Hubris

China under Xi has a "China Dream" objective that seeks to make China the dominant power, restoring China to its rightful position in their view. The problem is that China's rise has been and continues to be reliant on good relations with America for trade and technology:

Far from a rejuvenated hegemon poised to reshape the global economy, Xi’s China has been exposed as a giant with feet of clay.

The geostrategic implications are difficult to exaggerate. In the 40 years since Deng Xiaoping began to lead China out of the Maoist dark ages, the country has achieved unprecedented economic growth and development. But that progress would have been impossible – or, at least, much slower – were it not for China’s policy of maintaining a cooperative relationship with the US. Xi has upended that policy during his tenure, not least with his increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea.

These developments point to a straightforward conclusion: China is headed in the wrong direction. This is not lost on China’s elites, whose frustration is palpable – and rising.

Yet, despite rumors of pushback against his power by retired elderly leaders, Xi is unlikely to be overthrown.

I don't see such resistance to Xi in such a huge country as a sign that Xi doesn't effectively control China's governing apparatus. The mountains are high and the emperor is far--even with virtual closeness using Dystopian State 2.0 technology. So there is bound to be some slippage.

And it has long been my position that there is no need to panic over China's rise given their problems and our strengths. Maybe they pass us by. But maybe not and maybe not for good.

But my biggest worry is that Chinese nationalists proud of how far they've come from their weakness that made China a punching bag for distant Western powers (and Japan), will dangerously overstate how strong China really is:

China is a danger because their chest is swelling over their regained military stature. And while their actual power will help decide the outcome of a war, their beliefs about their power will help decide whether they start a war.

I liken it to new soldiers just out of boot camp. You enter probably out of shape and a pure civilian. You endure and come out part of the mean green fighting machine, with new muscles and the new skills of killing planted in you. You think you are a bad-ass SEAL Team 6-level killing machine in your still-crisp BDUs (or whatever they are called now).

But you are not a killing machine. You aren't even a cog in the killing machine. You are just the first rough stamping of a cog that will eventually be sanded and polished into a part of the killing machine. I remember our drill sergeants telling us that we need to avoid being full of ourselves when we leave basic training and move on to a new base or go back on the block. We are stronger than when we arrived. Do not mistake that for being stronger than other people, they warned. If we do, we'll get our butts kicked.

China has gotten out of world power basic training. Let's hope they don't throw a punch before they realize how much farther that they need to go to be actually powerful.

Even better, maybe China will come to realize how much advantage they have gained from tying in to the America-designed system and will understand they should be a status quo power lest they kill the goose that lays the Golden eggs for China.

Surely, that level of integration and prosperity should be the core interest of China, no?

I've read that Chinese economists are well aware of the economic problems that could derail China's rise; while Chinese foreign policy and military types tend to think China has no economic problems.

Maybe American foreign policy for China should include hosting lots of conferences that bring Chinese economists together with Chinese foreign policy and military leaders.

North Korea Will Sing Like a Canary

Iran is warning North Korea not to deal with America:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told North Korea's foreign minister that the United States cannot be trusted, Tehran's state media said, as the United States seeks a deal to rein in the North's nuclear and missile programs.

Iran is a warning to North Korea--not to try to swindle America with a bad deal. If it seems too good to be true, as the Iran deal was for Iran, don't even bother signing. Because it will be a short-term win only, and we will walk away.

And I assume any deal with North Korea over their nukes includes revealing research and supply links to Iran regarding nukes and missiles.

So Iran does not want North Korea to come to an agreement with America. Yet North Korea may fear Iran will, despite their hostile talk, cut a deal first to avoid sanctions.

The prisoner's dilemma sucks for them, Iran may find out.

Europawehr

Germany wants Europeans to do the jobs Germans won't do in uniform.

Germany to its credit wants to add troops to its painfully inadequate military (but spending better increase unless they want even more of their military to be useless during war). But recruiting foreigners whose countries are also fielding tiny militaries just robs Peter to pay Paul doesn't it?

The German military, the Bundeswehr, had 21,000 unfilled positions in 2017, and the service is now looking beyond its borders to fill its ranks.

A Defense Ministry report in late 2016 proposed recruiting from other EU countries, and the ministry confirmed in late July that it was seriously considering doing so.

Remember, the already small German army has already incorporated 4 brigades of NATO allies into their poorly manned and sustained army, which seems to me just reduces the effectiveness of the 4 foreign brigades that have been integrated into the German army.

So now Germany wants to poach recruits from other European states that probably spend more than Germany's low percent of GDP on their military?

In 2019 the Germans say they will be ready to command the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (the name cracks me up for the term inflation, although I fear NATO adds adjectives as a substitute for actual readiness. What's next, the "Absolutely Very High Readiness Joint Task Force"?). Well, as long as no German units are part of it, maybe VHRJTF will be very highly ready.

Oh, and from that first article linked there is this evergreen excuse for a poor military:

The Bundeswehr still struggles with its Nazi history.

First of all, as always, I'm ready with the clue bat:

I keep reading that the Germans hate their militaristic past so much that they don't want to fight.

Let's try applying the clue bat to Germany's collective skull on this issue.

Conquering and setting up death camps under the shield of a powerful military? That's bad. By all means, don't do that.

Having a military capable of fighting death cult enemies or stopping the Russians from moving west? Well, that's a good thing. Try doing that.

Second, do the Germans realize that their Nazi history included enlisting a lot of Europeans into SS formations to fight for Germany?

During World War II, the Waffen-SS recruited significant numbers of non-Germans, both as volunteers and conscripts. In total some 500,000 non-Germans and ethnic Germans from outside Germany, mostly from German-occupied Europe, were recruited between 1940 and 1945.

Why isn't getting foreign units and individual volunteers a sensitive issue for Germans to "struggle" with?

Did two world wars and a Cold War have no effect? Is Germany on our side?

Germany was never a high spender, but they fielded the best mechanized force in NATO in the Cold War (very late, America may have passed them by). What the Hell happened to them?

What Do We Do About Iran? (Okay, It's Really More Some Random Ranting)

Sure, striking Iran's nuclear facilities would be hard because Iran violates rules of war to put  nuclear targets near sensitive civilian areas; and invading and occupying Iran would be too difficult to carry out.

Invading would be easy as the Iranians seemingly admit, but pacifying a large country like Iran would take more troops than we have available even if most Iranians would be happy America marches in to overthrow the mullahs. So I'm not going to address the article on those merits. I'm confused however about this:

Iran’s places are also of significant concern in regard to Iran’s irregular and unconventional strategy to defend itself. This strategic combination of physical geography (places) and strategy (things) attempts to leverage Iran’s geography and its control over it in a mosaic defense. This includes the ability to project force to close the Straits of Hormuz and, as retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey pointed out in 2012, potentially sink a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, as well as to pull as much of the Iranian population as possible out of the cities and into the mountains in order to create civilian cadres to conduct a strategy that incorporates asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare against the United States. Iran’s strategy is one of attrition that seeks to leverage the human geography of Iran to bog the US military down and inflict high casualties as quickly as possible in order to destroy support for the war in the United States and severely damage the morale of the troops fighting it on the ground. [emphasis added]

If Iran's strategy is to wear out the invader, that pretty much assumes Iran can't stop an American invasion.

But again, I don't think America has the horses to pacify Iran. Even a largely friendly population has to be protected from insurgents and terrorists which means you have the 2% of population rule (yes, it is a guideline more than a rule but it is a good starting point) for occupying troop strength. And while in time the locals can pick up the slack, in the short run it has to be American or allied forces going in who provide the numbers.

