Quotes of the Day:

"Be great in act, as you have been in thought." 

– William Shakespeare

"Deliberation is the function of many; action is the function of one." 

– Charles de Gaulle

"Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things." 

– Ray Bradbury

A one minute thirty second USASOC/Army video that would make me join the Army today. Will it make those military age American citizens want to join? I hope so.

Jersey of the Greatest Team on Earth

No matter where your journey, passion, or purpose takes you.

We’ve got a Jersey for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYOWPEL9uKY&list=WL&index=15

1. Behind the scenes with the Ukrainian ‘Vampire’ Drone

2. Where Are the Mavericks?

3. ‘Serpent in Eden’: Foreign Spies and False Allies

4. U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

5. How the Massacre of Ignored Female Soldiers Came to Symbolize Oct. 7 Failures

6. What Game Theory Tells Us About the Threat of an Israel-Iran War

7. Hamas built an underground war machine to ensure its own survival

8. China says it evacuated 215 nationals from Lebanon

9. A Pentagon Debate: Are U.S. Deployments Containing the Fighting, or Inflaming It?

10. Missile Strike Near Donetsk Eliminates 6 North Korean Officers – Intel

11. Pentagon voices 'significant concern' with many NDAA provisions

12. Part-Time SOF: The Case for a Ranger Battalion in the National Guard

13. Diego Garcia: what "historic" UK deal means for US's Indian Ocean base

14. Collapse of national security elites’ cyber firm leaves bitter wake

15. Realigning Counterintelligence in the Grey Zone: A New Era for U.S. Defense

16. A Crucial Step in Combating Terrorism

17. Leidos: 'Black Arrow' Small Cruise Missile Ready for Flight Test

18. Raytheon expand capacity to build the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile

1. Behind the scenes with the Ukrainian ‘Vampire’ Drone

Can we learn from the heroic and innovative Ukrainians?

Excerpts:

The Vampire attack drone, equipped with a thermal camera, was developed by the Ukrainian company SkyFall specifically for night operations. This UAV is difficult to detect in the dark, as the Russians need thermal sights or night vision devices to engage it with small arms fire. 

It is probably for this reason that Russian troops have nicknamed it 'Baba Yaga,' after the fearsome and elusive witch of Ukrainian folk tales. 

One of Vampire's advantages is its ease of use. The developers claim that their instructors can train operators from scratch in just 3 hours.

The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak

Behind the scenes with the Ukrainian ‘Vampire’ Drone

Also known as the 'Baba Yaga' drone, named after a Ukrainian folk tale witch, we take a look at what makes Ukrainian innovation so unique.

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/behind-the-scenes-with-the-ukrainian?utm

Bihus.Info, Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova, and Tim Mak

Oct 05, 2024

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Editor's Note: The article was published in collaboration with the BIHUS Info, a Ukrainian publication. To subscribe to BIHUS Info, click here. 

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As the night falls, a terrifying Ukrainian drone, the Vampire, wakes up. 

“We are going to bomb a Russian mortar,” said Andrii, an assistant drone pilot with the 68th separate Oleksa Dovbush Ranger Brigade, which is currently operating near Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.

It’s thankless work. But these mortars can be very dangerous to Ukrainian soldiers. 

“If we can destroy a Russian mortar that threatens our infantry, or at least damage it, disable it for a day or two, we are doing a very good job,” says Mykhailo, a drone pilot.

The pilots are working. They drop one bomb, followed by another.

“They did a good job. Let it burn slowly. See how well it burns? That's it, the mortar is fucked,” Mykhailo and Andrii tell each other, adding that their heartbeats as racing as they work. “When the occupiers burn, it always feels great.”

Andrii and Mykhailo during operating with Vampire Drone, Screenshot from Bihus Info video 

The Vampire attack drone, equipped with a thermal camera, was developed by the Ukrainian company SkyFall specifically for night operations. This UAV is difficult to detect in the dark, as the Russians need thermal sights or night vision devices to engage it with small arms fire. 

It is probably for this reason that Russian troops have nicknamed it 'Baba Yaga,' after the fearsome and elusive witch of Ukrainian folk tales. 

One of Vampire's advantages is its ease of use. The developers claim that their instructors can train operators from scratch in just 3 hours.

Screenshot from Bihus Info video of Ukrainian drones hitting a Russian mortar

The drone war is growing. According to U.S. officials, the Ukrainian armed forces are losing about 10,000 drones a month. Officially, the Ukrainian and Russian sides do not disclose their UAV losses.

Designed to navigate challenging battlefield conditions, the Vampire drone represents a significant leap in the use of unmanned systems. Its deployment not only reflects Ukraine's growing reliance on technology-driven defense strategies, but also underscores the importance of drones in shifting the balance on the front lines.

The drone can lift loads of up to 15 kilograms and climb to an altitude of 400 meters. According to the manufacturers, this allows the Vampire to drop different types of ammunition on the enemy: thermobaric and high-explosive fragmentation, which allows it to effectively destroy different types of targets.

 Ukrainian soldiers from the 121nd load a Vampire drone with an antitank mine to strike into Russian positions in Krasnogorivka frontline, Ukraine on July 22, 2024. (Photo by Pablo Miranzo/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Vampires are relatively inexpensive at $10,000 apiece. And they’re easy to modify, making them cost-effective. The military uses them to destroy armored vehicles and tanks, as well as enemy defenses, fortifications, or ammunition dumps.

"This is a heavy bomber that works on all targets. It was designed primarily for shelters... It can also work on equipment," said drone pilot Mykhailo.

The main difference between a drone and artillery is that artillery cannot shoot as accurately. A drone almost always hits the target. In this way, the military saves ammunition, which is already in short supply in Ukraine. 

Interested in Ukrainian defense technology? Sign up for our sister publication, Counteroffensive Pro! It covers the regulatory environment for tech innovation, interesting startups and the latest trends in Ukraine for Western defense firms and VCs.

Thanks to the Vampire, the pilots of the 68th Brigade can bomb Russian positions, minefields or other areas where the enemy is located, and the Vampire also delivers food to Ukrainian soldiers who are on the front line and cannot get it themselves.  

"Now we will deliver water and food to our troops on the front line. The drone is the only way. We have no other way to deliver," says Andrii, call sign 'Luchan', assistant pilot of the 68th brigade. 

"Misha, let's go to work," his comrade shouts at him, and Misha [short for Mykhailo] drops food for the Ukrainian military from the drone. 

But he is stopped by the silhouette of the cat Murchik in the drone's control window. Mykhailo and his comrades are trying to make sure that the wild animals are not harmed: "Murchik's tail is long! Oh, that Murchik. He got away, hooray,” he exclaims.

Screenshot from Bihus Info video, where you can see the silhouette of the cat Murchik

These deliveries are quite frequent, sometimes 5-6 times a day.

"We feel that we are doing a good deed. Without mutual aid, nothing will happen… Thanks to the infantry we are here, we are standing. Everything is holding, the infantry is holding the line of defense," said Andrii and Mykhailo. 

A Ukrainian drone operator who gave the name Artem pilots an attack drone, as commander Andrii looks on (left), as Ukrainian soldiers of the 108th Territorial Defense Brigade test fly a Ukrainian-made Vampire drone, with six rotors, night vision and thermal imaging capabilities, and capable of carrying four 82mm artillery shells, near the southern frontline on February 21, 2024 in UNSPECIFIED, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine. (Photo by Scott Peterson/Getty Images)

Andrii and Mykhailo say they are already used to their work, it has become a routine for them. But at the same time, they realize that they are doing an extremely important job: using drones to help stop the Russians from advancing deeper into Ukraine. 

"We don't want them to stop somewhere in the Rivne region [in western Ukraine], God help us. We want them to stop here." 

Andrii prepares for the mission with a Vampire drone, Screenshot from Bihus Info video 

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NEWS OF THE DAY: 

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

THE ROOTS OF TRUMP'S UKRAINE GRUDGE: The moment after Trump and Putin met in 2017, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told WH aides: "We've got work to do to change the president's mind in Ukraine." Putin told Trump that Ukraine was a corrupt and fabricated country, the New York Times reported. Trump had become president thinking that Ukrainian officials preferred Democrats — a theme that has continue to today. In Pennsylvania recently, Trump said at a rally that Zelenskyy “wants [the Democrats] to win this election so badly.”

SECURITY OFFICIAL AT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT KILLED: Ukrainian military intelligence said that alleged pro-Russian collaborator Andrei Korotkiy died due to a bomb placed under his car. Korotkiy had worked with the Russians, Ukrainian sources said, and outed Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant employees with pro-Ukrainian views. Russia still controls the territory around the plant, which has been the site of numerous nuclear emergencies.

UKRAINE RAIDS ALLEGED CORRUPT OFFICIAL: Investigators claimed yesterday that they had found $6 million USD in cash at the home of an official in charge of the medical commission in the western Khmelnitsky region. The raid was part of a probe into whether they had run an illegal plan to register people as disabled in order to avoid the draft, The Guardian reported.

CORRUPTION WHISTLEBLOWER WINS REWARD, A FIRST: For the first time ever, a whistleblower received an award for exposing wrongdoing. The person in question is a current soldier who served as an auditor at the Ministry of Defense in 2020-2021, and claimed that he had been offered a bribe in exchange for favorable actions for a private company.

DEFENSE MINISTRY ALLEGES RUSSIAN POW EXECUTIONS: The ministry said that it believes at least 177 Ukrainian prisoners of war have died in Russian custody, reports Hromadske.

DOG OF WAR:

This photogenic dog we saw in the western city of Lviv, as we were attending a Ukrainian tech gathering.

Stay safe out there.

Best,

Tim

2. Where Are the Mavericks?

(we are not talking about Top Gun - though I suppose that Maverick is another exemplar - why are they always aviators?)

Excerpts:

CONCLUSION

The U.S. military faces significant challenges in fostering innovation, largely due to a promotion system that rewards conformity and a resourcing process that inhibits flexibility. Mavericks like Billy Mitchell and Jimmy Doolittle—those who think differently and are willing to challenge the status quo—are often weeded out of the system, to the detriment of the military’s ability to adapt and innovate.

In an increasingly complex and rapidly changing security environment, the ability to innovate is not a luxury; it is a necessity. To maintain its strategic advantage, the U.S. military must create a culture that embraces divergent thinking, rewards risk-taking, and allows for greater flexibility in resource allocation. By doing so, it can ensure that it remains capable of meeting the challenges of the future with creativity, adaptability, and resilience.

The road to change will not be easy. It will require a fundamental shift in the way the military thinks about leadership, risk, and success. But by embracing the spirit of the mavericks it once sidelined, the U.S. military can once again become a beacon of innovation and progress, ready to meet the challenges of a world that is evolving faster than ever before.

Where Are the Mavericks?

By Jeremiah Monk

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/where-are-the-mavericks?utm

Colonel Billy Mitchell during his 1925 court-martial (National Archives)

INTRODUCTION

Innovation is a driving force behind progress, and in today’s world, the ability to adapt, evolve, and think differently is critical to maintaining a strategic advantage. Nowhere is this more important than in military operations, where creativity in tactics, technology, and strategy can determine victory or defeat. However, the U.S. military has struggled with fostering innovation, primarily due to the very structure and culture of its promotion system. This article explores the tension between the need for innovation and the barriers imposed by a system that often rewards conformity and sidelines mavericks—individuals like Billy Mitchell and Jimmy Doolittle who dared to think differently and defy convention.

THE CONFORMITY CULTURE IN MILITARY PROMOTION

The U.S. military is known for its discipline, order, and professionalism—qualities that are critical for operational success and unit cohesion. But these qualities come at a cost. The military promotion system emphasizes “professional mastery,” which is often defined by adherence to established doctrine, following orders, and demonstrating a consistent record of achievement within traditional parameters. Officers who conform to the expectations of their superiors are often rewarded with promotions, while those who question the status quo or propose radical changes may find themselves sidelined or even ostracized.

This system is designed to ensure stability and reliability, which are crucial in times of crisis. However, it also creates an environment where risk-taking and divergent thinking are viewed as liabilities rather than assets. Mavericks—those who think differently and challenge conventional wisdom—are often considered disruptive to the chain of command and a threat to cohesion. As a result, they are frequently discouraged from advancing in their careers, and their ideas are often left unrealized.

Billy Mitchell, for example, is often cited as one of the earliest mavericks in U.S. military history. A vocal advocate for air power, Mitchell faced intense opposition from the Army establishment for his insistence that the future of warfare lay in air superiority. He was eventually court-martialed for insubordination, effectively ending his military career. Yet, his vision of air power ultimately proved prophetic during World War II, underscoring the cost of silencing innovative thinkers.

Jimmy Doolittle, another iconic maverick, led the daring Doolittle Raid during World War II—a mission that, at the time, was considered a high-risk operation with little strategic gain. However, the psychological impact of the raid was significant, boosting American morale and undermining Japanese confidence. Doolittle’s success demonstrates the value of embracing unconventional thinking, but his career trajectory was the exception rather than the rule.

THE NEED FOR MAVERICKS IN A COMPLEX SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

Mavericks like Mitchell and Doolittle are precisely the type of thinkers needed in today’s rapidly changing security landscape. The current environment is characterized by speed, ambiguity, and complexity, with emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, and autonomous systems reshaping the nature of conflict. In such a setting, the ability to think creatively and develop innovative approaches is essential to maintaining a competitive edge.

However, the military’s traditional promotion and reward structure is poorly suited to this new reality. To succeed, the U.S. military must cultivate a culture that encourages creative thinking, calculated risk-taking, and the willingness to challenge existing doctrines. Unfortunately, the current system too often rewards those who play it safe—those who fit neatly into the mold of professional mastery defined by conformity and adherence to established norms.

Mavericks, by definition, do not fit into this mold. They question the efficacy of established procedures, propose new strategies, and push boundaries. These individuals are not always easy to work with, and their ideas may not always succeed. But the very act of challenging the status quo can lead to breakthroughs that would be impossible within the confines of traditional thinking. The military needs people who are willing to think outside the box, and it must create an environment where such thinking is not only tolerated but actively encouraged.

THE ARCHAIC MILITARY RESOURCING, PROGRAMMING, AND BUDGETING PROCESS

The U.S. military’s approach to resource allocation further compounds the challenge of fostering innovation. The programming, planning, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) process is notoriously rigid and bureaucratic, often taking years to move from concept to funding to implementation. This system, developed during the Cold War, was designed to provide stability and predictability in military spending. However, in a world where threats evolve rapidly and technological advancements can render existing capabilities obsolete within months, the PPBE process is increasingly at odds with the need for flexibility and agility.

For innovation to thrive, organizations must be able to pivot quickly, reallocate resources, and experiment with new ideas. The current budgeting process, with its long lead times and multiple layers of oversight, makes this extremely difficult. By the time funding is approved for a new initiative, the threat landscape may have shifted, rendering the initial concept irrelevant. This is particularly problematic in areas like cyber warfare, where the ability to respond rapidly to emerging threats is crucial.

Moreover, the PPBE process often favors large, established defense contractors with the resources to navigate its complexities, further stifling innovation. Smaller companies and startups, which are often the source of the most disruptive technologies, struggle to break into the defense market due to the high barriers to entry. As a result, the military misses out on potential breakthroughs that could come from more nimble, unconventional players.

THE COST OF SUPPRESSING DIVERGENT THINKERS

The suppression of mavericks and the rigidity of the resourcing process place the U.S. military at a significant disadvantage, particularly in comparison to potential adversaries that are less constrained by bureaucracy. China, for example, has embraced a model of civil-military fusion that allows it to rapidly integrate commercial technologies into its military capabilities. The Chinese military has also demonstrated a willingness to experiment with new operational concepts and adapt its doctrine in response to changing circumstances.

In contrast, the U.S. military’s preference for stability over risk-taking means that it often struggles to adapt to new realities. The development of new technologies, tactics, and strategies requires a willingness to fail—something that the military’s promotion and budgeting systems do not easily accommodate. By weeding out mavericks and maintaining a rigid approach to resource allocation, the U.S. military risks falling behind in a world where speed and adaptability are increasingly important.

The consequences of this are not merely theoretical. In recent years, the U.S. has faced significant challenges in areas like cyber defense and space operations, where the traditional military approach has proven inadequate. The slow pace of innovation has left critical vulnerabilities unaddressed, and the reluctance to embrace unconventional thinking has hampered the development of effective responses. To maintain its strategic advantage, the U.S. military must find a way to reconcile the need for order and professionalism with the need for creativity and adaptability.

