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Quotes of the Day:
"The surest way to corrupt youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world.."
- Bill Bullard
"Wise men make more opportunities than they find."
- Francis Bacon
1. National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 12
3. Air Force clears milestone hurdle with 1st live-fire test of hypersonic missile
4. Pentagon Profiteers: Executive Compensation In The Arms Industry
5. Experts reveal how nuclear fusion could pave the way for unlimited clean energy
6. Is This the ‘Kitty Hawk Moment’ for Fusion Energy?
7. An open call to the visionaries in government to change DoD culture
8. Special Operations News Update - Dec 12, 2022 | SOF News
9. For the First Time, Chinese Protesters Are Standing With Uyghurs. Will it Last?
10. Former Marine Generals: ‘Our Concerns With Force Design 2030’
11. What Putin’s War in Ukraine Reveals About Russia—and the Likely Path Ahead
12. Ukraine and the shadow of Korea
13. A Putin nuclear strike on Ukraine? A Chinese attack against Taiwan? How the US prepares for global nightmares.
14. In the Gray Zone, This Much is Black and White: SOF Must Develop Partner and Ally Nation Capabilities
15. The Autocrat in Your iPhone
16. Taiwan Is Already Independent
17. The propaganda of "propaganda"
18. How Doctrine and Delineation Can Help Defeat Drones
19. Don’t Drag the Military into Politics by Kori Schake
1. National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition
This seems like a huge breakthrough.
Our national labs are a national treasure.
Excerpt:
“Monday, December 5, 2022, was a historic day in science thanks to the incredible people at Livermore Lab and the National Ignition Facility. In making this breakthrough, they have opened a new chapter in NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program,” NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby said. “I would like to thank the members of Congress who have supported the National Ignition Facility because their belief in the promise of visionary science has been critical for our mission. Our team from around the DOE national laboratories and our international partners have shown us the power of collaboration.”
National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition
Breanna Bishop
bishop33@llnl.gov
(925) 423-9802
llnl.gov
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) — a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power. On Dec. 5, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history to reach this milestone, also known as scientific energy breakeven, meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it. This first-of-its-kind feat will provide unprecedented capability to support NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program and will provide invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy, which would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy.
“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to supporting our world-class scientists — like the team at NIF — whose work will help us solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.”
The target chamber of LLNL’s National Ignition Facility, where 192 laser beams delivered more than 2 million joules of ultraviolet energy to a tiny fuel pellet to create fusion ignition on Dec. 5, 2022.
“We have had a theoretical understanding of fusion for over a century, but the journey from knowing to doing can be long and arduous. Today’s milestone shows what we can do with perseverance,” said Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the President’s chief adviser for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“Monday, December 5, 2022, was a historic day in science thanks to the incredible people at Livermore Lab and the National Ignition Facility. In making this breakthrough, they have opened a new chapter in NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program,” NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby said. “I would like to thank the members of Congress who have supported the National Ignition Facility because their belief in the promise of visionary science has been critical for our mission. Our team from around the DOE national laboratories and our international partners have shown us the power of collaboration.”
“The pursuit of fusion ignition in the laboratory is one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity, and achieving it is a triumph of science, engineering, and most of all, people,” LLNL Director Dr. Kim Budil said. “Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit — a continual process of learning, building, expanding knowledge and capability, and then finding ways to overcome the new challenges that emerged. These are the problems that the U.S. national laboratories were created to solve.”
“This astonishing scientific advance puts us on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (NY) said. “I commend Lawrence Livermore National Labs and its partners in our nation’s Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program, including the University of Rochester’s Lab for Laser Energetics in New York, for achieving this breakthrough. Making this future clean energy world a reality will require our physicists, innovative workers and brightest minds at our DOE-funded institutions, including the Rochester Laser Lab, to double down on their cutting-edge work. That’s why I’m also proud to announce today that I’ve helped to secure the highest-ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF program to build on this amazing breakthrough.”
“After more than a decade of scientific and technical innovation, I congratulate the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility for their historic accomplishment,” said U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA). “This is an exciting step in fusion and everyone at Lawrence Livermore and NIF should be proud of this milestone achievement.”
“This is an historic, innovative achievement that builds on the contributions of generations of Livermore scientists. Today, our nation stands on their collective shoulders. We still have a long way to go, but this is a critical step and I commend the U.S. Department of Energy and all who contributed toward this promising breakthrough, which could help fuel a brighter clean energy future for the United States and humanity,” said U.S. Senator Jack Reed (RI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“This monumental scientific breakthrough is a milestone for the future of clean energy,” said U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (CA). “While there is more work ahead to harness the potential of fusion energy, I am proud that California scientists continue to lead the way in developing clean energy technologies. I congratulate the scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for their dedication to a clean energy future, and I am committed to ensuring they have all of the tools and funding they need to continue this important work.”
“This is a very big deal. We can celebrate another performance record by the National Ignition Facility. This latest achievement is particularly remarkable because NIF used a less spherically symmetrical target than in the August 2021 experiment,” said U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren (CA-19). “This significant advancement showcases the future possibilities for the commercialization of fusion energy. Congress and the Administration need to fully fund and properly implement the fusion research provisions in the recent CHIPS and Science Act and likely more. During World War II, we crafted the Manhattan Project for a timely result. The challenges facing the world today are even greater than at that time. We must double down and accelerate the research to explore new pathways for the clean, limitless energy that fusion promises.”
The hohlraum that houses the type of cryogenic target used to achieve ignition on Dec. 5, 2022, at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility.
“I am thrilled that NIF — the United States’ most cutting-edge nuclear research facility — has achieved fusion ignition, potentially providing for a new clean and sustainable energy source in the future. This breakthrough will ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile, open new frontiers in science, and enable progress toward new ways to power our homes and offices in future decades,” said U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (CA-15). “I commend the scientists and researchers for their hard work and dedication that led to this monumental scientific achievement, and I will continue to push for robust funding for NIF to support advancements in fusion research.”
LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power homes and businesses, and DOE is currently restarting a broad-based, coordinated IFE program in the United States. Combined with private-sector investment, there is a lot of momentum to drive rapid progress toward fusion commercialization.
Fusion is the process by which two light nuclei combine to form a single heavier nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy. In the 1960s, a group of pioneering scientists at LLNL hypothesized that lasers could be used to induce fusion in a laboratory setting. Led by physicist John Nuckolls, who later served as LLNL director from 1988 to 1994, this revolutionary idea became inertial confinement fusion, kicking off more than 60 years of research and development in lasers, optics, diagnostics, target fabrication, computer modeling and simulation and experimental design.
To pursue this concept, LLNL built a series of increasingly powerful laser systems, leading to the creation of NIF, the world’s largest and most energetic laser system. NIF — located at LLNL in Livermore, California — is the size of a sports stadium and uses powerful laser beams to create temperatures and pressures like those in the cores of stars and giant planets, and inside exploding nuclear weapons.
To create fusion ignition, the National Ignition Facility’s laser energy is converted into X-rays inside the hohlraum, which then compress a fuel capsule until it implodes, creating a high temperature, high pressure plasma.
Achieving ignition was made possible by dedication from LLNL employees as well as countless collaborators at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and Nevada National Security Site; General Atomics; academic institutions, including the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University; international partners, including the United Kingdom’s Atomic Weapons Establishment and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission; and stakeholders at DOE and NNSA and in Congress.
llnl.gov
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 12
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-12
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces are continuing to shape and consolidate their force composition in eastern Ukraine to bolster defenses against ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives near the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border and support limited offensive efforts in Donetsk Oblast.
- The cost of the Russian war in Ukraine will likely continue to undermine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical campaigns worldwide.
- The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) officially denied rumors that Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov has been or soon will be replaced, although it stopped short of offering the kind of credible support for this denial that it has provided that Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu is still on the job.
- Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov stated that Ukraine intends to continue counteroffensives in winter 2022–2023 after the hard freeze enables maneuver warfare, supporting an ISW assessment.
- Senior US government officials may be correcting their assessments about Ukraine’s ability and intent to conduct counteroffensive operations this winter.
- Russian forces continued limited ground attacks near Svatove and Kreminna as Ukrainian forces struck rear areas in Luhansk Oblast.
- Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka–Donetsk City areas and conducted defensive operations southwest of Donetsk City.
- Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian military assets and logistics hubs along critical ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in southern Ukraine.
- Russian forces are fortifying the northern beaches of Crimea along the Black Sea coast.
- Russian forces may lack sufficient infrastructure to support their troops in Crimea.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 12
understandingwar.org
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 12
Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, Layne Philipson, George Barros, Madison Williams, Yekaterina Klepanchuk, and Frederick W. Kagan
December 12, 7 pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian forces are continuing to shape and consolidate their force composition in eastern Ukraine to bolster defenses against ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives near the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border and support limited offensive efforts in Donetsk Oblast. An independent Ukrainian analytical organization, the Center for Defense Strategies, noted on December 12 that the Russians are centralizing and systematizing the command and control of Western Military District (WMD) troops in the Kharkiv-Luhansk direction.[1] The Center noted that the 20th Combined Arms Army of the WMD is currently operating in this area in three general groupings: elements of the 144th Motorized Rifle Division near Svatove; elements of the 3rd Motorized Rifle Division on the Kreminna-Rubizhne line; and elements of the 18th Motorized Rifle Division of the 11th Army Corps in northwestern Luhansk Oblast near Troitske.[2] The Center also reported that elements of the 1st and 2nd Army Corps (troops of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, respectively), 76th Air Assault Division and 106th Airborne Division, and up to three BARS (Combat Reserve) detachments, amounting up to 15 to 17 battalions, are concentrated in this general area.[3] These troop concentrations are likely significantly degraded and understrength.
