline dike? If Ukraine can do that along the eastern bank of the Dnipro River on the Kherson front, it could get really interesting.

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 XM30 is Not a Silly Place to Seek

In case you missed it on Substack: NATO Stands Up in the Baltic States

In case you missed it on Substack: Blockade is a Continuation of War By Other Means

In case you missed it on Substack: Putting a Cope Cage Over an Entire Armored Division

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.

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.