To effectively incorporate divergent thinking into strategy development, military organizations can implement a simple yet impactful solution: establish a dedicated group of "wild card" thinkers to develop an alternative course of action (COA) for each strategy proposal. Instead of a token "throw-away COA," this group—comprising individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and unconventional perspectives—would be tasked with creating a highly creative, seemingly improbable COA that challenges conventional assumptions. By formalizing this as a standard practice in planning sessions, the "wild COA" would serve as a catalyst for deeper discussions about risks, vulnerabilities, and potential opportunities, encouraging more comprehensive evaluation of strategic options and enhancing the robustness of the decision-making process.

CREATING A CULTURE THAT EMBRACES INNOVATION

To overcome these challenges, the U.S. military must make a concerted effort to change its culture and processes in ways that encourage innovation. This begins with reforming the promotion system to recognize and reward those who think differently and take calculated risks. The military should identify and cultivate talent that demonstrates not only professional mastery but also the ability to innovate and challenge existing paradigms. Officers who propose new ideas, even if those ideas ultimately fail, should be recognized for their willingness to push boundaries and contribute to the military’s evolution.

Additionally, the military must reform its resourcing, programming, and budgeting processes to allow for greater flexibility. This could involve creating dedicated innovation funds that are not subject to the same bureaucratic constraints as traditional programs, allowing for more rapid experimentation and iteration. The establishment of organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to integrate innovative thinking across all branches of the military.

The military should also look to foster partnerships with the private sector, academia, and other government agencies to tap into a broader pool of ideas and expertise. By creating a more open and collaborative environment, the military can benefit from the kind of cross-pollination that drives innovation in other sectors. This requires a shift away from the traditional “not invented here” mentality and towards a culture that is open to learning from others.

Finally, the military must be willing to accept a certain level of risk and failure. Innovation is inherently risky, and not every idea will succeed. However, the lessons learned from failure are often as valuable as those learned from success. By creating a culture that views failure as an opportunity for growth rather than a career-ending mistake, the military can encourage more officers to take the kinds of risks that lead to breakthrough innovations.

CONCLUSION

The U.S. military faces significant challenges in fostering innovation, largely due to a promotion system that rewards conformity and a resourcing process that inhibits flexibility. Mavericks like Billy Mitchell and Jimmy Doolittle—those who think differently and are willing to challenge the status quo—are often weeded out of the system, to the detriment of the military’s ability to adapt and innovate.

In an increasingly complex and rapidly changing security environment, the ability to innovate is not a luxury; it is a necessity. To maintain its strategic advantage, the U.S. military must create a culture that embraces divergent thinking, rewards risk-taking, and allows for greater flexibility in resource allocation. By doing so, it can ensure that it remains capable of meeting the challenges of the future with creativity, adaptability, and resilience.

The road to change will not be easy. It will require a fundamental shift in the way the military thinks about leadership, risk, and success. But by embracing the spirit of the mavericks it once sidelined, the U.S. military can once again become a beacon of innovation and progress, ready to meet the challenges of a world that is evolving faster than ever before.

3. ‘Serpent in Eden’: Foreign Spies and False Allies

Some interesting history. Can we see parallels today? Is our republic still fragile?

Excerpts:

Mr. Reeder explores the early political debates about where the republic’s sovereignty resided. Did it rest with the people or was it held by their representatives in government? The stakes were high for such vital questions, which had first been asked during the Revolutionary War. But even the Constitution, for all it had to offer, hadn’t clarified the answers. By the 1790s, the young country was politically polarized. Sniffing out U.S. internal tensions, foreign agents eagerly exploited them, “pitting Americans against each other,” Mr. Reeder argues. So much so that, by 1812, the author suggests, “Madison lived in and had helped create a nation in which it seemed rational to trust a former British spy and mysterious French gascon more than his political opponents.”

These foreign and domestic pressures worked in tandem. “Foreign meddling bred political distrust, political distrust reinforced partisanship, and partisanship encouraged foreign meddling.” Moreover, the Federalists—who tended to be pro-British—and the Republicans—often, like Madison, pro-French—were alike “blind to their own partisanship,” Mr. Reeder writes. Both sides “fed the cycle.”

​As an aside, I like to recall the age of James Madison and what he did for our nation as one its youngest founding fathers.

James Madison was 30 years old in 1790: 

• 1774: Madison became a member of the Orange County Commission of Safety. 
• 1776: Madison was elected to the Virginia legislature. 
• 1780–1783: Madison was the youngest delegate at the Continental Congress. 
• 1787: Madison was a leading participant in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
• 1789: Madison was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served four terms. He fought to pass the Bill of Rights. 
• 1790: Madison was elected to the first United States Congress, representing Virginia. He also participated in the Compromise of 1790 with Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. 

‘Serpent in Eden’: Foreign Spies and False Allies

An episode of European meddling in early America revealed the fragility of the young republic.

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/serpent-in-eden-review-spies-lies-and-false-allies-5a34e6e8

By Mark G. Spencer

Oct. 4, 2024 11:38 am ET

‘The Present State of Our Country’ (ca. 1812) by William Charles. Photo: The New York Public Library

During the tumultuous year leading up to the War of 1812, a former British spy named John Henry collaborated with a French con artist named Paul-Émile Soubiran to sell information to President James Madison. The intelligence on offer related to Henry’s being hired by James Craig, British North America’s governor-general, to meddle in U.S. domestic affairs. Craig wanted Henry to determine if America’s Federalist leaders would persuade New England—the party’s stronghold—to secede from the country. Madison, a Republican, was eager to procure information on his Federalist enemies, and secretly paid Henry and Soubiran $50,000 in public funds—an exceedingly large sum at the time.

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Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison's America

By Tyson Reeder

Oxford University Press

424 pages

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As Tyson Reeder writes in “Serpent in Eden,” Madison “could have built a warship for about the same amount.” Embarrassingly for the president, however, the documents he purchased from Henry and Soubiran “contained no incriminating information about his political opposition.” When word got out about Madison’s secret dealings, a public firestorm erupted. The Federalists and the Republicans each accused the other side of corrupt misdeeds while claiming for themselves the moral high ground.

Mr. Reeder, a historian who teaches at Brigham Young University, contends that the Henry-Soubiran scandal illuminates more than the murky depths of Republican-Federalist animosity. It demonstrates that, in the wake of its successful revolution, the United States “was a war-torn land with a floundering economy and an uncertain future.” While it would one day become a global leader, the country did not “leap onto the world stage as a major player.” Rather, Mr. Reeder claims, “it limped on as a European pawn.” The United States was a fragile political experiment, one that many expected would soon falter and fail.

Mr. Reeder explores the early political debates about where the republic’s sovereignty resided. Did it rest with the people or was it held by their representatives in government? The stakes were high for such vital questions, which had first been asked during the Revolutionary War. But even the Constitution, for all it had to offer, hadn’t clarified the answers. By the 1790s, the young country was politically polarized. Sniffing out U.S. internal tensions, foreign agents eagerly exploited them, “pitting Americans against each other,” Mr. Reeder argues. So much so that, by 1812, the author suggests, “Madison lived in and had helped create a nation in which it seemed rational to trust a former British spy and mysterious French gascon more than his political opponents.”

These foreign and domestic pressures worked in tandem. “Foreign meddling bred political distrust, political distrust reinforced partisanship, and partisanship encouraged foreign meddling.” Moreover, the Federalists—who tended to be pro-British—and the Republicans—often, like Madison, pro-French—were alike “blind to their own partisanship,” Mr. Reeder writes. Both sides “fed the cycle.”

In his celebrated Federalist No. 10—drawing upon the writings of the Scottish Enlightenment thinker David Hume, an influence overlooked in Mr. Reeder’s telling—Madison had in 1787 envisioned a multiparty system as an effective check on the polarized, factional divide in the nascent United States. Under Madison’s presidency, though, “party strife and foreign meddling left American political institutions in crisis and the republic teetering on the brink of disaster.” The destructive cycle, we are told, “spiraled until Madison plunged the nation into war to eradicate what he viewed as a foreign threat emboldened by internal enemies.” In this way of seeing things, the War of 1812 came about not solely because of festering animosity between America and Great Britain, nor because of Americans’ own “political differences,” but because Republicans and Federalists alike “confused opposition with corruption, dissent with disloyalty.”

Mr. Reeder concludes his book with a broad, post-Madison historical survey of his theme and some historically informed glances to America’s present and future. “Forged in partisan conflict, the United States remains vulnerable to foreign powers that aggravate political discord,” he submits. And “foreign meddling—perceived and actual”—has long aspired to amplify political discord within American democracy. As his examples show, that was as much the case during the Civil War as it was in the 20th century during both world wars. Still, he reasons, “it would take a stronger strain of partisan hostility to reintroduce the pernicious cycle that existed in James Madison’s America—the sort of hostility that began to emerge in the decades before the 2016 presidential election.”

The final word, however, goes to Madison. Toward the end of his turbulent life, the former president wrote “Advice to My Country,” a revealing memorandum that did not circulate until after his death in 1836. “The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated,” Madison reflected. “Let the open enemy” to the United States “be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise.”

For Mr. Reeder—an editor of “The Papers of James Madison” (2024)—we are still living in that Madisonian moment. As he fashions it in the concluding sentence of “Serpent in Eden”: “Madison’s fears and vices persist, but so does his hope.”

Mr. Spencer, a professor of history at Brock University, is the author of “David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America” and the editor-in-chief of “The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment.”

4. U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

Unrestricted Warfare (I am a broken record).

U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

AT&T and Verizon are among the broadband providers that were breached

https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s-wiretap-systems-targeted-in-china-linked-hack-327fc63b?mod=latest_headlines

By Sarah Krouse

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, Dustin Volz

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, Aruna Viswanatha

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 and Robert McMillan

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Updated Oct. 5, 2024 12:12 am ET

China’s multipronged spying operations have drawn warnings in the U.S. about their economic implications. Photo: Andy Wong/Associated Press

A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests.

For months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful U.S. requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter, which amounts to a major national security risk. The attackers also had access to other tranches of more generic internet traffic, they said.

Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies are among the companies whose networks were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the people said. 

The widespread compromise is considered a potentially catastrophic security breach and was carried out by a sophisticated Chinese hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon. It appeared to be geared toward intelligence collection, the people said. 

Spokesmen for AT&T, Verizon and Lumen declined to comment on the Salt Typhoon campaign.

Companies are generally required to disclose material cyber intrusions to securities regulators within a short time, but in rare cases, federal authorities can grant them an exemption from doing so on national security grounds.

Verizon is among the companies whose networks were breached by a recently discovered intrusion. Photo: Michael Dwyer/Associated Press

The surveillance systems believed to be at issue are used to cooperate with requests for domestic information related to criminal and national security investigations. Under federal law, telecommunications and broadband companies must allow authorities to intercept electronic information pursuant to a court order. It couldn’t be determined if systems that support foreign intelligence surveillance were also vulnerable in the breach.

The attack and its significance was discovered in recent weeks and remains under active investigation by the U.S. government and private-sector security analysts. Investigators are still working to confirm the breadth of the attack and the degree to which the actors observed data and exfiltrated some of it, the people said.

The hackers appear to have engaged in a vast collection of internet traffic from internet service providers that count businesses large and small, and millions of Americans, as their customers. Additionally, there are indications that the hacking campaign targeted a small number of service providers outside the U.S., the people said. 

A person familiar with the attack said the U.S. government considered the intrusions to be historically significant and worrisome.

Senior U.S. officials have for years warned about the economic and national security implications of China’s multipronged spying operations, which can take the form of human espionage, business investments and high-powered hacking operations.

More recently officials have been alarmed by alleged efforts by Chinese intelligence officers to burrow into vulnerable U.S. critical infrastructure networks, such as water-treatment facilities, power stations and airports. They say the efforts appear to be an attempt by hackers to position themselves in such a way that they could activate disruptive cyberattacks in the event of a major conflict with the U.S.

The Salt Typhoon campaign adds another piece to the puzzle. 

Investigators are still probing the origins of the Salt Typhoon attack and are exploring whether the intruders gained access to Cisco Systems routers, core network components that route much of the traffic on the internet, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. A Cisco spokeswoman said earlier that the company is looking into the matter but has received no indication that Cisco routers were involved. The spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

China has routinely denied allegations from Western governments and technology companies that it relies on hackers to break into foreign government and business computer networks.

In a statement, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said: “China firmly opposes and combats cyberattacks and cyber theft in all forms.”

Microsoft is investigating the new Salt Typhoon intrusion along with other cybersecurity companies and what sensitive information might have been accessed. Microsoft helps companies respond to cyber intrusions using data from its vast, globe-spanning network of hardware and software and has assigned some China-linked campaigns the Typhoon moniker. 

Microsoft said most of Salt Typhoon’s targets were based in North America and Southeast Asia. Photo: Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“It will take time to unravel how bad this is, but in the meantime it’s the most significant in a long string of wake-up calls that show how the PRC has stepped up their cyber game,” said Brandon Wales, former executive director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and now a vice president at SentinelOne, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “If companies and governments weren’t taking this seriously before, they absolutely need to now.”

Salt Typhoon has been active since 2020 and is a nation-state hacking group based out of China that focuses on espionage and data theft, particularly capturing network traffic, Microsoft said in a research note written in August. “Most of Salt Typhoon’s targets are based in North America or Southeast Asia,” Microsoft said, noting that other cybersecurity companies call the group GhostEmperor and FamousSparrow.

The cybersecurity firm ESET calls this group FamousSparrow and says it has previously broken into hotels and government agencies worldwide.

U.S. officials in September said they had disrupted a network of more than 200,000 routers, cameras and other internet-connected consumer devices that served as an entry point into U.S. networks for a China-based hacking group called Flax Typhoon. In January, federal officials disrupted Volt Typhoon, another China-linked campaign that has sought to infiltrate a swath of critical U.S. infrastructure.

U.S. officials warned that Volt Typhoon appeared largely focused on gaining access into networks to later detonate cyberattacks that could cripple operations of infrastructure.

Drew FitzGerald contributed to this article.

Write to Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com, Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com, Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com and Robert McMillan at robert.mcmillan@wsj.com

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the October 5, 2024, print edition as 'U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack'.

5. How the Massacre of Ignored Female Soldiers Came to Symbolize Oct. 7 Failures

​So tragic. So sad. We must never forget those lost and we should never forget those who are responsible for this atrocity and crimes against humanity. They must be held accountable.

How the Massacre of Ignored Female Soldiers Came to Symbolize Oct. 7 Failures

The women stationed at Nahal Oz warned authorities for months about increasingly suspicious Hamas activity, but no one acted

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/how-the-massacre-of-israeli-female-soldiers-came-to-symbolize-oct-7-failures-e7dee819?mod=latest_headlines

By Anat PeledFollow

 | Photographs and video by Amit Elkayam for WSJ

Oct. 4, 2024 9:30 pm ET

NAHAL OZ BASE, Israel—It was about 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7 when dozens of heavily armed men burst into view on Maya Desiatnik’s video screen. The Israeli soldier, charged with monitoring a stretch of the Gaza frontier, picked up the radio at her side and raised the alarm.

“There is a Turkish knight!” she said, using the Israeli military code word for an incursion into Israeli territory. Palestinian militants were breaching the border. 

For months, Desiatnik, now 20 years old, and her colleagues in the observer unit, all of them young women, had warned their superiors repeatedly—and with increasing vehemence—that the Islamist militant group Hamas seemed to be preparing a major attack. Their concerns were dismissed.

Now, they were watching as their fears became reality, playing out on video screens in the observers’ situation room. The women issued urgent warnings to troops in the field. When more than 150 militants swarmed their base, about half a mile from Gaza, they started frantically calling for help.

None came. In the end, around 50 soldiers at the Nahal Oz base, including 15 observers, were shot or burned to death by militants. Seven observers were kidnapped and taken as hostages to Gaza. 

The failure of Israel’s security establishment to heed the warnings of the observers who served, unarmed, at Nahal Oz and its inability to protect them have turned the women into a potent symbol of the country’s intelligence and military failures on Oct. 7.

Maya Desiatnik, in the front row at left, and fellow members of the Nahal Oz observer unit.