ISW has previously observed WMD elements operating throughout Kharkiv Oblast prior to the sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensives in September that ultimately drove Russian troops back to the current line along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border.[4] Russian and Ukrainian reporting has additionally suggested that there is a high concentration of mobilized personnel operating on this axis, likely in order to fill gaps in WMD units that have been degraded over the course of ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives in northeastern Ukraine.[5] BARS-13 and BARS-16 detachments have been particularly active along the Svatove-Kreminna line.[6] Elements of the Central Military District (CMD) have previously been observed in the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area.[7] The observation that elements of the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) are operating in Luhansk Oblast suggests that they redeployed away from the west (right) bank of Kherson Oblast, where ISW previously reported they were operating prior to the massive Russian withdrawal from the right bank.[8] The current force composition of the Russian contingent in eastern Kherson is unclear. Elements of the Russian Southern Military District (SMD) likely maintain a presence in occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts.[9]
Wagner Group fighters, supported by elements of the 1st and 2nd Army Corps, are largely responsible for driving offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast, particularly around Bakhmut and the western outskirts of Donetsk City. ISW has previously reported the role of Wagner Group forces in securing minor gains around Bakhmut over the last few months.[10] Troops of the 6th Regiment of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) 2nd Army Corps have been active northeast of Bakhmut in the Soledar area.[11] ISW has additionally observed the prevalence of groupings of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 1st Army Corps in the Donetsk City–Avdiivka area, particularly the “Sparta” and “Somalia” battalions, which have claimed gains along the western outskirts of Donetsk City in areas such as Pisky, Vodiane, and Marinka. DNR elements have notably been active in this area since 2014. Russian sources reported that DNR troops, elements of the Russian Eastern Military District (EMD), and the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade and 40th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade of the Pacific Fleet were responsible for costly offensive operations southwest of Donetsk City in the Vuhledar-Pavlivka area in November.[12]
The cost of the Russian war in Ukraine will likely continue to undermine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical campaigns worldwide. The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on December 11 that Putin signed a law allocating over nine trillion rubles (approximately $143 billion) for defense, security, and law enforcement for the 2023 budget. That amount is about 8 percent of Russia’s 2021 gross domestic product according to the World Bank.[13] The UK MoD assessed that Russia’s defense spending significantly increased and will represent over 30% of Russia’s entire 2023 budget.[14] Putin is thus continuing to drain his budget into his war in Ukraine and may need to defund other international or domestic campaigns in the process. ISW has long assessed that Russian forces have been moving equipment and personnel from other conflict zones such as Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh and may deprioritize other combat and soft-power engagements in favor of sustaining a protracted war in Ukraine.[15]
Putin is seemingly still unwilling to sacrifice his geopolitical initiatives in the short-term, however, and risks facing a financial predicament in which he will not be able to balance maximalist goals in Ukraine with his global power projection campaigns. Putin, for example, has continued attempts to reestablish Russia’s position in Central Asia by unsuccessfully proposing to create a trilateral union among Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan in late November and during a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on December 9.[16] Putin’s continued spending on regional soft-power initiatives has already upset a few prominent pro-war milbloggers, who had criticized the Kremlin for reportedly allocating almost six billion rubles (about $95.5 million) for the development of Russian-language schools in Tajikistan while failing to provide for Russian forces on the battlefield.[17] The milbloggers added that the Kremlin is not effectively leveraging its soft power in Tajikistan, which further brings the necessity of such spending into question.
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) officially denied rumors that Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov has been or soon will be replaced, although it stopped short of offering the kind of credible support for this denial that it has provided that Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu is still on the job. A prominent Russian media aggregator circulated a claim on December 11 that Gerasimov may soon be replaced.[18] The claim reportedly originated with unidentified Russian milbloggers, and some Russian sources either amplified the claim or cautioned their audiences to not engage with such rumors.[19] The Russian MoD directly denied Gerasimov’s resignation or replacement, called the claims a Ukrainian “fake,” and provided links to images that supposedly show Gerasimov carrying out official duties over the last few weeks.[20] The Russian MoD has previously displayed similar sensitivity to reports of Gerasimov either resigning or being replaced and directly responded to refute such claims, as ISW reported in July.[21] This concerted effort to prove Gerasimov is still functioning as Chief of the General Staff suggests that Russian MoD is attempting to present Russian military leadership as present and engaged in Russian military affairs and to counteract reports of massive disruptions and incoherencies in Russian command structure due to widespread failures in Ukraine.[22] Despite this apparent interest in maintaining Gerasimov’s reputation, the Russian MoD has failed to provide video evidence of his activities, which it has consistently done with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and should be able to do easily for the chief of the general staff.[23]
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov stated that Ukraine intends to continue counteroffensives in winter 2022–2023 after the hard freeze enables maneuver warfare, supporting an ISW assessment.[24] Reznikov stated on December 11 that Ukraine will resume counteroffensives after the “ground is firmer” during the winter when responding to a question about US Director for National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines’s forecast that Ukraine is likely to conduct counteroffensives in the spring rather than the winter.[25] Reznikov previously stated on December 6 that Ukraine needs artillery ammunition, armored vehicles, tanks, and combat aircraft to support Ukrainian counteroffensives.[26]
Senior US government officials may be correcting their assessments about Ukraine’s ability and intent to conduct counteroffensive operations this winter. Voice of America National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin reported that an unnamed senior US military official stated that, “We know the Ukrainians can fight and fight well under these [winter] conditions" on December 12.[27] DNI Haines previously mistakenly identified the optimal window of opportunity for Ukraine to conduct more counteroffensives as the spring rather than winter on December 3.[28] ISW previously assessed that Ukraine likely seeks to conduct successive operations through the winter of 2022–2023.[29]
The UK MoD assessed that Russia still likely aims to retain control over all its occupied Ukrainian territory, supporting ISW’s recent assessment that the Kremlin likely maintains its maximalist objectives in Ukraine.[30] The UK MoD assessed that Russian military leadership still intends to make additional advances within Donetsk Oblast but that current Russian military strategy is highly unlikely to allow Moscow to accomplish that goal.[31] ISW previously assessed that Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s December 8 statements defining Russian territorial goals as controlling all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts remain maximalist given his restatement of Putin’s February 24 goals of “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, which would inhibit Ukraine’s ability to resist future Russian military or subversion campaigns.[32]
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces are continuing to shape and consolidate their force composition in eastern Ukraine to bolster defenses against ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives near the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border and support limited offensive efforts in Donetsk Oblast.
- The cost of the Russian war in Ukraine will likely continue to undermine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical campaigns worldwide.
- The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) officially denied rumors that Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov has been or soon will be replaced, although it stopped short of offering the kind of credible support for this denial that it has provided that Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu is still on the job.
- Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov stated that Ukraine intends to continue counteroffensives in winter 2022–2023 after the hard freeze enables maneuver warfare, supporting an ISW assessment.
- Senior US government officials may be correcting their assessments about Ukraine’s ability and intent to conduct counteroffensive operations this winter.
- Russian forces continued limited ground attacks near Svatove and Kreminna as Ukrainian forces struck rear areas in Luhansk Oblast.
- Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka–Donetsk City areas and conducted defensive operations southwest of Donetsk City.
- Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian military assets and logistics hubs along critical ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in southern Ukraine.
- Russian forces are fortifying the northern beaches of Crimea along the Black Sea coast.
- Russian forces may lack sufficient infrastructure to support their troops in Crimea.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Eastern Ukraine
- Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and one supporting effort)
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
- Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
- Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)
Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)
Russian forces conducted limited counterattacks near Svatove in order to regain lost positions on December 11 and 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks 15km west of Svatove near Andriivka and 15km northwest of Svatove near Novoselivske and Stelmakhivka between December 11 and 12.[33] Geolocated footage posted on December 11 and 12 shows a Ukrainian tank destroying a Russian tank from positions in the western part of Novoselivske, suggesting that Ukrainian troops maintain control of part of the settlement despite previous Russian claims that Russian troops had taken full control in the prior weeks.[34] A Russian source posted footage of Russian troops launching TOS-1A thermobaric rockets from positions near Kuzemivka, 11km northwest of Svatove.[35] Geolocated footage posted on December 10 additionally shows a Russian heavy equipment transport truck carrying a T-90M battle tank just north of Luhansk City, about 118km southeast of Svatove.[36] This footage is consistent with previous reports that Russian troops are using Luhansk City as a transportation hub for equipment destined for the Svatove-Kreminna front.[37]
Russian forces continued limited offensive actions to regain lost positions west of Kreminna on December 11 and 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops conducted unsuccessful attacks near Chervonopopivka and Zhytlivka (both within 5km north of Kreminna), Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna), and Bilohorivka and Serebrianka (both about 10km south of Kreminna).[38] Russian milbloggers claimed that the Kreminna front, especially along the Makiivka-Kreminna line, is the most difficult axis of advance in Ukraine with the exception of Bakhmut.[39] Several Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian troops have been losing ground around Kreminna and that Russian troops have made significant gains west of the R66 (Svatove-Kreminna) highway between December 11 and 12, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[40] Russian sources widely reported that the most intense fighting is occurring northwest of Kreminna, particularly in the Chervonopopivka-Zhytlivka-Ploshchanka pocket.[41]
Ukrainian forces continued to strike Russian concentration areas in the rear of Luhansk Oblast on December 11 and 12. Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated on December 11 that Ukrainian troops struck a hotel in Kadiivka (60km southeast of Kreminna) where Wagner Group fighters were reportedly staying.[42] Haidai noted that Wagner forces suffered high losses as a result of the strike.[43] Ukrainian strikes also targeted Russian forces in a hostel in Svatove, causing extensive damage to the building.[44]
Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut on December 11 and 12. An unnamed US military official stated that Wagner Group and Russian forces are engaged in intense battles for Bakhmut and committing significant resources to maintain the pace but noted that Ukrainian forces “continue to hold the line.”[45] Spokesperson for Ukraine’s Eastern Group of Forces Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Russian forces have changed their tactical force composition in the Bakhmut direction by switching from using company and battalion tactical groups (BTGs) to using assault units to perform purely offensive tasks.[46] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Bakhmut and settlements northeast of the city in Bilohorivka, Verkhnokamianske, Soledar, Bakhmutske, and Pidhorodne, on December 11 and 12.[47] Russian sources claimed that Wagner forces stormed Pidhorodne to partially encircle Bakhmut on December 12.[48] Geolocated footage showed a destroyed railway bridge over the E40 (M-03) highway northwest of Pidhorone, which Russian sources claimed to be one of two remaining main ground lines of communications (GLOCs) into Bakhmut.[49] Russian sources claimed Ukrainian forces blew up the bridge to create an artificial barricade on the E40 towards Slovyansk.[50] A Russian source also claimed that Wagner assault detachments established control over two former Ukrainian platoon positions on the Bakhmut-Soledar line approaching a highway connecting the settlements, likely referring to the T1302 highway.[51] Russian sources also claimed that Wagner Group forces advanced near Opytne (3km south of Bakhmut) and that fighting is ongoing in the area.[52] A Russian source claimed that Wagner Group forces launched attacks from the Andriivka area (9km southwest of Bakhmut) against unspecified settlements and claimed that fighting is ongoing east of Bakhmut, noting that Ukrainian forces are not retreating from the city.[53]Another Russian source claimed that the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) forces are attempting to advance east towards Toretsk (23km southwest of Bakhmut) with artillery support.[54]
Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Avdiivka–Donetsk City area on December 11 and 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks on Krasnohorivka (19km west of Donetsk City), Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka (about 25km southwest of Donetsk City) on December 12.[55] DNR Head Denis Pushilin claimed that Russian forces control 70% of Marinka on December 12.[56] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces failed to break through Ukrainian defenses along Druzhba Street in the center of Marinka but that fighting is ongoing.[57] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces are trying to regain control of Pisky (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City) and that Russian forces thwarted a Ukrainian counterattack in the area on December 12.[58] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces made marginal advances toward Pervomaiske and Vodyane on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City on December 11 and 12.[59] ISW is unable to confirm the veracity of the milbloggers’ or Pushilin’s claims.
