The German Question Gets Answered in Russian

Germany, as one would expect from history and power, sees Russia as the greatest threat to it.

Germany has a new military strategy:

It sets no concrete force-building targets to review annually and trigger a political response when not met.

Despite this, the analysis does contain some positive points suggesting a shift in the military’s mindset. The Bundeswehr’s focus on the threat Russia poses is sensible, as is the recognition that Europe must provide its own conventional defense within NATO, as the United States clearly has other priorities.

The German Question's answer has been fluid, but with a document called an actual military strategy, the Germans seem committed. 

I'm not worried that force structure isn't an apparent priority because Germany needs the defense industry to support an expansion. Otherwise, the expanded force structure will be hollow.

But is Germany quietly falling apart? Will new resolve be overwhelmed by the circular firing squad that Germany resembles today? 

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 the article.

Small UAVs: Part of a Complete Combined Arms Breakfast

Small drones get cut down to size. But there is a catch. You have to adapt to defeat them. Shocking, I know.

Drones are not wonder weapons. And once outside of the counter-measures vacuum they have exploited, the normal rules of combined arms operations will reassert themselves:

A new theory about the hider-finder competition between air penetration and air defense shows that drones are vulnerable to air defenses and electronic warfare systems, and that they require support from other force structure assets to be effective. This competition imposes high costs on those who fail to master the set of tactics, techniques, procedures, technologies, and capabilities necessary to limit exposure to enemy fire and to detect enemy targets.

Preaching to the TDR choir, they are!  

I'm not sure what is new about their formulation of the usual competition between lethality and protection is. But I'll not quibble when so many throw panties at FPV suicide drones. 

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 U.S. Army.

The PLA Funnies?

China's first-wave amphibious tanks heading for Taiwan will survive with variant support vessels and other robotic assets in a networked drone defense during the dangerous run to the beaches.

China can't protect individual amphibious tanks with point-defense systems, so it will put a figurative cope cage over the entire wave: 

The contemporary discourse on drone-driven warfare rarely suggests the end of maneuver, but it highlights an increasingly perilous gap between tactical movement and force survivability in a hypertransparent environment. Against this backdrop, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s sustained commitment to amphibious armor invites examination of how a high-end force intends to bridge that gap in the contested littoral space. The recent discovery of a mine-clearing variant built on China’s new amphibious armored vehicle chassis, successor to the Type-05 series, shows that Beijing is not pivoting away from the littoral zone in the face of drone proliferation. Instead, China’s defense industrial base continues to develop specialized variants that transform the platforms and the army and marine corps brigades that field them into a self-contained breaching ecosystem. This continuous hardware evolution signals a permanent pillar of China’s force design. 

Will the PLA match Hobart's funnies designed for D-Day in the variety of variants to fight their way ashore through a Hellscape of fires and drones? 

If so, there will be more grains of sand deposited on the beach and hovering offshore to create the PLA beachhead on Taiwan. With all that implies.

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 the article. 

The Winter War of 2022 Looks to Belarus

 

Is Belarus Putin’s last card to play in his invasion of Ukraine? The potential for success seems low and the potential for disasters of different varieties seems rather high.  

Head on over to Substack for the essay. I decided to put the essay there from now on. But you can always get the link here on TDR.

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: Rebuilding the Division For High-Intensity Conventional Battle

In case you missed it on Substack: Small Army Combat UGVs

In case you missed it on Substack:  The Case For Splitting the Joint Expeditionary Force

In case you missed it on Substack:  So What's the Deal With Navy Small Surface Combatants?

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. 

Happy 250th Birthday, America

Happy birthday, America!  

My mom made this for me for the 200th anniversary*:

I will have my 50-star flag out on the flag pole. Of course. And I bought the most eye-catching 250 shirt I could find. 

It is hard not to be an optimist about America.

My grandparents came here from Ireland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One grandfather served in World War I and the other served on the Mexican border mission prior to World War I; my parents (my dad was barely old enough to enlist in the Navy in World War II) built a solid blue collar life for me and my siblings in a deteriorating Detroit, and told me I should go to college; I became the first in my family (with two brothers serving during the Vietnam War, one serving in Vietnam) to go to college (with a side trip to the Army National Guard that somehow didn’t send me to the Persian Gulf) and then got out of Detroit for a white collar career; and my children have opportunity to thrive (one with a PhD and the other in medical school).

It’s the American dream over four generations. I’d have to be an ungrateful moron not to be an optimist! Or to fail to love this country which provides such opportunity.

I don't understand how people's patriotism can vary depending on what party holds the White House. Mine has never varied one bit based on mere politicians. Our country is far more than who we select to sit in the Oval Office. If your patriotism varies by that metric, you love your party and not your country. 

Perhaps watch this if you hate your own country and can't bring yourself to celebrate this grand day:

Or you can read the 1917 original here. 

I assume I will make it to celebrate 275. But absent serious advances in medical science, 300 is right out. 

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: It is actually pretty big. It is stretched across my small sofa for the picture. I have taken it to every place I have lived since heading off to college. Thanks, mom! May she rest in peace. 

Kill Them All, Let AI Sort the Ammo Out

Aerial suicide drones are just the explodey bits of an entire system built to create a kill chain from finding targets to destroying them. Suicide UAVs will become just one of many types of ammunition available to be selected by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for their needed capabilities to kill specific targets.

Preaching to the TDR choir, they are:

The AI orchestration software that fuses sensor feeds, assigns targets, and sequences fires across hundreds of platforms is already selecting and engaging in the functional sense. In other words, the software pulling the strings is where the autonomy lives, not the projectile. 

 As I observed a couple months ago:

We may say each drone is much cheaper than each shell or rocket. But you must consider the training needed to fly drones and the cost of the ground-to-space-spanning intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) network and communications network that allow both FPV drones and precision artillery to find and attack the enemy. With total costs considered, is the drone really lowering the total cost of delivering strikes significantly compared to a precision shell or rocket?

Heck, as I observed in this essay, rather than AI making even slightly old weapons obsolete, "perhaps we are underestimating what AI can do with older weapons. Even as new weapons and means of fighting are used in the Winter War of 2022, old—ancient in some cases—weapons are being hauled out of storage to fight."

The entire Reconnaissance Strike Complex system is the key. We can plug in lots of ammunition types into that RSC apart from suicide drones. And when we can do that, small suicide drones will be reduced in importance as other forms of ammunition prove they can do some things better than small suicide drones. 

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 the article.

Speak Softly and Escort a Big Ship

With Iran's navy, air power, and surveillance crippled, America was able to use land-based forces to shepherd civilian shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States quietly escorted civilian ships through the Strait of Hormuz: 

It emerged this month that the US has begun guiding ships through Hormuz with their signals off, by a route that hugs the Omani coast, helping to boost oil and cargo flows. 

The Navy wasn't needed and was able to act as a hammer from the distance in case the Iranians got too active. And the Marine threat kept the Iranians distracted, too, I bet. 

That mission is why we had command and combat elements of the 82nd Airborne Division there. And why we lost an Apache helicopter when it was hit by an Iranian UAV. 

The Strait wasn't fully open. But it helped to cushion the effect of Iran's effort to close the strait. 

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: Photograph from the article.