At about 80 million people, that means 1.6 million troops. With ideally 3.2 million more troops for rotating the occupation force.

With ideally no other potential war that could require troops to deal with for the duration of the occupation.

Certainly we could focus on key territory only rather than the entire country, and expand control out to the rest of the country as local forces are raised. But this is still a big country to occupy.

So yeah, I'm not in favor of that. Although I suspect that the idea that America is uniquely vulnerable to casualties is questionable given enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan hoped to do the same to us and failed (indeed, North Vietnam tried to do that and failed--rescued by Congress which then abandoned South Vietnam). Iran has its own demographic problem that makes me doubt whether its reputation from the Iran-Iraq War for sustaining casualties is any more valid than Russia's reputation based on the carnage of World War II.

Also, while I won't question the series of problems highlighted by the article that the American military has, the notion that this cripples our military is ludicrous. We just have to be better than our enemy to win (although fixing the noted problems reduces the chance of losing as well as reducing casualties and time needed to win), and if we don't have that at our level of spending (discounting our unique logistical tail necessary to fight far from home), we have serious problems.

Remember, Saddam's at best adequate Iraqi military did beat Iran on points in the Iran-Iraq War when Iran's military power was greater.

But while those are interesting questions, I'm digressing.

My questions are about sinking carriers and evacuating cities for mountain-based insurgency.

On the carriers, WHY ON EARTH DO WE PUT CARRIERS IN THE PERSIAN GULF!? Just stop that. It's insane. Keep our carriers far from simple weapons on or near the shore and use our aircraft's range to take the fight to Iran, eh?

But the Iranian plan to evacuate cities and put people into the mountains to wage an insurgency is just puzzling beyond measure.



With all the hype about how megacities are so dangerous that we must refocus the Army on fighting in them, why would Iran evacuate their cities (as much of the Iranian population as possible!) where they have food, eyes and ears, and shelter to go off into the alien mountains where they'll starve or freeze and be farther from targets they may want to strike?

Although you know my views on megacity hype.

And if we have to fight in cities, please define controlling a city as the militarily useful part.

Okay, I'm done. The original article is basically interesting, don't get me wrong.

The Final Act in Syria?

Assad looks like he is winning the multi-war. Unless something changes that trend will continue.

There is no "mission accomplished" banner, but Assad sees light at the end of the tunnel:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told his troops on Wednesday they were close to winning the country's seven-year civil war after inflicting a succession of defeats on rebels.

Early last year, government forces held just 17 percent of national territory but a series of blistering offensives has since forced the rebels out of many of their strongholds, putting Assad's government in control of nearly two-thirds of the country.

But trends can change. When the rebellion began it looked so bad for Assad that President Obama felt confident in jumping to the head of the parade to tell Assad he should step down--without doing anything substantial to push Assad out. Assad looked doomed--if the rebels were backed adequately.

But the chemical weapons deal in 2013 checked that momentum and kept Assad going.

Even after that and despite the fragmentation of the rebels, rise of jihadis (encouraged by Assad to make him seem like a good alternative), and failure of America to adequately build up non-jihadi rebels, by early 2015 it again looked like Assad was losing ground and hope.

But Russian-Iranian intervention in the latter half of 2015 reversed that losing trend; while the American-led war on ISIL in Syria finally cracked that potent opposition to Assad. Assad again gained the edge.

The biggest pockets of territory not controlled by Assad are not threats to him.

Turkey won't let the Idlib rebels--if those rebels had offensive capabilities--threaten Assad at the price of losing their buffer zone. Whether Assad even lets Turkey keep their buffer is the more likely question.

And the Kurds in the northeast and east have no interest in moving beyond their region to threaten Assad. The question is how long will it be before Syria's government turns on them.

The civil war isn't over as long as those regions are outside of Assad's control.

And the end of the rebel control of territory in the rest of Syria doesn't rule out insurgency and terrorism in those regions now occupied by pro-Assad forces. The role of Iran and Hezbollah might encourage that resistance to foreign occupiers. Or could Iran find the financial cost of holding their gains in Syria too much to continue that support?

In addition, the victory wrecked Syria with massive death tolls, displacement, and economic damage. The only victory is Assad's survival. Will Assad's supporters be eager to back him when the alternative of jihadi victory is gone?

Can Assad reassert central control over even his western territories?

And then you have the possibility of Syria as a battleground for an Israeli-Iranian war.

The trends are good for Assad right now. But trends, as they have in the past during this war, could change again. Will they?

All I know for sure is that I'm so happy America didn't "further militarize" the conflict in Syria back in early 2012 about half a million deaths ago. Whew!

[Pre-publication addition: Strategypage on Syria and Iran, including Idlib. And things about Turkey.]

Stop the Light Tank Madness!

No, active protection systems (APS) are not like a "force field" and they will not replace heavy, bulky, passive armor. There are many ways to defeat APS if the vehicle is lightly protected.

This is a necessary layer to protection but the hype is nonsense:

Astonishingly futuristic new tech creates a seemingly invisible, impenetrable, protective bubble around military armored vehicles making enemy attempts to fire at U.S. tanks pretty pointless – those rounds won’t hit the tank, they’ll explode mid-air. ...

APS gives soldiers massively better protection, but without adding the weight of additional armor slowing down the vehicles’ speed and maneuverability.

The implication is that APS can replace traditional armor, making the protected vehicles faster and more maneuverable because they are light.

But APS isn't a force field. It needs an ammunition supply. Ammo that runs out.

As I noted eleven years ago, APS cannot replace armor because there is more than one way to skin a cat. What if we replace armor with APS?

With bulky passive armor, you can just take the hit and keep going. Even with just some armor, you can afford to take some smaller weapon hits and so minimize the number of times you have to fire off the APS with friendlies or civilians nearby to nail the incoming stuff that can kill you.

So we are probably going to have vehicles that can take heavy machine gun fire passively and knock down incoming HEAT rounds from missiles and RPGs and high velocity tank shells.

The problem is, what if an enemy fires something too heavy to be stopped by the passive armor yet too numerous to be stopped by limited APS capacity?

What if the enemy uses 30mm chain guns firing high velocity rounds to spray the FCS with penetrating ammo? With no heavy Abrams-like armor to defeat, why would an enemy bother with 125mm cannons?

Heck, why couldn't you use a carrier round for the big cannons that detects the target as the round approaches and releases dozens of submunitions outside the range of the APS that blanket the FCS and overwhelm the APS while still packing a punch to penetrate the thin legacy armor?

Or maybe enemy infantry just fires RPGs in volleys.

Or perhaps the enemy just goes for mission kills by using weapons that only aim to shred the tracks or wheels, or knock out the vehicle's sensors, defanging the target for the duration of the battle.

I'm seriously worried about the survivability of light vehicles against enemy heavy armor equipped with APS, too.

APS is a vital new layer of defense but it does not replace heavy traditional armor. So just stop this nonsense that gave us the Future Combat Systems (FCS) at the turn of the century (see pp. 28-33).

Come back to me when we have an actual force field.

UPDATE: We are updating 135 Abrams tanks to the latest standard per year. That's enough to upgrade 1.5 heavy brigades per year. We have 10 active and 5 National Guard heavy brigades.

This is higher than before but is not major production. Clearly, a lot of our heavy brigades won't have the latest Abrams for quite some time. Let alone giving the Army the option of giving infantry brigades the latest Abrams, if the Army chooses to do so.