Russian forces conducted defensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast on December 11 and 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 11 that Russian forces are defending their positions near Vuhledar, Velyka Novosilka (31km northwest of Vuhledar), Zolota Nyva (19km northwest of Vuhledar), and Pavlivka (3km southwest of Vuhledar).[60] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces made marginal advances towards Velyka Novosilka on December 11 and 12.[61] Russian sources boasted about a Ukrainian retreat in this area while a Ukrainian source stated that Ukrainian defenses halted a Russian advance.[62] A Russian milblogger claimed on December 11 that Russian forces massed as if preparing for a full ground attack but only conducted reconnaissance-in-force near Velyka Novosilka and claimed such an act indicates poor readiness.[63] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attempt to advance towards Neskuchne (33km west of Vuhledar) on December 11.[64] Russian forces continued routine indirect fire along the line of contact in western Donetsk and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts on December 11 and 12.[65]
Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Russian forces continued to strengthen defensive positions in Kherson Oblast amid poor weather conditions on December 11 and 12. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command stated that there is a heavy fog in Kherson Oblast with low visibility and icy roads, making road transportation difficult.[66] Ukrainian Tavria Defense Force Grouping Spokesperson Yevheny Yerin stated that Russian forces are redeploying units in the Kherson direction, strengthening defensive lines, and conducting sabotage and reconnaissance operations.[67] Yerin stated that Russian forces aim to establish observation posts on islands in the Dnipro River delta southwest of Kherson City.[68] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that Russian forces continued to shell areas on the west (right) bank of the Dnipro River on December 11 and 12, including Kherson City and its environs.[69]
Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian military assets and logistics hubs along critical ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in southern Ukraine. Geolocated footage shows the aftermath of a strike against a restaurant-hotel complex in Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast overnight on December 10–11, which Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov said Russian forces used as a base for the Federal Security Services (FSB) and to quarter soldiers.[70] Fedorov also stated that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian checkpoint and logistics hub in Bohdanivka and a radar station in Semenivka, both northeast of Melitopol, and two Russian military bases in Polohy and Maiske just south of the frontline.[71] Fedorov added that these strikes collectively killed dozens of Russian military personnel and wounded over 200 servicemen.[72] The Ukrainian Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration stated on December 11 that Ukrainian strikes in an unspecified area of Zaporizhia Oblast injured over 150 Russian military personnel.[73] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces struck areas along the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast, including Oleshky and Hola Prystan, and rear areas in eastern Kherson Oblast including Skadovsk, Chaplynka, and Radensk on December 11 and 12.[74]
Russian forces continued to conduct routine fire west of Hulyaipole and in Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv oblasts on December 11 and 12.[75] Russian forces struck Nikopol and Marhanets, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast on December 11 and 12.[76] Russian sources expressed continued concern that Ukrainian forces are preparing for a counteroffensive along the Zaporizhia Oblast front line.[77]
Russian forces are fortifying the northern beaches of Crimea along the Black Sea coast. An image posted on December 10 shows that Russian forces are digging trenches along a beach in Chornomorske, Crimea (124km south of Kherson City).[78] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian occupation authorities in Crimea are strengthening law enforcement and counterintelligence measures in Chornomorske and Mizhvodne, both along the northwestern beachline and the T0107 highway that connects northwestern coastal areas of Crimea to Simferopol and other rear areas.[79] Some Russian milbloggers claimed that pictures of these fortifications are instead part of an effort to restore Crimean beaches for tourism, but it remains unclear how digging trenchlike fortifications would assist such restoration efforts.[80] Russian forces may be concerned about a possible future Ukrainian amphibious counteroffensive against Crimea from across the Black Sea.
Note: ISW will report on activities in Kherson Oblast as part of the Southern Axis in this and subsequent updates. Ukraine’s counteroffensive in right-bank Kherson Oblast has accomplished its stated objectives, so ISW will not present a Southern Ukraine counteroffensive section until Ukrainian forces resume counteroffensives in southern Ukraine.
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian forces are lacking sufficient infrastructure to support their troops in Crimea. Russian milbloggers claimed that the 1472nd Naval Clinical Hospital in Sevastopol is facing blood donor supply shortages for wounded Russian personnel.[81] The milbloggers claimed that the hospital staff notified the Russian military command of lacking commercially provided supplies for blood collection but had not received any support in rectifying the problem. The milbloggers stated that the main cause of the shortage of supplies is the hospitals’ lack of budgetary provisions for blood-transfusion-related materials in 2022 and implied that corruption is at play. Russian forces are also likely experiencing supply shortages as a result of the damage to the Kerch Strait Bridge. Russian President Vladimir Putin noted on December 9 that he expects Russia to repair the road bridge in March and railway lines in mid-summer, which is likely going to continue to challenge Russia’s ability to supply forces.[82]
The Russian siloviki group — members of the Russian elite with paramilitary institutions — are continuing to recruit personnel into their forces. Russian opposition outlet Meduza spoke with servicemen from Ingushetia and employees of the Russian Special Forces (SPETSNAZ) University in Grozny, Chechen Republic, who had implied that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is recruiting volunteers from Inhushetia in return for political favors.[83] Meduza’s report noted that Kadyrov supports the Sufi brotherhood in Inhushetia, which has been declining in popularity in the region since the early 2010s, in exchange for volunteers to deploy to Ukraine. Employees of the SPETSNAZ University stated that Chechnya has already deployed about 10,000 volunteers from the university after only two weeks of training, and Kadyrov continues to consistently advertise the deployment of volunteer units.[84] Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoit also announced that the Kursk Territorial Defense, or the “Patriot People’s Squad,” plans to recruit 6,000 people.[85] ISW previously reported that Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin had made comments suggesting that he has a connection to newly announced territorial defense units in Belgorod and Kursk oblasts.[86]
Ukrainian officials are increasingly warning about the Russian Armed Forces intensifying their forced mobilization campaigns in occupied Luhansk and Zaporizhia oblasts ahead of a predicted second mobilization wave in Russia. The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated that Russian forces are searching for and distributing summonses to Ukrainian men ahead of the new Russian mobilization wave scheduled for January–February 2023.[87] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are forcefully mobilizing Ukrainian men in an effort to replenish elements operating in the Severodonetsk direction and are enforcing strict movement restrictions on men residing in Khrystalnyi on the Donetsk-Luhansk Oblast administrative border.[88] Ukrainian local officials in exile reported that Russian forces are also forcefully mobilizing men in Dovzhansk, Luhansk Oblast (near the Russian border) and Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast.[89] Ukrainian officials did not specify if and where Russian forces would train these mobilized forces, and an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, Petro Andryushenko, noted that Russian forces built a second training camp for mobilized Russians in the suburbs of Mariupol.[90]
The Kremlin continues to struggle to address issues with administering payments to mobilized men and is attempting to deflect the blame for payment delays from Russian President Vladmir Putin. The Kremlin has adopted rules for the distribution of one-time payments of 195,000 rubles (about $3,100) to the mobilized and contract servicemen.[91] Russian servicemen will need to return the one-time payments if their spouses open financial accounts abroad, fund entrepreneurial activities, or if the serviceman commits a crime. The rules also call on servicemen to return portions of their payments if they break their contracts with the Russian Armed Forces. Russian officials are likely to continue to struggle with providing these one-time payments that more than double the normal Russian salaries and are part of an effort to preempt further protests among servicemen and their relatives. Zaporizhia Oblast Occupation Administration Council member Vladimir Rogov stated that mobilized men should not contact Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) if they have not received their one-time payments but should instead file complaints with their commanders.[92] Rogov’s request is likely an attempt to deflect blame from the Russian leadership that actually has the authority to authorize these payments.
Russian mobilized men and their instructors are continuing to describe issues with lack of equipment and supplies, however. A combat training instructor of the 247th Air Assault Regiment from Stavropol and his mobilized subordinates published a video appeal complaining about lack of clothes and supplies, as well as unsanitary conditions at a training center.[93] Some Russian milbloggers shared the appeal, noting that federal instead of local authorities should be responsible for the proper equipment of the mobilized personnel.[94] Founder of Russian human rights project Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin, also published footage of prison authorities beating prisoners in Kaluga Oblast for refusing to fight with Wagner, which indicates that paramilitary structures in Russia are also not properly treating their forces.[95]
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)
Russian occupation authorities are continuing efforts to establish legal control over Ukrainian citizens in occupied territories. Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated on December 12 that officials in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) are gradually filling law enforcement vacancies in LNR territory with Russian citizens.[96] The Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security reported on December 12 that Russian occupation officials are currently holding more than 230 Ukrainian citizens captive in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast to force cooperation with Russian occupation efforts.[97] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 11 that Russian occupation authorities continued forcing Ukrainian citizens to obtain Russian passports in occupied territories, with a particular emphasis on Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast.[98]
Russian occupation authorities continued taking steps to consolidate economic control of occupied territories and force Ukrainian civilians to switch to the ruble on December 11 and 12. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Russian occupation authorities are offering Ukrainians the option to exchange their currency to rubles at an exchange rate of one ruble for 1.25 hryvnia, which is inconsistent with the official currency rate of one ruble for .59 hryvnia.[99] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on December 12 that Russian occupation authorities are continuing to push Ukrainian businesses to eliminate the hryvnia but are facing resistance despite fines and threats.[100] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 11 that Russian occupation authorities are offering financial assistance to persons of retirement age in the amount of 10,000 rubles and offering higher salaries to locals who agreed to work in the institutions of the occupation authorities.[101] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported on December 11 that Russian occupation authorities are gradually withdrawing Ukrainian hryvnias from trade networks, forcing the population to switch to Russian rubles.[102]
Russian occupation authorities are continuing to target Ukrainian children in occupied territories with propaganda to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated on December 12 schools in occupied territories hired Russian teachers to brainwash Ukrainian children with stories that Russia has liberated them from “Nazis.”[103] The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported on December 12 that Russian occupation authorities in southern Ukraine have increased propaganda events hosting famous Russian bloggers, athletes, and musicians.[104]
Russian occupation authorities are continuing to face partisan pressure in occupied territories. The Ukrainian and Tartar partisan group “Atesh” claimed responsibility for setting fire to Russian barracks in Sovietske, Crimea, on December 10, noting that they only targeted the base of mobilized Russian men. [105]
Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.
