Stepping Up to Fight

Secretary of Defense Carter complains that Arab Gulf states aren't stepping up to fight ISIL. Perhaps the lack of volunteers comes from the lack of a fight to step into.

Okay:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter ... had blunt criticism of other American allies in the Middle East: the Arab Gulf states, who, he argued, sometimes appear unwilling to effectively engage their enemies. Carter suggested that these states—the members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Egypt as well—would rather build show-horse air forces than commit to the dangerous work of countering ISIS and Iran, the main bogeymen of moderate Arab states.

That's funny. In Yemen, the Arab Gulf states have contributed a heavy combat brigade that they are keeping in the fight against Iran-backed rebels:

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will rotate the forces that it currently has deployed in Yemen, the country's official WAM news agency reported on 2 November. ...

The UAE has played a leading role in the Arab coalition that is attempting to reinstall Yemen's president and has had soldiers in the southern port city of Aden since at least July and had deployed to Marib province by early September.

Those troops have been seen operating Leclerc tanks and BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles and are supported by helicopters deployed to Aden International Airport and an airstrip in Marib province.

Perhaps the Arab Gulf states just don't think they need to bring their PowerPoint skills to the coalition in Iraq.

Perhaps we need to actually organize a war for our allies to get involved in before we complain about them not fighting.

UPDATE: Related:

As the United States prepares to intensify airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, the Arab allies who with great fanfare sent warplanes on the initial missions there a year ago have largely vanished from the campaign. ...

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have shifted most of their aircraft to their fight against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Jordan, reacting to the grisly execution of one of its pilots by the Islamic State, and in a show of solidarity with the Saudis, has also diverted combat flights to Yemen. Jets from Bahrain last struck targets in Syria in February, coalition officials said. Qatar is flying patrols over Syria, but its role has been modest.

So our Arab allies aren't failing to step up to fight. They're shifting to an actual war front where they think they'll make a difference and can actually fight.

UPDATE: Is it really time already at Ramadi?

Iraqi forces appear better positioned than ever to launch an offensive against Islamic State militants controlling Ramadi, now that months-long efforts to cut off supply lines to the city are having an effect, but plenty of risks remain.

The grass grew. The paint dried. The last PowerPoint presentation was presented.

Now all we need to do is liberate Ramadi.

If a mechanized Jordanian offensive force backed by coalition air, special forces, and other support rolls into western Anbar province, too, in support of anti-ISIL Sunni Arab tribes, I might cry from joy.

Will the European Union Collapse?

This article quotes European leaders speculating that the European Union is in danger of collapsing:

Have you heard the European Union is on the verge of destruction?

Of course you have. Even passive political observers would have had a hard time avoiding the apocalyptic assessments from European politicians over the past few months. With the migrant crisis flaring, another round of doomsday rhetoric from Brussels to Berlin and beyond is upon us.

Here’s a look at the best, most calamitous, end-of-days proclamations ricocheting across the continent[.]

Of course, many of the Euro-elites are horrified that the EU might be in danger.

I believe I'm on record as expressing a preference for the proto-empire's demise.

Sadly, I was foolish enough to believe that popular voting might actually stop the empire from forming.

Although Perhaps I'm underestimating the EU will to empire. Could the EU exploit the migrant crisis to assume military and police powers to resist the flood?

Safe Space? Could We Try Sane Space?

So Yale has become just a kindergarten, eh?

No worries, the precious little snowflakes will still collect their diplomas.

One-ply for BA. Two-ply for MA.

Fold into pointy corner for "with honors" notation.

The Yale administration got exactly the best and brightest student body they deserve. Who the ef hired them, indeed? My contempt for both sides in that tantrum knows no bounds.

I'd like to point out that we have young men and women of the same age as those precious snowflakes humping through Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Third World heck holes to provide us with a "safe space" called "America."

UPDATE: It's a good education!



We love those social justice warriors! They're just swell!

How many bad men have to go to the corn field before we all love them?

UPDATE: Remember, this is the face of fascism:



Because sometimes you just have to eliminate undesirables elements in your midst.

UPDATE: Heh.  Huh? Hey!? Hell yeah!

UPDATE: One more:

This shocking video is a glimpse of the future—the boorish, hate-filled Cultural Revolution come to America. Colleges have capitulated completely to delusional victimology; unless employers are willing to stand up against the coddled products of the academic hothouse, we may all soon be living in a world of screaming, monomaniacal victims.

Yeah, give these children power (like some reliable "muscle"), and they'd send that professor to the countryside to learn to be a good Maoist.

This is the video noted above (you could reach it through the first link, but what the heck):



I'm appalled that this is tolerated on campus, with even the progressive victims of the tirades voicing their approval of the abusers.

Who the ef thought she and her finger-snapping chorus are ready for college? The best and brightest, indeed.

Much like some wag said about the Iran-Iraq War, it would be nice if both sides lost in this struggle.

UPDATE: Okay, one more:



We're in for more than a 3-hour tour with these clowns.

Rotation is Nice. A Corps is Better

The Army is working on beefing up its presence in Europe. It isn't enough.

This is at least a move in the right direction:

Defense officials said NATO would avoid massive troop buildups and instead rely on ways to get smaller numbers of troops forward from the U.S. both during a crisis and to prevent tensions from growing into a conflict.

The Army currently has two brigades—of about 3,500 soldiers each—based in Europe. It has assigned one additional brigade in the U.S. to serve as a regionally aligned force that will rotate into and out of Europe. Gen. Milley said he would like to add more brigades to those rotating to Europe, and add attack helicopter units, engineering teams and artillery brigades.

Right now we have a Stryker brigade and a parachute brigade as our maneuver elements.

What General Milley needs rather than mere rotations is an Army corps with 5 brigades forward on the ground (see my article in that issue--and please note that I have no idea why they credit me with a PhD since at no time did I indicate that. I have a master's degree, in history. They published my email to them to correct that error in a subsequent issue of Military Review and for a time they corrected the online version, but the error has returned.)

Anything less than a corps isn't a real warfighting asset. We need more than a tripwire now.

Europe is useful for deploying Army forces not only for Europe but for an arc of crisis extending across Africa to Afghanistan, so I wouldn't put a heavy corps there that isn't strategically mobile.

Put XVIII Airborne Corps with a parachute brigade, a heavy brigade, a Stryker brigade, and a couple airmobile brigades as the forward maneuver elements of the corps--along with those supporting brigades Milley identifies.

I wouldn't deploy these units forward permanently as a rule, but would rotate battalions into eastern NATO states from their positions in central and western Europe. As long as the infrastructure in the east can handle an influx of NATO troops, that would be fine.

Although I'd pay good money to have an old-fashioned armored cavalry regiment in Europe in place of one of the airmobile brigades I suggest in order to at least rotate elements of that regiment to the Baltic states, with the ability to put the whole regiment there in a crisis.

With most of our forces in Europe lighter so they can also be projected into the arc of crisis, I'd build up unit sets for NATO heavy brigades in Poland--call it REFORPOL if you wish (in honor of the REFORGER sets we once had in abundance in West Germany during the Cold War).

Oh, and I'd heavy up any Stryker brigade intended for Europe duty.

And as NATO forces centered on the American armored cavalry regiment delay a Russian offensive into the Baltic states while building up heavy forces in Poland (and don't forget to pound Russia's ill-gotten gains in Crimea while we're at it) to prepare for the defeat of the Russian invasion force, we should gain control of the Baltic Sea in order to project and support heavied-up Marines into the flank of Russia's invasion.

Seventy years after we won World War II, we find that responsibly ending that war requires us to defend our gains. Being on the right side of history is hard work, as it turns out.

