The Great White North Kerfuffle Begins to Fade

America and Canada remain allies, notwithstanding the amplified disagreements among friends. And now Canada is stepping up its North America defenses.

Woo! 

Canada has made a 6 billion Canadian dollar ($4.2 billion) deal with Australia to develop a cutting-edge radar for the Arctic that can detect hypersonic missiles and other threats over the curvature of the earth, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Tuesday.

Mr. Carney also announced hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending to carry out year-round military exercises in the Arctic and to build up vital infrastructure for the Indigenous communities that make up most of the population there.

Canada won't stink on ice!  

There is no "crisis" in U.S.-Canadian relations. It's not like the bitter and lengthy Cod Wars, after all. If it was, Canada would be building border defenses at Windsor and blowing the bridges and tunnel leading into Canada. What we have is just a well-publicized politically convenient "Canadian Bacon" kerfuffle (for both Trump and Carney) over terms of trade.

Well, it's a kerfuffle unless Canadians start believing their own BS in response to our silly "51st state" and "governor" taunts. Oh ... .

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.  

NOTE: Image from the article, by Alex Welsh for The New York Times.

Bring On the Theater Army?

I've often focused on an Army corps because with just ten divisions in the active component, that seems like the most likely maximum echelon in combat without significant mobilization of reserves and creation of new forces. But exploiting other service capabilities in multidomain warfare actually requires a theater army headquarters.

This is interesting:

Theater armies are the most obscure Army echelon. Nevertheless, their complex mission is indispensable to Army support to joint force campaigns through multidomain operations (MDO). Theater armies (TA) provide an extensive breadth of capabilities such as theater-level sustainment, intelligence, fires, information advantage activities, protection, signal, aviation, medical, and civil affairs formations and staffs. TAs also provide unique access to the joint- and national-level enterprise. As the Army integrates MDO, most leaders tend to focus on the corps and division as the decisive echelons for large-scale combat operations in the land domain. However, to be decisive, the corps and division must have areas of operation properly managed by a TA, which enables their focus on achieving their objectives in close combat. In other words, the TA is the most significant enabler of MDO.

Okay, I have some problems with taking multidomain too far by straying too much over service boundaries of core competencies. I think multidomain synergy is best created by each service winning their domain. And it seems odd to have a theater army commanding a single corps.

That said, the fact that theater army is needed indicates cross-boundary encroachment hasn't gotten out of hand. And given that the Army had stripped down corps to be campaign-fighting headquarters rather than Cold War-era bloated entities, it makes sense that a theater army is needed rather than bloating the corps headquarters with too many staff officers.

Unless artificial intelligence (gulp) can push down theater army capabilities for integrating service capabilities to the corps without bloating and complicating the corps ability to effectively command its assets, that seems reasonable to me.

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. 

NOTE: Image from the article. ["Standard theater-level enablers include a theater sustainment command, theater medical command, signal command (theater), civil affairs command, and military intelligence brigade–theater. ... As theater operations expand, additional theater-level forces may include an Army air and missile defense command; a security force assistance brigade; a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives command (CBRNE); engineers; military police; a battlefield coordination detachment; regional support groups; theater liaison detachments; and Army field support brigades."]

There is No "Reasonable Man" Standard for Judging Israel

Urban warfare is a minefield of bad publicity and enemy propaganda even if you aren't Israel with four strikes against it before stepping up to the plate. 

Should we draw lessons for maintaining legitimacy of the military efforts of Israel in Gaza urban terrain?

In urban warfare, where combat unfolds amid a multitude of civilians and dense infrastructures, maintaining legitimacy is not merely a legal formality—it is a strategic imperative. According to U.S. military joint doctrine, legitimacy is one of the twelve principles of joint operations. Its purpose is to “maintain legal and moral authority in the conduct of operations,” and it is grounded in the “actual and perceived legality, morality, and rightness of actions from the various perspectives of interested audiences” to include national leadership, domestic populations, governments, local communities in the operational area, and international audiences.

The perception of legitimacy underpins the credibility of the strategic goals military action is used to achieve. Indeed, if there is one transcendent lesson from the Israeli campaign against Hamas, it is this: the perception of illegitimacy will snatch strategic defeat from the jaws of overwhelming tactical victory.

I think that is futile given that much of the world and those who "report" on it considers Israel itself to be illegitimate and any use of force by Israel--which to me seems largely proportional under the laws of war--is a war crime; while Hamas war crimes are ignored or even celebrated.

As long as our troops are following the rules of war, letting them come home with honor as soldiers rather than as brutal killers--and if we aren't shy about explaining that--we should consider that good enough when it comes to the opinion of the sainted international community. Our standards are superior to their standards.

Still, that claimed lesson is another reason to avoid fighting in cities (as I argued in Army magazine) if we can achieve campaign objectives without entering that moral authority booby trap, eh?

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. 

Europeans Will Build Their Own F-35 Kill Switch

Traditionally,  Europeans have built their own kill switches for their aircraft. Don't blame America.

There is no "kill switch" that lets America disable allied F-35s. 

In the shadow of escalating tensions between Europe and the United States over NATO commitments and the war in Ukraine, a persistent myth about the F-35 Lightning II has exploded online: the notion that the Pentagon has embedded a “kill switch” in the fifth-generation fighter jet, allowing it to remotely disable or impair the aircraft operated by foreign allies.

Honestly, it could be a revised Russian information operation to kill a plane they fear. The Russians are persistent and bold liars.

And traditionally, the real "kill switch" has been the failure of allies to buy the spare parts and missiles that keep their planes fighting for more than four days. We saw that weakness in the fight against ISIL; and earlier over Libya, which the Europeans made a plan to solve.

Only allies looking for an excuse to avoid re-arming will claim this allegation is true. 

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. 

NOTE: I made the image with Bing.