[13] GDP (current US$) - Russian Federation | Data (worldbank.org)
[16] https://rus.azattyq.org/a/review-russian-gas-swap-scheme-gets-cold-shoul... https://www dot asiaplustj dot info/ru/news/world/20221129/putin-predlozhil-tokaevu-sozdat-soyuz-rossii-kazahstana-i-uzbekistana
[19]
[22] https://isw.pub/RusCampaignAugust23; https://storage dot googleapis.com/istories/opinions/2022/08/23/kto-upravlyaet-rossiiskimi-voiskami/index.html;
[23] https://tass dot ru/armiya-i-opk/16283583; https://tass dot ru/armiya-i-opk/16283573
[24] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAAmRSLIaVo&ab_channel=UkraineMediaCente... https://zn dot ua/ukr/UKRAINE/reznikov-rozpoviv-koli-prodovzhitsja-kontrnastup-sil-oboroni-.html; https://www.pravda.com dot ua/eng/news/2022/12/11/7380306/;
[25] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAAmRSLIaVo&ab_channel=UkraineMediaCente... https://zn dot ua/ukr/UKRAINE/reznikov-rozpoviv-koli-prodovzhitsja-kontrnastup-sil-oboroni-.html; https://www.pravda.com dot ua/eng/news/2022/12/11/7380306/; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[26] https://fakty.com dot ua/ua/ukraine/20221206-ukrayini-sogodni-ne-potribna-dodatkova-mobilizacziya-reznikov/; https://nv dot ua/ukr/ukraine/politics/ukrajina-otrimaye-zahidni-tanki-ta-boyovi-litaki-zayaviv-reznikov-novini-ukrajini-50288954.html
[29] ISW assessed that weather conditions in winter 2023 likely will dictate a timeframe in which Ukraine can conduct maneuver warfare and continue its string of operational successes with minimal pauses that would increase the risks of Ukraine losing the initiative. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[42] https://suspilne dot media/336006-pivtora-miljona-ludej-na-odesini-bez-svitla-es-pogodivsa-nadati-18-milardiv-ukraini-291-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://t.me/serhiy_hayday/8896; https://t.me/serhiy_hayday/8897;
[43] https://suspilne dot media/336006-pivtora-miljona-ludej-na-odesini-bez-svitla-es-pogodivsa-nadati-18-milardiv-ukraini-291-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://t.me/serhiy_hayday/8896; https://t.me/serhiy_hayday/8897; http...
[46] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/12/11/na-bahmutskomu-napryamku-okupanty-zminyly-taktyku-vedennya-bojovyh-dij-sergij-cherevatyj/
[67] https://suspilne dot media/336280-vijskovi-rf-zdijsnuut-peredislokaciu-svoih-pidrozdiliv-na-hersonsini/
[68] https://suspilne dot media/336280-vijskovi-rf-zdijsnuut-peredislokaciu-svoih-pidrozdiliv-na-hersonsini/
[70] https://t.me/ivan_fedorov_melitopol/1029; https://suspilne dot media/336426-zelenskij-uhvaliv-sankcii-proti-svasennikiv-upc-mp-na-odesinu-povertaetsa-svitlo-292-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1601697039452364800; https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1601682486861660161; https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1601856383472881666; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1601825348404273153
[71] https://t.me/ivan_fedorov_melitopol/1029; https://suspilne dot media/336426-zelenskij-uhvaliv-sankcii-proti-svasennikiv-upc-mp-na-odesinu-povertaetsa-svitlo-292-den-vijni-onlajn/
[72] https://t.me/ivan_fedorov_melitopol/1029; https://suspilne dot media/336426-zelenskij-uhvaliv-sankcii-proti-svasennikiv-upc-mp-na-odesinu-povertaetsa-svitlo-292-den-vijni-onlajn/`
[74] https://suspilne dot media/336006-pivtora-miljona-ludej-na-odesini-bez-svitla-es-pogodivsa-nadati-18-milardiv-ukraini-291-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://t.me/readovkanews/48700; https://t.me/readovkanews/48663; https://t.me/hueviyherson/30788; https://t.me/rybar/41944; https://t.me/hueviyherson/30789
[82] https://radiosputnik ria.ru/20221209/krymskiy-most-1837578081.html
[83] https://meduza dot io/feature/2022/12/12/my-prikazyvaem-detyam-chtoby-oni-slushali-nachalstvo
[85] https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-dec-10-11#KyzW; htt ps://kurskcity.ru/news/main/197301; https://t.me/astrapress/17330
[87] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/12/11/rosiyany-aktyvizuyut-mobilizacziyu-na-tot/
[89] https://t.me/luhanskaVTSA/7376 ; https://t.me/serhiy_hayday/8901; https://suspilne dot media/336426-zelenskij-uhvaliv-sankcii-proti-svasennikiv-upc-mp-na-odesinu-povertaetsa-svitlo-292-den-vijni-onlajn/
[91] https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-dec-10-11#SIWU; htt p://publication (dot) pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202212100015?rangeSize=10; https://t.me/N_Voensud_ru/810
[95] https://meduza(dot)io/news/2022/12/11/gulagu-net-soobschil-ob-izbienii-zaklyuchennyh-v-kolonii-v-
[99] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/12/12/okupanty-tysnut-na-ukrayinskyj-biznes-aby-toj-perestav-pryjmaty-gryvnyu/
[100] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/12/12/okupanty-tysnut-na-ukrayinskyj-biznes-aby-toj-perestav-pryjmaty-gryvny
[103] https://sprotyv(dot)mod.gov.ua/2022/12/12/rosiyany-aktyvno-vzyalys-za-propagandu-sered-ukrayinskyh-ditej/
[104] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/12/12/rosiyany-aktyvno-vzyalys-za-propagandu-sered-ukrayinskyh-ditej/
understandingwar.org
3. Air Force clears milestone hurdle with 1st live-fire test of hypersonic missile
Air Force clears milestone hurdle with 1st live-fire test of hypersonic missile
Stars and Stripes · by Doug G. Ware · December 12, 2022
Air Force Master Sgt. Marcella Philips, 2nd Maintenance Group weapons standardization loading standardization crew chief, and Tech Sgt. Darrell Stewart, 307th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron loading standardization crew member, secure the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon to the B-52H Stratofortress ejector rack at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Nov. 2, 2022. The ARRW is the first Air Force hypersonic weapon and is scheduled to be operational in the fall of 2023. (Nicole Ledbetter/U.S. Air Force)
WASHINGTON — The Air Force on Monday carried out the first live-fire test of its first hypersonic weapon, which can travel at least five times the speed of sound, according to service officials.
The Air Force and contractor Lockheed Martin have been developing the AGM-183A air-to-ground missile system — better known as the ARRW — since 2018.
“The ARRW team successfully designed and tested an air-launched hypersonic missile in five years,” said Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, the program executive officer for weapons and director of the Armament Directorate.
The “all-up-round” test was done off the coast of Southern California, and it appears “all objectives were met,” the Air Force said. An all-up-round test is one that evaluates the weapon in its fully assembled condition. The end-to-end test succeeded when the live warhead struck and detonated in a previously designated area in the Pacific.
Last week, the Air Force cleared the initial hurdle in this late-stage testing process — loading the system onto a B-52 bomber and taking it back off. Making that step allowed the Air Force to move on to live-fire testing. Lockheed has said the ARRW should become operational within a year.
The live-fire test marked the first launch of a full prototype operational ARRW missile, Air Force officials said. Tests earlier this year focused on evaluating the booster — a rocket-powered vehicle that carries the warhead to hypersonic speeds before releasing it to strike a target.
“With this test, we are on the cusp of an operational capability that can be deployed to the men and women in uniform,” Lockheed Vice President of Air Dominance and Strike Weapons Jay Pitman said in a statement.
The Pentagon has been focused on adding modern hypersonic components for years, particularly when it became known that military competitors such as Russia and China were also racing toward the technology. Claims by Moscow that Russian forces have already used a hypersonic missile in Ukraine this year have not been confirmed by U.S. defense or intelligence officials.
Stars and Stripes · by Doug G. Ware · December 12, 2022
4. Pentagon Profiteers: Executive Compensation In The Arms Industry
Pentagon Profiteers: Executive Compensation In The Arms Industry
Forbes · by William Hartung · December 13, 2022
If Congress has its way, funding for the Department of Defense and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy will reach more than $850 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, far higher than spending at the height of the Cold War or the peak years of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. While advocates of spending these enormous sums often argue that the money is needed to “support the troops,” more than half of the Pentagon’s yearly budget goes to private contractors, many of whom are making hefty profits at taxpayer expense while producing flawed products at exorbitant prices. One telling example of how these companies waste taxpayer dollars is how much they pay their top executives.
In 2021, the most recent year for which full figures are available, the top five weapons makers – Lockheed Martin LMT , Boeing BA , Raytheon, General Dynamics GD , and Northrop Grumman NOC – received over $116 billion in Pentagon contracts while paying their top two dozen executives a total of $287 million, according to data from the the Pentagon and company proxy statements. The CEOs of the top five contractors received compensation ranging from $18 million to $23 million each, including James Taiclet of Lockheed Martin, $18.1 million; David Calhoun of Boeing, $21.1 million; Gregory Hayes of Raytheon, $21.8 million; Phebe Novakovic of General Dynamics, $23.5 million; and Kathy Warden of Northrop Grumman, $19.9 million.
Since these firms receive a large share of their revenue from U.S. government contracts, much of this excessive executive compensation is essentially subsidized by the taxpayers. The figure for dependency on government contracts range from roughly half for Boeing (49%) and Raytheon (48%) to roughly three-quarters or more for Lockheed Martin (71%), General Dynamics (70%), and Northrop Grumman (85%). Huge CEO compensation does nothing to advance the defense of the United States and everything to enrich a small number of individuals.
It is useful to put the $287 million the top five contractors pay their top executives in some perspective. In the national security arena, average arms industry CEO pay of $21 million is 95 times the $221,000 that an active duty general makes, and 463 times the $45,000 in pay and allowances made by a beginning enlistee in the armed forces.
As expected, CEO pay at the Top Five also far exceeds the median pay of their own employees. At Lockheed Martin the ratio of CEO compensation to median worker salary is 164 to 1, compared to 169 to 1 at Boeing, 208 to 1 at Raytheon, 254 to 1 at General Dynamics, and 166 to 1 at Northrop Grumman.
... [+]AFP via Getty Images
Another way to understand the size of CEO compensation at the big contractors is to look at how many jobs would be created if that $287 million were spent on something else. The answer is that spending that money on productive activities would create thousands of jobs: 2,812 jobs in clean energy or infrastructure; 4,104 jobs in health care; and 4,362 in education, calculated using data on the jobs impact of government spending generated by Heidi Peltier for the Brown Costs of War Project.
A large portion of the compensation package of most arms industry executives comes from stock options. Therefore, they have a personal incentive to try to boost company share prices, by whatever means necessary. Doing so by improving company performance is one thing, but that is not the only method employed. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has noted, rather than investing in research, plant, equipment, or employee compensation during a period of high cash flow and ample profits, top weapons making firms have spent tens of billions of dollars buying back their own shares. This boosts stock prices, but does not result in better equipment for members of the armed forces or spur innovation in the development of future systems. It is a questionable practice that underscores the fact that too often in the defense sector, self-interest trumps the national interest.
Defense executives wouldn’t be able to earn multi-million dollar salaries if their companies weren’t grabbing billions in Pentagon contract awards. In the run up to the 2022 midterm elections, the arms industry was working overtime to curry favor with candidates from both parties, with a tilt towards Republicans (56% of contributions) over Democrats (43% of contributions) in keeping with predictions that Republicans would take over one or both houses of Congress in the November 2022 vote. In addition to campaign contributions, the industry spent over $100 million on lobbying in just the first three quarters of 2022. And the top recipients of arms company donations were members with the most power to determine how high the Pentagon budget will go in Fiscal Year 2023 and beyond. According to research by Open Secrets, top recipients of defense industry largesse were Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), who is in line to take over the chair of the House Armed Services Committee in January 2023, and Rep. Ken Calvert, who will likely chair the defense subcommittee of House appropriations. They received $444,400 and $390,750, respectively, in the 2022 election cycle.