The Anorexic Red Line

The British army may have the reputation as the "thin red line" that fights and wins outnumbered, but the British army had grown too thin to fight a real enemy let alone win.

The British are becoming just another militarily weak European country:

We find ourselves in this parlous position largely because of the conclusions reached five years ago by the last government’s disastrous Strategic Defence and Security Review. The review was conducted on the naive assumption, presented in the government’s equally egregious National Security Strategy, that we faced no apparent threats to our security or national interests. It allowed the Tory/Lib Dem coalition to make the most drastic cuts to our defence budget for a generation.

Yes, this situation was predictable.

Russian aggressiveness makes the assumption that Britain need face nobody tougher than Luxembourg rather obviously wrong, eh?

Notwithstanding British reliance on France to make up their shortcomings.

I wasn't being cruel when I reported that Britain is building a base in Bahrain. I was just stating the obvious.

UPDATE: If the French are losing their influence within the European Union, how can Britain rely on France in the real world beyond its borders?

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That, Of Course

This is hilarious.

Kevin Williamson is so white his favorite meal is tuna fish salad on white bread with mayonnaise, Tab, and Twinkies.



The Left is funny. Somebody is being a jerk and it isn't Kevin.

Tip to Instapundit.

UPDATE: And do note in the Twitter trail that the Leftist writer who made the original error responds by invoking the racist "one-drop rule" on Williamson. Stay classy Chauncey DeVega.

I'm Out. And Ready to Go Out More

Okay, I'd done with whatever Internet Exlorer replacement that Windows 10 uses. I go out to run and when I come back, it has eliminated all my tabs. And there is no apparent way to open closed tabs.

If it wasn't for the large number of bookmarks I have committed to IE, I'd just switch to Firefox which seems to survive these periodic purges.

But if I get a fourth purge while using the latest IE that is loading now, I'll eat the sunk costs and rebuild in Firefox.

Vanguard of the Low-Information Viewers

Communists like to believe that they can organize a popular movement against some recognized evil and then ride that anger to power by being the organizing force of that mass movement--whose members likely don't know of the communist influence. It's the whole vanguard of the proletariat notion.

Instapundit notes the communist heritage of the recent protest in which Quentin Tarantino took heat for expressing hatred against cops:

Who is Carl Dix, the protest organizer defending Tarantino and equating the police with the mafia?

Mr. Dix is one of the founding members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a group that has held anti-police events in October for nearly two decades and that openly advocates for an armed overthrow of the United States of America.

I've noted this before with anti-Iraq War protests and the Occupy Wall Street open-air sewers. The media almost never even mentions this linkage to communists. But if you look at the people quoted in the stories or follow the organizations, you find the radical communist groups behind the scenes.

Do recall that the media is on full "association mode" when they report on Tea Party events. If they can identify even a single person with questionable views, media says that this person taints the entire movement by attracting the person.

Not that I'm saying that the vast bulk of the protesters aren't sincere in disliking whatever bad event has been identified; nor am I saying that they are communists. They'd be "useful idiots" in the communist view.

What you call the media that can't be bothered to fully explain just who is out there leading these protesters rather than identifying "ordinary people" in the march or protest is beyond me. They're useful, no doubt. But they know what they are doing, so can't really be called idiots.

Words Accompanied By Actions Matter

I find it amusing that President Bush (43) gets so much heat for his "Axis of Evil" description of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

Really? This is what the Left has come to? Would not noting their evil make them less evil somehow?

The “axis of evil” line was no more a mistake than it was for Ronald Reagan to speak of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” Doing so didn’t commit the U.S. to a war, as his liberal critics foolishly thought at the time. But it did put the world on notice that the U.S. knew the difference between right and wrong, and that it was no longer afraid to call things by their right names. Doing so helped undermine the Soviet Union just as the Bush speech helped isolate Iraq and Iran.

You know who didn't get in trouble for similarly black-and-white language? President Clinton:

But for all our promise, all our opportunity, people in this room know very well that this is not a time free from peril, especially as a result of reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals.

We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. They feed on the free flow of information and technology. They actually take advantage of the freer movement of people, information and ideas.

And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us.

But this "unholy axis" isn't mocked or even much remembered. Because they were just words that substituted for action to fight and defeat the evil named.

I guess for some, only words matter. Or maybe their enemies list is just different.

Interdiction

The long effort to make everything just right for an Iraq front offensive continues.

We provided direct air support to Syrian rebels in eastern Syria:

Speaking from Baghdad via teleconference, Operation 'Inherent Resolve' spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said more than 1,000 members of the Syrian Arab Coalition (SAC) had "reclaimed approximately 255 km 2 of ground" in the vicinity of Al-Hawl: a town in Al-Hasakah province that is less than 15 km from the Iraqi border.

Col Warren said the coalition supported the operation with 17 airstrikes that killed 79 enemy fighters. He said US Air Force A-10 and AC-130 attack aircraft were involved in the strikes.

While I think our correct response to Russia's intervention in Syria is to focus on the Iraq front of the war on ISIL, I think operations like this in Syria around Al-Hawl are fully consistent since they fit in with interdicting the border to hinder ISIL efforts to rush reinforcements to stop a big coalition effort in Iraq (based on my overall view of the fight) should we ever finish up all the PowerPoint presentations required to start the big push on Ramadi and points west or Mosul.

How can we not be ready to defeat ISIL in Iraq by now?

And do we really believe that ISIL will just sit there and wait for us to finalize the perfect killing blow without doing something that will unravel our carefully prepared plans?

Here's an overview by Strategypage--which has been far more understanding of the time issue--of the situation in Iraq.

Enemies Multiply

It's almost as if every enemy we have doesn't want to be the last rogue kid on the block to have their trophy at our expense.

So just where does the buck stop these days?

The picture being painted by Obama’s soon-to-be-former advisors is one of a president paralyzed with indecision. He is being increasingly tested by the world’s bad actors and revisionist powers and has little resolve to act early and decisively. That is an impression that was confirmed by Reuters in October.

Yes. I did note that the "no drama Obama" meme meant to show a president calm in a crisis is actually backwards. Our president's motto is actually "Drama? No Obama."

After years of being told that our president is cool under pressure when responding to crises (no-drama Obama), it increasingly seems as if our president does not wish to grapple with crises.

And our enemies, after watching us attempt to retreat from the world, are following and closing in, ending the faux "war receding" period the Left has claimed we enjoyed as a result.

I noted that problem early, too.

The really dangerous part comes from the likelihood that this administration will resolve on some issue that we really can't retreat further and signal a red line that a foe really can't cross--yet our enemy won't believe we are any more serious about this line than the previous lines.

God help us all.

Flight Path

Living due south of the Michigan football stadium, I'm in a prime position to photograph planes heading for game-day flyovers.

Here's a B-17 on Saturday:

And here's a B-25 the same day:

Just a reminder, too, that if you know when and where a plane will fly, if you stand there waiting you can see it with the Mark I eyeball. Even if it is a stealth plane.

War on Terror: Boko Haram Front

Nigeria is getting more serious about fighting jihadis. And we are increasing our level of support to the region,

This is good news from Nigeria:

President Buhari, being a retired army officer, ordered a change in the way the military does business as soon as he came to power in March. As a former general he knew how to assess and address the current commanders and has enacted a number of military reforms. This has led to the dismissal of a lot of officers, especially in the army. One general was even jailed for incompetence, misbehavior and losing a major battle to Boko Haram. There are new training programs, which the troops appreciate as a lot of corrupt or incompetent officers did not want to be bothered in the past. ...