A year later, the deadly attack, which killed 1,200 and saw some 250 taken hostage, is still fresh in Israel, roiling politics and stirring grief and anger. The war that has followed has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians and each day seems to pull more of the Mideast into its violent spiral.

Dozens of Israelis remain in militants’ hands. Tens of thousands of Israelis are living as displaced people after fleeing their homes in the country’s north, where they face rocket attacks, or in communities near Gaza.

Parents of the women slain or kidnapped at Nahal Oz feel angry and betrayed, and are demanding accountability from the government and the military. “We need to speak the truth, even if it hurts,” said Eyal Eshel, whose daughter, Roni, died at Nahal Oz. 

The Wall Street Journal interviewed more than two dozen survivors of the attack on the base, as well as forensic scientists, families of the killed or kidnapped soldiers, and military officials, and reviewed photos of the aftermath. 

A memorial ceremony for Shahaf Nisani, who was killed at the Nahal Oz base in the Oct. 7 attacks. Sapir Nisani, her sister, attended the ceremony.

Months of warnings

The observers at Nahal Oz, in the desert 50 miles south of Tel Aviv, were part of a specialized, all-female group whose job was to keep watchful eyes on Israel’s border areas.

Theirs was a demanding job. The women worked in shifts to constantly monitor screens with video feeds from the borders at all times, 24/7. If they needed to eat or go to the bathroom, other soldiers had to take their place. Suspicious activity was reported by telephone to soldiers near the border.

At Nahal Oz, the months before Oct. 7 were full of suspicious activity. Former observers said crowds of Palestinians, some armed, would show up regularly—for stretches almost daily—at the border fence, setting tires on fire, blocking camera views and sometimes attempting to breach the barrier.

Roni Lifshitz, 21, who served as an observer at Nahal Oz but was away at a different base on Oct. 7, said that at one point she saw around 10 pickup trucks with some 20 militants near the fence. They were dressed in black, their faces covered, marking them as members of Hamas’s armed wing.

“They pointed at spots on the fence and where our lookouts are,” she said. “I alerted my command,” she said. She said she had no idea whether her superiors acted on the information or passed it on. 

Yael Kochavi and Yam Glass, who was killed in the attack, oversaw observers. Kochavi wasn’t at the base on Oct. 7.

Omer Keinan, now 21, another observer from the base, said that a few months before the attack she saw what appeared to be a Hamas training exercise inside Gaza that included practice taking prisoners.

“I saw them simulate everything. They would run and then crawl,” Keinan said. “We would alert about everything.” 

Many observers shared their concerns at the time with their parents, in text messages reviewed by the Journal, and told them they believed a war or operation was coming soon.

Roni: There isn’t going to be a ceasefire soon. 

Mother:There will. There will be a ceasefire. There will. 

Roni: There won’t be. You don’t know what happened and you don’t know what’s happening here. 

Mother: They can’t continue 

Roni: You don’t know what’s happening here. They are not telling you everything and there won’t be a ceasefire soon. Listen to what I am telling you. 

Mother: But you can’t leave the residents. 

Roni: There are things I know and you don’t and there won’t be a ceasefire soon and I’m really already broken (begins to cry) I don’t want to be here anymore. They are going to leave me here.

— A phone call between Roni Eshel and her mother a month before the Oct. 7 attack.

In a recording of a phone call a month before Oct. 7, Roni Eshel told her mother that incidents at the fence were increasing, and that she would have to spend more weekends on the base.

“It’s not good,” she said, according to a recording shared with the Journal by her father. “We don’t know when we will be able to come home.”

Yael Kochavi, 20, a noncommissioned officer who was tasked with overseeing the observers’ work, compiled daily intelligence reports for her superiors at the end of each shift with photos and video of unusual events. This report was then sent to an intelligence officer and up to the brigade commander, she said. 

The pace of irregular events two weeks before the attack was the highest she had seen during more than a year and a half of service. She called intelligence staffers during these two weeks. She said they told her not to worry. She didn’t escalate the situation further because she said she trusted them. 

The ignored warnings became a subject of gallows humor. “We always used to joke about whose shift the raid would fall on,” said Roni Lifshitz. “It was a repeating joke in the situation room.”

Eyal Eshel in the charred situation room where his daughter, Roni Eshel, and other observers had worked.

Current and former intelligence officials said that in recent years the military had tended to view observers more like security guards, and instead focused on other, higher-tech intelligence sources such as classified signals intelligence from Israel’s elite 8200 unit.

The warnings of observers typically weren’t passed up high in the military’s chain of command and to the intelligence community, they said. 

The young women, however, took their jobs seriously. The shared sense of duty and stress made for strong bonds. 

The observers at Nahal Oz kept each other’s spirits high by cooking together, planning meals and parties, and spending time together on weekends. One TikTok video from before Oct. 7 shows the women dancing and lip syncing to songs and pulling pranks on each other.

Tap to unmute

Nahal Oz observers at the base on a day before the Oct. 7 attack.

The attack

When sirens started blaring and Hamas launched barrages of rockets at 6:29 a.m. on Oct. 7, nine observers who weren’t on duty in the situation room ran into a base bomb shelter, which had a dirt floor and concrete walls. Many were still in their pajamas. 

In a video taken by Daniela Gilboa, which she sent from the shelter to her boyfriend that morning, the women can be seen huddled inside as they speak to each other in fear. Explosions can be heard around them.

“It’s escalating! Shahaf, it’s escalating!” one calls out in a terrified voice to a friend, Shahaf Nisani, who is crouching in a corner.

Soon, militants swarmed the desert base, which is about 280 yards long and 160 yards wide, with rows of barracks and other buildings encircled by a fence. Some combat soldiers who were there fought back, but many were quickly killed. 

Koby Levy, 23, a combat medic, said he began to hear guns firing at around 6:45 a.m. He spent the ensuing hours fighting militants armed with grenades and Kalashnikovs, he said. 

“They just kept coming,” said Levy, who, faced with overwhelming numbers of militants, said he hid behind a bush near some trash cans.

Inside the bomb shelter, women started to send their parents messages saying goodbye.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I love you guys,” one of the observers, Noa Price, texted her mother at 7:30 a.m. through another observer’s phone, as the militants began to close in.

Noa Price sent a text message to her mother on Oct. 7: 'I don’t know what's going to happen, but I love you guys.'

Family of Noa Price

Shahaf Nisani sent her father a selfie of herself hiding in the shelter with another friend around the same time. “Take care of mom and everyone if I don’t make it out of this,” she wrote him.

Militants tossed grenades into the shelter, wounding some. A few combat soldiers with weapons who had come to shelter from rockets with the observers attempted to fight off the invaders, but were killed. The Hamas militants entered and began shooting.

Roni Eshel told her mother in her last text message from Nahal Oz not to worry and that she loved her.

Family of Roni Eshel

A video, taken by a Hamas militant that morning and later recovered by Israeli soldiers, showed the aftermath: seven young women, bloodied but still alive, tied up against the shelter wall in front of the dead bodies of seven of their friends. 

Those women—including Daniela Gilboa, who had messaged her boyfriend earlier—would later be forced into pickup trucks and taken into Gaza, where she is believed to still be alive as a hostage. 

Among those who were dead was Shahaf Nisani, a curly haired soldier who was serving her last weekend on the base before completing military service. She had prepared a festive meal for all of the observers on the base the night before and handpicked parting gifts for each of her friends.

Shahaf Nisani texted as the militants closed in: 'I love you the most in the world, dad. You were the best. Really. Take care of mom and everyone if I don’t make it out of this.'

Family of Shahaf Nisani

Over in the situation room, which was supposed to be the safest place on the base, the observers stayed at their posts until they got orders to hide in an adjoining commander’s office, a bit farther away from where the militants were trying to enter the building.

They spent the next few hours trying to calm each other down, even making occasional jokes, according to Desiatnik.

A handful of armed soldiers who were on hand tried to fight off the militants, but the attackers set the area on fire, making it hard to breathe, Desiatnik said. 

She heard a voice calling her to climb out through a bathroom window, even though there were still militants outside. The window was so small that she got stuck before another soldier pulled her through. 

For the next 40 minutes, Desiatnik hid behind concrete barricades near the situation-room window with several soldiers who had also escaped in hope other observers would climb out, but no one came. When the heat and smoke became unbearable, they moved to another hiding spot until reinforcements arrived hours later. 

Levy, the combat medic, said he was first able to assess the totality of damage to the base when he was rescued by arriving Israeli troops around 4 p.m. The base was littered with bodies. Cars and buildings were either burned or on fire, he said. The air smelled of wood, asphalt, plastic and corpses.

“I saw the situation room completely burned down,” he said. “It was clear what happened.”

'We need to speak the truth, even if it hurts,' says Eyal Eshel, whose daughter died at Nahal Oz. 

A master sergeant who arrived at Nahal Oz on Oct. 8 to recover bodies warned his soldiers not to look at the faces since they could be someone they knew. Many of the bodies he saw had gunshots wounds to the torso. 

One photo he took, viewed by the Journal, showed the burned body of a young woman lying on the remains of a mattress. Another young woman was found dead behind a bench, wearing Mickey Mouse pajamas. 

Some bodies were little more than bones turned white from the high temperatures, and would take weeks to identify.

When first responders from an Israeli rescue organization asked a mother, Anat Glass, if she wanted to know the details about her daughter’s death, she turned them down.

“I don’t know what I buried,” she said.

Searching for the truth

In the weeks after Oct. 7, when Eyal Eshel’s daughter, Roni, was still classified as missing, he became frustrated by a lack of answers from authorities about what happened. He started his own investigation, speaking to survivors, military officials and anyone else he could track down.  

It took 34 days for authorities to identify his daughter, Roni, in a forensic lab where anthropologists sifted through crowns, teeth and what little else remained of the young women on duty that day. Forensics specialists said their bodies had been incinerated at crematorium-level temperatures.

Families discovered that the young women didn’t have fire extinguishers in the situation room, and that the ones who were on duty were alive until at least around 11:30 a.m., when some parents received calls. They could have been saved if rescuers had come in time, Eshel and other parents say. 

Survivors said they had never prepared for a base-invasion scenario, so they didn’t know what to do.

The bomb shelter at the Nahal Oz base, where soldiers were slain or kidnapped.

Other information that emerged after Oct. 7 point to broader intelligence failures. The Israeli military discovered detailed Hamas maps of several bases after the attack. Some videos of militants breaching the Nahal Oz base and kidnapping soldiers were used as propaganda on Hamas Telegram groups.

Officials missed danger signs, such as videos published on social media by Hamas before Oct. 7 that showed it conducting training exercises. The Israeli military and its vaunted intelligence units had for years put most of their resources toward the country’s northern border, and especially Hezbollah, which was seen as a more serious threat than Hamas, according to an Israeli security official. 

Despite the Israeli attorney general’s insistence that a state commission of inquiry be launched, one hasn’t taken place. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said investigations should take place only after the war ends. Some allege that he wants to delay unflattering findings.

The prime minister’s office declined to comment.

The military is currently conducting its own probe into what took place at Nahal Oz to study its performance and draw lessons for the future and has promised to make the findings public.

But parents want a broader, independent state investigation to study wider failures associated with Oct. 7, with the authority to find individuals responsible for mistakes and recommend that such people can’t continue serving in positions of power. 

Past state commissions of inquiry, including one after Israel’s 1973 Yom Kippur War, led to public outcries and major changes in policy. 

For survivors, the attack remains an open wound. 

One of the seven kidnapped women was rescued by Israeli forces in Gaza. The body of another was found and brought home. The five others were seen alive, though wounded, by hostages who were freed in November’s cease-fire deal. 

A 'civil commission' includes bereaved families who want the government to launch an official inquiry into the Oct. 7 attacks. At Nahal Oz, memorial candles were burning at what was a workstation.

More than 10 months later, families are worried about their chances of survival. Negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reach a hostage swap for a cease-fire deal have collapsed in recent months.

Sigal Price, whose daughter, Noa, died, stopped working and relives Oct. 7 every Saturday morning when she wakes up trying to imagine her daughter’s last moments. “Both the government and the military have to give us answers on how such a disaster took place,” she said.

Anat Glass is devastated by the loss of her daughter, Yam, and finds it hard to leave the house; she paints to feel closer to her and stay calm. Eyal Eshel stays focused on the state commission of inquiry. In September, he visited the charred remains of the Nahal Oz situation room, which still has melted telephones and keyboards. The smell of smoke was present in the air. 

Insisting on a full investigation, he said, allows him to act as his daughter’s voice, since hers was taken away. “I am not driven by rage,” he said. “I demand justice.”

Shahaf Nisani was serving her last weekend on the base before completing military service.

Write to Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com

6. What Game Theory Tells Us About the Threat of an Israel-Iran War

Excerpts:

“It’s a very, very dangerous thing,” she said.

Sobelman, who has studied Iran and its proxies for decades, said that he believes that Iran was trying to deter Israel, not to begin a new era of direct conflict between the countries. In the missile attacks on Tuesday night, Iran was “trying to establish a certain deterrence threshold that would bring this escalatory cycle to closure,” he said. “It was trying to retaliate in a certain fashion that would deter Israel from further escalation.”

The question now is whether Israel will see it that way — and, even if it does, whether the Israeli government will view this moment as an opportunity to do further damage to Iran now that the threat of retaliation by Hezbollah seems to have been substantially reduced.

If that happens, it is not clear how far the situation might escalate, or how the United States and other Israeli allies would react if it did.

One likelihood is that the heaviest burden of any miscalculation or renegotiation of the rules would fall on civilians.

Israeli attacks in Lebanon have displaced approximately a million people from their homes in recent weeks, according to the United Nations, and killed at least 1,600, according to Lebanese health officials, though the death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Approximately 60,000 residents of northern Israel have been displaced for the past year because of the threat of Hezbollah rocket attacks. And the sole confirmed death from Iran’s missile attack Tuesday night was Sameh al-Asali, a laborer from Gaza who was sheltering in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — one more victim of the dangerous uncertainty about the new rules of the game.

What Game Theory Tells Us About the Threat of an Israel-Iran War

Each side must predict how the other will react to avoid mutual destruction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/world/middleeast/what-game-theory-tells-us-about-the-threat-of-an-israel-iran-war.html

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Destruction is seen in a Dahiya neighborhood south of Beirut after a week of deadly Israeli airstrikes.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

By Amanda Taub

Reporting from London

Oct. 4, 2024

For years, the conflict between Israel and Iran had unofficial but fairly clear rules, allowing the enemies to maintain an uneasy equilibrium in the Middle East.

Neither wanted all-out war, so both kept within certain boundaries. At times of rising tension, they stepped back from the brink.

Scholars of game theory say this is a common pattern. In conflicts that simmer over many decades, tit-for-tat actions and reactions often develop into mutually understood “rules of the game” that deter open warfare, said Daniel Sobelman, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is literally writing the book (or at least a book) on game theory in the region, as author of the forthcoming “Axis of Resistance: Asymmetric Deterrence and Rules of the Game in Contemporary Middle East Conflicts.”

But the events of the past few weeks, including Israel’s successful attacks on Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and the volley of ballistic missiles that Iran launched against Israel on Tuesday night, have demonstrated that the old rules no longer apply.

Now, the question is whether Israel and Iran will reach a new equilibrium that stops short of a full-blown conflict — or if the dangerous new mix of uncertainty and aggression will send the Middle East spiraling into all-out war.

War games

It is an idea that sounds so simple as to be almost callous, yet its implications are so powerful that it won a Nobel Prize: Wars — both fighting them and preventing them — are essentially games of prediction.

That’s an important cornerstone of game theory, a method of analyzing the strategies that different “players” — be they militaries, business rivals or poker players — choose to achieve the best possible outcome for themselves.

When it comes to war, each side needs to forecast how the other will react to a given move in order to weigh its costs and benefits. And by credibly demonstrating that the costs of aggression would be too high to be worthwhile, even bitterly opposed enemies can deter a catastrophic war.

That theory will be familiar to anyone who has watched Hollywood movies like “War Games” or “Fail Safe,” whose plots turn on understanding that the best way to avoid a catastrophic nuclear war is to convince your opponent that any attack would lead to its annihilation.

But it doesn’t only apply to nuclear war. Other forms of conflict, including long-running tensions like those between Israel, Iran, and Iran’s proxy militias, also center on one question: What action should I take to advance my interests and keep my opponent from imposing greater costs than I am willing to bear?