The industry gives money to members best placed to help them secure taxpayer dollars. Thirteen of the top fifteen recipients are on the armed services or appropriations committee of their respective chamber. And in addition to incoming armed services and defense appropriations chairs Mike Rogers and Ken Calvert, the current leaders of those bodies – Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) and Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) – are also in the top 15 recipients of defense sector funding. Other key players include Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), who was defeated in the November elections but was a leader in the runup to the elections in efforts to add tens of billions of dollars to the Pentagon budget beyond what the department even asked for; Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), a consistent advocate for more funding for the Virginia-based Newport News Shipyard; and Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT), booster for General Dynamics’ Groton, Connecticut Electric Boat submarine plant. Wittman and Courtney are co-chairs of the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus.
Executive compensation is just one indicator of the problems of overspending, waste, and profiteering in the defense sector. These larger issues cannot be addressed without finding ways to reduce the political and economic power of the military-industrial complex: campaign finance and lobbying reform, measures to curb price gouging, developing economic alternatives to the dependence of key communities on weapons spending, and more. There should also be a healthy skepticism of the claim that America needs to spend more on defense when so much of it is being wasted, or determined by corporate interests rather than the national interest.
William Hartung
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I am a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. I am the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). My previous books include And Weapons for All (HarperCollins, 1995), a critique of U.S. arms sales policies from the Nixon through Clinton administrations.
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5. Experts reveal how nuclear fusion could pave the way for unlimited clean energy
I hope this is the game changer we anticipate.
Experts reveal how nuclear fusion could pave the way for unlimited clean energy
'A remarkable point in human history': Experts say nuclear fusion could pave the way for UNLIMITED clean energy - as California scientists use the world's biggest laser to replicate the reaction that powers the sun
- Experts have gained more energy out of nuclear fusion reaction than they put in
- It is the first time this has been done and puts unlimited clean power on horizon
- Sparked huge excitement within scientific community with more details coming
- Experiment carried out at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California
By SAM TONKIN FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 07:43 EST, 12 December 2022 | UPDATED: 00:42 EST, 13 December 2022
Daily Mail · by Sam Tonkin For Mailonline
It could help tackle climate change, speed up a trip to Mars, and relinquish Vladimir Putin’s vice-like energy grip on the West.
In short, nuclear fusion would change the world.
And that’s why scientists across the globe are rejoicing at news coming out of the US that the ‘holy grail’ of unlimited clean power is within touching distance.
For the first time ever, researchers are believed to have gained more energy out of a controlled nuclear fusion reaction than they put in.
Excitement: Scientists across the globe are rejoicing at news coming out of the US that the ‘holy grail’ of unlimited clean power is within touching distance. For the first time ever, experts are believed to have gained more energy out of a controlled nuclear fusion reaction than they put in. Pictured is how a reactor works, based on one developed by UK firm Tokamak Energy
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (pictured) used 2.1 megajoules of energy to create the conditions for the reaction, which replicates the reaction that powers the sun sun, and from that they received 2.5 megajoules
According to the Financial Times, scientists in California used 2.1 megajoules of energy to create the conditions for the reaction, which replicates how the sun is powered, and from that they received 2.5 megajoules.
The laboratory behind the monumental milestone is yet to confirm its shock findings but the US government has teased a ‘major scientific breakthrough’ and called a press conference for tomorrow (Tuesday).
It has sparked huge excitement within the scientific community as experts eagerly await further details from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
One scientist described it as a ‘phenomenal breakthrough’ that has come ‘just when the planet needs it’, while another ‘heralded it as a remarkable point in human history’.
Nicholas Hawker, chief executive of Oxford-based start-up First Light Fusion, described the potential breakthrough as ‘game-changing’.
‘If confirmed, this result is a watershed moment for inertial fusion as a power generation technology,’ he told MailOnline.
However, Mr Hawker warned that despite the excitement over the potential of limitless clean energy, it ‘would not be a silver bullet for climate change’.
‘For the energy sector, there will not be an immediate impact, and it is important that deployment of renewables must continue,’ he added.
‘We need clean baseload power and this is what fusion can offer. It does not have the drawbacks of nuclear, no high-level or long-lived waste, no weapons grade material, no meltdown risk.’
Dr Mark Wenman, of Imperial College London, said: ‘So far despite 70 years of research no one has got more energy out of a fusion reaction than they have needed to put in. The record was around 70 per cent (i.e. a net loss of energy).
‘This new announcement by Lawrence Livermore, if proven to be true, therefore sets a remarkable point in human history, which in future could usher in an era of green, secure and essentially inexhaustible form of compact energy, without long-lived nuclear waste.
‘Of course this announcement is likely to be of more scientific significance than a practical one, but as a proof of concept should help more funding flow into nuclear fusion research bringing the time when we can connect a fusion plant to the grid that bit closer.’
Arthur Turrell, from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, said: ‘This phenomenal breakthrough brings us tantalisingly close to a demonstration of “net energy gain” from fusion reactions — just when the planet needs it.
‘The team at the National Ignition Facility, and their partners around the world, deserve every plaudit for overcoming some of the most fearsome scientific and engineering challenges that humanity has ever taken on.
‘The extraordinary energy release achieved will embolden nuclear fusion efforts the world over, lending momentum to a trend that was already well under way.’
He wrote on Twitter: ‘This experimental result will electrify efforts to eventually power the planet with nuclear fusion — at a time when we’ve never needed a plentiful source of carbon-free energy more!’
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory confirmed that a successful experiment had recently taken place at its National Ignition Facility but said analysis of the results was ongoing.
Although it is far from being a commercial reactor, the development is still considered an important step for the field.
Professor Steven Rose, of Imperial College London, said: ‘This is the most significant advance in inertial fusion since its beginning in 1972.
‘What has been achieved has completely altered the fusion landscape and we can now look forward to using ignited plasmas for both scientific discovery and energy production.’
Preamplifiers at the National Ignition Facility boost the energy of the laser beams that ultimately irradiate hydrogen fuel
His colleague, Dr Brian Appelbe, added: ‘We have entered a regime we’ve previously never been in — this is uncharted territory in our understanding of plasma.’
Oliver Cameron, an executive at self-driving car company Cruise, was enthused by the idea of nuclear fusion energy and, following the huge excitement and popularity of newly-released chatbot ChatGPT, developments in artificial general intelligence (AGI).
‘It is becoming increasingly likely that we end this decade with both AGI and viable nuclear fusion,’ he tweeted.
Dr Aidan Crilly, Research Associate in the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London, was excited about what the achievement might mean for our understanding of the universe.
‘Reproducing the conditions at the centre of the sun will allow us to study states of matter we’ve never been able to create in the lab before, including those found in stars and supernovae,’ he said.
‘We could also gain insights into quantum states of matter and even conditions closer and closer to the beginning of the Big Bang — the hotter we get, the closer we get to the very first state of the Universe.’
Nuclear fusion power works by colliding heavy hydrogen atoms to form helium, releasing vast amounts of energy, mimicking the process that occurs naturally in the centre of stars like our sun, which burns at roughly 27million°F (15million°C).
Similar tests have been performed before, but the Livermore one is the first to generate more energy than was used to create the experiment — meaning scientists could theoretically harness nuclear fusion as an energy source.
All of the energy of NIF’s 192 beams is directed inside a gold cylinder called a hohlraum, which is about the size of a dime. A tiny capsule inside the hohlraum contains atoms of deuterium (hydrogen with one neutron) and tritium (hydrogen with two neutrons) that fuel the ignition process
Using the world’s largest laser, consisting of 192 beams and temperatures more than three times hotter than the centre of the sun, the researchers coaxed fusion fuel for the first time to heat itself beyond the heat they zapped into it — achieving a net energy gain.
It could represent a groundbreaking moment in humankind’s move away from fossil fuels like oil and coal to completely clean energy sources that do not pollute the air, or scar landscapes with mining or pipelines.
The ultimate goal, still years away, is to generate power the way the sun generates heat, by pushing hydrogen atoms so close to each other that they combine into helium, which releases torrents of energy.
A single cupful of that substance could power an average-sized house for hundreds of years, with no carbon emissions.
That is why in a world with an ever-increasing demand for electricity and a deteriorating environment, fusion is considered the holy grail of energy.
It merges atomic nuclei to create massive amounts of energy — the opposite of the fission process used in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants, which splits them into fragments.
Unlike fission, fusion carries less risk of accidents or the theft of atomic material.
But achieving fusion has been seen as both extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive.
The majority of scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away — but the technology’s potential is hard to ignore.
The $3.5billion (£2.8billion) National Ignition Facility was initially built with the intention of testing nuclear weapons by simulating explosions but its focus has now shifted to the advance of fusion energy research.
Researchers around the world have been working on the technology for decades, trying different approaches.
Thirty-five countries are collaborating on a project in Southern France called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor that uses enormous magnets to control the superheated plasma. That is expected to begin operating in 2026.
Earlier experiments in the United States and United Kingdom succeeded in fusing atoms, but achieved no self-heating.
Daily Mail · by Sam Tonkin For Mailonline
6. Is This the ‘Kitty Hawk Moment’ for Fusion Energy?
I certainly hope so.
Is This the ‘Kitty Hawk Moment’ for Fusion Energy?
This week’s big news amounts to a symbolic achievement—and symbols matter.
By Charles Seife
The Atlantic · by Charles Seife · December 12, 2022
Tomorrow, the U.S. Department of Energy is expected to announce that the era of fusion power is finally upon us: Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, have generated energy with a controlled nuclear fusion reaction. It has already been hailed as a transformative moment, even as the nature and reality of that transformation is nigh-impossible to discern.
As first reported yesterday by the Financial Times, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is expected to announce that researchers have ignited a small fusion reaction that produces more energy than it consumes. The federal government is calling this “a major scientific breakthrough,” and if the rumors are true, that description will in some sense be justified. For the better part of a century, scientists have been trying to use the power of fusion—the nuclear process that makes the sun shine—to provide a near-limitless source of energy. But it takes a huge amount of energy to set up the reaction: to build the tremendous heat and pressure necessary to get light atoms to stick together—to fuse—and release energy stored in their mass. Until now, physicists and engineers had managed to produce more than they’d invested only by triggering uncontrolled fusion reactions in certain types of nuclear weapons; no one has yet made a defensible claim of doing so in the lab.
How defensible the Livermore scientists’ claim will be is not yet clear. (When this story went to press, neither the Livermore lab nor the Department of Energy had responded to requests for comment.) Their fusion-energy device, the multibillion-dollar National Ignition Facility, was playing defense from the start. On paper, the plan seemed great, if ambitious: to use enormous, building-size lasers to focus light energy down onto a target roughly the size of a BB, compressing and heating it and causing its contents to fuse. However, previous laser experiments at Livermore have failed to deliver promised fusion results, and a number of scientists were skeptical that the facility would ever achieve “ignition,” defined as generating more energy from fusion than is contained in the laser beams. Advocates of NIF turned to a top-secret set of nuclear experiments from the 1980s called Halite/Centurion—in which X-rays from underground nuclear explosions shined upon similarly tiny target capsules—to back up their argument that NIF would, indeed, achieve ignition. But the results of those experiments are classified, and a few insiders with the requisite clearance have expressed their concerns. “Something that worked at the Halite/Centurion scale would not necessarily work at the NIF scale,” Ray Kidder, a weapons designer, told a historian in 2008. “They didn’t want that to be said.”