President Buhari has quietly reinstated the use of mercenaries. His predecessor had hired some foreign mercenaries in late 2014 to train and advise (lead) a task force of elite Nigerian troops to quickly crush the most determined Boko Haram resistance. While running for election Buhari condemned this move and sent the mercenaries home once he was in power. Buhari condemned the bribes that accompanied the mercenary deal but his own special operations officers reported that the mercenaries had been quite useful.

And this use of STTEP mercenaries is illustrative of their value:

The men STTEP sent consisted of whites and blacks but all were experienced (often former special operations) combat vets. A few were from outside Africa although most were South African (or from neighboring countries like Namibia). In a few weeks the STTEP force had expanded by selecting competent Nigerian troops and these few hundred men, moving quickly in trucks and a few armored vehicles as the 72nd Mobile Force Battalion, with Nigerian aircraft overhead (some with STTEP men aboard acting as spotters) quickly smashed one “troublesome” Boko Haram group after another. Boko Haram had up to ten thousand armed men in the north organized into dozens of smaller units led by charismatic men of varying military skill. The STTEP force went after the most effective Boko Haram battlegroups, which not only greatly weakened Boko Haram overall but demoralized the less competent Boko Haram leaders and gunmen. This made it easier for the troops from neighboring countries to go after the remaining Boko Haram fighters.

Nigeria just needed a core force of good, mobile troops supported by air power to spearhead the advance by the rest of the ground forces. The jihadi enemies aren't supermen. They're fanatics. And even many of them are just fanatical when they are winning. They can be killed by good troops and even adequate troops if the jihadis are put on the run. The war against Boko Haram isn't won, but the jihadis were hurt.

And this path to success has long been my goal for the war against ISIL in Iraq. I've wanted core forces to spearhead the attacks.

Yet over a year into our effort, we're still just a PowerPoint presentation away from unleashing trained fury on the fairly small ISIL ground army in Iraq. How good and numerous do the Iraqis have to be, anyway?

But I (sort of) digress.

Back in Africa, we are working with Nigeria and Nigeria's neighbors Cameroon, Niger, and Chad (and Benin, too, if the accompanying map is indicative of the scope) to help kill Boko Haram jihadis:

"This training is part of U.S. AFRICOM's core mission to help our partners strengthen their defense capabilities," Prichard said. "The skills gained during these military-to-military exchanges can be used by the participants for a broad range of activities to secure their home countries or contribute to a regional security effort."

The number of troops involved is small but will work with local forces to make them more effective.

We Know They're Evil. How Much of an Axis are They?

Will Putin expand his alliance with Iran to a serious effort to bolster the pro-Iran side in the Yemen civil war?

The Saudi-Iranian struggle in Yemen continues to tilt Saudi Arabia's way as Saudi Arabia builds a ground coalition to stiffen their side in the Yemen civil war:

Most of the pro-government forces in Yemen are tribal militias. The Yemeni military has fallen apart since the unrest began in 2011. ...

The Arab coalition offers some brief training for these volunteers, if only to improve communications and help prevent friendly fire, but some tribesmen refuse the training and are allowed to join the fight anyway. The Arab coalition has also persuaded (with cash and other favors) three more African nations (Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan) to send troops to join the coalition. Most of these (about 12,000) will come from Sudan. Eritrea is sending about 400 troops and Somalia is sending a token number of troops but is mainly allowing the Arab coalition to use Somali territory and air space The coalition needs more professional (and disciplined) troops to augment the often undependable and unpredictable tribal militias. Senegal has already agreed to send about two thousand troops. The Sudanese forces have been arriving over the last few weeks and are apparently already in action in Ibb and nearby provinces.

Plus the Gulf Arab states have contributed a heavy brigade.

I'm kind of surprised that Saudi Arabia hasn't been able to leverage Egyptian help, considering the money the Saudis send to Egypt.

The Russians are at least trying to help the Iran-backed Houthis with basic logistics (if they are telling the truth) or weapons (if not):

Russia on Thursday sent a plane to rebel-controlled Yemen carrying what Moscow said was more than 20 tonnes of humanitarian aid for the conflict-torn country.

Russia's emergencies ministry said the Il-76 transported "23 tonnes of humanitarian aid" including food and tents to Yemen's capital Sanaa.

The Arab coalition may be willing to halt Iranian efforts to resupply the pro-Iran side in Yemen, but I doubt they'd confront Russia.

So how long before Russia just sends supplies--weapons and all--by sea to support their ally Iran in Yemen?

Heck, perhaps Cuba gets involved in Yemen and we get a full-blown Axis of Reset!

UPDATE: The Houthis have clawed back some ground:

Yemen's Iran-backed rebels have regained several positions lost in recent months across the country's south, in a fresh push towards the Gulf-backed government's temporary headquarters in port city Aden, military sources said Sunday.

Perhaps when the main Saudi-led mobile force is back in action, their offensive will resume:

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will rotate the forces that it currently has deployed in Yemen, the country's official WAM news agency reported on 2 November.

"The General Command of the UAE's Armed Forces has said the first batch of its brave soldiers will return to the homeland after being replaced with the second force," it said. It credited the first force with securing the city of Marib and the nearby Marib Dam.

The war goes on.

Whenever "They" Ask for Money, Putin Smiles

While Russia threatens new NATO states from the outside, corruption threatens NATO's eastern border in Romania. Romania needs NATO civilian advisors to clean up corruption as much as Romania needs NATO troops to keep the Russians away.

Let's hope this popular movement can peacefully encourage authorities to develop rule of law in Romania:

In Bucharest’s Universitate Square — where the crowds first gathered 26 years ago to oust the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu — a banner draped from a wall proclaims: “In 1989 we fought for liberty, today we fight for justice.” ...

[The slogan "corruption kills"] is certainly Andrei’s experience, in the construction industry where he works: “You want a permit, they ask for money. You want to start building something, they ask for money. Whatever it is, they ask for money. It has to change, and I think a lot of people are here for this reason.”

“They” are Romanian politicians and public officials, whose approval rating is the lowest in Europe, at 12.6 percent.

Liberty without rule of law is not really liberty.

Corruption kills rule of law by making the law apply only to the little people. And putting the burden of the failure of law on them, too. Don't think that doesn't undermine national defense.

Right now, Ukraine stands between Russia and Romania. So perhaps corruption seems acceptable. Do those who benefit from corruption assume that Ukrainians will successfully battle corruption in order to keep that buffer?

A Phony FONOP?

Was our recent freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in the South China Sea actually an "innocent passage" that does not in fact deny China's territorial claims?

Oh, good grief:

USNI News, Defense News and Graham Webster all recently noted that the USS Lassen was undertaking innocent passage when it sailed past Subi Reef on 27 October. This surprising revelation has not been officially confirmed but is understood to have been widely corroborated by sources in the US Navy, Department of Defence and Capitol Hill.

It matters because the regime of innocent passage under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is specific to a country’s 12-nautical mile (nm) territorial sea. This allows warships to enter without notice but under constrained conditions, including that passage should be continuous and expeditious, with no use of on-board weapons, aircraft or 'any act aimed at interfering with any systems of communication or any other facilities or installations of the coastal State'.

It was widely assumed that Subi Reef, as a low tide elevation now extensively built upon by China, was chosen deliberately as the location for the US Navy’s FONOP in order to demonstrate on clear legal grounds that the US does not recognise Beijing’s (or rival claimants’) jurisdiction over the surrounding waters. It is integral to the demonstration value of FONOPs against excessive claims that warships carry out 'the normal range of activities which they would on the high seas, including manoeuvring, the use of active and passive sensors and even the operation of shipborne helicopters'. FONOPs and innocent passage are quite different things.

So did we carry out a freedom of navigation operation that denied Chinese claims to the waters around Subi Reef or did we conduct innocent passage that concedes Chinese control of the waters around Subi Reef?