Luck Has Nothing To Do With It

A scary outline of American decline is set forth, and the author asks:

So what in this description sounds so implausible? Is it that you think productivity growth will come in at 3 percent? That it will all be worth it because advances in medicine will allow us to stick around in decent form until age 135? That technological breakthroughs will extend the reach of the U.S. military further yet? That the Mars colony will be awesome?

Just how lucky are you feeling?

Given that we keep being told we will be supplanted by another rising power and haven't yet, I think the past is a pretty good track record for a bit more optimism.

The major flaw with predictions like that is that they seem to assume that no other country that competes with us will falter or slow down with their own problems. As Kipling wrote:

Man cannot tell but Allah knows

How much the other side is hurt.

Even if every glaring problem the author assumes for America comes true, don't assume our competition has no problems to overcome just because we don't see them.

Competition involves comparing America to other countries. That's the implausibility of the prediction of America's decline and fall. Luck has nothing to do with it.

The Mobility Option for AFRICOM

I've written that with AFRICOM a lower priority than other theaters--which is more pronounced with a focus on great power competition--it can't expect consistent or significant Navy support. So it should build its own navy with The AFRICOM Queen as a power projection platform. It will be needed even more now.

AFRICOM is losing assets to other theaters with higher priority:

The Pentagon is mulling plans to wind down special operations missions on the African continent and reassign troops to other, more in-demand regions.

The plans, submitted by a top U.S. military commander, align with the Trump administration’s strategy to focus on near-peer threats from countries like China and Russia.

With fewer special forces on the ground, potentially, it will be more important to have mobility to move the special forces and other forces around the vast continent, and gain an element of surprise.

These special forces would reinforce non-special forces, likely security assistance brigade (SAB) forces training host nation troops, for specific missions.

Certainly, the special forces can be flown around between land air bases. But there is still sensitivity to American forces on the continent in any "permanent" fashion.

A mobile force at sea in modularized auxiliary cruisers capable of strike, air, infantry, and special forces operations would be a great help in mobility and the element of surprise--and keeping the footprint in Africa as small as possible.

Fighting in a City isn't the Same as Fighting for the City

Urban warfare is all the rage these days.Surely you've heard of "megacities." Hell, maybe "ultra megacities" are a thing by now. After urban insurgencies in Iraq and the battles for ISIL-held cities in Syria and Iraq, culminating in the long campaign to liberate the large city of Mosul, the Army seems to want to fight in cities more than it should. The Army should certainly be prepared to fight in cities (especially on defense)--but it should be careful what it fights for in cities.

As a general idea, there is nothing wrong with being aware of the need to fight in cities:

Today, over 50 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2050, two out of every three humans on the planet will reside in a city. The U.S. military will continue to be asked to conduct a full range of operations in major cities — whether it is assisting in offensive operations against insurgents like ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa, peace-keeping operations in Sarajevo and Mogadishu; or humanitarian aid operations in Port-au- Prince, Haiti, or Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. It is not a matter of if, but when again, we will send Army units to conduct missions among the populations of dense urban areas.

Army senior leaders have made it clear that the Army will begin preparing for operations in dense urban areas. The chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Mark Milley, has said, "In the future, I can say with very high degrees of confidence, the American Army is probably going to be fighting in urban areas,” and with readiness as his number one priority, Milley believes the Army “need[s] to man, organize, train and equip the force for operations in urban areas, highly dense urban areas.”

I do not believe that the Army needs to man, organize, train, and equip the Army for offensive combat operations in dense urban areas as if city fights are fun and easy if we prepare.

And this gets really problematic:

[TRADOC commander] Townsend not only believes the enemy will continue to pull the U.S. into dense urban areas in the hopes of gaining an advantage over American forces, but also that “we’re going to see battle in megacities and there’s little way to avoid it.”

Enemies will try to pull American troops into cities because it provides them an advantage over American troops with our training and firepower that is partly nullified by the ease of dying in place and taking as many down with them as they can. And thinking we can man, organize, train, and equip" the Army to flip that advantage to our side is futile. And of course we can avoid it--by knowing what we need to fight for.

The Army should be able to fight in cities. Especially on defense to wreck attacking enemy armies. Although I'd like it if the Marines take that offensive role on as a core competency.

But whoever fights in cities must not make the mistake of thinking that fighting in cities means you fight to control the entire city.

In the Iraq War, we focused on a population-centric strategy to deny the enemy sanctuaries for terrorism and insurgency. We had to control the entire city.

Against ISIL, the Syrians and Iraqis had incentive to liberate their cities. We had no such incentive to bleed to control those cities and simply helped our allies free their own people and territory.

We must not think that because of those city-clearing campaigns that controlling enemy-held cities is the normal thing to do--especially in conventional war. Unless we are trying to liberate one of our own cities, why do we need to capture an entire enemy-held city? Unless it is the capital of a highly centralized state whose capture can reasonably be said to represent the final objective of winning the war, why do it?

If our purpose is to defeat the enemy army, I'd rather bypass an enemy force holed up in a city and let them wither on the vine. Treat the cities the way we treated Japanese-held fortresses in the Pacific during our island-hopping campaign in World War II.

If we do that, we just need to conduct limited military operations in the city to allow our forces to bypass the city. If a city has rivers or restricted terrain running through or near it, we may just need to gain control of one side of a river or otherwise control the lines of communication in or out of the city in that direction.

Maybe operations within the city just need to take out offensive weapons and supply depots to defang an enemy offensive threat, including destroying lines of communication and supply leading out of the city in directions we don't anticipate needing but which the enemy could use.

Maybe operations just need to seize key terrain and facilities like a road/rail line going through the city, an airport, port facilities, or power or water stations.

And certainly we need officers who understand how to fight in large cities and we need to equip and train combat engineers to help infantry (given pre-operation training in city fighting) move and fight through urban terrain when needed.

Indeed, given that even fighting across open terrain will include lots of smaller urban areas, American troops need the ability to fight in urban areas just to continue an advance across so-called open terrain.

But don't let that reality suck us into prolonged and bloody combat to take megacities when we may or may not need to control the entire city.

We need to get back to the idea of "securing" a city as meaning making it secured enough to continue offensive military operations in pursuit of the objective--not that the city is full controlled, pacified, and functioning. We don't need officers who understand how a city works enough to just crush the latest version of SimCity. We need officers who understand how much of a city we need to control to continue the campaign.

(Funny enough, I ran across a very similar post I had written early in the year. I may be wrong but you can't say I'm not consistent!)

Commiczars

Putin wants to shore up Russian army patriotism:

Vladimir Putin has created a new directorate inside the Russian army to promote patriotism, evoking memories of a Soviet practice that once saw soldiers taught the precepts of Marxism and Leninism by political commissars.

The move, approved by Putin in a presidential decree published on Monday, will affect Russia's around 1 million active military service people and appears designed to ensure soldiers' loyalty at a time when Moscow is locked in a geopolitical standoff with the West.

I'm sure that in the definitions section, "patriotism" is defined as loyalty to Putin. Commissars in the Soviet system enforced army loyalty to the communist party, which the top dog controlled. There will be no such nuanced indirect effort this time.

Given the problem Putin has in sending anybody but seconded "volunteers" and mercenaries rather than Russian army units to his wars in Syria and Ukraine where their deaths would prompt outrage at home, I imagine he'd like an army a little more willing to go the extra mile. For patriotism, of course.

It's been a long time since the Great Patriotic War when Russians were willing to endure 30 million casualties to win a war.

Add this to the creation of a personally loyal second army, the National Guard, and I think we can safely say that Putin has no intention of ever retiring.