Read: Nuclear is hot, for the moment
Nevertheless, the first target pellet was witness to the firepower of a fully armed and operational ignition facility in 2010. NIF scientists were confident of quick success. Siegfried Glenzer, Livermore’s plasma-physics group leader at the time, told the press to expect ignition later that year. It didn’t happen. Nor did it happen in the next fiscal year, as promised in 2011 by then–Livermore head Parney Albright. Nor did it happen in the next six to 18 months, as then–NIF head Ed Moses said “with some confidence” in 2012; at the time, the official word was that Livermore was “tantalizingly close” to this achievement.
Tantalus never got to eat, though. Success remained well out of reach, and the full-on “national ignition campaign” was a failure. Yet you wouldn’t have known that by the headlines that sprouted up around the world in 2014, when Livermore declared victory with a claim of having extracted net energy from fusion fuel. Physics World even named it one of the top 10 breakthroughs of the year. This was nothing more than an accounting trick: Instead of comparing the fusion energy produced with the energy of the incoming laser beams, NIF scientists had compared it with the small fraction of the laser-beam energy that struck the target chamber, got converted into X-rays that shined onto the target, and was eventually absorbed by the fuel—which is to say, roughly 1 percent of the total. Fiddling with the denominator turned a 99 percent failure into a 100 percent victory.
When the headlines faded, NIF kept puttering along, consuming energy and dollars. Only in the past year have its scientists come within a respectable distance of achieving ignition. In mid-2021, one shot yielded 1.3 megajoules of fusion energy, more than half of what’s contained in the roughly 2-megajoule laser beams. That, too, was touted as a breakthrough, and one that Livermore scientists would later designate an “‘existence proof’ of ignition in the lab.” Once again, though, their claim was based on a sleight of hand, using a slightly different definition of ignition to make it seem like NIF had finally lived up to its middle name. (On Twitter, NIF claimed that its criterion remained the same: “The ‘goalpost’ for ignition has never moved.”)
This brings us to tomorrow’s announcement. According to the FT, one NIF shot finally generated more energy than was contained in the laser beams—about 2.5 megajoules out, compared with 2.1 megajoules in. If true, this would meet the classic definition of ignition used for decades rather than the ad hoc ones Livermore scientists have lofted to hide their failures over the years; NIF would genuinely have succeeded at its goal, albeit more than a decade late. No more fake-it-’til-you-make-it: This would arguably be the first production of net fusion energy produced outside of a nuclear-weapons test.
However, the real implications of honest-to-god ignition at NIF are significantly more subtle than one might think. Even if NIF is able to replicate the shot, perform similar ones consistently, and eventually increase the yield by five or tenfold, the experiment is still a dead end when it comes to meaningful energy production. Two megajoules is about the amount of energy released by burning a small chunk of kindling, so thousands upon thousands of such shots a day would be required before the energy production became in any way usable. Unfortunately, NIF’s lasers use huge slabs of glass that take hours to cool down between shots; in other words, they simply aren’t up to the task. (In fact, NIF was never meant to be a fusion-energy project but one designed for weapons research—another story altogether.)
If the achievement is genuine (and NIF hasn’t moved the goalposts yet again), it means that—at the very least—NIF has achieved its nominal goal: ignition as scientists defined it a few generations ago. But this definition is untethered from the realities of power generation. The “more energy out than laser energy in” equation masks several fundamental problems. NIF’s doped glass lasers have an efficiency of about 0.5 percent, meaning that they would have sucked in roughly 400 megajoules of energy from the grid in order to produce the 2.1 megajoules of light energy that eventually yielded the 2.5 megajoules of fusion energy out. That isn’t accounted for in the “break-even” calculation. Nor is the large amount of energy (and time and money) required to manufacture each target. Even if we could collect all the fusion energy generated with perfect efficiency and convert it into usable power (which we can’t), this brings us to much, much less than 1 percent of the way to a true net production of energy from NIF’s very best fusion reaction.
This isn’t to say that the achievement is meaningless. NIF really producing 2.5 megajoules of fusion energy from a 2.1-megajoule laser beam would be a genuine victory, and not just because it’s a multibillion-dollar experiment that finally stopped failing to meet its design goal. But this would be less like a Kitty Hawk moment than a lab experiment demonstrating that air flowing over a wing can produce a little bit of lift. The work doesn’t address any of the myriad other scientific, technical, and design problems that would need to be solved before we really can take off from the ground and claim that we’ve produced more energy with fusion than we’ve consumed. Still, it’s a symbolic achievement—and symbols, too, should be celebrated.
The Atlantic · by Charles Seife · December 12, 2022
7. An open call to the visionaries in government to change DoD culture
This is focused on cyber/technology.
I think we need visionaries for irregular warfare as well. All those IW visionaries in DOD stand up and be counted like the cyber/technology visionaries.
An open call to the visionaries in government to change DoD culture
Defense News · by Bonnie Evangelista · December 12, 2022
Whether you acknowledge it or not, all roads in the emerging technology race lead to contracts. Unfortunately, federal contracting is lengthy, overly burdensome and rigid. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Disrupting traditional federal contracting is critical to advancing rapid acquisition, but it is only one step of many needed in order to forge a new path for the Department of Defense. Several leaders across the DoD have publicly displayed their frustrations over the federal acquisition malaise. Nick Chaillan is most notable for having “dropped the mic” as he left his position as the Air Force chief software officer, criticizing the military for refusing to advance IT modernization and agile acquisition.
The resignation of Defense Innovation Unit chief Michael Brown earlier this year is another reminder of how the DoD is slow to transform its technology acquisition processes. His chief complaint was the lack of support from the Pentagon when bridging the gap between the department and commercial technology.
Clearly, there’s an issue that even some top DoD leaders can’t ignore. I strongly suspect there’s a growing consensus among some of the rank and file across the DoD that something has to give. But the real question remains: As an organization, are we willing to let go of the culture and policies that stifle significant progress in advancing military capability, or will we continue to fall behind the rest of the world?
Resistance to change in the DoD is not new and has been an ongoing conversation for years. In 2017, Jeffrey Bialos, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs, published a report calling out the DoD’s “cultural resistance to disruptive change.” Yet, here we are five years later, still waiting for the tipping point. Why aren’t we seeing the results most agree are needed to advance commercial technology in the DoD?
We all know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. We have to be willing to let go of the things that created the DoD of today in order to make way for a better DoD tomorrow. If we want to rapidly secure the absolute best technology so that we can earnestly compete with our adversaries, then we have to do something differently. It’s just that simple.
This is my open call to the pioneers and visionaries left in the Government:
Where are my people who are willing to let go of cybersecurity policies that shut out technology innovation for the sake of a “no-risk” authority to operate? Who dares to let go of intellectual property positions that conflict with the privately developed commercial solutions we need? Who is willing to let go of whatever boxes we think we need to check in order to comply with a policy no one even understands?
Tradewind, housed in the DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, is an attempt to clear a way out of the bureaucratic contracting labyrinth. Tradewind showcases a suite of tools and services that aim to accelerate the procurement and adoption of bleeding-edge solutions. Look more closely and you’ll realize Tradewind is more than that: It’s a movement to take intentional action that drives not only the procurement and acquisition of leading-edge technology, but also the cultural change the DoD so desperately needs.
The Tradewind Solutions Marketplace, one of the tools in Tradewind’s suite, is our premiere service offering. It enables industry innovators to quickly and easily get their solutions in front of eager government buyers.
All the time-consuming, cumbersome barriers to entry have been removed; industry simply submits a brief video that describes their solution and its potential application to DoD problem sets. A team of technology subject matter experts will assess each solution for technical merit to address a DoD problem. All solutions placed in the marketplace are available for award.
For government, this means a searchable inventory of potential technology solutions that have met competition standards for Federal Acquisition Regulation and non-FAR based contracting methodologies. No more time spent in source selections and downselects — just find a solution and buy it.
Simple. Logical. Quick. This is how it should be. We don’t have time for anything else.
A very smart person told me that disruption — technological disruption or otherwise — is not bad. It’s a sign that people love and care about the organization so much that they want to see it live on. The DoD is very capable of cultural change. We just have to be brave enough to let go so we have the chance to ascend. If not, we will continue to fall, and that will hurt all of us.
Bonnie Evangelista is the Tradewind execution lead within the U.S. Defense Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office.
8. Special Operations News Update - Dec 12, 2022 | SOF News
Special Operations News Update - Dec 12, 2022 | SOF News
sof.news · by SOF News · December 12, 2022
Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.
Photo: An airman jumps out of an Air Force HC-130J during an exercise over Palau. Photo by Air force Airman 1st Class Courtney Sebastianelli, 7 Nov 2022.
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SOF News
SOTF-A Cdr Interview on Afghanistan Departure. The last Special Operations Task Force – Afghanistan (SOTF-A) commander is interviewed on the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. LTC Matthew Chaney talks about the U.S. military withdrawal and the final days before the Taliban takeover Afghanistan. As the commander of 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group, he deployed to take over the SOTF-A in the final year of the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. “A Green Beret Commander on the War in Afghanistan, “Retrograde” and Those Still Left Behind”, InsideHook, December 9, 2022.
New Sky Warden Schoolhouse. The Air Force has selected Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Oklahoma, to host its formal training unit for the AT-802U Sky Warden. The aircraft won the USSOCOM Armed Overwatch contract. (Air and Space Forces, Dec 9, 2022).
Life After Failure at BUD/S. The high attrition rate of the Navy SEAL’s selection course puts hundreds of candidates into low-skilled jobs. Sailors with college degrees are relegated to menial positions in the Navy after ‘ringing the bell’. “Recruited for Navy SEALs, Many Sailors Wind Up Scraping Paint”, The New York Times, December 9, 2022. (subscription)
AFSOC CoC. Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind has assumed command of Air Force Special Operations Command as of December 9, 2022. He relieved Lt. Gen. Jim Slife who will now serve as the Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, at the Pentagon. Bauernrfeind is a MC130E pilot and former commander of the 1st Special Operations Group and the 27th Special Operations Wing. He will command approximately 22,000 personnel around the world. “Bauernfeind new leader of Air Commandos”, AFSOC, December 9, 2022.
MARSOC and the Future. There are some changes in mission for the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command or MARSOC. The elite Marines are now moving to competitive engagement with potential “near-peer” adversaries (Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea). “Marine Corps’ Elite MARSOC Operators Have Been Getting Ready for the Future”, SANDBOXX, December 6, 2022.
GB to be Top Army NCO. The current CSM for the US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) will be the Army’s top enlisted soldier in August 2023. CSM Michael Weimer has spent nearly his whole career in the special operations world. “Green Beret to Fill Army’s Top Enlisted Spot Next Year”, Coffee or Die Magazine, December 9, 2022.