And is this administration fine with just the American people thinking we stood up for freedom of navigation while China knows better?

Perhaps the reason the ASEAN defense ministers failed to offer a common statement in favor of freedom of navigation is because they know that it was a phony mission we carried out. Why would they be led from behind with a powerful China looming over them?

When will I learn to wait for the initial hype to fade before complimenting this administration?

UPDATE: Here's a USNI News article on the difference between innocent passage and a FONOP. Which did we conduct? Which one does China think we conducted? What do are allies think we did?

UPDATE: Senator McCain wants to know what exactly we did, too.

I Guess Words Do Matter

Russia entered the war in Syria loudly proclaiming their intention to attack ISIL, but largely ignored ISIL as they bombed other rebels. Oddly enough, ISIL still feels at war with Russia:

The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group has claimed responsibility for the disaster, in which the Saint Petersburg-bound jet crashed minutes after taking off, killing all 224 mainly Russian tourists on board. ...

The Times newspaper reported on Friday that electronic communications intercepted by British and US spies suggested a bomb may have been carried onto the plane.

A joint intelligence operation used satellites to uncover the chatter between militants in Sinai and Syria, it said.

People keep saying that retribution by Russia will be harsh. Perhaps it will.

But Russia never did make an open retaliation for the Beslan school massacre. Heck, I recall that the Soviets had a couple of their flagged civilian ships attacked during the Iran-Iraq War and they never openly retaliated. Perhaps there was quiet retaliation known in the world of spooks, but the world certainly saw nothing.

How things have changed. I was pretty broke back then, but still sent a donation to the Russians because it was so horrifying that their children were slaughtered.

And now Putin stokes needless fears of America's alleged plots against them. And I can't work up a lot of tears for their loss to terrorists, though I know I should since the people on the flight certainly didn't deserve any of this no matter what their government is doing.

I do wonder if this terror attack will compel Putin to divert forces from the current campaign in support of Assad in order to strike ISIL and be seen as doing something.

UPDATE: Russia has 80,000 targets for ISIL in Egypt:

Around 80,000 Russians are stranded in Egypt after the Kremlin grounded all flights to the country following the crash of a Russian airliner in the Sinai Peninsula, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said on Saturday. ...

A planned process to evacuate tourists will be executed," Russian news agencies quoted Safonov as saying. "Planes will arrive empty and be boarded by those tourists who should return home on that date."

The Egyptian military is organizing this effort, apparently.

This article says that Putin could benefit from a terror attack on the plane if Russian opinion backs escalation in Syria.

But how does it benefit Putin if he feels compelled to escalate against ISIL (which we'd welcome) if it detracts from his focus on supporting Assad by attacking non-ISIL rebels in western Syria as he has been doing?

UPDATE: A few words about this attack might have been nice to know before that Russian plane was bombed, don't you think?

A flight from London Stansted to the Egyptian resort reportedly had a close call with a deadly missile.

The Thompson plane carrying 189 passengers is said to have come within 1000ft of the rocket.

Thankfully, the pilot took evasive action in time and the flight landed safely.

The Department for Transport confirmed the incident involving the British flight occurred on August 23 – although passengers on the plane were not told at the time.

I suspect it must have been a slow, unguided RPG-type anti-tank weapon and not an anti-aircraft missile. Otherwise, a lumbering civilian plane couldn't evade it.

Still, that's the kind of threat environment that should be publicized before the threat succeeds, isn't it?

UPDATE: Speaking of Russian paranoia, this won't help on that issue:

A prominent Russian millionaire with high-level ties to the Kremlin has been found dead inside a Washington hotel, a Russian official and a senior U.S. official told ABC News.

Mikhail Lesin, the former head of media affairs for the Russian government who's been accused of curtailing the country’s press freedoms, had been staying at The DuPont Circle Hotel when he was found Thursday, according to officials.

The story says it is unclear why he was in Washington, DC. One can't rule out that Putin had him killed if he was here to defect, I suppose. But even if that is true, it will be easy to spin that a loyal minion of Putin was killed by our CIA. The plots never end, do they?

That's their story, and they'll stick to it.

No Pot For You!

Ohio voters turned down legalized marijuana. Hopefully they turned down crony legalization, too.

There will be another vote, I'm sure, after this:

Ohio voters rejected a ballot proposal Tuesday that would have legalized both recreational and medical marijuana in a single stroke — a vote-getting strategy that was being watched as a potential test case for the nation.

I'm generally against marijuana legalization. But I guess I have enough libertarian streaks to not be very invested in the issue.

But what I am heartened by is this part of the opposition to the ballot proposal:

Issue 3 would have allowed adults 21 and older to use, purchase or grow certain amounts of marijuana and allowed others to use it as medicine. The growing facilities were to be controlled by private investors, leading opponents to label it a "marijuana monopoly."

That featured heavily in opposition campaigns and a separate ballot question to prevent monopolies from being inserted into Ohio's constitution for the economic benefits of a few.

Yes. That aspect is ridiculous. If Ohio residents want to legalize marijuana, it would be better to do it through the legislative process. The ballot proposal path is how groups with money can get a proposal on the ballot to bypass the legislative process--as Issue 3 was--in order to benefit the people who paid for putting the ballot proposal up for a vote. Success would lead to a big payoff for the select few granted the authority to grow and sell marijuana.

That's how we got gambling in Detroit a couple decades ago. Groups kept holding ballot proposals to allow gaming in Detroit by the entities paying for the ballot proposal. Eventually, the ballot proposal passed as desperation to do something about Detroit's downward spiral grew. I'm not going to judge whether casinos helped Detroit, but the 3 casinos allowed sure have benefited those who own them.

It would have been better to just legalize casinos (or marijuana) and let the market work. But then you run into the resistance of the Indian casinos scattered around the state in growing numbers.

Training the Way You Fight

All the Air Force talk of how multi-purpose aircraft can handle the close air support role rather than the A-10 misses the point that only A-10 pilots focus exclusively on training for ground support. How likely is the Air Force to make sure that their pilots train enough to provide ground support when so many other missions compete for flying time?

Strategypage writes about the survival of the plane that Air Force brass oddly seems to hate:

If there is another major war in someplace like Korea, Eastern Europe or Iran, the A-10s would once more be one of the most popular warplane with the ground troops, unless the air force manages to get rid of it.

Read it all, as the expression goes.

I won't bother to try to link to all my posts on the A-10 controversy--but here's a shotgun link.

But I will admit that the A-10 and their pilots have had a special place in my heart since basic training (and my vehicle in my Guard unit was Alpha 10--A-10 on the bumper--so we naturally called ourselves "Warthogs"):

Night firing was pretty cool. The most cool thing about it was the fact that Air Force A-10s exploited the fact that we were shooting in order to practice their own strafing runs with the big 30 mm chain guns they carry. By running parallel to our firing line, they could see what it looks like to support friendly forces shooting down below. Not that the plane was very close to us, but we could hear the continuous sound of the gun firing. It sounded awesome.

That's training the way you fight. I got a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing they were on our side.

That's the kind of dedication to providing close air support that pilots who have no other job bring to the mission. Flying in the dark on strafing runs in front of friendlies so that when the time comes, you put rounds on the enemy and not on the troops you are supporting.

Sure, in an age of GPS it isn't as difficult (if everything works like it should), but that's the kind of focus we still get from the A-10. Focus that has earned the respect of Army troops traditionally wary of our own pilots.

But the Air Force as an institution just doesn't believe that this type of focus is important to maintain.

One day the A-10 will go away. It is an old plane and won't last forever. I'd like to put off that day as long as possible.