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Israel was always stronger militarily than Iran, particularly when its close alliance with the United States was factored into the equation. But Iran cultivated the militias known as the “axis of resistance” — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Houthi rebels in Yemen — that posed a credible threat that the costs of full-blown war would be too great for Israel to bear.

“Hezbollah in particular was a big part of that threat,” said Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research institute that studies peace and security. “It was, ‘If you do something against Iranian interests elsewhere in the region, Hezbollah will launch a massive rocket attack from Lebanon. And you know, you don’t want to cross that line.’”

Oct. 7 changes the balance

That equilibrium was damaged but not broken on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters attacked Israel, massacring civilians and taking some 250 hostages. Hamas clearly wanted its attack to be the opening salvo in a regional conflict between Israel and the entire Iranian axis, but Hezbollah and Iran quickly communicated that they did not want to escalate.

Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israeli positions on Oct. 8, but in a way that suggested that it expected Israel to keep its response restrained and symmetrical, Sobelman said.

Israel, for its part, “didn’t want to fight a two-front war, and therefore it was doing enough to dissuade Hezbollah from pushing its luck,” said Lawrence Freedman, an emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London. For most of the last year, that was enough to maintain a stable if hostile dynamic between Israel and Hezbollah. They regularly exchanged attacks, but kept them relatively mild in comparison to the heavy fighting in Gaza.

For a time, that deterrence strategy seemed to hold: actions were met with proportional responses, avoiding an all-out war.

In April, there was a moment of uncertainty that brought new risks of miscalculation. Israel bombed an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria, killing three top Iranian commanders and four other officers. In retaliation, two weeks later, Iran launched a barrage of hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel. The week after that, Israel struck an antiaircraft system that protects a nuclear facility near the city of Isfahan.

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Those strikes, while an escalation of the conflict between Israel and Iran, nevertheless fit within the longstanding framework for deterrence between the two countries. Because the diplomatic compound was in some ways an extension of Iranian territory, “it made sense in the context of symmetrical rules of the game that they would retaliate directly against Israeli territory,” Sobelman said.

And while Iran’s strike on Israel was unexpectedly large-scale, the weapons it used meant that Israel and its allies were able to intercept the attack, preventing significant damage. Israel’s limited strike in retaliation was a signal that the escalatory exchange had ended — that it would “take the win,” as President Biden reportedly urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do.

When the old rules no longer apply

But now that equilibrium has faltered. Israel sharply escalated its actions against Hezbollah in mid-September when it detonated hundreds of explosives concealed in pagers and two-way radios that it had covertly distributed to the armed group, dealing a serious blow to its leadership. Days later, it began a heavy bombing campaign in Lebanon. And on Sept. 27, it killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah and one of the most powerful figures in the Iranian axis.

Game theory suggests that ultimately, the weaker party — Iran and its proxies in this case — is the one responsible for preserving deterrence, Sobelman said. “The onus is on the weaker actor to restrain the stronger side,” he said, by acting in a way that shows that an all-out conflict would lead to intolerable harm.

So under the unwritten rules of the game, Israel’s recent attacks on Hezbollah should have provoked a devastating response from the armed group, Sobelman said. “Theoretically, there should’ve been thousands of Israeli fatalities,” he said. “There should have been high-rise buildings going down in Israel.” But that didn’t happen. Whether because Israel’s attacks have been so devastating that Hezbollah no longer has the ability to retaliate, or for some other reason, the expected response never came. The deterrent Iran had relied on to keep the conflict at a manageable level appeared, for practical purposes, to have collapsed.

“Deterrence has failed,” Ashford said. “The Iranians now have to figure out, can they stop Israel or the U.S. from crossing more of their red lines?”

The danger of uncertainty

Iran’s attempt to answer that question seems to have come on Tuesday night, when it fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israeli soil, a significant escalation in direct hostilities. Because Iran’s targets included the urban area around Tel Aviv,, the attack was widely seen as crossing a new threshold even compared to the April attack, which only targeted military bases and relied partly on weapons that were easier to intercept.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Iran is trying to escalate the conflict. In fact, that kind of escalation can be used to deter an open conflict, rather than start one, Sobelman said.

However, the danger is that without the clarity of the rules that governed the conflict for so long, either side could misjudge and overstep, taking action that provokes a much stronger retaliation than they anticipate. “You’re not restoring what existed before,” Ashford said. “You’re moving to some new equilibrium. And that equilibrium could be similar, better, or it could be worse, if either side misinterprets.”

“It’s a very, very dangerous thing,” she said.

Sobelman, who has studied Iran and its proxies for decades, said that he believes that Iran was trying to deter Israel, not to begin a new era of direct conflict between the countries. In the missile attacks on Tuesday night, Iran was “trying to establish a certain deterrence threshold that would bring this escalatory cycle to closure,” he said. “It was trying to retaliate in a certain fashion that would deter Israel from further escalation.”

The question now is whether Israel will see it that way — and, even if it does, whether the Israeli government will view this moment as an opportunity to do further damage to Iran now that the threat of retaliation by Hezbollah seems to have been substantially reduced.

If that happens, it is not clear how far the situation might escalate, or how the United States and other Israeli allies would react if it did.

One likelihood is that the heaviest burden of any miscalculation or renegotiation of the rules would fall on civilians.

Israeli attacks in Lebanon have displaced approximately a million people from their homes in recent weeks, according to the United Nations, and killed at least 1,600, according to Lebanese health officials, though the death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Approximately 60,000 residents of northern Israel have been displaced for the past year because of the threat of Hezbollah rocket attacks. And the sole confirmed death from Iran’s missile attack Tuesday night was Sameh al-Asali, a laborer from Gaza who was sheltering in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — one more victim of the dangerous uncertainty about the new rules of the game.

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Amanda Taub writes the Interpreter, an explanatory column and newsletter about world events. She is based in London. More about Amanda Taub

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 5, 2024, Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: The Impact of Game Theory on Israel, Iran and the Risks of Escalation. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

7. Hamas built an underground war machine to ensure its own survival

This might have been enhanced with an interview with Dr. Bruce Becthol to highlight the north Korean connection, particularly on tunnel contribution advice and assistance.

To the highlight statement I have to respond with "Yet." Modern military has faced the complexity of the battlefield in Gaza, "YET." Just wait until we encounter the 5000+ underground facilities on the Korean peninsula in the north.

And as an aside, I think north Korean support to Hexbollah may be even greater. But I would defer to Dr. Bechtol.

Excerpts:

“Nobody understood how extensive the tunnels were, or that there were so many different types of tunnels,” said Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East during the first three years of the Biden administration.

Echoing a common assessment among U.S. and Israeli military officials, Stroul said the failure to grasp the many dimensions of Hamas’s most important strategic asset was “part of the intelligence failure” of Oct. 7, and one that has not yet been fully reckoned with. Fighting an enemy that can move horizontally and vertically, through a battlefield situated in heavily populated urban terrain, posed a formidable military challenge, she said.

“I don’t know that any modern military has faced the complexity of the battlefield that the IDF faced in Gaza,” she said.

The tunnels served to hide weapons production, according to Israeli, U.S. and Arab analysts, but they also served as a communications network, supply depot, highway system, logistics pipeline, bomb shelter and field hospital, officials said. Hidden tunnel shafts were used as staging grounds for ambushes. Underground living quarters became command centers and detention facilities for Israeli hostages.

Hamas built an underground war machine to ensure its own survival

Vowing self-sufficiency, Hamas turned a maze of tunnels in Gaza into weapons factories and well-stocked fortifications. A year after the war began, parts of the group remain deeply entrenched.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/10/05/hamas-tunnels-weapons-gaza-war-october-7-attacks/

18 min

1447

An Israeli soldier secures a tunnel beneath al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in November 2023. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

By Joby Warrick and Loveday Morris

October 5, 2024 at 2:00 a.m. EDT

AMMAN, Jordan — Six months before the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas’s top leader in the Gaza Strip was meeting with visiting Palestinian businessmen in the enclave when he made a shocking disclosure. Hamas was planning something big, Yahya Sinwar told his guests.

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“There’s going to be a surprise,” he said, according to one of the participants in the meeting, which has not been previously reported. While offering no details, he intimated that preparations had long been underway in Gaza itself, within Hamas’s network of underground fortresses. Of the allies and partners assisting the effort, he mentioned only one.

“God will help us,” he said.

Sinwar’s secret plan would reveal itself on a Jewish Sabbath morning one year ago as waves of attackers swarmed Israeli villages and military bases, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages. But the nature of Sinwar’s preparations — how, exactly, the group armed itself for the assault while simultaneously engineering a sophisticated, multilayered defense against the inevitable Israeli military response — would become clear only gradually, in the weeks and months of heavy fighting that followed.

Evidence accumulated over the past year has brought new clarity to Hamas’s operational planning before Oct. 7, revealing how and from where it obtained the means for both the attack itself and a carefully considered resistance phase that was designed to last up to 12 months. It shows how, despite years of isolation within a densely populated strip of land the size of Philadelphia, Hamas acquired an astonishing arsenal of rockets, explosives and small arms, while constructing the financial and defensive networks that enabled Sinwar and his followers to hold out for months under a determined assault by one of the world’s most capable militaries.

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Across Israel’s northern border, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah is in disarray after Israeli forces killed the group’s leader and decimated its command structure in a series of recent operations that revealed a deep penetration of the group by Israeli intelligence.

But a year after the Oct. 7 attacks, Sinwar, who studied Israeli tactics during years in prison and later became notorious for brutally rooting out suspected Israeli collaborators, has not only survived but is already laying the groundwork for the group’s reemergence, according to Hamas officials interviewed by The Washington Post.

Palestinians transport a captured Israeli civilian, center, from Kibbutz Kfar Aza into the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023. (Hatem Ali/AP)

This article is based on interviews with more than two-dozen Israeli, U.S. and Arab military and intelligence analysts, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments. The Post also interviewed current and former Hamas and Palestinian Authority officials, some of whom, like the businessman who met with Sinwar in the spring of 2023, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The accounts describe how Hamas, under Sinwar’s leadership, became relentlessly focused on achieving self-sufficiency, including a capacity to produce its own weapons and explosives, and carry out elaborate operations involving thousands of participants, while maintaining complete secrecy.

The group relied on outsiders for money and advice. It raised tens of millions of dollars, some of it from Iran, but much of it siphoned from aid money, charitable contributions, tax revenue and — after Oct. 7 — shareholder deposits stolen from Gazan banks. Hamas commanders traveled to Tehran for training, Israel Defense Forces officials say, and made multiple trips to Lebanon, where Iran had established an operations room to coordinate military planning and share technical know-how.

But the Hamas that Sinwar built was no mere proxy group, officials and experts said. Mindful of Israel’s ability to cut off Gaza from the world, Hamas spent years perfecting a war machine that could make its own munitions, carry out operations without outside approval or even knowledge, and then allow its fighters to disappear inside an elaborate underground maze — a warren beneath the streets of the seaside enclave estimated to consist of hundreds of miles of interlinked, reinforced passages, rooms and bunkers.

Hamas’s tunnels are its greatest engineering feat and, to Sinwar, the key to its survival.

“We succeeded in making manufacturing factories underground,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s political bureau from Gaza, said in an interview with The Post, “because we knew that one day all the channels would be closed.”

Yahya Sinwar, then Hamas's top leader in the Gaza Strip, attends a rally in Gaza City on Oct. 1, 2022. He became head of the Hamas political bureau in 2024 after the death of Ismail Haniyeh. (Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)

Hamas today is, without question, a badly diminished force. The group has lost its top civilian leader along with dozens of military commanders and an estimated 15,000 fighters, according to regional intelligence officials. Cash and weapons stockpiles are dwindling; swaths of the Strip lie in ruins; and at least 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Many of the group’s estimated 5,700 tunnel shafts have been destroyed by Israeli bombs.

Yet Hamas fights on. The group’s capabilities and tactics, revealed over the past year, have repeatedly challenged the conventional thinking about Hamas that existed before Oct. 7, 2023. They also raise new concerns about the organization’s ability to reconstitute itself in Gaza or elsewhere.

Unchecked War

Next

How Joe Biden lost his grip on Israel’s war for ‘total victory’ in Gaza

The female soldiers who predicted Oct. 7 say they are still being silenced

Hamas built an underground war machine to ensure its own survival

Many analysts had believed that Hamas was heavily dependent on Iran and had smuggled in large shipments of Iranian-made rockets and missiles while making new ones in large underground factories. Yet a year later, IDF investigators in Gaza have turned up surprisingly few Iranian-made weapons, and no large-scale factories for mass assembly of rockets and missiles. Instead, they mostly found small workshops where metalworkers with simple lathes turned scavenged pipes and agricultural chemicals into components for explosive projectiles to be lobbed into Israeli villages.

After the IDF’s May invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, an Israeli commander reported finding no new active smuggling tunnels leading into Egypt, as many experts had believed existed. In the previous decade, when Gazans ran contraband through hundreds of tunnels along the border, Israeli forces would sometimes seal off the shafts with concrete, only to later discover that Hamas had drilled new passageways through the barriers. The group even tweaked rocket designs so that the components were small enough to fit through twists and turns in the reconfigured passageways.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid enter the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing with Egypt in November 2023. (Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images)

Yet after the Rafah invasion, intelligence analysts concluded that most of Hamas’s supply of imported weapons and components had entered overland, in trucks and cars passing through border crossings controlled by Egypt and Israel. The rest arrived years ago, before Egypt destroyed thousands of underground passageways and created a mile-wide system of barriers along its border with Gaza.

But the biggest surprise, U.S. and Israeli officials say, was the tunnels within Gaza. Israeli war planners well understood the challenge IDF soldiers faced in trying to defeat a foe that could move fighters and supplies freely through underground passages. But the size, scale and complexity of the Gaza “metro,” as it came to be dubbed, far exceeded Israeli estimations. IDF officials in interviews described their dismay after picking their way through bunkers 30 feet beneath Gaza’s streets, only to find shafts leading to deeper tunnels buried 120 feet underground.

“Their eyes were bulging,” said a former U.S. counterterrorism official who visited Hamas-built tunnels as a guest of the IDF. “They had no idea of the labyrinth. Can you image 150 kilometers of tunnels? The reality was several times bigger.”

‘We will come to you with endless rockets’

In private conversations and in public speeches before Oct. 7, Sinwar could not restrain himself from bragging about what his group had achieved. Outside Gaza, his words were mostly dismissed as empty boasts.

“We will come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood,” Sinwar warned Israelis at a rally for his supporters in Gaza on Dec. 14, 2022. “We will come to you with endless rockets, we will come to you in a limitless flood of soldiers, we will come to you with millions of our people, like the repeating tides.”

Sinwar, who had long dreamed of inflicting a savage blow that could disrupt the status quo with Israel, “made sure the money and material was there for many years,” said Abu Hamza, 33, a Hamas commander in the West Bank town of Jenin. Abu Hamza spoke on the condition that he be identified by his nom de guerre for security reasons.

A rocket is launched from the Gaza Strip toward Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. (Mohammed Saber/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

“Hamas built really well for this thing,” Abu Hamza said. Inside the tunnels, Hamas was “hiding weapons and making their own,” while laboring to ensure that Hamas could withstand any Israeli counterstrike.

“In Gaza we were working day and night, day and night, 24 hours,” said Hamad, the member of the group’s political bureau. “We prepared a lot, not for one year or two years.”

But even homemade weapons require parts that must be brought in from the outside. Hamad said getting components past the Israeli blockade was a constant challenge. Almost every facet of weapons production, from machine tools to agricultural chemicals for explosives, was either labeled for civilian use or hidden inside shipments of food or other everyday wares.

“We are in the situation that pressures us to do everything, and collect everything,” he said. “We face a very dangerous country, with a lot of technology and weapons. It’s not easy to fight Israel. We knew this equation very well.”

Homemade arsenal

The Israeli response to Oct. 7 began in earnest with a ground invasion three weeks later by an IDF force that eventually grew to 100,000 fighters. Within days, Israeli soldiers were venturing into Hamas’s tunnels, often with underground surveillance drones or bomb-sniffing dogs in the lead.