And if this loyalty effort works, Putin could start a war of conquest over an easy target to stay in power if he thinks that is his best alternative.

If this is the idea, I'd say the properly "patriotic" army invades ... oh, to take a name at random, Belarus ... to take it and then Putin's National Guard pacifies the people.

The Continuing Tale of How Russia is Effing Up Royally!

Russia is building up military forces on islands Japan lost to Russia in the waning days of World War II. I doubt that Japan is the real target of those weapons. But the stench of stupidity lingers.

Well sure, Japan would like the islands back:

Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said on Tuesday that Tokyo had asked Russia to reduce its military activity on a disputed island chain in the Pacific after Moscow beefed up its forces there in response to what it sees as a potential threat.

Japan is unlikely to be a threat to Russia despite the lack of a peace treaty that formally ended World War II between them because of the island issue.

But even if the Japanese agreed to pay a good price for the islands, given that Russia would probably like the Sea of Okhotsk to be a defended SSBN bastion to have a survivable nuclear deterrent, I doubt Russia would give up the islands and open a gaping hole in that barrier.

And really, that region facing Japan (and America) will serve as a rear area to support Russian forces to the west freed to focus on China.

Russia claims to worry about Japan when it is really worried about China.

And all this while Russia claims that NATO is a threat when it is really China that poses a threat.

All Russia manages to achieve with this deception is a stronger China with (for now) dormant claims on large portions of Russia's Far East, an awakened and alarmed NATO, and an awakened and alarmed Japan (although China and North Korea played the major roles in that).

Will nobody in Russia tell Putin he's effing things up royally?

#WhyRussiaCan'tHaveNiceThings

Stop Pretending Abrams Tanks Aren't an Existing Asset

The Russians are heavying up their already relatively heavy airborne forces. This should be a lesson for the Army.

Russian paratroopers will get T-72s, among other improvements:

The Russian airborne troops (VDV) are forming three tank battalions, as well as units equipped with electronic warfare (EW) systems and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), this year, VDV commander-in-chief Colonel General Andrei Serdyukov has said.

The Russians are also expanding recon companies into battalions.

Earlier this year, in "Preparing for a Heavier Fight: Look to Abrams Tanks to Support the Infantry," Army Magazine, April 2018 (sorry, not online, but oh, here it is, and I mention it here in my post worrying about survivable tank-killing power), I argued that American infantry units that might have to face enemy mechanized forces should be reinforced with Abrams tanks (or combined arms formations) that we have tons of in storage, rather than building a new light tank-type vehicle for them.

Such a light vehicle is a niche capability for airborne forces in airmobile forcible entry operations. Light armor would be too weak for conventional combat and would ignore Russian practice and even American Army experience in World War II of attaching tank and tank destroyer battalions to American motorized infantry divisions.

And no, active protection systems won't make a light tank as protected as a heavy tank.

And now we see that Russian airborne forces that already have the light armor, see the need for heavier actual tanks for conventional combat.

The Army shifted forces from heavy to light in response to counter-insurgency fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. A shift back is evident already, but adding armored battalions or combined arms task forces (or just companies or combined arms teams)  to the various infantry units that might go into combat is a good interim step.

UPDATE: We are updating 135 Abrams tanks to the latest standard per year. That's enough to upgrade 1.5 heavy brigades per year. We have 10 active and 5 National Guard heavy brigades.

This is higher than before but is not major production. Clearly, a lot of our heavy brigades won't have the latest Abrams for quite some time. Let alone giving the Army the option of giving infantry brigades the latest Abrams, if the Army chooses to do so.

How Afghanistan Could End

This author has a better view of the Afghan security forces than others (who are less optimistic about the mission), and thinks we've largely achieved our objectives; but believes that stalemate is the natural state given capabilities and interests of each side. He brings up an end state that I've advocated since at least the beginning of the Obama administration before the president ordered two surges.

This makes sense to me:

The [Afghanistan] insurgency continues to have some support outside hard core Taliban strongholds because the central government simply cannot deliver expected basic governmental services outside main urban areas due to poor transportation and communications networks. Iraq’s government can manage a highly centralized system because it has a relatively mature transportation and communications infrastructure; but even Iraq is challenged in insurgency situations. The key to long term success in Afghanistan is providing good governance at the provincial and local levels, and this can only be accomplished by decentralization.

This fits well with my hopes for the surge:

The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well, will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.

And we stick around this time, unlike after the Soviets left Afghanistan when we ignored the place, for a generation or two to see if we can move Afghanistan into the 19th century (hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves).

Hopefully our military surge recedes by the end of 2011 and we can get down to a single combat brigade plus air power that function as a fire brigade and a hammer for the central government should a local difficulty exceed Afghan military capabilities.

And while contractors can fill roles in maintenance, I would not privatize the war effort in an effort to get American troops out of Afghanistan.

While the people of Afghanistan may eventually adapt to the small pressures of the nation-state system that recognizes a government in Kabul as the formal national government, thus far the large pressures of being the place other empires didn't expand into will make "Afghanistan" a geographic rather than political term.

It took a long time (and a bloody civil war) for Americans to think of the United States rather than these united States. I don't think we should rush the process when our main goal is to prevent terrorists from using the territory as a sanctuary to strike America.

Send Russia the Bill

Ukraine will unleash the lawyers on Russia:

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ordered the creation of a body to prepare a lawsuit against Russia for damages caused by separatists whom Moscow supports in the Donbas region and for its illegal annexation of the Crimea Peninsula.

Early on in the war, I figured Ukraine should send in the lawyers by charging Russia rent for their illegal occupation of Ukrainian territory. That had to be a part of a strategy that puts Russia's gleaming Battlestar Crimea at risk, but sending in the lawyers should be an asymmetric form of warfare on Russia.

The Taiwan Question is Really the China Question

A free Taiwan is absolutely an issue of vital importance for America rather than being an "internal" matter for China that is none of our business:

Taiwan helps bottle up the Chinese fleet and air force in China’s peripheral waters—Adm. Ernest King is reputed to have called the island “the cork in the bottle”—and anchors Japan’s defense in the south. There are Japanese islands south of Taipei, and on a clear day one can see Taiwan’s mountains from Japanese soil. Because Japan is America’s “cornerstone ally” in Asia, defending Taiwan is, in a real sense, defending America.

I've long noted how important Taiwan is to China for power projection into the Pacific.

Every year, China's improvements in their blue water navy and long-range air and missile power make controlling Taiwan more important for China.

I'd be happier if Taiwan spent more on money as if their freedom depended on it. Because it does, given that China's Dystopian State 2.0 will smother Taiwan if China takes control.

And I'll add that as long as Taiwan doesn't have a sense of urgency in defending their free island--including spending much more money on defense, America has to hedge its bets in arming Taiwan because we don't want advanced technology to fall into Chinese hands if China invades and wins the war.

UPDATE: A warning for Taiwan:

As many as 6,000 residents of the mostly Uyghur-populated township of Haniqatam in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have been held in political “re-education camps” for as long as two years, according to a local official.

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in political re-education camps throughout the XUAR, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

And that's just one township.

Dystopian State 2.0 isn't just high-tech social media control and surveillance. It involve old-fashioned imprisonment and indoctrination for those who don't get the hint from the social suitability score issues.

Taiwanese under Chinese control will get the same treatment.

Indeed, as I've written before, if I was an evil Chinese autocrat, upon the conquest of Taiwan I'd ship in Han colonists to Taiwan and send Taiwanese troublemakers to Xinjiang and Tibet, in a two-for-one measure that allows locals to hate the alien colonists and drive those Taiwanese to back China just to survive the local hostility.