UPDATE: ANSWER: Cancel the A-10!

QUESTION: How will the Air Force pay for their new long-range strike bomber?

Because the A-10 is the source of all problems for the Air Force, remember.

Sending in the Buses?

The offensive to relieve the siege of Syrian troops (and supporters) in Aleppo opened up the major road leading to the main part of Assad's territory. Now what?

The Syrians with support from their Hezbollah, Iranian, and Russian allies, pushed through to Aleppo in the north:

The Syrian army regained control of a road southeast of Aleppo on Wednesday, taking back the government's only supply route into the city from Islamic State fighters who had seized it last month.

State TV said army forces took full control of the road which runs from Aleppo through the towns of Khanaser and Ithriya and links up with the cities of Hama and Homs further south. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group confirmed the report.

The road is the army's supply route to government-held western parts of Aleppo, home to around 2 million people.

State TV rolled live footage of the road being reopened. Cheering Syrian soldiers crowded around a reporter who declared: "The buses did not wait until tomorrow morning" to begin using the road again, as a handful of vehicles drove behind them.

Buses? Not trucks for supplies or troops to bolster defenders to hold the area? Buses? That carry people and their baggage?

Like I wrote when the offensive started, I figured the objective was more likely to be a mission to evacuate supporters:

[It] makes far more sense to me for an operation aimed at Aleppo to be a rescue effort to evacuate the troops and civilians still trapped up there and then retreat back to the Core Syria further south.

Aleppo has always seemed like a bridge too far for Assad's ground forces to hold.

And of course, the city is only part of the problem for Assad. East of the city, the Kweires airport remains under siege, as that first article notes. So no evacuation from the city should be telegraphed until the airport is relieved, too, to prevent the jihadis around there from turning an evacuation into a retreat from the Chosin Reservoir.

Or who knows? Maybe the appeal of holding Aleppo is too strong for Assad to resist even if abandoning the city is what I would have recommended a long time ago if I was on Assad's national security team.

UPDATE: The Syrian armed forces and their friends are making progress toward reaching Kweires:

State news agency SANA says troops and pro-government gunmen captured the village of Sheikh Ahmad in Aleppo province on Monday.

That would put them about 2 kilometers from the base.

I'd expect an evacuation more than I'd expect an attempt to reinforce and hold the area.

Power Projection?

Britain is returning to east of Suez.

Britain is building a base in the Middle East for the first time since 1971:

Construction work has begun in Bahrain to build Britain's first permanent military base in the Middle East since 1971, amid security threats in the region, Bahrain's state media reported Sunday. ...

The new base in Bahrain "will enable Britain to send more and larger ships to reinforce stability in the Gulf," British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said last year.

Sure. It could project power into the Middle East.

If I was a rude writer, I'd emphasize the new British ability to retire to a nearby port after the Iranians take naval crews hostage.

But I'm not inherently rude, so I'll thank Britain for reminding us that the CENTCOM region was not calm enough to pivot away from it to focus on the Pacific.

But hey, at least Iran won't get nukes.

The Russia Problem

This is an interesting podcast on Russia's military and their operations in Ukraine and Syria.

It provides some good perspective--despite a trendy Euro-slap at our Iraq War that we did in fact win and which our current administration once boasted about before they walked away and let Iraq unravel--and it is worth your time.

Obviously, I like it because it supports my views. Before the Crimean War, I recognized that Russia's military was weak but that it could capture Crimea and eastern Ukraine if they struck fast with their limited decent quality forces.

Russia just went with the Crimea portion.

When Russia delayed their attack into the Donbas, I correctly figured that Russia had lost their chance for a quick and cheap win.

Russia has gained some ground but struggles to maintain their position there in the face of Ukrainian resistance.

As for Syria, I wondered about Russia directly intervening before Putin did. And once he did intervene I did not think that the intervention could really change the course of the war after the initial morale boost to Assad's forces of seeing Russia move in.

Basically, Russia is still weak between special forces and nuclear weapons.

And I learned something new: that much of Russia's Spetsnaz really aren't like our best special forces and are more like long-range recon units. There are even conscripts in the ranks.

Of course, I think Putin could achieve success because Russia has limited objectives for Syria, as this article details:

Today the Russian bombing campaign seeks only to stabilize the Syrian regime’s lines around the key corridor running north from Damascus through Homs and Hama. This approach provides breathing space for Assad, and allows his regime to implement its long-mooted Plan B — a rump state centered on the Alawite heartland along the Mediterranean coast.

Assad is a long way from being able to reconquer all of Syria. Indeed, I think that Assad--even with increased Russian and Iranian support--can't hold Damascus and points south and east (or Aleppo and points north) without stretching his ground forces so much that he can't hold the true Alawite heartland and a buffer zone inland to the main north-south highway.

Could Russia get non-jihadi rebels to flip in a Putin Awakening if those rebels don't feel America and the West are serious about supporting them in the face of Russia's intervention? I rather doubt that, but I'm unwilling to bet on President Obama's reputation over Putin's reputation.

For Russia, despite being weak, we actually have to stop Putin for that weakness to be the critical factor in the outcome.

Could the West really give Putin a hat trick of a secure bastion in Syria, allied to Iran; plus a deal with Europe that reduces the flow of Moslem migrants to Europe in exchange for accepting Russia's presence in Syria and letting Russia keep some (at least Crimea) or all of their conquests in Ukraine?

We don't need to start a war with Russia. But we should work to stop them while they are weak. Or do we assume they won't get stronger or that they will gain enough power and territory to be satisfied before hitting the West where it really hurts?

If we let the problem go until then, we'll really have a problem and we'll need to risk direct war to stop them.

Losing Turkey

Basically, Turkey's "soft" Islamist Erdogan stoked instability and then exploited that to win reelection on a desire to restore stability.

Austin Bay on Turkey:

Nov. 1's snap national election results put Turkish democracy, cultural vitality and Ataturk's legacy at risk.

The threat to Turkish democratic institutions is a man notoriously jealous of Ataturk, current president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The snap election gave Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, AKP, overwhelming control of parliament (316 of 550 seats). The AKP had controlled parliament since 2002, but in the June 7 election it lost its one-party majority. Political haggling among opposition parties, including Ataturk's Republican Peoples Party, the CHP, failed to produce a coalition government; a new election was necessary.

However, in the intervening month's domestic terrorist incidents, the fitful war with the Islamic State in the Levant and Syria's violent chaos dominated Turkish politics.

Erdogan portrayed himself as the only leader capable of addressing Turkey's deteriorating security situation.

Oh, and don't forget old-fashioned voter manipulation.

I was going to write a post on this, but Bay knows the subject much better and so saves me the work. Read it all, as the expression goes.

UPDATE: Part of the instability was blackmail (tip to Instapundit):

[Evidence] is now mounting that the upsurge in the migratory wave was the result of deliberate efforts by Erdogan to facilitate and push the flow of migrants in order to blackmail and punish the EU into supporting him.

Could be. I did wonder if Russia and Turkey might cooperate--perhaps it was by using migrants as weapons--for their own separate objectives.

FauxCons

So what's our legacy of action in Africa the last 7 years?

A "freedom agenda" without any action to promote actual freedom:

In his recent tour of Africa, Obama has continued to excel in making the right kind of noise, or at least the kind of noise that may have been considered ‘right’ when he began his presidential career nearly eight years ago. Unfortunately, pumping out the same old rhetoric has done little to convince anyone that any progress has been made on any of the more salient of Africa’s issues.