The images posted by the IDF in the weeks that followed offered the first glimpse into what Hamas had wrought underground. Among the initial findings were armories filled with weapons — thousands of them, of every make and description: North Korean-made F-7 rocket-propelled grenades, Bulgarian rifles, Iranian 60mm mortars and Italian-designed TC/6 mines, a copy of which is produced in Egypt.

But IDF officials eventually concluded that up to 80 percent of Hamas’s weapons were manufactured in Gaza, by the group itself. Among the homemade arms: antitank IEDs (improvised explosive devices), Claymore-type antipersonnel mines and thermobaric rocket-propelled grenades. Hamas — perhaps drawing inspiration from Islamic State fighters who used similar tactics in the 2017 battle for Mosul, Iraq — learned to modify small commercial drones to drop explosives, IDF officials said.

A cache of Hamas weapons is displayed at a military base in southern Israel on Oct. 20, 2023. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

Hamas’s specialty is short- and medium-range rockets, such as the M-75, a copy of the Iranian-made Fajr-5, capable of striking targets as far away as Tel Aviv. More common is the Qassam, named after a legendary Syrian Arab nationalist from the 1920s and featuring a design developed by Hamas more than 20 years ago. Hamas weaponeers have assembled thousands of Qassams from steel water pipes, shaping the metal into rocket bodies using metal presses and lathes, and packing the warheads with hundreds of pounds of explosives made from sugar and potassium nitrate fertilizer.

While limited in range, a single Qassam costs only a few hundred dollars to make. The Israeli military’s Iron Dome antimissile system shot down thousands of such rockets in the days after Oct. 7, but at a cost of roughly $50,000 per launch.

By January, the IDF had stumbled upon Hamas’s manufacturing hubs. Israeli soldiers found dedicated fabrication centers for producing small arms, ammunition and explosives, and other workshops for crafting the cylindrical frames for rockets. Some of the production facilities consisted of interconnected underground chambers that formed crude assembly lines. These were not factories, in the traditional sense. But they served the purpose.

“They are essentially labs with lathes,” said Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department counterterrorism official who has studied Hamas and its tunnels for more than a decade.

The largest of the manufacturing hubs discovered up to now consisted of a complex of underground workshops and street-level warehouses, raided by IDF forces in January beneath a crowded district in Khan Younis, a city in central Gaza. Connected by tunnels, it amounted to a weapons assembly line that extended nearly half a mile, according to an IDF weapons expert who analyzed the site.

“There were many different capabilities within the same location,” the IDF official said. “It was such a large operation, it took us about a week to process it.”

Secretly, and out of the view of satellite surveillance cameras, the group had a created a “Hamas military industrial complex” that could produce a variety of cheap weapons in vast quantities, said Levitt, who now serves as the director of the Reinhard counterterrorism program for the Washington Institute of Near East Policy. “Some of the weapons even had Hamas branding on them,” he said.

Cities beneath cities

The IDF had long known about the threat posed by tunnels. After Hamas used cross-border tunnels to abduct Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006, Israeli forces deployed special sensors along the border that allowed them to hear, see and map efforts to dig new passages into Israeli territory. Yet the size and complexity of the group’s tunnels within Gaza itself surprised everyone, including Israel’s vaunted intelligence services and their U.S. counterparts.

“Nobody understood how extensive the tunnels were, or that there were so many different types of tunnels,” said Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East during the first three years of the Biden administration. 

Echoing a common assessment among U.S. and Israeli military officials, Stroul said the failure to grasp the many dimensions of Hamas’s most important strategic asset was “part of the intelligence failure” of Oct. 7, and one that has not yet been fully reckoned with. Fighting an enemy that can move horizontally and vertically, through a battlefield situated in heavily populated urban terrain, posed a formidable military challenge, she said.

“I don’t know that any modern military has faced the complexity of the battlefield that the IDF faced in Gaza,” she said.

The tunnels served to hide weapons production, according to Israeli, U.S. and Arab analysts, but they also served as a communications network, supply depot, highway system, logistics pipeline, bomb shelter and field hospital, officials said. Hidden tunnel shafts were used as staging grounds for ambushes. Underground living quarters became command centers and detention facilities for Israeli hostages.

People sit amid destroyed buildings in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Sunday. (Haitham Imad/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Costing, at minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars — money that Hamas diverted from humanitarian and economic development projects intended to improve the lives of ordinary Gazans — the tunnel system by Oct. 7 extended more than 300 miles, longer than the New York City subway, or about the distance from Tel Aviv to southern Turkey. The IDF acknowledges there is no practical way to destroy the entire system.

The IDF eventually became adept at fighting underground. But Maj. Gen. Dan Goldfus, an Israeli commander dubbed by local media as the IDF’s “tunnel destroyer,” said his forces initially faced a steep learning curve.

“All our definitions of tunnel shafts, tactical tunnels, strategic tunnels — none of that applies there,” Goldfus told the Hebrew-language newspaper Israel Hayom in August. “It’s all one large network; you can enter it at the [northern] Erez Crossing and emerge in Rafah [on the Egyptian border]. Everything there is connected to everything.”

Goldfus described a moment of wonder in February when the IDF arrived at Sinwar’s hastily vacated underground command center, a suite of well-appointed bunkers buried deep beneath the streets of Khan Younis.

“We reached senior officials’ compounds and we studied this infrastructure … this center of strength, its importance,” Goldfus told the newspaper. “It slowly became revealed to us before our eyes. And when I understood it — what can I say, hats off.”

Surviving the siege, eyeing a comeback

By the day of the Oct. 7 assault, Hamas’s well-trained military wing numbered about 35,000, including a vanguard of 6,000 shock troops who burst into Israel early that morning for the attack the group dubbed “Operation al-Aqsa Flood.” Hamad, the political bureau member, said the idea was to shake Israel to its core and force its leaders to end the siege on Gaza, halt settler expansion in the West Bank and curtail raids on the al-Aqsa Mosque, which sits atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, known in Islam as the Noble Sanctuary and revered by both Muslims and Jews. He said he was not aware of Oct. 7 planning in advance.

But Sinwar, Hamad said, also understood that Israel would respond with devastating force. Much of the planning and preparation in the years preceding the attack was devoted to ensuring that Hamas would not only survive the blow but also quickly recover so it could strike again.

The tunnels, amply stocked with provisions and weapons to last many months, would play a key role. But so would Hamas’s reserves of cash.

Hamas is believed to have socked away hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and cryptocurrencies before Oct. 7, much of it from tax revenue collected from Gazans as well as financial aid given by Qatar — with the tacit approval of Israeli leaders — in recent years to keep the enclave’s economy from collapsing.

Hamas has used the cash over the past year to pay fighters in the group’s military wing, who Hamad said are still being “looked after,” even as the roughly 2 million civilians in Gaza have been forced into destitution.

The money has also enabled Hamas to retain a functioning public sector to meet the basic needs of Gazans, the officials said. The group’s payroll includes 50,000 workers, including teachers, doctors, sanitation crews and more. Whatever money is left serves as a vital lifeline for Gazans struggling to feed their families at a time when many businesses and shops have been shuttered or destroyed. Hamas regularly announces collection points and times for aid recipients, with new locations posted every month.

Displaced Palestinians inspect tents destroyed by Israeli bombardment west of Rafah in May. (Jehad Alshrafi/AP)

“I don’t know where the money comes from,” said an employee of the Gaza Justice Ministry. “What I care about now is finding something to satisfy my two children’s hunger.”

Yet a year into the conflict, the tap appears to be finally running dry. Beginning in the spring, many Gazan workers began drawing only half their normal salaries, when they were paid at all.

With Israel’s unrelenting assault and a dearth of humanitarian trucks bearing food and other necessities reaching Gaza, Hamas may be reaching a tipping point, at least with regard to its supply of money and other vital resources, say analysts. While Hamas was prepared for an extended siege, a year of IDF operations in Gaza — combined with stricter controls by Israelis at border crossings — have nearly drained Hamas’s coffers, officials said. Hamad maintains that Hamas still has “channels” to ensure cash flow into Gaza, but he declined to elaborate.

Still, one of Hamas’s key assets remains available to the group with a nearly inexhaustible supply. Analysts say Gaza’s devastation is spurring recruitment, driving legions of embittered or desperate youths into the arms of Hamas.

“There is no shortage of young volunteers,” a senior Arab intelligence official said. “Perhaps they are not as well trained, but they will help Hamas make up for its losses. These are the people who have lost families, and they have one motive: revenge.”

Hamas, still in survival mode, appears already to be shifting to a new phase of conflict that could more easily harness the energy of its newest members. Social media postings by Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, have begun to promote the tactics of an insurgency, such as bombings using IEDs.

One illustration, titled “The Hunting,” depicts three Israeli soldiers approaching a pair of mines. A Hamas operative in the foreground extends his hand to touch the remote-control trigger.

“What is hidden,” it warns, “is immense.”

Middle East conflict

The Israel-Gaza war has gone on for months, and tensions have spilled into the surrounding Middle East region.

The war: On Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking civilian hostages. See photos and videos of how the deadly assault unfolded. Israel declared war on Hamas in response, launching a ground invasion that fueled the biggest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948. In July 2024, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an attack Hamas has blamed on Israel.

Hezbollah: Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, a militant organization backed by Iran, have escalated over the past year, leading to an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel’s airstrikes into Lebanon have grown more intense and deadly, killing over 1,400 people including Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s longtime leader. The Israel-Lebanon border has a history of violence that dates back to Israel’s founding.

Gaza crisis: In the Gaza Strip, Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars, killing tens of thousands and plunging at least half of the population into “famine-like conditions.” For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Western allies to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave.

U.S. involvement: Despite tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some U.S. politicians, including President Biden, the United States supports Israel with weapons, funds aid packages, and has vetoed or abstained from the United Nations’ cease-fire resolutions.

History: The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mistrust are deep and complex, predating the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Read more on the history of the Gaza Strip.

View 3 more stories

By Joby Warrick

Joby Warrick joined The Washington Post’s National staff in 1996. He has served with the Post's investigative and national security teams, and writes about the Middle East, terrorism and weapons proliferation. He is the author of three books, including “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS," which was awarded a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.follow on X @jobywarrick

By Loveday Morris

Loveday Morris is The Washington Post's Berlin bureau chief. She was previously based in Jerusalem, Baghdad and Beirut for The Post.follow on X @LovedayM

8. China says it evacuated 215 nationals from Lebanon

China says it evacuated 215 nationals from Lebanon

05 Oct 2024 08:35PM

channelnewsasia.com

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli air strike that targeted Beirut's southern suburbs on Oct 5, 2024. (Photo: AFP/Etienne Torbey)

05 Oct 2024 08:35PM

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BEIJING: China said on Saturday (Oct 5) that it has evacuated 215 of its nationals from Lebanon, where Israel has been carrying out intense bombardments since last month, resulting in more than 1,100 deaths.

This week, Israel said its troops launched "ground raids" into parts of southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Iran-backed Hezbollah, following days of heavy strikes on areas across the country where the group holds sway.

Israel has recently shifted its focus to securing its northern border with Lebanon, where there have been near-daily clashes since Hezbollah launched strikes in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, after that group's Oct 7, 2023, attack.

Several countries have launched operations to remove their nationals from Lebanon in the wake of the ground raids, including South Korea, Russia, France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.

"So far, 215 Chinese citizens have been safely evacuated from Lebanon in two batches under the organisation and arrangement of the Chinese government," Beijing's foreign ministry said in a statement given to AFP.

"The Chinese embassy in Lebanon continues to carry out its mission in Lebanon and will continue to assist the Chinese citizens there in taking security measures," it added.

The ministry did not say where the evacuated Chinese nationals had been taken.

According to Lebanese authorities, more than 1,110 people have been killed in the country since the escalation in Israeli bombardment on Sep 23, while more than a million people have been forced to flee their homes.

On Wednesday, China urged world powers to prevent the conflict from "further deteriorating" after Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel, which warned it would make Tehran "pay" for the attack.

Source: AFP/kg

9. A Pentagon Debate: Are U.S. Deployments Containing the Fighting, or Inflaming It?

​An important debate that we must have and must think deeply about.

I personally think we must act on the side of what is necessary to ensure US national security, protecting our homeland and citizens and vital interests abroad, provide options to our political leaders, and create dilemmas for our enemies.

But the idea that we are "emboldening" Israel as if that is a bad thing is a troublesome proposition to me. We need to "embolden" Israel to be able to effectively defend itself with whatever support is necessary to be able to take all action that is necessary and appropriate to defend itself. To view Israel as the problem is troublesome and ignores who are the perpetrators of the conflict.

This may be an inflection point for how we think about US national security and our military operations in support of national security. If we get this wrong it could have untold and unknown (and likely negative and dangerous) implications for years to come.

A Pentagon Debate: Are U.S. Deployments Containing the Fighting, or Inflaming It?

Military officials discuss whether sending more force to the Middle East is helping to prevent a much wider war, or emboldening Israel.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/politics/troops-mideast-israel-war.html?

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The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its strike group of destroyers and fighter squadrons has been monitoring Iran from the Gulf of Oman since August.Credit...K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune, via Associated Press

By Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt

Oct. 4, 2024

As the Israeli offensive in Lebanon expands to include ground incursions and intensifying airstrikes, senior Pentagon officials are discussing whether the enhanced U.S. military presence in the region is containing a widening war, as they had hoped, or inflaming it.

In the 12 months since Hamas attacked Israel, launching a conflict that includes Yemen, Iran and Lebanon, the Pentagon has sent a bristling array of weaponry to the region, including aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships and fighter squadrons.

The Pentagon announced this week that it would add a “few thousand” more troops to the equation and essentially doubled its air power in the region.

President Biden says the U.S. hardware and extra troops are there to help defend Israel and to protect other American troops on bases throughout the region. In an interview on Thursday, the deputy Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said the Defense Department’s leadership remained “focused on the protection of U.S. citizens and forces in the region, the defense of Israel and the de-escalation of the situation through deterrence and diplomacy.”

The larger American presence, she said, is meant to “deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war.”

But several Pentagon officials expressed concern that Israel was waging an increasingly aggressive campaign against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, knowing that an armada of American warships and dozens of attack planes stand ready to help blunt any Iranian response.

“Right now, there’s enough posture in the region that if the Iranians step in, we can and would support Israel’s defense,” said Dana Stroul, the Pentagon’s top official for Middle East policy until last year. Of Israel’s increasingly aggressive campaign against Hezbollah, she said, “If you’re Israel and you’re a military planner, you want to do all that while things are in the region, not after it leaves.”

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Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has raised the issue in meetings at the Pentagon and at the White House, officials said. General Brown, a former F-16 pilot who commanded U.S. air forces in the Middle East, has also questioned the effect of the expanded American presence in the region on overall combat “readiness,” the ability of the U.S. military to respond quickly to conflicts, including with China and Russia.

General Brown, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other officials have tried to balance containing the conflict and emboldening Israel, one senior U.S. military official said. Another official said it was easier for Israel to go on offense when it knows that “Big Brother” is nearby.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

Dealing with the Israelis has become more difficult for the Pentagon, they said, as Israel has made clear that it will not warn the United States before it takes actions against what it views as existential threats.

On Sunday, Biden administration officials said they had talked to the Israelis and believed that they had agreed to a limited ground incursion into Lebanon. But Israel’s raids this week look more like an extensive operation so far, other officials said.

Middle East Crisis: Live Updates

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Oct. 5, 2024, 4:36 a.m. ET6 hours ago

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Then, there was Israel’s plan to assassinate the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, last week. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, the officials said, informed Mr. Austin during a call as the Israeli operation was underway.

Pentagon officials said Mr. Austin was seething that the Israelis did not give more notice to allow U.S. troops in the region to increase defensive measures against likely Iranian retaliation.

When asked about Mr. Austin’s reaction, Ms. Singh told reporters that “he was caught off guard.”

“How you interpret that, I’ll leave that to you, but that was his reaction,” she said. “And it was a frank and very firm conversation on both sides.”

But that same day, the Pentagon said it was deploying a “few thousand” more American troops to the region. A Defense Department official said the number would be between 2,000 and 3,000 and include aircrews with the three additional fighter squadrons, plus personnel to maintain, supply and protect them.

Iran has not attacked American troops in the region directly, but has, rather, left that to its proxy groups. In February, the U.S. launched retaliatory strikes after an attack by an Iran-backed militia killed three U.S. troops in Jordan and injured 40 more.

Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, requested the additional troops to protect American forces in the region and to help defend Israel, when the expected Iranian retaliation came, the officials said.

When Iran retaliated against Israel on Tuesday, two U.S. Navy destroyers — the Bulkeley and the Cole — together launched a dozen interceptors against the Iranian missiles, knocking down a handful. The warships fired more than one interceptor at each incoming missile, officials said, though Israel handled the bulk of its defenses itself, using its own air defense systems.

The Biden administration had tried to prevent the conflict in the Middle East from spiraling. The Pentagon was already helping Ukraine defend against Russia and trying to focus on the national security strategy, which says the Defense Department should focus on so-called great power conflicts with Russia and China.

More significantly, though, Defense Department officials are worried that the Middle East conflict will draw resources away from the Pacific region, where the military is trying to shift more of its attention, in the event that China invades Taiwan or a conflict on disputed territory in the South China Sea leads to something bigger.

“What happens in one part of the world impacts other parts of the world,” General Brown said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last week. “We’ve got to make sure we’re able to make those connections, so we don’t get surprised at a later date because we’re only focused on one area.”

Successive U.S. administrations have tried to extricate the American military from the Middle East for nearly a decade. But the region is again hosting a growing array of U.S. military power.

The United States has an amphibious assault ship and three guided-missile destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean. A second aircraft, the Harry S. Truman, left Virginia in late September for a previously scheduled exercise in Europe. But it may need to divert to the eastern Mediterranean if fighting in the region boils over.

In the Red Sea, the Navy has several guided missile destroyers, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. In the Gulf of Oman, the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, with its attendant strike group of guided missile destroyers and fighter squadrons, has been monitoring Iran since August. This week, Mr. Austin ordered it to remain there, extending its deployment by two months.

Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent. More about Helene Cooper

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 5, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Presence in Mideast Spurs Debate at Pentagon . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: Israel-Hamas War News, Hezbollah, Defense Budget, Lloyd Austin, President Joe Biden, Charles Q. Brown Jr.

10. Missile Strike Near Donetsk Eliminates 6 North Korean Officers – Intel

​What might be the blowback here?

Missile Strike Near Donetsk Eliminates 6 North Korean Officers – Intel

kyivpost.com · by Kateryna Zakharchenko · October 4, 2024

Six officers from North Korea were among the 20 soldiers killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on Russian-occupied territory near Donetsk, intelligence sources say.

by Kateryna Zakharchenko | October 4, 2024, 4:34 pm

This picture taken on June 19, 2024 and released on June 20, 2024 from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) via KNS shows North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (R) presenting the Kim Il Sung Medal to Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) in Pyongyang. (Photo by KCNA VIA KNS / AFP)

• China
• Russia
• Nuclear weapons

More than 20 soldiers were killed as a result of an Oct. 3 missile strike on Russian-occupied territory near Donetsk, including six officers from North Korea, who came to confer with their Russian counterparts, Kyiv Post’s intelligence sources said. Three more North Korean servicemen were wounded.

According to reports from Russian social media, prior to the missile strike, the Russians were demonstrating to North Korean representatives the training of personnel for assault actions and defense.

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Last year, Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) reported the arrival of a limited contingent of servicemen from North Korea to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, including units of engineering troops, indicating active cooperation between Russia and North Korea.

The Center for National Resistance (CNR) reported in September 2023 that Russia was planning to bring North Korean citizens to the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk for construction work.

Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin, after meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June of this year, persuaded his counterpart from Pyongyang to open “diplomatic missions in Donetsk and Luhansk.”

The CNR assessed that the North Koreans were invited to ensure the supply of labor in these regions, as the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine has resulted in a labor shortage throughout Russia and the occupied territories.

Other Topics of Interest

Russians Rush S-300 Missiles to Crimea, Bracing for Massive Assault on Military Targets, Say Guerrillas

This suggests that the Russian armed forces are preparing to repel a major attack on their military facilities and are bolstering their defenses, according to Atesh partisans.

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Kateryna Zakharchenko

Born and lives in Kyiv. A journalist for Kyiv Post. Writes exclusive articles and interviews.

11. Pentagon voices 'significant concern' with many NDAA provisions

From my bias and personal agenda in this excerpt. While some in SOF might feel good about this because Congress appears to be protecting SOF (and SOF only exists because of Congressional action and support over many years), this could have long term implications for SOF and the Pentagon. (which is why we need a Third Revolution for SOF ).

Excerpt: 

He also criticized a House provision that would block a planned 3,000-soldier reduction to Army special forces end strength.

Pentagon voices 'significant concern' with many NDAA provisions - Roll Call

Concerns include submarine procurement plan, "culture war" provisions and more

rollcall.com · by John M. Donnelly · October 3, 2024

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has sent to leaders of the Armed Services panels a 15-page letter detailing his serious worries about several dozen pending provisions in the House or Senate NDAAs.

Some of these are “topics of significant concern,” Austin wrote in the Sept. 26 letter, obtained by CQ Roll Call. “lf left unaddressed, certain provisions in the House-passed or Senate-proposed bills will substantially impact the Department’s ability to accomplish our strategic goals.”

House and Senate negotiators have begun reconciling the House-passed fiscal 2025 NDAA with the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version and hope to clear a bicameral measure later this year.

‘Heartburn’

Austin’s new missive is this year’s version of an annual Pentagon communication, known as the “heartburn letter.” In it, the department tells the authorization committees of provisions in the House or Senate NDAA that are causing the department worry as lawmakers meet to write a final version of the measure.

The new letter reiterates some Pentagon concerns that were previously known — for example, about provisions in the House GOP-authored bill to limit what the U.S. military can do on “culture war” matters such as transgender health care and diversity promotion.

But the document also reveals Defense Department concerns about numerous other provisions that are less well-known. These include a number of NDAA proposals to prescribe or proscribe weapons or military organizations, as well as disclosure of several cost estimates and projections of budgetary implications.

Austin thanked the defense authorizers for major investments in U.S. defense programs.

“Nevertheless,” he added, “the respective FY 2025 House-passed and Senate-proposed NDAA bills include certain provisions of significant concern to the Department.”

Submarines and pay hikes

In the document, Austin reiterated the department’s opposition to procuring a second Virginia-class attack submarine in fiscal 2025. He conveyed officials’ concern that U.S. sub manufacturers lack the workforce and capacity to build two attack subs this fiscal year and deliver them on what he called “a reasonable schedule.”

The secretary argued that being required to build the second sub would force a $400 million cut to the Navy’s developmental “next generation fighter” program, making it “unexecutable and degrading the Navy’s ability to field next generation aircraft capabilities required in the 2033 to 2037 timeframe.”

In addition, Austin said the department “strongly objects” to the House’s proposal to increase pay for junior enlisted military personnel by nearly 20 percent, saying it is excessive and would unacceptably narrow the difference between junior and senior pay rates.

The House’s proposed pay changes “would cost over $3.3 billion in FY 2025 and a total of more than $21.9 billion from FYs 2025 to 2029,” he wrote.

Limiting options

Austin also pushed back against proposed directives on what the Pentagon should buy or maintain in its inventories.

He objected, for example, to the House bill’s requirement that the Pentagon build a third missile-defense site on the East Coast to protect against a ballistic missile attack. He said it is not necessary and would cost $5 billion to construct.

He also expressed concern about mandates in one or both bills to restrict the department’s planned reductions to certain types of aircraft and other assets or to limit Pentagon’s options on force structure and basing decisions.

He also criticized a House provision that would block a planned 3,000-soldier reduction to Army special forces end strength.

Similarly, Austin assailed the Senate bill’s proposed restrictions on cutting U.S. forces in Syria and on closing the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or moving detainees from there to U.S. prisons.

Milcon and management

Austin also opposed a Senate mandate to reestablish a chief management officer position and another to set up a new assistant secretary for nuclear deterrence policy and programs.

He took aim, too, at a House proposal to cut the department’s discretionary budget by 0.5 percent if the Pentagon does not produce an “unqualified audit opinion” on its financial books by 2029.

Last November, the Pentagon released for the sixth consecutive fiscal year a department-wide audit with a disclaimer of opinion — meaning the financial statements were once again not, in the view of independent auditors, reliable enough for them to reach conclusions.

Austin also opposed inclusion of 23 military construction projects that would only be partly funded and as such, he said, would create an “unfunded obligation” of $2.4 billion in future budgets. And he hit proposed reductions to fully funded projects in the president’s request that would pay for lawmakers’ preferred work.

The House-approved so-called culture war provisions that drew Austin’s opposition in the letter would:

• Cut back on programs to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
• Bar the military’s health care system from covering gender transition.
• Prohibit spending on certain initiatives to address military “resilience and survivability” in the face of climate change.

rollcall.com · by John M. Donnelly · October 3, 2024

12. Part-Time SOF: The Case for a Ranger Battalion in the National Guard

​I do not have a strong enough imagination for this. I cannot imagine how a Ranger unit could sustain a reasonable level of Ranger proficiency on one weekend a month and two weeks of the year. I am just not imaginative enough to see how this could in any way be effective or anything more than adding the Ranger name to an organization that will never be able to be employed as a fully qualified and effective Ranger unit. Show me the error of my thinking. Or tell me what the HASC is thinking? Is this from the National Guard lobby? Is there some governor out there who wants to call one of his national guard organizations a Ranger unit? And on a more strategic resourcing level: "Is the juice worth the squeeze?"

Part-Time SOF: The Case for a Ranger Battalion in the National Guard - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Ray Vawter · October 4, 2024

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In the House Armed Services Committee’s report on the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act, the committee directed the secretary of the Army to submit a report, “not later than March 1, 2023,” assessing the viability of a Ranger battalion in the Army National Guard. This report was to include information on the required resources and a timeline for activating such a unit. It is not clear that this report was ever submitted. Of course, not all reports submitted to Congress are required to be sent to the US Government Publishing Office for publication. So even if it was submitted, it hasn’t spurred formal discussion about the potential unit, though interest in the topic has surged on platforms like YouTube and Reddit. This is unfortunate. It’s a discussion that should happen not just on social media, but at the highest levels of government.

The primary reason the committee proposed the idea of a National Guard Ranger battalion was to increase the dwell time—the time spent at home between deployments—for the 75th Ranger Regiment. More dwell time would mean not only more training time for active duty Rangers but also more time with their families and to manage their lives stateside. Increasing dwell time is a compelling reason to establish a Ranger battalion, or multiple battalions, in the National Guard, not least because it could have a significant positive impact on retention and mental health for active duty Rangers, which are primary underlying ideas with dwell time.

While it’s appropriate that the House Armed Services Committee addressed dwell time, other factors illustrate why the United States needs Rangers in the National Guard. A primary concern with part-time Rangers is whether the same high standards and effectiveness of existing Ranger units can be maintained in the reserve component. This is a fair question, but evidence that these standards are maintainable can be seen elsewhere in the special operations community. The Army National Guard is already home to the 19th and 20th Special Forces Groups, just as the Navy Reserve is home to SEAL Teams 17 and 18.

In the Army, there is a direct pipeline to Special Forces through the 18X program, whereas SEALs must serve on an active duty team before joining SEAL Team 17 or 18. Each of these offers a distinct recruitment model that a National Guard Ranger battalion could follow, but a pathway for non–prior service members to join, like that of the 19th and 20th Groups’ model, is likely to be more beneficial for recruitment numbers. These Special Forces groups are highly capable units. Units from 19th Group have deployed multiple times since 2001, including during the invasion of Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom. 20th Group’s units have similarly contributed to major US operations—Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and Inherent Resolve. Both groups have extensive experience, demonstrating that it is feasible for the Army National Guard to support special operations units administratively and organizationally. The SEAL teams, operating under Naval Special Warfare Group 11, validate this concept from an operational standpoint. Like the Rangers, the SEALs specialize in direct action, showing that a direct action unit can effectively operate within a reserve component. In fact, using training time as a justification, a case can be made that it’s easier to maintain the direct action skillset than all of the skills that fall under the purview of Army Special Forces.

The recruitment crisis is arguably the biggest challenge facing the military today. A National Guard Ranger battalion could help address this problem in at least two ways. First, just as there are service-inclined members of the population who thrive in reserve components because their lifestyle isn’t conducive to active duty, there are those whose attributes and interests make them ideal candidates for the specific type of missions Ranger units excel in. A National Guard Ranger battalion would enable the Army to recruit and retain more of this segment of the population—action-oriented individuals who might already be working as SWAT officers or firefighters, but could equally be working in an office or a factory. This diversity is a strength of the entire reserve component and would be a strength of a National Guard Ranger battalion, as well. Offering more options to the public can only benefit recruitment.

Second, this unit could help retain Rangers leaving active duty. Just as SEALs and Special Forces have the option to continue serving in the reserves, Rangers should have the same opportunity. As noted earlier in this article, increasing dwell time would increase retention in the active component. The reserve component Ranger battalion would also encourage Rangers who are leaving active duty to transition to the Army National Guard, which effectively further increases retention for the Army as a total force. The National Guard allows them to continue serving even as they transition to the civilian world. Additionally, it would be an opportunity for the Army to bolster the return on its substantial investment in these elite soldiers.

In his book The New Rules of War, Dr. Sean McFate holds that the military is fielding too many obsolete conventional weapons and needs to grow its investment in special operations forces. He notes that one aircraft carrier costs more than all of those forces—a vast enterprise of tens of thousands of service members—combined. By divesting number of big-ticket legacy items that he believes to be obsolete, he argues, we can triple the budget of special operations forces and still have money left over.

If we do want to invest in our special operations capabilities but disagree with the idea that we can safely dispense with expensive, advanced systems, however, McFate’s book makes another point that indirectly advocates for a National Guard Ranger battalion. He asserts that the arrangement of the active duty and reserve components is exactly backwards—that reserve support units are over deployed and active duty combat arms units rarely even perform their jobs during peacetime. New special operations units in the reserve component are a logical way of addressing this imbalance. This could mean simply adding units, sure, but it could also mean restructuring. The Army could do this concurrently with, or without the divestiture of expensive platforms. Either way, a National Guard Ranger battalion is a step in the right direction for addressing our overreliance on technology and the underrepresentation of our combat arms units in the reserve components.

Special operations forces cannot be mass produced. Competent special operations forces cannot be created in the aftermath of emergencies. And humans are more important than hardware. These are three of the five “truths” of special operations forces. The United States can leverage these truths to find a cost-effective solution to expand and diversify its special operations capability, enhance recruitment and retention, and build readiness. We need to expand our pool of skilled special operators before conflicts with near peers arise, not after.

Ray Vawter is a national security commentator who has experience in the think tank space, counterterrorism analysis, tactical conditioning for operators, and higher education. He currently works as a civilian for Army Research Laboratory and in human intelligence in the Washington, DC Army National Guard. Follow him on X (@rayvawter).

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: New York National Guard

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Ray Vawter · October 4, 2024

13. Diego Garcia: what "historic" UK deal means for US's Indian Ocean base

Diego Garcia: what "historic" UK deal means for US's Indian Ocean base

Newsweek · by Ryan Chan · October 4, 2024

The United States has applauded a landmark deal between the United Kingdom and Mauritius that secured its continued use of Diego Garcia, a vital British and American joint military outpost in the Indian Ocean.

The future of the strategic atoll was addressed at the top of Britain's announcement on Thursday of a "historic political agreement" to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, which has maintained a claim to the islands for decades. A future treaty to that effect will end London's administration of what it currently calls the British Indian Ocean Territory.

This image released by the U.S. Navy shows an aerial view of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. On October 3, the government of the United Kingdom announced that it would be authorized to exercise... This image released by the U.S. Navy shows an aerial view of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. On October 3, the government of the United Kingdom announced that it would be authorized to exercise sovereign rights over Diego Garcia for 99 years as part of an agreement to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. U.S. Navy via AP

Diego Garcia, the largest in the Chagos group in the central Indian Ocean, is about 1,300 miles northeast of Mauritian capital Port Louis. For half a century, it has been a staging area for major coalition missions in the Middle East, including the Gulf War and the Iraq War.

For an initial period of 99 years, the U.K. will be authoritized to exercise sovereign rights over Diego Garcia, according to the agreement. The deal ensures continued operations at Camp Thunder Cove, part of the military base known as Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, used by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and the British armed forces.

"It enables the United States to support operations that demonstrate our shared commitment to regional stability, provide rapid response to crises, and counter some of the most challenging security threats we face," U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement. "The agreement secures the effective operation of the joint facility on Diego Garcia into the next century."