UPDATE: Abandoning Taiwan is no way to defend ourselves against a rising and increasingly hostile China.

Although I don't think our ambassador to Iraq greenlighted Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. I think she was talking about a specific oil field dispute between Iraq and Kuwait.

Oh Good Grief, Stop the NATO Expansion Hand Wringing

Enlargement is not making NATO weaker and more prone to risk.

In general, it almost amuses me that there are analysts who say that of course Russia wants buffer states in the west to put more distance between them and potential invaders. We should understand their desire. Yet none of them ever says that it is a good idea for NATO to want a buffer in the east.

And while there are analysts who say that NATO is stretching itself out by expansion; none of them say Russia's desire to expand a buffer zone west risks stretching out Russian defense capabilities.

With Macedonia on the path to joining NATO, no doubt their military is small. But they will join a NATO committed to the 2% defense spending goal. So they will get better.

And their territory will provide some depth to Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece from Russian threats from the Aegean and Black Seas. Further, by joining NATO Macedonia will not be able to allow a non-NATO state to have a base in their territory.

And rather than being persuasive, the author's historical examples of how a small state might entangle America in a war with Russia is farcically wrong. Neither the American participation in the European-instigated Libya War of 2011 nor the German involvement in the Austro-Hungarian crisis with Serbia had anything to do with America or Germany, respectively, responding to a military threat that committed the country to helping an ally.

As long as America refuses to embark on an offensive war under Responsibility to Protect doctrine because Macedonia lobbies for a war against Russia; and refuses to give Macedonia a "blank check" to challenge Russia over some dispute, we won't be dragged into a war out of nowhere.

Really, if Macedonia declares war on Russia, NATO is not obligated to defend Macedonia.

Indeed, the author's example of the risk of war when Russian troops entered Kosovo at the end of the 1999 NATO war against Serbia was only possible because Russian troops were sitting in neighboring Bosnia and they raced into Kosovo to make sure they had a seat at the table. Removing the ability of Russia to put troops into positions behind NATO's eastern front might be a good idea given that example, eh?

Remember, the alternative to NATO expansion was leaving states that rejected Soviet/Russian domination in a gray zone where they'd be vulnerable to Russia when it recovers from the nadir of the post-Soviet morale, military, and economic collapse. Georgia and Ukraine represent what can happen to those gray area states when Russia turns their gaze to those former imperial territories.

Does anybody think that Russia would leave those ex-territories free absent NATO membership?

Weekend Data Dump

Australia is hosting their biennial multinational air combat exercise, Exercise Pitch Black, in Darwin. It started out with just Singapore, which is basically Australia's first line of defense at the southern end of the South China Sea. Note that Darwin is where America is gradually building up a rotational force of a Marine battalion.

Oh wonderful, Pakistan could be even more anti-American. They're a funny ally.

North Korea doles out the remains of American dead from the Korean War for political bargaining purposes. Remember that the reason North Korea has so many is that America didn't control the many battlefields in the north when the war was suspended.

This is stupid, with all due respect. If climate change is a national security issue, so is the economy. So is nutrition. So is childhood exercise. So is education. So is civil rights. What isn't a national security issue if you say it is because it affects the military's ability to carry out its national security mission? On national security, we should stay focused on fighting and winning--to hopefully prevent--our Goddamned wars.

The American military is always considering how to defend oil traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. We fought Iranian forces in 1988 during the 1987-88 American-led Western escort missions during the Iran-Iraq War. Today, our local allies are better able to take the lead. We may not need that oil directly, but our allies and trading partners do. And if they can't get it, our economy and alliances falter.

The Littoral Combat Ship program has made progress in anti-submarine warfare mission modules to insert into the hulls of the LCS. I like seeing progress on this because it adds to the potential systems The AFRICOM Queen modularized auxiliary cruiser could employ.

I'd rather have the metrics of territory controlled be used to judge our renewed air power in Afghanistan rather than bombs dropped and enemies killed and wounded. Those are means rather than objectives. Although it can take time for the government forces to exploit the damage done to the enemy in both men and equipment and in atomizing the enemy.

Armed American drones are now flying missions over Niger. We know our mission is working when news from Africa doesn't dominate a news cycle.

The Air Force is trying to battle their pilot shortage by creating a new track for transport plane pilots that lifts command burdens from them so they can just fly.  Pilots oddly like to fly their planes and not their desks with command duties. Why the Air Force doesn't follow Army practice and institute warrant officers for pilots who fly but don't command is beyond me. Their insistence on pilots being an officer and a gentlemen is just going to encourage unpiloted combat aircraft with robotic pilots that are neither officers nor gentlemen. So maybe I should thank the Air Force rather than complain.

It may be useful, but without being fully tracked with heavy armor, the Centauro II is not a "tank"--it is just a heavily armed armored car. The Italians say it is "lighter and more flexible than a traditional tank." My translation says that means it is "easier to kill than a traditional tank."

To better defend Europe, recent "NATO decisions focused on supporting the ability to ensure strategic-level supply via air, land and sea into and within Europe." NATO is working on this issue. This applies both to American forces arriving in western Europe and moving them--and other European NATO forces--into what until now has been a logistics desert in eastern NATO.

American and Turkey are working to coordinate our military presence around Manbij, Syria, to balance Turkey's desire to contain the Kurds who might support separatist Kurds inside Turkey and our desire to protect the Kurds who fought with us against ISIL. Well, it isn't a bad development.

I have no problem with developing  multi-domain battle (or operations or whatever you want to call it) if it is stepping up jointness. And more power to it if it brings in all the government's assets. What I worry about is the Navy and Air Force drafting Army forces for the core missions of those services in the face of threats that threaten their core competencies while the core competency of the Army is ignored. Synergy can work with everyone providing their core competencies to a joint fight and helping in other domains in the process of doing that.

Some left-wing activists pretended their cargo of medical supplies would break a "blockade" of Gaza.  There is no Israeli blockade of Gaza. What there is not is free access to Gaza from the sea where Iran would be free to ship in weapons and material used to attack Israel. Gaza has overland access to everything they need to live through Egyptian and Israeli territory, where it is screened for military and military-related supplies. Both of those countries periodically shut down that access when they have too many security problems flowing from Gaza. If there was a "blockade" of Gaza, everyone in Gaza would have died long ago.

China continues to build their Dystopian Police State 2.0.

You are either fully with Putin or against him. Donbas rebels have discovered that the attitude of resistance that was so appealing to Putin when the eastern Donbas was under Ukrainian control is discouraged with extreme prejudice when Russia is in control. I'm sure the same is true in Crimea.

Do battle lines still exist? Yes. Now stop wasting our time with silly questions about whether an enduring feature of wars has suddenly stopped being true because of ... whatever. As long as armies try to take territory and other armies try to protect territory, there will be front lines. The only real question is the force-to-territory ratio which might make the frontline static if high or movable if low.

War on women: reality edition.

No rule of law in Pakistan. So the democracy is less than effective. With bonus example of how selectively enforced laws (even if they are good laws) are a tool of the powerful.

Experts don't see the need for an independent Space Force now. They have interesting suggestions that could be better than my opinion that the Air Force should simply evolve to the Aerospace Force for the Earth-Moon system, putting off an independent service until we move out into the solar system.

If we do end up bombing Iran, you can't say we didn't try to talk.

A tour of socialist Venezuela's decent into poverty. I guess the bright side is that an international war is unlikely to be a result of the collapse. Which is good, given I have worried about that option to try and rally the people around the corrupt, inept rulers.