Powerful statements such as those made on democratization in Africa and support for strong institutions and not for “strong men” may have hit the spot at an earlier point in his career but for many will seem little more than blind-eye-turning hypocrisy. While denouncing the autocrats in Zimbabwe and Burundi, Obama failed at a speech before the African Union to bring to task a number of other nations who are guilty of similar offenses, such as Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Rwanda, Uganda. And the fact that many of these omitted nations are also long-term security partners of the U.S. is sure to raise further eyebrows.

As we pivot to confront China in Asia, we are letting China and their tyrant-friendly rules penetrate Africa.

So instead of a so-called "NeoCon" foreign policy that sought to give people the chance for freedom and rule of law (remember, according to Democrats--now, not then (see the embedded video)--it was wrong to liberate Iraq from the tyrant Saddam, thus creating one of the great achievements of Obama foreign policy in democracy promotion--yeah, we won the war before we nearly lost it), we have a FauxCon policy of saying people should be free while doing nothing to make that a reality.

I'm so old, I remember when Kissinger-esque foreign policy realpolitik was just for cold, calculating (and don't forget evil!) conservatives.

Another Carrier Debate?

As we find ourselves short of forward-deployed carriers (even if for a good reason), we should have a carrier debate. Heck, let's have a seapower debate.

If the Navy has decided to pick a number about how big the fleet must be, the aircraft carrier has to be part of the debate because that's where the money is for getting numbers.

It's on!

Calling the U.S. aircraft carrier the "backbone" of America's global military presence, the Navy's top brass highlighted the risks of failing to maintain a big enough fleet during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday.

But a new report on the future of aircraft carriers suggests that the Navy's problems run deeper than the number of ships or planes on these mobile airfields.

I know nothing about the author of the report, although I normally think little of the Center for No American Security that put it out. But these ships are so central to our fleet and so expensive that we should debate their role and prominence.

First off, we need to have rules on the debate so those on both sides don't argue past each other using their favorable side of the debate. Remember, carriers have two main roles, power projection and sea control:

Power projection is what we've done with our carriers since world War II. Sail them off the coast of some country that doesn't possess a potent navy or air force, and use it as a floating air base. Without the need to fight for control of the sea, we exercise that control of the sea from the start of a conflict. We've done this a lot. And the carriers have performed superbly.

This history of power projection is what the defenders of carriers point to.

But what the anti-carrier side points to is usually the sea control mission. In this mission, by definition we face a nation with a navy and air force capable of fighting us for control of the seas--or at least denying us full control.

And for nations without carriers, advances in persistent surveillance and guided missiles give them a potent weapon to use against our big carriers.

Further, while defenders of carriers like to call them sovereign pieces of American real estate that can host our planes, unlike actual real estate, our carriers float and therefore can sink. Or just burn and become mission kills. Really.

We don't like to admit it and rarely practice what we do if a carrier goes down, but they can be sunk. They can be sunk by relatively cheap missiles. They can be sunk by relatively cheap missiles guided by relatively cheap surveillance assets.

We like to think of land warfare as casualty intensive and air and naval warfare as cheap in lives. But lose one carrier battle group in the middle of the ocean and we could lose more sailors in one day than we lost in the entire Iraq War on the ground over years.

So, our big deck carriers are very valuable in the power projection mission (or in peacetime disaster response where the disaster isn't shooting at us).

But we have to be careful using them in a sea control mission. Especially since the range of our carrier aircraft has bizarrely gone down over the decades, meaning we have more problems striking enemy assets that can target our carriers.

Two, carriers are far too central in our ability to kill ships in a sea control mission. I was shocked to find that we were phasing out Harpoon in the surface fleet--until the Navy thought better of that.

I was even more shocked this week to find that it has been almost two decades since our subs had Harpoon anti-ship missiles!

The Navy is investigating adding an anti-ship missile to its submarine force — bringing it inline with the majority of the world naval submarines, the director of Naval Reactors said on Wednesday. ...

The U.S. submarine fleet did use the UGM-84A Harpoon anti-ship missile but that Harpoon variant was retired in 1997. The current primary attack submarines is the anti-ship weapon is Mk 48 heavy torpedo and is limited in its range relative to anti-ship missiles developed and deployed with foreign navies.

How did I miss that? As God as my witness, I thought our subs had Harpoon anti-ship missiles all this time. It is possible I knew it but forgot, since I am a member of the US Naval Institute so get their magazine. Surely they mentioned this.

The CNAS report does validly point out that another cost-saving measure was made--losing the range of carrier-based aircraft that World War II experience had taught us had to be long to keep the carriers at a safer distance from threats.

Even though I long suspected--even in the Cold War--that carrier survivability was a major problem,  I figured that with anti-ship power spread throughout the fleet we had a good backup to gain control of the seas if our carriers burned.

But instead, our carriers returned to the center of our fleet with the rest just supporting characters.

In one sense I can accept that in an era when sea control was assured because the Soviet navy was rotting away in port and the Chinese navy was a glorified coast guard that saving money by getting rid of redundant anti-ship weapons and aircraft range to focus on power projection made some financial sense.

But here we are with a rapidly growing and technologically advanced Chinese fleet and a more aggressive Russia and our fleet still needs our carriers for the bulk of anti-ship missions?

At least the LCS is being redesigned as a frigate with better anti-ship weapons.

If we are to build carriers, perhaps to justify them we need to think of them as reserve amphibious ships since the Marines are short of amphibious warfare vessels (of course, the amphibious carriers would have a reserve carrier role, too).

And I think that while the carrier has a major role in power projection missions, it must have a supporting role in sea control as networked ships, subs, and planes with long-range anti-ship missiles take out the big threats to our carriers before they can pursue the enemy and finish them off.

Face it, the aircraft carrier as a symbol of American power is far greater than their power for sea control missions. Losing one or more at the outset of a war would be a devastating morale blow against us and would encourage our enemy--regardless of the actual impact on warfighting capabilities. We didn't have to face that reality since the Cold War did not go hot at sea.

I'm just not upset that we have carrier gaps in our forward-deployed naval forces. I'm of the opinion that routine forward deployed ships in range of major enemies should be expendable. Rather than dangle these symbols of our power before an enemy, I'd keep our carriers tethered to home waters to support a surge of carriers for either sea control or power projection in time of war.

And for God's sake, distribute anti-ship weapons throughout the fleet and supporting air power. And make that air power have sufficient range to lessen the danger to the carriers.

Heck, let's be radical and instead of having another useless carrier debate where defenders and attackers argue past each other, let's just have a seapower debate.

Don't Get Too Excited

So is a large natural gas field going to disrupt our efforts to keep Egypt at peace with Israel? Let's restrain the instinct to panic--about that prospect, anyway--okay?

This is good news for energy supplies. Is it bad news for our diplomacy?

[Italian energy company Eni's] gamble worked. The company, using drilling rights from the Egyptian government, found what it called a “supergiant” natural gas field. It may be the largest discovery yet in the Mediterranean and is one of the world’s biggest new gas finds in years.

Eni will need to drill more wells to prove its claim that the field, which it calls Zohr, holds up to 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. That could be worth about $100 billion, even when taking into account current low energy prices. But the promise of Zohr — the Arabic word for noon — is already brightening the prospects of the Egyptian economy, which has been benighted by an energy shortage and years of political turmoil. ...

Egypt’s becoming more energy-independent could sidetrack efforts — backed by the United States — to use energy diplomacy to improve relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Israel has its own ambitions for offshore natural gas, including a long-gestating plan to sell gas to Egypt.

Mr. Descalzi met recently with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, to discuss next steps. And on Thursday, the Eni chief plans to visit Jerusalem in an effort to persuade the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that there are still opportunities for Egypt and Israel to jointly prosper by developing their gas fields.

I don't know how long a field produces. Is that $100 billion spread out over 20 years? If so, that's just $5 billion per year. How much of that goes to Egypt?