Conversation with Shawn Ryan. A former Navy SEAL and contractor with the CIA has a discussion about his training course for basic and advanced shooting techniques. “Inside the Mind of a CIA Contractor: A Conversation with Shawn Ryan”, Soldier of Fortune Magazine, December 7, 2022.
SOF and the Arctic. ARSOF is the force of choice in the ARCTIC and it should liaise with the Arctic Security Studies and other like organizations. Three members of the 10th Special Forces Group tell us why in “Quiet, Cold, and Vital: ARSOF in the Arctic”, War Room, U.S. Army War College, December 8, 2022.
2023 Frogman Swim. The annual event that benefits Navy SEALs and Gold Star families has raised over $6 million since first being held in 2010. The swim will take place on January 15, 2023 in Tampa Bay. “Tampa Bay 2023 Frogman Swim looks to raise $1 million for Navy SEALs and Gold Star families”, Fox News, December 11, 2022.
Retired Navy SEAL Chris Beck. Changing things up again! Apparently a Navy SEAL who came out as a transgender years ago is having some regrets. He/she says the transition ‘destroyed my life’ and is now announcing a detransition. (New York Post, Dec 11, 2022).
World’s Best Sniper Rifles. Steve Balestrieri, a former Special Forces soldier, picks out the best sniper rifles. He mentions the McMillan TAC-50, M24SWS, M40A6, Barrett .50 Caliber, Barrett Mark 22 MRAD, and others. “World’s Best Sniper Rifles”, 1945, December 5, 2022.
International SOF
NATO SOF and Performance Psychology. Some academics have collaborated on a paper that explores the specific and and unique challenges encountered when researching and consulting with Special Operations Forces (SOF) within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. The authors highlight key differences between SOF and CF and then look at the specific requirements for developing performance psychology in the SOF context. They then offer some suggestions for more accurate and impactful research and practice. “Sharpening the Tip of the Spear: Tailoring performance psychology for Special Operations Forces”, Frontiers in Psychology, December 9, 2022.
Somali’s Danab Brigade. The Danab force has been trained up by U.S. Special Forces personnel for a number of years. Under the Trump administration the U.S. trainers were removed from long-term stays in Somalia and were forced to make short trips into the country to do training activities. The Biden administration has reversed that order and U.S. troops are now there on longer and more effective tours. “US troops are back in Somalia and scrambling to help it special forces”, Stars and Stripes, December 10, 2022.
Top UK Female Spies. British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times. Women began to be regularly recruited as intelligence officers in the late 1970s. Now, much of the top leadership in the SIS are women. The current adversaries of the West – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – are repressive in nature and there are few women in positions of power in their respective spy agencies. So women spies of the West have the potential to be overlooked by our adversaries. “The secret lives of MI6’s top female spies”, Financial Times, December 8, 2022.
SOF History
Navy SEALs History. Steve Balestrieri provides a glimpse of history about the U.S. Navy SEALs. He covers the timeline from World War II to the present day. “The U.S. Navy SEALs Seem Unstoppable For a Reason”,1945, December 9, 2022.
Operation Franklin. A group of former Royal Marines are recreating one of the most daring raids of World War Two. Ten marines set out in kayaks to paddle up the Gironde river in France to attack Nazi ships near Bordeaux in 1942. Only two survived the mission – however, the mission was judged a success. “Cockleshell Heroes: Marines aim to recreate Bordeaux mission”, BBC News, December 3, 2022.
National Security
U.S. Kills ISIS Militants in Syria. U.S. helicopters and SOF carried out a raid that killed two Islamic State militants in eastern Syria. It is said that the operation was conducted in concert with Kurdish forces. There are about 900 U.S. forces in Syria supporting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against IS. “US helicopter raid kills 2 Islamic State militants in Syria”, The Washington Post, December 11, 2022. (subscription)
Changes for NMEC. The Strategic Competition era has arrived at the National Media Exploitation Center. It is downsizing and will now focus primarily on China and other near-peer adversaries. Like everything else in DoD, CT and COIN is fading as a mission – regarded as no longer a primary national security concern. The NMEC was established in 2001 to work the receipt, analysis, and sharing of documents and other information gathered by the U.S. military and intelligence community it the fight against terrorism. “US military’s National Media Exploitation Center to refocus on China”, Defense News, December 7, 2022.
War Powers Report. President Biden has sent the administration’s report that informs Congress on the deployments of United States Armed Forces equipped for combat. (The White House, Dec 8, 2022).
Black Hawk Replacement. The Army plans to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with the Bell V-280 tiltrotor. The V-280 will be phased into service as its primary transport and assault aircraft. Deliveries are several years away. The V-280 is smaller than the MV-22 Osprey. “Meet the V-280 Valor, the Replacement for the Army Black Hawk”, Coffee or Die, December 5, 2022.
SOF and China. US Special Operations Command is reorienting to take on China. It is now focusing on working with partners in the Pacific to support the US military’s goals. USSOCOM is aiming to create “multiple dilemmas” for China. (Business Insider, Dec 8, 2022).
CIA’s Rescue of Allies. During the August 2021 non-combatant evacuation operation thousands of Afghans converged on Kabul airport seeking to board an evacuation flight out of the country. The United States and other nations flew over 120,000 people out; most of them Afghan citizens. Many worked with the U.S. or other nations during the long Afghan conflict and would likely be targeted for revenge upon the Taliban takeover of the nation. One organization went above and beyond to take care of its Afghan allies. The CIA arranged for the movement of its Afghan paramilitary allies from various parts of Afghanistan to the Kabul airport. While there, the commandos secured the airport perimeter for the U.S. military. They and their families were flown out on the last of the evacuation flights to a number of different countries. Many found their way to the United States. However, not all of the agencies allies made it out – so for some veterans of the CIA, the evacuation continues. “CIA Comrades Honor Mike Spann by Rescuing Afghan Allies”, Real Clear Politics, December 10, 2022.
Arrow Security & Training, LLC is a corporate sponsor of SOF News. AST offers a wide range of training and instruction courses and programs to include language and cultural services, training, role playing, and software and simulation. https://arrowsecuritytraining.com/
Videos and Podcasts
Video – Air Force TACP – Embedding, Assessing, Evolving. The TACPs are a weapon system that brings tactical and strategic advantages to Lead Wing commanders. DVIDS, November 28, 2022, 2 mins.
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/865608/air-force-tacp-embedding-assessing-evolving
Video – Understanding Resistance – Irregular Warfare. Some national security SME’s discuss IW during this panel discussion. Pritzker Military Museum & Library, December 3, 2022, one hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=676BhjwHwpo
Video – Robin Sage: Inside the Final Test of Special Forces Training. Follow the 14 soldiers of ODA 9114 as they undergo a tough two-week long unconventional warfare exercise that is considered a culminating event for the long Special Forces training. They will be tasked with planning their UW mission, infiltrating Pineland, link up with local resistance, equip and train their fighters, and then employ the resistance force. Coffee or Die Magazine, December 4, 2022, YouTube, 17 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSodhf-tls
Podcast -SFAS Standards. In 1948 the Combat Exclusion Policy was enacted as part of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act which excluded women from combat positions. This policy was repealed in 2013. In 2020, the first woman joined U.S. Army Special Forces. But some in the SOF community have complained that commanders have lowered the standards for Green Berets to allow women in their ranks. Retired Army Special Forces Lt. Col. Dr. David Walton researched this topic and found that the selection process is as hard as it has ever been. Military Matters Podcast, Stars & Stripes, December 8, 2022, one hour.
Podcast – MACV-SOG with John Stryker Meyer. A legend of the SF community who served in the Vietnam War chats with Paul & Mike about what it takes to confront and defeat communism. The Pinelander, December 9, 2022, one hour.
https://pinelander.podbean.com/e/episode-053-macvsog-with-john-stryker-meyer-december-9-2022/
Podcast – Navy SEALs Training Modified. After a recruit died earlier this year (2022), the Navy has modified their grueling BUD/S training course. National Public Radio, December 8, 2022, 4 minutes.
Podcast Channels
Pineland Underground. U.S. Army JFK Special Warfare Center and School
https://linktr.ee/pinelandunderground
The Pinelander. Blacksmith Publishing
https://www.thepinelander.com/
The Indigenous Approach. 1st Special Forces Command
https://open.spotify.com/show/3n3I7g9LSmd143GYCy7pPA
Irregular Warfare Podcast. Modern War Institute at West Point
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/irregular-warfare-podcast/id1514636385
sof.news · by SOF News · December 12, 2022
9. For the First Time, Chinese Protesters Are Standing With Uyghurs. Will it Last?
Strength in numbers? Can they mobilize for sustained collective action?
For the First Time, Chinese Protesters Are Standing With Uyghurs. Will it Last?
It took a deadly fire linked to China’s COVID curbs to draw national attention towards Uyghurs, but their larger struggle remains invisible.
Vice · by Rachel Cheung · December 12, 2022
Ever since Abduweli Ayup fled China in 2015, the Uyghur linguist has been organizing protests in Europe against human rights abuses in China. He invited his friends from the Han Chinese community in Norway to the protests many times, but they never showed up.
That changed only recently.
At a rally in Oslo, one of many held across universities around the world to commemorate the victims of a fire in Urumqi last month, he was surrounded by Chinese faces. “This is the first time I have seen that they are standing with us,” Ayup told VICE World News.
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It took a deadly fire to finally draw national attention toward Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where the ethnic Uyghur population has been persecuted for years. The blaze, which killed at least ten after pandemic restrictions reportedly hampered their rescue, is viewed as the latest tragedy linked to China’s draconian zero-COVID policy.
It sparked an unprecedented display of solidarity: hundreds of residents took to the streets across the country last month to mourn the victims and oppose pandemic restrictions, while overseas, Uyghurs and Chinese stood side by side at rallies, demanding an end to dictatorship in China.
While it may seem that the fire shed light on their plight, as China pivots from its zero-COVID policy, marking a partial victory for protesters, many Uyghurs are questioning how far the solidarity will go.
“Many, if not all Uyghurs, feel that the Uyghur suffering is still left as a fading echo in the void that soon gets completely forgotten once protesting Chinese get their end of the deal, which is to lift the zero-COVID policy currently in place,” Patime, a Uyghur in Sweden, told VICE World News. They spoke on condition of using a pseudonym to avoid government reprisal. “This is the biggest root of the conflict and distrust.”
There are reasons for their fear. Despite the uproar over the tragedy, the issue of ethnicity has been largely overlooked in public discourse.
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Social media discussions often skip over the fact that all victims of the fire were Uyghurs, for whom the biggest threat isn’t just a blocked fire escape or a protracted lockdown, but the Chinese government’s brutal repression—including mass incarceration, cultural erasure and forced separation of families. By taking aim at the zero-COVID policy and failing to take the Chinese state’s systematic persecution of the historically Muslim ethnic minority into account, experts say Han Chinese protesters risk erasing the larger struggle of Uyghurs.
“Uyghurs are contesting that they are being racially targeted by the zero-COVID policy, as they are with all other policies,” David Tobin, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield, told VICE World News.
“They see this as just another dimension of cruelty and mismanagement by the party state.”