Tactical nukes for the Cold War turned very hot. I did mention that the Western Europeans in the Cold War feared the strategic effects of tactical weapons.

Trump didn't "strengthen" Iranian hardliners--he just made them more vocal. Was it really better when we pretended they weren't nutball hardliners while the nutball hardliners quietly worked against our interests?

India is closer to America, Japan, and Australia because of fear of growing Chinese power (and territorial claims); but India doesn't commit fully to the other 3 parts of "the quad" out of fear of China, it seems. Expect to see more of this since India gave up on its ambitious plan to build up forces in the northeast to counter China's growing strength in the region, as I noted in this post.

Ten years ago, Russia ambushed Georgia in the Goons of August War to consolidate Russian control of the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Russian military was flawed but in less than a week the war was over. I'm sure Russia would have preferred that outcome in the Donbas if they could have pulled off an invasion. Ten years later Georgia's military is exercising with NATO and other friends, including American troops.

No good, that's a given.

The Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) becomes Stormbreaker.

If Russia is announcing the return of "UN" peacekeepers to the Israel-Syria border and participating in the patrols, I seriously doubt these are UN peacekeepers.

Israel warned Iran not to shut down Red Sea shipping lanes. I've discussed that Iranian threat over the years.

One can hope that Iranians will end the fanatical mullah government, but I've gotten my hopes up before. So I have no idea if these protests have real significance on that issue. Still, unlike in the past when America kept silent to "avoid tainting the opposition" (which is nonsense), Iranians now know that America is sympathetic. And the protests have been going on, on and off, since last December.

If we keep our distance as we should, these massed boats aren't a lethal "swarm"--they just represent a "target-rich environment."

Taiwan has successfully fielded the Apache attack helicopter.

Driving Miss Daisy: So an American senator basically paid a Chinese spy for two decades. I suspect that it is probably pretty easy to infiltrate Congress since working for a potential enemy is probably indistinguishable from the views of your average college liberal arts faculty lounge. Tip to Instapundit.

Sunni bombers kill 39. All I have to say is that if they hadn't invaded Iraq and would just get out of the region, the Sunni killers would have no reason to hate Shias. Amiright?

I still thank my younger self for not majoring in Soviet studies. Even though I despised the Soviets and their fellow communists while in college, it seemed rather pessimistic to major in Soviet studies as if I'd spend my career in that field. Since I got my MA in 1989, that was fortunate, eh?

A Strategypage tour of global defense purchasing.

Israel is getting increasingly frustrated with Hamas in Gaza. The rumor mill has it that Israel might invade to really dig out the threat. If my long expectation of an Israeli operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon is correct, this Gaza focus might be cover for Israeli mobilization. Maybe Israel ignores Hamas to go after Hezbollah. Maybe Israel hits both. Or maybe the target is Gaza and my expectation has been wrong.

So ... a meteor impacted near one of our missile launch early warning bases, Thule, Greenland, late last month with the force of 2.1 kilotons. (Hiroshima was destroyed by a 16 kiloton bomb, for comparison sake--although the meteor is obviously not a radiation-producing blast.) If the meteor had hit the base, the natural inclination would have been to assume a hostile state destroyed the base. Because who would believe the possibility of a meteor? Perhaps we would have raised our nuclear alert level and then dropped back down as the situation clarified, without any bad effect as other states with nukes wondered what we were doing. And you wonder why I don't look forward to the possibility of deterring nuclear-armed North Korea?

I know that there are those who say American sanctions on Iran just rally the Iranian people around the nutball mullahs, but I'm just not seeing that effect in Iran: "The protests have often begun with slogans against the high cost of living and alleged financial corruption but quickly turned into anti-government rallies."

If true--a big if, apparently--I wouldn't have cried if it worked. UPDATE: America denies involvement, implying there really was an attempt on Maduro's life.

I must say that while I often run across items that outrage me over their partisan "11" angle and I really want to post about them, I find I actually do feel much better about not getting involved in the insanity. And I read the outrage stories less often, too, so bonus. Both sides should proclaim that they believe that the extremists don't represent the majority and stop acting like we believe the extremists are just brave enough to say what the majority really feels.

The War After the War

Even if the multi-war in Syria is ending, Syria will continue to be a battlefield.

Russia says it has no dog in any Israeli-Iranian fight inside Syria:

Russia cannot compel Iranian forces to quit Syria, Moscow's ambassador to Tel Aviv said on Monday, rebuffing Israel's long-standing demand that it should work to ensure their total withdrawal from the country.

Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov said Moscow could equally do nothing to prevent Israeli military strikes against Iranian forces in Syria, which along with Russia and Tehran-backed Lebanese militias are supporting President Bashar al-Assad in combating rebel fighters.

Assad is in a tougher position because he surely wants Iran out of Syria once the rebel threat to Assad is finished; yet can't allow Israel to openly violate Syria's territorial integrity without trying to stop it.

Allow Me to Rantsplain Air Power

Afghanistan's government has not made progress in gaining control of territory from the Taliban in the last quarter:

Afghan security forces are fighting Taliban insurgents to a stalemate, a U.S. government watchdog said in a new report. ...

It also said the number of people living under government and insurgent control remained the same over the last quarter despite an intense aerial campaign by U.S. and Afghan forces. [emphasis added]

Sigh. Bombing does not substitute for putting your troops on the ground if the objective is to control the ground.

More bombing is great if your troops can direct and exploit the bombing to take territory (and I argued for it on our way out and during our return), but alone it is just a punitive expedition. It is better than doing nothing, but it is attrition.

It's even fantastic that there is more air support in Afghanistan. But if the strategy is to give up territory, that territorial stalemate will shift to an advantage for the Taliban despite an intense aerial campaign into the future.

Solving North Korea Does Not Solve Northeast Asia

A nuclear deal with North Korea could involve the evolution of American forces in South Korea, but our interest in keeping troops there goes beyond protecting South Korea from North Korea.

Yes:

[There] is nothing inherently wrong with making adjustments to US forces in South Korea based on the evolution of the North Korean threat, changes in military technology, opportunities to rationalize and streamline command and control arrangements, improvements in South Korean military conventional capabilities, or the need to meet other competing demands (as the Bush administration did in 2004 when it re-deployed 10,000 troops from South Korea to Iraq during the second Gulf War). Changes in the US military presence in Europe and Japan have been made over the years in response to such factors. Nor is there anything sacrosanct about the number 28,500—an arbitrary figure arrived at without any systematic assessment of operational requirements that took on a life of its own.

The actual defense of South Korea does not depend on these forces, but rather on the capacity to rapidly reinforce the South with additional ground troops, air and naval forces from the US and elsewhere in the region. It is doubtful that North Korea would be any less deterred if the US made modest reductions in its troop presence as long as enough capability remained in place to protect and support those reinforcements. [emphasis added]

The author also notes that America has other interests that South Korea-based forces defend--subsidized by South Korea:

[The] US alliance with South Korea embodies more than just a defense commitment to that country; it is also a pillar of the US position in the Asia-Pacific region and central to preserving a favorable balance of power with China. The US forces based there are critical to the defense of Japan and could be used to project US military force more broadly in the region if circumstances warranted. A rapid and unilateral pullout would further damage whatever is left of the credibility of US security commitments in the region. [emphasis added]

I've noted our other interests and have suggested a force evolution that would look good for North Korea yet retain our ability to funnel reinforcements to South Korea in a crisis.

A deal with North Korea on nukes and eventually conventional forces would make the North Korea issue much better; but it does not end our security problems in the region.