Egypt has about 90 million people and a GDP of about one trillion dollars.

So this could be nice for Egypt. But hardly decisive. Especially when you consider how large Egypt's population is and the size of their GDP.

And if Third World natural resource bonanzas are any predictor for Egypt, Egypt may squander the new wealth with overambitious plans and increased corruption, quite possibly making things worse for Egypt in the long run.

So I guess you can stop worrying about the bad effects on our current round of diplomatic efforts. But do worry about new problems, eh? A new Nigeria closer to the Middle East isn't exactly a boon for our diplomatic efforts.

Because a Strong China Comforts Nobody

When China looms over the region, anger and defensiveness over Japan's colonial rule of Korea is a luxury spat neither can afford to maintain.

South Korea and Japan are trying to put past friction behind them:

In the first bilateral talks between the two countries since 2012, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to speed up the resolution of the “comfort women” dispute, according to Reuters[.]

"Comfort women" were Korean sex slaves for Japanese troops occupying Korea. It was an ugly business. And the Japan of that era was brutal.

But Japan is different now. And China looms over both. Best to settle this dispute so that it doesn't hinder military and political cooperation.

We Really Don't Need to Rebuild Sixth Fleet

Do we need to rebuild 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea? I don't think we need it. And just what fleet do we take these ships and subs from to rebuild it?

This author argues that we should rebuild Sixth Fleet:

Despite a dearth of resources, the current U.S. Sixth Fleet could likely protect merchant shipping from IS in an uncontested operating environment. Unfortunately, the Mediterranean is now a contested operating area. Russian intervention in Syria, which added air power to existing naval power, represents a clear challenge to America and NATO in the Mediterranean. Putin has reopened Russia’s naval base at Tartus, allowing Russian surface combatants to operate in the eastern Mediterranean indefinitely. Russian air cover could extend to that region with proper tanker support, giving the Russian navy a definitive combat advantage over the thinly stretched and unsupported U.S. Sixth Fleet. The refugee crisis compounds this situation, because it presents a dual humanitarian issue and security threat. Thus, after a hiatus of almost two decades, the Mediterranean is again a contested operational zone.

The reestablishment of the Sixth Fleet would bolster American capabilities in the region. It would send a clear message to the Russians and deny IS access to the inland sea. This means keeping an aircraft carrier strike group (CSG) on station in the Mediterranean. A CSG would provide U.S. commanders in Europe and the Mediterranean with the full power of the carrier air wing, along with its various destroyer, cruiser, and submarine escorts.

We need to rebuild 6th Fleet because of Russia and ISIL? We need a carrier battle group with nuclear attack submarines to handle the migrant crisis? Really? We're to be southern Europe's coast guard?

Even if we didn't have higher priority areas for our Navy, I wouldn't really care if we had a robust 6th Fleet. Yes, we had a large 6th Fleet in the Cold War. But in 1980, the Soviets had 3 cruisers, 40 destroyers and frigates, and ten attack submarines in that sea.

Russia has few enough warships in the Mediterranean (a cruiser and a few frigates) that our NATO allies can handle them and police the seas against ISIL and migrants.

I recently addressed the so-called rebirth of our virtual 6th Fleet and concluded we just don't need it:

We have NATO allies Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey--which also chokes off Russian reinforcements from the Black Sea through the Turkish straits--with decent navies (with about a 125 subs and principal surface combatants in 2012, plus smaller vessels and air support from ashore and afloat) that we can support. We don't need a significant 6th Fleet these days to control the Mediterranean Sea.

And while we can't afford a carrier battle group for 6th Fleet, I'll ask again in this context: why can't we deploy a carrier air wing to land bases?

Navy planes based at Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, or bases on the mainland of Europe could provide the air support for NATO naval operations without a carrier. There's little room to maneuver in the constricted Mediterranean Sea, anyway.

Sixth Fleet is still a virtual combat fleet, notwithstanding the four ballistic missile defense ships now assigned to the fleet. Those ships have a dedicated mission and they really aren't going to be available for routine missions.

But I don't think we really need to rebuild 6th Fleet. Our European NATO allies are mostly incapable of fighting out of area to support us. We should at least take advantage of those NATO capabilities in Europe's own back yard to make up for our smaller navy.

And even if we needed more ships there and a dedicated carrier battle group (when we can't maintain one at all times in CENTCOM), who do we take these assets from?

Sixth Fleet is basically a command ship to control ships transiting the Mediterranean Sea going to or from CENTCOM. So far that has sufficed. And now it has 4 anti-missile ships that oddly enough are being used for routine missions, too. Which seems odd to me.

If we need more US naval power in the Mediterranean to bolster our NATO allies, we'd need to send more from the Atlantic Fleet. But if our NATO allies can't handle the Russians, migrants, and the ISIL threat in their own backyard, why bother having allies at all?

The Long, Futile Horizontal March

China has decided to end their one-child policy that largely limited parents to one child. There were some exceptions for minorities all along, I believe. But this won't solve China's demographic problem.

How many little princes will get a brother or sister?

China will ease family planning restrictions to allow all couples to have two children after decades of a strict one-child policy, the ruling Communist Party said on Thursday, a move aimed at alleviating demographic strains on the economy.

But will this work, when an earlier loosening of the rule changed little?

Under the 2013 reform, couples in which one parent is an only child were allowed to have a second child.

Critics said the relaxation of rules was too little, too late to redress substantial negative effects of the one-child policy on the economy and society.

Many couples who were allowed to have another child under the 2013 rules decided not to, especially in the cities, citing the cost of bringing up children in an increasingly expensive country.

State media said in January that about 30,000 families in Beijing, just 6.7 percent of those eligible, applied to have a second child.

I was skeptical that lifting the limit would do any good:

Eliminating the one-child policy would not cause a dramatic rise in population growth, although it would help out fifteen years down the line. Societal changes would keep the birth rate from shooting up. Worldwide birth rates are dropping dramatically without one-child policies, after all.

So this will help China at the margins. It would have to. Some people will take advantage of the official permission if they didn't want to violate the law before (or find a way around it).

In the short term, China can't avoid the problems that the one-child policy has created (tip to Instapundit):

“China not only has dimmer economic prospects and a lot of grievances, but they now have a highly masculine young adult population,” Hudson said. “For the Chinese government, this is going to be a tiger ride for a long time.”

And the long-range demographic problem for China and their rise to global dominance is likely to continue.

The First Armed Drones

Should we need to interfere with Chinese naval traffic in the South or East China Seas; or if we need to bottle up Russia's Baltic fleet in order to liberate the Baltic NATO states; or if we need to blockade Russia's Black Sea fleet, this weapon will be of great use:

The United States has developed a new way to deliver naval mines; by attaching a JDAM glide and satellite navigation kit to naval mines designed to be dropped, like dumb bombs, into shallow water. The JDAM mine can glide 70 kilometers thus avoiding many enemy air defenses.

Mines are simple armed autonomous drones, really. Stationary, but still killer, robots.

But they have worked well for over a century. Hopefully we pay attention to clearing them and laying them.

Carjacker Assist

All those driver assist features on cars--leading to autonomous cars--had best have the capability of turning off "safety" features unless we want to enable carjacking.

I'm thinking in particular of automatic braking.

How long before armed carjackers simply step in front of a car--which causes the car to screech to a halt--and then demand the driver get out?

Kidnappings could be assisted in this way, too.

I'm just saying that if I had to run someone down to escape their attack on me, I'd like to be able to shut of that automatic braking feature.

Will the resulting lawsuit fail because the product worked as intended by the manufacturer or succeed because it worked as the criminal intended?