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the agreement would help safeguard British and American "strategic security interests" in the Indo-Pacific region. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the deal "a win for diplomacy."

The importance of the Indian Ocean—long viewed by India as its background—has risen along with the economic and military growth of China, a strategic competitor of the U.S. and its allies. Beijing's presence in the region has been a point of contention for New Delhi, America's new security partner.

Perhaps the most far-reaching British foreign policy decision so far by the Labour government led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the deal with Mauritius has been criticized by members of the opposition Conservative Party.

Tom Tugendhat, Britain's former security minister and a leading candidate for Tory leader, said Mauritius was now "free to rent" the Chagos Islands to countries including China, potentially offering Beijing "a military foothold in the Indian Ocean."

China's naval support base in Djibouti in the horn of Africa remains its only publicly acknowledged overseas military facility, according to Newsweek's map of American and Chinese bases around the world.

David Lammy, Britain's foreign secretary, said the agreement had U.S. support and would "protect international security, close a potential illegal migration route, and avert threats to peace and prosperity in the Indian Ocean."

China's foreign ministry did not immediately return a request for comment.

A U.S. Air Force B-2 strategic bomber taxis to an airfield runway at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean on August 21. The U.S. Air Force said the island enables rapid response capabilities across the... A U.S. Air Force B-2 strategic bomber taxis to an airfield runway at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean on August 21. The U.S. Air Force said the island enables rapid response capabilities across the vast Indo-Pacific region. Staff Sgt. Whitney Erhart/U.S. Air National Guard

Mauritius had been under British rule since 1814 before it gained independence in 1968, formally splitting from the Chagos Archipelago in the process. In 1966, Britain leased Diego Garcia to the United States, and it remains off limits to non-military personnel.

Diego Garcia's location outside the cyclone belt is part of its appeal, as is its equidistant proximity to the east coast of Africa and Indonesia's island of Aceh in southeast Asia.

Satellite photos show US reclaiming World War II airfield for China war

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Satellite photos show US reclaiming World War II airfield for China war

The island is an important forward operating base for the U.S. Air Force's bomber fleet. Two B-52H strategic bombers deployed to Diego Garcia from late March to early April. In August, a B-2 bomber conducted hot-pit refueling at its air base.

"Strategically located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia provides a key platform for U.S. military operations, enabling rapid response capabilities across the vast Indo-Pacific region," the Air Force said of the B-52H's deployment.

Diego Garcia is 2,570 miles from the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway connecting the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf, and it is 2,390 miles from the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, leading to the Red Sea.

The island could serve as an alternate bomber base, complementing the U.S. territory of Guam in the Western Pacific Ocean, for operations in the contested South China Sea, which is about 2,300 miles away.

U.S. Navy ballistic-missile submarine USS West Virginia conducts a port visit at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean during a scheduled patrol on October 25, 2022. The U.S. Navy said the island provides logistic support... U.S. Navy ballistic-missile submarine USS West Virginia conducts a port visit at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean during a scheduled patrol on October 25, 2022. The U.S. Navy said the island provides logistic support to operational forces forward deployed to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jan David De Luna Mercado/U.S. Navy

The U.S. Navy says the atoll supports logistical operations for forward-deployed forces in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, including surface warships and submarines.

One year ago, the USS West Virginia, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine armed with up to 20 nuclear-tipped missiles, visited the island as part of its deterrence operations in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific region.

IThe Ohio-class cruise missile submarine USS Florida, armed with 154 Tomahawk missiles, conducted a port visit in February following its deployment to the region amid Israel's war with Hamas.

Newsweek · by Ryan Chan · October 4, 2024

​14. Collapse of national security elites’ cyber firm leaves bitter wake

A man's got to know his limitations. I was speaking with a friend and former military colleague the other day about defense industry business. And I realized that I had no understanding of the business side of many of the things we thought we understood while in uniform. Now he was in complete control of his business knowledge and it was impressive and he had worked hard in post retirement to develop that knowledge but I could see my limitations (which is probably why I never had a post-retirement financial windfall!) as I listened to him explain things.

Collapse of national security elites’ cyber firm leaves bitter wake

The Seattle Times · by ALAN SUDERMAN · October 3, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The future was once dazzling for IronNet.

Founded by a former director of the National Security Agency and stacked with elite members of the U.S. intelligence establishment, IronNet promised it was going to revolutionize the way governments and corporations combat cyberattacks.

Its pitch — combining the prowess of ex-government hackers with cutting-edge software – was initially a hit. Shortly after going public in 2021, the company’s value shot past $3 billion.

Yet, as blazing as IronNet started, it burned out.

Last September the never-profitable company announced it was shutting down and firing its employees after running out of money, providing yet another example of a tech firm that faltered after failing to deliver on overhyped promises.

The firm’s crash has left behind a trail of bitter investors and former employees who remain angry at the company and believe it misled them about its financial health.

IronNet’s rise and fall also raises questions about the judgment of its well-credentialed leaders, a who’s who of the national security establishment. National security experts, former employees and analysts told The Associated Press that the firm collapsed, in part, because it engaged in questionable business practices, produced subpar products and services, and entered into associations that could have left the firm vulnerable to meddling by the Kremlin.

“I’m honestly ashamed that I was ever an executive at that company,” said Mark Berly, a former IronNet vice president. He said the company’s top leaders cultivated a culture of deceit “just like Theranos,” the once highly touted blood-testing firm that became a symbol of corporate fraud.

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IronNet’s collapse ranks as one of the most high-profile flameouts in the history of cybersecurity, said Richard Stiennon, a longtime industry analyst. The main reason for its fall, he said: “hubris.”

“The company got what was coming to” it, Stiennon said.

IronNet and top former company officials either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

The general

IronNet’s founder and former CEO Keith Alexander is a West Point graduate who retired as a four-star Army general and was once one of the most powerful figures in U.S. intelligence. He oversaw an unprecedented expansion of the NSA’s digital spying around the world when he led the U.S.’s largest intelligence agency for nearly a decade.

Alexander, who retired from the government in 2014, remains a prominent voice on cybersecurity and intelligence matters and sits on the board of the tech giant Amazon. Alexander did not respond to requests for comment.

IronNet’s board has included Mike McConnell, a former director of both the NSA and national intelligence; Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and Army vice chief of staff, and Mike Rogers, the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who is running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. One of IronNet’s first presidents and co-founders was Matt Olsen, who left the company in 2018 and leads the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Alexander’s reputation and the company’s all-star lineup ensured IronNet stood out in a competitive market as it sought contracts in the finance and energy sectors, as well as with the U.S. government and others in Asia and the Middle East.

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IronNet marketed itself as a kind of private version of the NSA. By scanning the networks of multiple customers, the company claimed, IronNet’s advanced software and skilled staff could spot signals and patterns of sophisticated hackers that a single company couldn’t do alone. The company dubbed the approach the “Collective Defense Platform.”

The South African

Venture capital firms were eager to invest. Among IronNet’s biggest early boosters was C5 Capital, an investment firm started and run by Andre Pienaar, a South African who had spent years serving the needs of the ultra-rich while cultivating business relationships with former top national security officials.

C5’s operating partners – essentially expert advisers — include former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and Sir Iain Lobban, who used to lead the U.K.’s signals intelligence agency equivalent to the NSA. Former C5 operating partners include National Cyber Director Harry Coker Jr. and Ronald Moultrie, who resigned earlier this year as undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security.

Prior to going into venture capital, Pienaar was a private investigator and started a firm called G3 Good Governance Group whose clients included blue chip companies, wealthy individuals and the British royal family. Pienaar also worked at the time to help Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg cement relationships with London’s rich and famous, according to William Lofgren, a former CIA officer and G3 co-founder.

“The relationship was steady and frequent because both Andre and Vekselberg saw merit in it,” said Lofgren.

Pienaar also helped Vekselberg win a share of a South African manganese mine in 2005 and then later served as one of the oligarch’s representatives on the mine’s board of directors until early 2018, internal G3 records and South African business records show.

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Vekselberg has been sanctioned twice by the U.S. government, first in April 2018 and again in March 2022. The U.S. Treasury Department has accused him of taking part in “soft power activities on behalf of the Kremlin.”

In 2014, the FBI publicly warned in an op-ed that a Vekselberg-led foundation may be “a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research.”

Pienaar’s long association with Vekselberg should have disqualified him from investing in IronNet, which was seeking highly sensitive U.S. defense contracts, former intelligence officials said.

The company’s leaders “absolutely should have known better,” said Bob Baer, a former CIA officer.

He added that Russian intelligence services would have had a strong interest in a company like IronNet and have a history of using oligarchs like Vekselberg to do their bidding, either directly or through witting or unwitting proxies.

Pienaar also sponsored a swanky Russian music festival that Vekselberg and a close associate, Vladimir Kuznetsov, put on in Switzerland. Kuznetsov, who served as a key investment adviser to Vekselberg, was also an investor in Pienaar’s investment firm.

Sponsored

Alexander and others at IronNet either did not know the details of Pienaar’s relationships with Vekselberg or did not find them troubling: A month after Vekselberg was first sanctioned in 2018, Pienaar joined IronNet’s board and C5 announced it was putting in a $35 million investment.

C5’s investment would grow to $60 million by the time IronNet went public, giving the investment firm around a 7% stake in the company.

Vekselberg did not respond to requests for comment. Kuznetsov told the AP he stopped speaking to Pienaar about five years ago but did not say why.

“I’m not commenting on that,” Kuznetsov said.

Pienaar’s attorneys said he has never had a relationship with Vekselberg. The lawyers said the mine’s filings with the South African government’s regulatory agency that listed Pienaar as a director were incorrect and should be “viewed as suspect” because news reports indicated the agency has been hacked.

Pienaar filed a defamation lawsuit last year against an Associated Press reporter who sought interviews with Pienaar’s former associates. The AP said the suit, which remains pending, was meritless and an attempt to stifle legitimate reporting.

The fall

Not long after Alexander rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in September 2021, IronNet’s stock price soared, making its founders and early investors extremely wealthy on paper.

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Top officials were prohibited from unloading their stock for several months, but Alexander was allowed to sell a small amount of his shares. He made about $5 million in early stock sales and bought a Florida mansion worth the same amount.

IronNet was projecting exponential growth that required the company to land a handful of major contracts, according to confidential board documents obtained by the AP.

Those prospective deals included one valued at up to $10 million to provide cybersecurity for the U.S. Navy’s contractors and a more than $22 million deal with the government of Kuwait.

It did not take long for IronNet’s promises to slam into a tough reality as it failed to land large deals and meet revenue projections. Its products simply didn’t live up to the hype, according to former employees, experts and analysts.

Stiennon, the cybersecurity investing expert, said IronNet’s ideas about gathering threat data from multiple clients were not unique and the company’s biggest draw was Alexander’s “aura” as a former NSA director.

The AP interviewed several former IronNet employees who said the company hired well-qualified technicians to design products that showed promise, but executives did not invest the time or resources to fully develop the technology.

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When IronNet tried to land contracts with the NSA, officials dismissed the company’s offerings as unserious, according to a former member of U.S. Cyber Command who was at the meeting but not authorized to discuss government procurement proceedings publicly.

The failure to win large contracts quickly derailed IronNet’s growth plans. In December 2021, just a few months after going public, IronNet downgraded its annual recurring revenue projections by 60%.

Another sign that things were not well: IronNet and C5 were engaging in a questionable business practice in an apparent effort to juice the cybersecurity firm’s revenues, according to C5 records and interviews with former employees at both firms.

In addition to being a major investor, C5 was also one of IronNet’s biggest customers, accounting for a significant part of the cybersecurity firm’s revenue when it went public.

C5 had signed two multi-year customer contracts with IronNet for $5.2 million, according to internal C5 records.

Contracts of that size were typical for large clients with thousands of employees, not a small investment firm like C5 that had a couple dozen employees and partners, former IronNet employees said.

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“That’s an inflated number,” said Eddie Potter, a former top sales executive at IronNet, when told by the AP of the size of C5’s contracts with IronNet. He added there was “no way” that C5 required services “worth $5 million.”

Indeed, one C5 internal record obtained by the AP shows it budgeted only about $50,000 a year for IronNet’s services.

Pienaar’s attorneys said C5’s contracts with IronNet were to help protect the U.K. government’s hospitals and other entities against “escalating cyberattacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.” His attorneys said the work was coordinated through a charity Pienaar and C5 created in 2020.

Securities and Exchange Commission filings and C5 records show C5’s contracts with IronNet were signed in the summer and fall of 2019 — several months before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Pienaar’s attorneys said Alexander and Pienaar were “briefed on the shocking scale of hostile nation-state cyberattacks on hospitals” in 2019, which created the “foundation” for IronNet’s work with C5.

Pienaar’s charity never registered with the IRS, as one of Pienaar’s companies claimed in U.K. business filings, and former C5 and IronNet officials said they did not see it do any substantive work.

“It was marketing, fluffy crap,” said Rob Mathieson, a former IronNet vice president.

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Pienaar’s attorneys said his charity was successful but there was “insufficient time” for it to register with the IRS.

After reporting millions in revenue from C5 from 2020 to 2023, IronNet wrote off $1.3 million from C5 in what the cybersecurity firm claimed was “bad debt,” IronNet’s filings with the SEC show. Pienaar’s attorneys said the write-off represented a reduction in the cost of providing services to his charity and denied that C5 had not fulfilled its financial obligations to IronNet.

IronNet was not alone in having trouble getting money from Pienaar and his firms.

A group of nuns sued C5 in 2022, court records show, alleging it failed to return their $2.5 million investment in a tech incubator that Pienaar had promoted as a way to boost socially conscious start-ups. C5 agreed to refund the nuns’ investment, plus attorney fees and expenses, to settle the lawsuit, records show. The nuns’ financial adviser, Carolyn LaRocco, told the AP that Pienaar used the nuns’ investment to pay expenses she believed were unwarranted.

An affiliate of the United States Institute of Peace, a nonprofit established by Congress, sued Pienaar in 2020 after he failed to pay a promised $1.5 million personal donation, federal court records show. The nonprofit’s affiliate then took Pienaar back to court after he failed to make payments on time as part of a settlement. Pienaar used $500,000 from a C5 bank account to meet a court-ordered deadline for payment, court records show. C5 staff were concerned about Pienaar’s use of the firm’s funds to cover his personal debt, according to C5 records.

In the last year, Pienaar-controlled entities have been sued by a top former CIA executive who alleged C5 owed him back wages and a Washington landlord who accused Pienaar’s firms of failing to pay more than $140,000 in rent and associated costs. The suits were dismissed soon after they were filed, indicating the parties likely settled, court records show. A lawsuit recently filed by a financial services firm alleges C5 owes it more than $1 million in unpaid debts.

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The crash

After slashing revenue projections in December 2021, Alexander tried to project confidence and said IronNet was still on track to see its revenue rise.

It didn’t work. IronNet’s stock went into a prolonged skid and the company underwent multiple rounds of layoffs.

In April 2022, the company was hit with a class-action lawsuit from investors who alleged IronNet had fraudulently inflated its revenue projections to boost its stock price.

The company has denied any wrongdoing but recently agreed to pay $6.6 million to settle the lawsuit, according to a proposed settlement filed in federal court. Alexander told Bloomberg News this past January that IronNet’s troubles stemmed in part from his naivety about how the business world worked.

C5 began loaning money to IronNet to keep it afloat starting at the end of 2022 while Pienaar continued to try and boost the company’s brand.

In September of last year, IronNet announced it had run out of money and was closing its doors.

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A Pienaar-controlled entity stepped in shortly afterwards with $10 million in loans to allow the company to restructure via bankruptcy.

A dramatically scaled-down version of IronNet led by Pienaar’s allies went private in February and announced Alexander had stepped down as chairman of the board.

Pienaar remains bullish on the company, which he said continues to successfully protect clients in the U.S. and Europe from cyber threats. IronNet’s more recent activities have included looking to partner with the government of Ukraine.

“Any accusation that IronNet has been anything other than successful is categorically false,” his attorneys told the AP.

Many of C5’s investors and former employees are baffled by Pienaar’s continued heavy bets on IronNet after it has been soundly rejected by the market.

During bankruptcy proceedings earlier this year, an investment bank approached 114 prospective buyers for IronNet, federal court records show. None of them made an offer.