And really, if America and North Korea can make a true peace (and I wouldn't bet on it, but things remain the same until they don't), North Korea may see China as the historic threat it has long been and welcome an American presence in South Korea.

As a partial aside, I don't think North Korea has such a large (but poorly trained and equipped by now, and even hungry) army to threaten South Korea as much as it has a large army to keep those potential rebels from threatening North Korea. While North Korea in the long run should want to divert resources to civilian purposes, in the short run letting large numbers of young men remain in the civilian world outside of tight army control is a security challenge.

A Signal Event

It would be very significant if South Korea's military rescues their citizens held by a Libyan group since July 6th:

A South Korean destroyer is steaming for Libya and South Korean special forces are on standby in Greece in preparation for a possible hostage rescue mission.

According to the presidential office on Thursday, the Korean navy’s anti-piracy Cheonghae unit has redeployed from the Gulf of Aden and is heading for the North African country.

The special forces are on Crete. I assume American forces and surveillance assets are working closely with the South Koreans.

South Korea is a strong power militarily and economically that has to spend most of its time worrying about its own neighborhood, what with North Korea looming over Seoul and in the background China and Russia.

As the balance has tilted against North Korea, South Korea has been able to start building a blue water navy that can be a global force.

If South Korean military power can be projected to Libya, it can certainly be projected to the South China Sea, eh?

If the South Koreans manage to rescue their people, this will be a signal event announcing South Korea's global status.

Deja Vu All Over Again in Afghanistan

At some point the Taliban need to be defeated and friendly Afghanistan territory extended.

This is discouraging even if it is necessary in the short run:

The Trump administration is urging American-backed Afghan troops to retreat from sparsely populated areas of the country, officials said, all but ensuring the Taliban will remain in control of vast stretches of the country.

The approach is outlined in a previously undisclosed part of the war strategy that President Trump announced last year, according to three officials who described the documents to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. It is meant to protect military forces from attacks at isolated and vulnerable outposts, and focuses on protecting cities such as Kabul, the capital, and other population centers.

The withdrawal resembles strategies embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations that have started and stuttered over the nearly 17-year war. It will effectively ensure that the Taliban and other insurgent groups will hold on to territory that they have already seized, leaving the government in Kabul to safeguard the capital and cities such as Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad.

Yes, back in the Obama administration I discussed the pull-back strategy, seeing it as a necessary step to slowing down friendly casualties in the face of Taliban forces that can mass forces to crush small outposts, building up mobile forces, and gaining the initiative to take territory from the enemy.

I was unhappy that the situation had degenerated from the position we had won at cost by the end of our surges to Afghanistan ordered in 2009. But you work the problem you have rather than complain that the problem shouldn't exist.

I thought that we'd managed to start taking the initiative at the end of last year.

Apparently not. Have we gone from a "regional" strategy that recognizes the gaping hole of Pakistan in defeating the Taliban inside Afghanistan because of the jihadi sanctuaries in our Black Sheep ally to a "hold the cities" strategy?

Again, if this is a temporary short-term move to hold a line; gather mobile trained reserves; build up Afghan air power, logistics, and other support forces; and then take the initiative to finally deny the Taliban territory and atomize the Taliban to make outposts safer, this is fine.

But if it is a retreat to the cities, doesn't this cede the vast amount of rural territory and put the Taliban in a position to demoralize and break the city citadels the way the Taliban did to the Soviet/Russian-backed government when--if memory serves me--it eventually gave up trying to hold territory outside the cities which allowed the rebels to eventually mass around Kabul and finally take it?

How does that persuade the Taliban to come to the peace table rather than continue the war until they win?

People abandoned by the government now will be compelled to side with and support the Taliban no matter what their personal view of the Taliban.

It is in our interest to keep Afghanistan from being a sanctuary for terrorists who will try to strike us as they did on September 11, 2001. I don't know if we are trying to do that.

Commonality

NATO is not obsolete even if members don't have a common threat perception. As a means of enabling coalitions of the willing it has great value by promoting the ability of national military forces to work together.

This is useful if NATO has to put together units from various member states:

At the U.S. Army-hosted Joint Warfighting Assessment in Germany last month, the service, as well as joint and multinational partners, took steps to cement the capability to fight together on the battlefield by working to build a command network where any country can plug in its capability and seamlessly see a common picture of the battlefield and real-time operations.

The JWA is the first of its kind. Previous assessments were not focused on joint capability and took place at Fort Bliss, Texas.

If brigades can be put together, deterrence on the eastern frontier of NATO facing Russia is enhanced.

And the ability of NATO to join America in an operation outside of the continent is possible.

Remember, the Army and Marines have to pay attention lest commonality diverge as each service buys systems for their own needs. How much more important is this for an alliance of separate nations?

Remember too that this Army program is needed despite the existence of NATO which is supposed to promote interoperability; and despite experience with allies in Afghanistan operating with Army units. I shudder to think of how bad it would be without NATO.

I hope to have thoughts on this published, having submitted an article related to this issue for a contest recently.  We shall see.

Assault Echelon

China's naval infantry (marine) force is small compared to the United States Marine Corps. But unlike the American marines which can carry out extended missions, the Chinese marines are clearly just the assault echelon for the army.

Chinese marines are getting a new light turreted assault gun:

The new Chinese ZTQ 05 light tank has shown up in the bluish camouflage used by the Chines marines. The marines do not use the ZTQ 05 as a tank but as an assault gun, with its 105mm gun providing close (line of sight where the gunner can see the target) artillery support. The new marine brigades each have two marine infantry battalions and one armor battalion. The armor battalion contains Type 96A medium tanks as well as ZTQ 05 light tanks operating mainly as assault guns to help the marines fight their way off the beach as quickly as possible. Tanks often operate as assault guns for the infantry but the marine ZTQ 05s will carry mostly high-explosive shells and use crews trained to handle assault gun jobs.

That's a high ratio of mobile armor to infantry and looks more like a traditional mechanized infantry unit--except for the infantry being foot mobile.

But the infantry will have more easily transported light armor to provide direct fire support to blast through opposition (assuming it isn't blasted apart for being so lightly armored).

But any significant advance from the landing point will rely on follow-up Chinese army units.

Do all the Chinese marine brigades have this organization? Or just the new expansion brigades?

Because I had assumed the marines would be more useful for taking islands in the South China Sea and East China Sea. But with such a high proportion of armor, they don't seem appropriate for lightly defended small islands (but they'd be good for taking the Pescadores Islands off of Taiwan).

I've long been conflicted over China's marines. Some analysts dismiss China's ability to invade Taiwan by noting the small size of the Chinese naval infantry force (not that long ago just two brigades). I never thought China needed these brigades at all to invade. With seven brigades now, China could well think they have enough for small island missions, seizing the Pescadores Islands off of Taiwan, and spearheading a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Although I suspect the assault guns and other vehicles of a Chinese naval infantry brigade used fo an invasion of Taiwan would be more likely to unload into a Taiwanese port from a RO/RO vessel than churning up a beach in a traditional D-Day-style invasion--which I don't believe would be the model for a Chinese invasion.

If You Build It, It Will Sail

The United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) commander fully understands his command is low on the priority list for resources. But he has challenges to overcome. I'm thinking (again), he could use The SOUTHCOM Queen.

Admiral Tidd notes his top five challenges:

Russian and Chinese competition for influence there.

Hezbollah fundraising in Latin America.

Terrorist recruiting and attacks in the Caribbean Sea area.

Helping to defend the Panama Canal.

The Venezuela refugee problem, which is just one of the humanitarian issues that could put SOUTHCOM in motion.