UPDATE: And let's not forget the Hot Babe Apocalypse that we are headed for with other driving technology.

So Today's Internet Really Can Be Attacked Physically

Russia is scoping out Internet cables on the sea bottom (tip to Instapundit):

So, the Russians are at it again, snooping around the undersea communications cables that connect the continents. These fiber optic cables carry 99 percent of all transoceanic digital communication—phone calls, emails, web pages, you name it. They’re the reason you can Skype your colleague in Sydney or text with your friend in Mumbai. They’re essential infrastructure for the global economy. It’s no wonder, as The New York Times reported this week, that US military officials are not at all comfortable with Russian subs and spy ships “aggressively operating” in their vicinity.

Eight years ago, I wondered if all the focus on cyber-warfare didn't slight the real damage that physically attacking the Internet could achieve:

[If] I was in charge of the plans to take down the Internet because the enemy could exploit it more than I can, I'd knock out those thirteen critical computer sites--the chokepoints of the Internet--with regular ol' missiles rather than worry about training legions of hackers to overwhelm them with cyber-bombs.

When facing such a system as we have now that relies on thirteen crucial computer sites, using real bombs is the real way to knock out the Internet. People are getting so wound up in exploiting cyber-warfare that they forget that physical infrastructure is best destroyed by high explosives and not by hacking into the system and tricking the refrigerator and toaster to overheat and burn the place down.

I know that sounds so obsolete in our new age, but physical computers blow up real good.

After looking around and reading dismissals of the very concept of physically attacking the Internet, I partially backtracked on my worry that the Internet is vulnerable to physical attack:

The experts seem to think the Internet can't be sufficiently attacked physically to knock it down. Yet their confidence seems based on assuming that no attackers could attack enough of the Internet's physical infrastructure to knock it down. Am I missing something (and I certainly could be--I'm a history major with a computer and not a computer major who knows history), or is this logic a bit circular?

I'm not ready to take back my climb down on vulnerability. I think my brief research indicates the Internet is not as vulnerable as I thought. Still, the search for efficiency has created vulnerabilities that have only been counter-acted by the massive growth of the whole which has created redundancies from sheer size, it seems.

But I'm not convinced the Internet is as robust as it needs to be. And if I was an enemy of America, I still think I'd devote more attention to physically attacking the Internet in time of war rather than trying to hack the system down.

Yet the Internet founded on redundancy for survival in a nuclear war has been transformed into a major commercial infrastructure where efficiency is more valued than redundancy, no?

At the very least, the ocean-crossing links in the Internet are vulnerable to physical attack. And as the Internet evolves for commercial purposes, I imagine it will be even more vulnerable to attack in more ways. I wonder if those 13 critical computer sites I noted in 2007 are more or less important now?

The Forever Rule

We're over 6 years into our ten-year rule that says we won't need to fight a major war. We're setting future Army strength at a level that basically assumes the ten-year rule never ends.

When we look around the world today, do we really assume that the tides of war are receding all around us for good?

Is it really time to slash the Army to dangerously low levels?

It is one thing for President Obama to try to avoid more Mideast quagmires on his watch. It is quite another to direct the Army not to be ready for the plausible range of missions that history, as well as ongoing trends in demographics and technology and global politics, counsels us to anticipate. In our future defense planning, we should remember the old Bolshevik saw: You may not have an interest in war, but war may have an interest in you.

We are already 6-1/2 years into our new ten-year rule medium-term rule that says we don't need to worry about war in the medium term:

We've just instituted the Medium Term Rule on our defense spending. The problems that will flow from this plan won't show themselves in the near term. We can coast on our past progress in building the best military in the world. But have no doubt that our military strength will erode, and this means we are accepting risks in case we have to fight a conventional war in the medium term despite our assumption that we can still win such a war.

We won't cancel the Medium Term Rule until it's too late to do any good.

But rising chaos on the ground hasn't led us to abandon that assumption by now? Really? We've gone from worrying about fighting endless wars to assuming endless peace?

Remember this administration when we have to go to war with the Army we have and not the Army we wish we had when ground war becomes very interested in us. You get what you pay for--or don't pay for.

Dust Off Those Old Cold War Deterrence Studies

The administration's plan for Iran's nuclear ambitions is to contain it for 10-15 years and then hope for the best. Assuming Iran actually abides by the agreement for the full period and does not go nuclear until after the agreement expires, can Israel deter Iran from using nuclear weapons against the "one-bomb" state as the Iranians have described it?

Does Iran's anti-Semitism make deterrence impossible?

Now, assume, reasonably, that Iran’s pursuit of a potentially genocidal weapon will not be seriously impeded by parchment barriers such as the recent nuclear agreement. And assume, prudently, that the Iranian regime means what it says about Jews and their “Zionist entity.”

Then apply Snyder’s warning: Ideas have consequences. The idea of anti-Semitism is uniquely durable and remarkably multiform. It can express a mentality that is disconnected, as in Hitler’s case, from calculations of national interest.

Hence an anti-Semitic regime can be impervious to the logic of deterrence. Much, including Israel’s calculation of what military measures are necessary for its safety, depends on the nature of Iran’s anti-Semitism.

Of course, I think it is possible to take a stab at measuring what might deter Iran from striking Israel on the assumption that anti-Semitism does not trump all else:

Iran endured a pounding in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War (the First Gulf War, as I prefer to call it). Iran lost between 300,000 and 500,000 to kill half as many Iraqis. Let's call it 400,000 dead Iranians to kill 200,000 Iraqis. With a wartime population averaging about 40 million, Iran endured the loss of 1% of their population to kill Iraqis.

So, how much more do Iranians hate Jews than fellow Moslems--albeit Arab Moslems? Twice as much? Ten times as much? Consider that Iran waged war on Iraq after they ejected the Iraqis from Iranian territory in 1982 in order to--as they claimed--get to Jerusalem to kill Israelis. So Iran lost 1% of their population just to get at the real enemy--Israel--they really wanted to fight but for that inconvenient Saddam between them. Then add in the 2% of population losses as the price of killing Jews in large numbers that might wreck Israel.

If you conservatively assume Iranians hate Jews only twice as much as they hate Arabs, you'd have to say that Iran would easily be willing to lose 3% of their population--2.1 million people--to nuke a single Israeli city if they believe Israel truly is a "one-nuke country." Maybe Iran is deterred, based on how many Iranians could die in a counter-strike. But maybe not.

In making that calculation I assumed Israel has no more than 100 nuclear warheads and that Israel could probably only afford to use 25 of them on Iran because a crippled Israel would still need to deter the Arab world from invading to take advantage of the strike by Iran (with a thank you to Israel for taking down Iran quickly forgotten).

I further assume that Israel could inflict 2.5 million deaths on Iran in a nuclear counter-strike, or about 3.3% of Iran's population.

So if anti-Semitism doesn't trump all else, and if my assumptions are correct, maybe Iran can be deterred from striking Israel.

Maybe. Is Israel comforted by the notion that maybe they can deter Iran?

So We Know Something New

It has perplexed me that Hillary Clinton could have had a private email account during her tenure as Secretary of State, yet that fact did not come out until long after she left the government--even though requests for emails had been made by Congress. How, I wondered, could the White House not know that Secretary Clinton was using less-secure private email on her own server?

Now we know that the White House knew that odd fact but did nothing about it:

The White House will not allow the release of emails exchanged between President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from when she was secretary of state, a senior administration official said on Friday.

The emails may be withheld until after Obama leaves office under the Presidential Records Act, according to the White House, which governs public access to the president's records.

While the contents of the emails might or might not be of interest, their very existence tells us that the White House knew about the private email and yet did nothing to rein in their rogue cabinet member.