ALAN SUDERMAN

The Seattle Times · by ALAN SUDERMAN · October 3, 2024

15. Realigning Counterintelligence in the Grey Zone: A New Era for U.S. Defense

Realigning Counterintelligence in the Grey Zone: A New Era for U.S. Defense

news.clearancejobs.com · by Shane McNeil · October 2, 2024

Counterintelligence (CI) is a cornerstone of national defense, protecting against espionage, sabotage, and other intelligence threats from foreign adversaries. Traditionally, CI has operated under the Directorate of Intelligence (J2), focusing on defensive measures. However, evolving global security dynamics suggest a strategic realignment as a Joint Fires Element (JFE) could significantly boost CI’s effectiveness.

Understanding the Joint Fires Element (JFE)

A JFE is an integrating staff element within the J3 (Operations Directorate) that synchronizes and coordinates joint fires planning and execution on behalf of a Joint Force Commander (JFC). The JFE ensures that joint fires—such as artillery, airstrikes, and other offensive capabilities—are effectively integrated into military operations to achieve strategic objectives.

Aligning CI with a JFE

Counterintelligence can align with a JFE by leveraging its capabilities to support both offensive and defensive operations. Here’s how:

• Proactive Threat Disruption: CI can provide actionable intelligence to the JFE, enabling preemptive strikes against adversarial intelligence operations.
• Operational Security: CI can enhance the security of joint fires operations by identifying and mitigating espionage threats that could compromise mission success.
• Cyber Operations: CI can support cyber elements within the JFE to disrupt adversarial networks and protect U.S. cyber infrastructure.

Resistance from the Intelligence Community

Elements within the intelligence community may resist this realignment due to a misunderstanding of CI’s role. CI is often perceived as a defensive, foreign intelligence function, focused on protecting against espionage. However, CI’s proactive capabilities can significantly enhance operational effectiveness when integrated with J3 operations. Overcoming this resistance requires clear communication about CI’s potential to support offensive operations and its distinct role from traditional foreign intelligence.

Integration with J3 and J5

Integrating CI with both J3 (Operations) and J5 (Strategy, Plans, and Policy) is crucial for transitioning CI into a non-lethal effect incorporated into defense strategic planning and OPLAN execution:

• J3 (Operations): By aligning with J3, CI can directly support operational planning and execution, providing real-time intelligence to shape battlefield tactics and strategies. This integration ensures that CI is not just reactive but actively contributes to mission success.
• J5 (Strategy, Plans, and Policy): Collaboration with J5 ensures that CI insights are incorporated into long-term strategic planning. This includes developing policies and plans that leverage CI capabilities to counter grey zone threats, ensuring a comprehensive approach to national defense.

Implications for the U.S. Defense Industry

The shift to grey zone competition has significant implications for the U.S. defense industry. Defense contractors must adapt to the changing landscape by developing technologies and solutions that support grey zone operations. This includes:

• Advanced Cybersecurity Solutions: Developing cutting-edge cybersecurity tools to protect against and respond to cyber threats.
• Intelligence and Surveillance Technologies: Enhancing capabilities for intelligence collection and analysis, including OSINT and signals intelligence (SIGINT).
• Special Operations Support: Providing equipment and support for special operations forces engaged in grey zone activities.
• Multi-Domain Integration: Creating systems that integrate operations across land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains to provide a comprehensive approach to grey zone competition.

As the U.S. shifts its focus from counterterrorism to great power competition, rethinking how we envision counterintelligence in the grey zone is essential. By enhancing cyber capabilities, leveraging OSINT, integrating special operations, and building strong alliances, the U.S. can effectively compete against major nation-state actors. For the defense industry, this shift presents both challenges and opportunities to innovate and support the evolving needs of national defense.

Shane McNeil has a diverse career in the US Intelligence Community, serving in various roles in the military, as a contractor, and as a government civilian. His background includes several combat deployments and service in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), where he applied his skills in assignments such as Counterintelligence Agent, Analyst, and a senior instructor for the Joint Counterintelligence Training Activity. He is a Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholar and has a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology from the University of North Dakota. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy degree in National Security Policy at Liberty University, studying the transformative impacts of ubiquitous technology on national defense. All articles written by Mr. McNeil are done in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the United States government.

news.clearancejobs.com · by Shane McNeil · October 2, 2024

16. A Crucial Step in Combating Terrorism

Excerpts:

In these challenging times, let us send a clear message to the world: America stands firm in its commitment to justice, security, and the protection of innocent lives. Supporting legislation like H.R. 9153 is not just a political act – it's a moral imperative. It's a statement that we will not stand idly by in the face of terror, that we will use every tool at our disposal to pursue those who threaten peace and stability.

As the first anniversary of the October 7th attacks approaches, let us remember the victims and all those who have suffered at the hands of terrorism. Let their memory fuel our resolve to act, to support measures like H.R. 9153, and to work tirelessly for a world free from the scourge of terrorism. The path ahead may be challenging, but with determination and the right tools, we can make significant strides in our fight against terror. This is an important step on that path and deserves our full support.

A Crucial Step in Combating Terrorism

By Eli M. Gold

October 05, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/10/05/a_crucial_step_in_combating_terrorism_1063136.html

In the wake of the devastating October 7th attacks on Israel, the United States finds itself at a critical juncture in its ongoing fight against international terrorism. The horrific nature of these attacks, which claimed numerous lives, including those of American citizens, and resulted in hundreds of hostages, demands a robust and decisive response from our nation. As we grapple with the aftermath of this tragedy, a new piece of legislation, the Hamas Terrorist Fugitive Act (H.R. 9153), has emerged as a beacon of hope and a powerful tool in our pursuit of justice.

This bill represents a significant advancement in our commitment to dismantling terrorist organizations that threaten global peace and security. At its core, this crucial piece of legislation proposes adding key leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List. While this may seem like a simple administrative action, its implications are far-reaching and profound.

By placing these terrorists on this high-profile list, we send an unequivocal message to the world: those responsible for acts of terror will be held accountable, no matter how long it takes or how far they run. This move demonstrates our unwavering commitment to bringing the perpetrators of the October 7th attacks to justice, a commitment that extends beyond mere words to concrete action.

Moreover, H.R. 9153 serves to strengthen our alliance with Israel, showing solidarity in the face of shared threats. In times of crisis, it is crucial that we stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies, and this legislation does just that. It reassures Israel and the world that the United States remains a steadfast partner in the fight against terrorism, ready to use all tools at our disposal to combat those who seek to sow fear and chaos.

The benefits of this legislation extend beyond symbolic gestures. By adding these terrorist leaders to the Most Wanted list, we enhance our joint intelligence efforts, improving our ability to track and apprehend these dangerous individuals. This increased focus and allocation of resources can lead to crucial breakthroughs in our counterterrorism efforts, potentially preventing future attacks and saving countless lives.

Furthermore, H.R. 9153 provides Israel with vital leverage in pursuing terrorists currently sheltered in various countries. The international notoriety that comes with being on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List can pressure harboring nations to cooperate in bringing these individuals to justice. It narrows the safe havens available to these terrorists, making it increasingly difficult for them to evade capture.

The urgency of this legislation is underscored by recent actions from the Justice Department, which has announced terrorism charges against senior Hamas leaders. This development reinforces the need for swift legislative action and highlights our dedication to combating terrorism at its highest levels. H.R. 9153 aligns perfectly with these efforts, creating a multi-pronged approach to addressing the threat posed by terrorist organizations.

It's important to note that the Hamas Terrorist Fugitive Act is not just about responding to a single, albeit horrific, event. It represents a broader commitment to global security and the rule of law. By targeting the leadership of terrorist organizations, we strike at the heart of their operations, disrupting their ability to plan and execute further attacks. This approach has proven effective in the past and allows us to apply this strategy to some of the most dangerous terrorist groups currently operating.

As Americans, we have a moral obligation to stand against terrorism in all its forms. The October 7th attacks serve as a stark reminder of the brutality and indiscriminate nature of terrorist violence. We must use every tool at our disposal to protect innocent lives and preserve the values we hold dear. H.R. 9153 provides us with a powerful means to do just that, allowing us to take a proactive stance in the fight against terrorism.

Critics may argue that adding names to a list is an insufficient response to such a grave threat. However, this perspective fails to recognize the far-reaching implications of the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List. Being placed on this list is not a mere formality; it brings with it increased international scrutiny, makes travel and financial transactions more difficult for those listed, and often leads to valuable intelligence gathering. It's a vital part of a comprehensive strategy to combat terrorism.

Moreover, H.R. 9153 sends a powerful message to potential recruits and supporters of terrorist organizations. It demonstrates that involvement with groups like Hamas and PIJ can lead to international condemnation and pursuit, potentially deterring individuals from joining or supporting these organizations. In the long-term fight against terrorism, such deterrence can be just as important as direct action against current leaders.

In these challenging times, let us send a clear message to the world: America stands firm in its commitment to justice, security, and the protection of innocent lives. Supporting legislation like H.R. 9153 is not just a political act – it's a moral imperative. It's a statement that we will not stand idly by in the face of terror, that we will use every tool at our disposal to pursue those who threaten peace and stability.

As the first anniversary of the October 7th attacks approaches, let us remember the victims and all those who have suffered at the hands of terrorism. Let their memory fuel our resolve to act, to support measures like H.R. 9153, and to work tirelessly for a world free from the scourge of terrorism. The path ahead may be challenging, but with determination and the right tools, we can make significant strides in our fight against terror. This is an important step on that path and deserves our full support.

Eli M. Gold is the president of the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think-and-do tank.

17. Leidos: 'Black Arrow' Small Cruise Missile Ready for Flight Test

Leidos: 'Black Arrow' Small Cruise Missile Ready for Flight Test

airandspaceforces.com · by John Tirpak · October 3, 2024

Oct. 3, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

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Leidos is readying its Small Cruise Missile—nicknamed “Black Arrow”–for guided flight tests out the back of an Air Force Special Operations Command AC-130 this fall, the company announced. The missile is being developed for multi-service use.

The flight testing follows successful captive carry and separation tests which were accomplished in December, 2023, Leidos said. Those tests “confirmed digital twin predictions of safe separation, benign store dynamics, and trajectory characteristics,” a company spokesperson said. The system has been integrated with the Naval Surface Weapon Center Battle Management System. Flight testing has demonstrated its operational flight software, navigation and “flight safety functionality.”

Leidos initiated the Small Cruise Missile design in 2021, building off its experience with the GBU-69 Small Glide Munition—which equips the AC-130–and X-61 Gremlins program with the Defense Advanced Projects Agency. The Gremlins program launched an air vehicle from a C-130 and also recovered it in midair.

The company signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Special Operations Command and AFSOC in 2022 to develop the SCM, intended as a “low-cost, service-common, mission-adaptable ‘delivery platform,’ designed to facilitate future spiral upgrades for both kinetic and non-kinetic missions,” the company said.

“The SCM is envisioned as service-common ‘bus’ capable of being launched from a ramp, via a pallet or conventional means,” a Leidos spokesperson said. Its modular architecture allows the adaptability to kinetic and non-kinetic applications.

The Defense Innovation Unit published a request for one-way uninhabited aerial systems earlier this week; a program seemingly targeted at vehicles that will be capable of multiple missions with different payloads. The Leidos spokesperson said “low cost” will be defined by “the quantities and subsystems” of the final product.

The experience with “rapidly fielding” the GBU-69 and demonstrating Gremlins, “as well as our focus on agility and innovation, have led to achieving important milestones with our Small Cruise Missile offering,” according to Mark Miller, Leidos senior vice president for missile and aviation solutions.

“We have…made significant investments to integrate on, and test off, the AC-130J, preparing us to proceed with further activities once the CRADA is complete.”

The company said it’s using model-based systems engineering, additive manufacturing techniques and artificial intelligence “to support the timely and cost-effective development of the SCM, which aims to provide adaptability and utility for the warfighter.

The weapon’s “modular airframe and open system architecture…accommodates distributed manufacturing for individual subsystems, which can then be rapidly assembled and tested separately before final assembly,” the company said in a press release. The approach was used on the SGM, “which has delivered over 4,000 units to date.”

Leidos’ “open architecture SCM solution is intended to integrate the best subsystem solutions, regardless of the source,” Miller said. “We believe that recognizing that subsystems and payloads will evolve with different use cases is critical, and that innovation will come from outside typical prime contractors and venture capital companies entering the market with vertically integrated solutions,” he said. This was likely a reference to Anduril Industries, which recently announced an initiative to build low-cost cruise missiles for the armed forces that can be produced “at scale” and with few tools and requiring only brief training of workers.

The Air Force has been experimenting with a number of munitions for launch from cargo aircraft, notably the Rapid Dragon tests that dropped palletized AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Missiles from the ramp area of C-130s and C-17s.

AFSOC has also explored launching several kinds of missiles that from AC-130s, either from wing stations or the cargo bay, specifically for the Special Operations mission.

Air Mobility Command sponsored a number of these initiatives with the idea of complicating an adversary’s targeting problem, requiring an opponent to treat cargo aircraft as potential shooters. But critics have said the Air Force would need all its airlift aircraft for transport in the event of a major conflict.

Air

Rapid Acquisition & Sustainment

airandspaceforces.com · by John Tirpak · October 3, 2024

18. Raytheon expand capacity to build the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile

Raytheon expand capacity to build the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile - Airforce Technology

These funds come under the aegis of the EWAAAC - a $46bn funding mechanism for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center based at Eglin Air Force Base.

John Hill

October 3, 2024

airforce-technology.com · by John Hill · October 3, 2024

An artist’s impression of a Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), jointly developed by Raytheon, and RTX business, and Northrup Grumman. Credit: Raytheon.

The US Air Force (USAF) has awarded Raytheon, a subsidiary of the US defence prime RTX, a $73m deal to enhance its manufacturing capacity to produce the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM).

These funds come under the aegis of the ‘Eglin Wide Agile Acquisition Contract’ (EWAAC). This funding mechanism mobilises $46bn for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center based at Eglin Air Force Base over a ten-year period concluding in September 2031.

‘Hypersonic’ refers to aerial objects—including aircraft, missiles, rockets, and spacecraft—that can reach speeds through the atmosphere greater than Mach 5, which is nearly 4,000 miles per hour (6,437 km/h). A fully fledged hypersonic capability factors in manoeuvrability at such excessive speeds.

EWAAC and HACM

Through EWAAC, the USAF intends to support the rapid development and acquisition of novel weapons technologies, systems concepts, and capabilities across all phases of the weapons lifecycle. Task orders under this vehicle cover a wide range of activities including research and development, engineering, testing, production, sustainment, and modernisation of weapons systems.

HACM is one emerging technology programme under the auspices of EWAAC. Raytheon designed HACM, which leverages Northrop Grumman scramjet propulsion, to travel at hypersonic speeds and cover vast distances in minutes.

The USAF claim it plans for the missile to be operational by Fiscal Year 2027.

This industrial partnership started in 2013 and resulted in a 2019 teaming agreement to develop, produce and integrate Northrop Grumman’s scramjet engines and boosters onto RTX’s air-breathing hypersonic weapons, which led to the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept.

Scramjet capability

The re-emergence of strategic great power competition has spurred investment in the field of hypersonic weapons technology due to its potential applications in deterrence and military operations.

HACM is a leading hypersonic programme that will provide the USAF with a ‘hypersonic’ capability in the strict sense of the term in contrast to the embryonic stage of existing hypersonics such as the Russian Zircon missile.

“The Russians initially claimed the Zircon had an operational scramjet,” noted William Freer, a research fellow in national security, Council of Geostrategy, though “subsequent evidence from wreckage of Zircon missiles in Ukraine shows that this claim was false, it uses a ramjet engine.”

Nevertheless, Northrup Grumman’s scramjet will soon power the Raytheon missile in the coming years.

Scramjets have been studied since the late 1950s, with few sustained flight successes. They are essentially supersonic ramjet engines and require high vehicle speed – provided by a rocket booster or supersonic aircraft – to compress air through an inlet into a combustion chamber.

“It’s more complicated than a typical solid rocket motor, but much less than the turbine engines on some cruise missiles and jets.

“There are almost no moving parts inside the engine. It’s all about the design to manage the aerodynamic forces involved.”

airforce-technology.com · by John Hill · October 3, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com