As I've written repeatedly, a modularized auxiliary cruiser that I wrote about in The AFRICOM Queen could be a major asset for SOUTHCOM.

For SOUTHCOM, multiple modularized auxiliary cruisers would be useful, to focus on anti-terrorism intelligence and direct action; humanitarian response; and more conventional naval capabilities for missile and air defense and anti-ship or anti-submarine work.

Oddly the drug trade is not mentioned, but I imagine that is a major part of Hezbollah fundraising.

Is Assad Still Turkey's Foe?

Turkey's thin shield of troops in Idlib province in northwest Syria won't be enough to stop an Assad offensive. As the last significant bastion of resistance to Assad (the Kurds are not really in rebellion against Assad as much as they are seeking more autonomy), Assad will naturally seek to take the region:

The Syrian regime enjoys the momentum of military successes. Damascus clearly understands that in order to make the triumph complete, there needs to be the final spurt on Idlib. The Baath Party leadership sees the latest victories in eastern Ghouta, eastern Qalamoun, Homs, most of Daraa and Quneitra as severely demoralizing for opposition forces in Idlib. Many in the opposition are already seeking opportunities to leave the country fearing the northwest of Syria will soon end up under Assad’s control. Hence, given the speed with which the opposition militants are dealt with in the south of Syria, Russia and Syria would want to take advantage of this momentum. With no further operative delay, they would begin the operation as soon as most combat-capable units — especially the Tiger forces and the 4th tank division — arrive at this front.

Syria and its allies apparently don’t think much of the Turkish observation points in the area, and Turkey is seemingly not ruling out the possibility of an offensive in Idlib and has been fortifying its observation points with cement walls.

Idlib looms over core Alawite areas near the coast, which rebels form Idlib once threatened. The rebellion is reduced enough that Assad's limited force certainly have the capacity to carry out the offensive without the Iranian-suppled shock troops (Hezbollah and the Shia foreign legion) and without Russian air support.

Will Russia prevent Assad from attacking to maintain better Russian-Turkish relations yet perhaps risk Assad denying Russia bases as punishment for blocking Assad?

Will Iran go along with leaving the remaining rebels in place to justify their presence in Syria?

Will Turkey restrain the rebels to stay Assad's hand, which would require more Turkish troops inside Syria to maintain their buffer zone?

Heck, would Turkey decide to make good on their early civil war ultimatum to Assad, which would require a multi-division (if not multi-corps) invasion?

Or would Turkey side with Assad to wipe out the autonomous Kurdish region in the northeast and risk conflict with America?

I seriously doubt Turkey would try to drive on Damascus, but who knows?

But Russia and Turkey do have things to discuss as the war in the west is being won by Assad.

UPDATE: More:

With uncertainty in Syria growing for Ankara, the only certainty appears to be that Idlib has the potential to cause a big headache for Turkey.

It seems highly likely that Assad will drive into Idlib, the rebels won't be able to stop them, and that Turkey's troops could very well find themselves bypassed and requiring Syrian permission to get supplies and eventually evacuate back to Turkey.

Which will end Turkey's anti-Assad position regarding the rebellion, that started with the August 2011 Turkish ultimatum to Assad to stop killing civilians.

UPDATE: Is an Assad offensive into Idlib really unlikely without the approval of Turkey, Russia, and Iran?

Really? Iran and Russia aren't about to punish Assad for attacking if those states want to remain in Syria; and if Turkey resists Assad, Russia and Iran will help Assad face Turkey.

And is Turkey really going to fight a major war against Assad after declining to do so these many years when Assad was weaker and there were local forces to support? Is Turkey really willing to fight Russia and Iran? Is Turkey really willing to abandon their effort against the Kurds to fight this kind of war, and be forces to go to NATO and America for help?

I think Assad will send in forces to begin the reconquest of Idlib province.

Don't Be Evil (Without Us)?

Well that's nice:

Google is planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal.

If true, of course. Although this isn't the first we've hear of this kind of project. So the name for their new search engine is already clear to me. China is building their high-tech Dystopian State 2.0 and Google apparently has no problem participating in that.

Funny what Google employees do have problems with, no?

Google, hoping to head off a rebellion by employees upset that the technology they were working on could be used for lethal purposes, will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work when a current deal expires next year.

Tiananmen Square 2.0 might never happen with the new tools of digital oppression. But if somehow it did, I wonder if Google helps with driverless vehicles too?

The Art Wasn't Even the Point

My youngest is still not too old to want to hang with her dad a bit.

On the last Sunday of Art Fair, Lamb texted me to ask if I would take her to art fair. Which was a nice surprise.

I'd already walked down to art fair on the first day--and actually bought some art (and got a couple shirts and a small back pack from a local company begging to give their virtual reality swag away). But another trip with my daughter sounded great.

So I picked her up and then we walked to the art fair and took a tour. She was happy to see her "tribe" of light green artists in one section. She had volunteered to stuff artist packets for art fair with all they needed to set up a tent. I had missed that section in my trip, thinking it was mostly a kid zone.

She was disappointed that she didn't find anyone giving out granola samples--which is the only time she eats it, pretty much.

We walked back home and I got her to her mom's for dinner. All in all it was a nice outing.

While I am eager to launch my children from their nest for their sake, I know I will miss things like this dearly and treasure them when I can do them in the future.

Absolutely Sign That Bill

Congress may remind the world that the NATO alliance entered by treaty with the approval of the Senate is a national commitment not subject to the whim of an individual president.

President Trump should definitely sign that bill if it reaches his desk:

A bipartisan group of senators is sponsoring legislation to explicitly prohibit the president of the United States from withdrawing from NATO without Senate approval.

Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., introduced the bill Thursday. President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned the trans-Atlantic alliance.

A separate House bill would prohibit funds from being used to withdraw the U.S. from NATO. It’s sponsored by California Reps. Jimmy Panetta, a Democrat, and Steve Knight, a Republican. Both sit on the House Armed Services Committee.

Yes, Trump has questioned NATO--perhaps more times than he has said that Article V is valid. Although I have protested that NATO is a national commitment indicated by its existence as a Senate-approved treaty and not reliant on verbal commitments from every new president, I think that Trump should sign either of these bills if they make it to his desk.

Because you never know when the party suddenly deeply concerned about Russia will revert to their former stance of being highly flexible for Russia and their Soviet predecessor. Lock them in now.

If President Trump signs bills reaffirming the bipartisan American commitment to NATO, he will have added to his legacy of strengthening NATO.

There Should Be No Gray Area With Nukes

I don't like this one bit:

The U.S. Navy’s fleet of ballistic missile submarines will soon carry tactical nuclear weapons, as Congress prepares to fund development of a new, low-yield nuclear warhead. The submarines, which form a functional invulnerable retaliatory force in case of surprise nuclear attack, will soon be able to launch missiles with less powerful tactical nuclear weapons.

When an enemy sees a missile flying from the ocean, they will rightly assume it is a strategic weapon. We should not rely on them to refrain from a strategic response that requires them to figure out that it is a single tactical warhead and not merely the one strategic missile they can see from all of the sub's tubes.

I do see the value of smaller nukes. But they should not be launched from our strategic ballistic missile submarines or our land-based ICBMs. I've argued this position before.

Keep those tactical nukes for aircraft or smaller land-based missiles.

Besides, precision weapons make tactical nukes far less valuable than they were in the pre-precision days when you needed the blast radius of a nuke to destroy certain high value targets.

And if the target is important enough to be destroyed within an hour, it's probably important enough to use a big boy nuke.