A WOMAN HOLDS UP A BLANK PIECE OF PAPER, a symbol of recent protests in China, AT A RALLY IN IRVINE, CALIFORNIA. PHOTO: FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP
For years, Uyghurs have been subject to arbitrary detention, invasive surveillance and other harsh security measures from which their Han Chinese counterparts are exempt. More recently, they’ve borne the brunt of China’s severe pandemic rules.
“The Uyghur majority areas in Xinjiang are some of the poorest in the nation, so the forms of private sustenance and protection—food, clothing, spaces to live—available to people elsewhere are often missing,” said Darren Byler, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, who has studied the region for more than decade.
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World News
Rachel Cheung
11.29.22
As a result, the pandemic restrictions have driven many Uyghurs to desperation, and in some cases, death. While households in other cities have also complained of shortages in supplies, the Uyghur diaspora have reported their families dying from starvation and lack of medical help. Footage on social media has shown people crammed in centralized quarantine, where conditions were far worse than facilities in other parts of the country.
“Many Uyghurs I know in North America have lost a friend or relative to what appears to be state authorized and enforced neglect,” Byler said.
“Some Uyghurs in the diaspora are very suspicious about what Chinese protesters are doing. Some of them feel that they are using our death as an opportunity to reach their goal. It has nothing to do with us.”
The contrast is also evident in the state response to pushback against the COVID-19 curbs. In other regions, instances of public backlash have occasionally yielded concessions and apologies from officials. But in Xinjiang, military police are readily deployed to stamp out unrest and small acts of protests from the Uyghur community are immediately met with force, said Tobin of Sheffield University.
For this reason, Uyghurs in Urumqi were too scared to join in the latest protests or even share images or clips online, despite their anguish over the fire.
Despite his hopes of building bridges between Han Chinese and Uyghur diaspora outside China, Ayup admitted that many in his community do not share his optimism. Ethnic tensions have been fueled by views that many Han Chinese citizens are ignorant, if not complicit, in their oppression.
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“Some Uyghurs in the diaspora are very suspicious about what Chinese protesters are doing. Some of them feel that they are using our death as an opportunity to reach their goal. It has nothing to do with us,” Ayup said. “This mistrust is widespread.”
World News
Rachel Cheung
10.19.22
Patime, who has attended a rally in Sweden, also pointed at the gulf between the fundamental goals of the Chinese protesters and the Uyghur community. While the former are petitioning for a democratic China, many of the latter advocate for self-determination or independence.
Nevertheless, Patime saw the need to find common ground.
“This is an opportunity not to be thrown away, the alternative is that they would have remained silent forever,” Patime said, stressing the need to sustain the momentum of the movement in order to achieve other goals, including shutting down the Chinese Communist Party’s internment camps in Xinjiang.
“While the Communist party has the illusion of power and control, the real power comes from the people and their strength grows with their numbers.”
CHINA has begun LIFTING LOCKDOWNS AS IT PIVOTS away FROM ITS DRACONIAN ZERO-COVID POLICY. PHOTO: NOEL CELIS/AFP
Zhu Xun, a Chinese human rights activist based in the U.S., has also noticed subtle changes on the ground in China. Speaking to VICE World News under a pseudonym to avoid government reprisal, Zhu said the subject is such a political taboo that even among Chinese overseas, few understood the scale of the atrocities against Uyghurs.
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“But some more progressive students are actively bringing the issue into public consciousness,” Zhu said.
World News
Rachel Cheung
11.10.22
Just last Monday, two Chinese students began a hunger strike outside Apple’s California headquarters, calling for the company to remove restrictions on AirDrop in China, as well as improve workers’ conditions in its Foxconn facility and condemn the mass incarceration of Uyghurs.
On Twitter, a student group called Not Your Little Pink—a dig at China’s young nationalists, known online as Little Pink—proposed including closure of the internment camps as one of the wider protest movement’s demands.
“Without including this, our demands for an end to lockdowns, equality, freedom, right, democracy and dignity are Han-centric and built on wilful ignorance to the persecution Uyghurs face,” they wrote in a widely-shared post on Twitter.
“Having relatively more freedom and resources, we are able to know what happened to Uyghur people,” one of the Chinese students that raised the proposal told VICE World News, speaking anonymously to avoid retaliation. The student stressed the need for overseas Chinese nationals to address China’s repression of Uyghurs, given the privilege and freedom they have, but also noted that it is not an easy task.
World News
Hanako Montgomery
11.28.22
“They’re going through the process of unlearning everything they were taught when they were back in China,” they said. “Especially for folks that just arrived, they show a lot more resistance and hesitation in engaging in ‘sensitive issues’ about China, because what they were taught were so different.”
As a result of these efforts, Zhu said many protesters, who are starting to become politically aware, are also confronting the issue for the first time. “Many are just beginners taking baby steps,” Zhu said.
At some rallies, Chinese protesters sought to let Uyghurs speak first; others have become mindful of the language they used, realizing simple terms to express support—such as “tongbao,” or compatriots—could be politically charged.
Yet there is still a long way to go. “Ultimately, social movements can’t create qualitative changes. It requires community organizing, mutual engagement and dialogue over a long period,” Zhu said. “This is just the beginning.”
Follow Rachel Cheung on Twitter and Instagram.
Vice · by Rachel Cheung · December 12, 2022
10. Former Marine Generals: ‘Our Concerns With Force Design 2030’
Has there ever been so much public pushback by the greybeards (former Marine/military leaders) on a new operating concept?
Former Marine Generals: ‘Our Concerns With Force Design 2030’
We believe the path currently charted by the Marine Corps poses a significant risk to national security.
by John J. Sheehan James Amos
The National Interest · by John J. Sheehan · December 12, 2022
In March 2020, the Marine Corps published Force Design 2030, a concept calling for significant changes to the Corps’ operating forces. Twelve months later, in November 2021, the Marine Corps released Talent Management 2030, another document with troubling implications. After careful study, a small group of retired senior Marines (loosely termed “Chowder II”), which has since grown to include hundreds of former and retired Marines of all ranks, began to voice alarm at what we believe to be a lessening of the Corps’ ability to operate as a combined-arms, air-ground-logistics team. We also spoke of our severe misgivings about the capability of Marine Air Ground Task Forces to respond globally to a wide range of crises and contingencies.
Over the next two years, several of us had opportunities to discuss these concerns with the current Marine Corps leadership. Despite our urgings, we saw no deviation from the path laid out in Force Design 2030. After much discussion and with great hesitancy, we saw no other option but to take an unprecedented step, that is, to speak out publicly, otherwise we were convinced we would watch the organization we had served faithfully for decades become a hollow shell of its former self.
More importantly, we recognized that a less capable Marine Corps posed a significant risk to national security, our first concern. Valued by combatant commanders for its high state of readiness and ability to respond quickly with robust sustainment from shipboard stores and Maritime Prepositioning Force stocks, the Corps was often the “go to” force. We saw Marine Corps capabilities that were needed today to fight the Nation’s wars being unwisely jettisoned to fund future, unproven capabilities that in some cases other Services already possessed. Not always recognized was the fact that the Corps provided 25 percent of the nation’s ground divisions and 15 percent of its fighter/attack aircraft, percentages that have steadily dropped over the past three years.
We are not opposed to change. The Marine Corps, arguably more than any other Service, has always transformed to meet the requirements of a changing world. The development of amphibious operations, close air support, helicopter envelopment, and maneuver warfare are some examples of innovations pioneered by Marines to enable the Corps to remain relevant. These changes were implemented after extensive experimentation and validation and without sacrificing other capabilities. These advances made the Marine Corps more capable and relevant—not less capable or relevant as the current case does. Our concerns with Force Design 2030 and Talent Management 2030 are all related to the unintended consequences of these initiatives. These consequences pose an unnecessary risk to national security, the role of the Marine Corps in national defense, the readiness of Marine forces for global contingencies, and those intangibles that define Marines.
What, exactly, are our concerns? They fall into five categories: (1) The myopic focus on one enemy in one geographical region employing one method with a defensive orientation; (2) The devastating reduction of operational capabilities for global response; (3) The loss of currently needed capabilities for two to seven or more years and the associated risk these reductions pose to national security, all incurred with the “divest to invest” approach to modernization; (4) The unusual way in which force structure decisions were made outside of the highly regarded combat development process; and (5) The adoption of personnel plans that are likely to destroy the culture and ethos of the Corps, attributes that have enabled Marines to fight and win some of the nation’s most difficult battles.
Excessive Focus on One Potential Mission
Projected Marine Corps operations in the Western Pacific are centered around Stand-in Forces. These are small, isolated teams of Marines tasked with detecting and then attacking enemy ships at sea with medium-range missiles. Much like the Wake Island Defenders of World War II, these isolated units will be vulnerable to attack and capture. In our opinion, the units will be too widely separated to be mutually supporting and too far inside contested areas to be immediately reinforced or logistically resupplied during hostilities. Other Services can more effectively perform the mission today with weapons such as Navy attack submarines and Air Force long-range bombers, and with exponentially less risk. The most obvious duplication is with the Army’s Multi-Domain Task Forces (MDTF), which the Army began experimenting with in the Pacific in 2017. Army leadership began manning and equipping the 1st MDTF in Washington State in 2021 with planned completion in 2023. The Army will activate another MDTF in the Pacific Theater in 2023. The Army will build upon its long experience with missiles and the sensors needed for their employment to cover surface and air threats at mid- and long ranges. Simultaneously, the Marine Corps will be experimenting with its Stand-in Forces, not reaching initial operational capability until 2025 and full operational capability until 2030 or beyond.
In response to our criticism, Marine Corps leaders have claimed that Force Design 2030, Expeditionary Advanced Force Operations, and “Stand-in Force” plans and operating concepts are applicable to a wide range of military contingencies. The evidence for this claim is sparse. The Corps is in the process of structuring three of its regiments into new organizations, Marine Littoral Regiments (MLR). MLRs are built around a battalion-size Littoral Combat Team (LCT) whose primary armament is a missile battery designed to engage enemy ships. The main purpose of infantry in the LCT is to provide security for dispersed missile teams. The MLR also has an anti-air battalion and a combat service support battalion. What it does not have is the ability to conduct offensive operations or to control maneuver units. In other words, it provides a fires solution to the detriment of maneuver. It has no ability to conduct combined arms operations, which have been the mainstay of Marine Corps operating forces for more than a hundred years. If MLRs were tasked to fight in a war like the one we see in Ukraine today, they could do little more than contribute fires to the “deep fight.” By all accounts, the Corps has abandoned the concept of “single battle” for it has little to contribute to the “close battle” or “rear battle” should one occur. Soon one-third of the Corps’ operating forces will no longer be able to close with and destroy the enemy, long a unique strength of the Corps.
To resource the MLRs, the Corps has made deep cuts in its other two Marine Expeditionary Forces (MEFs). As an example, the 2nd Marine Division has lost one-third of its infantry regiments and has taken deep cuts to its cannon artillery, and the 2nd Marine Logistics Group was stripped of all its bridging. The 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing has suffered similar losses in aircraft.
Reduce Operational Capabilities
Despite assertions otherwise, the Marine Corps is clearly less capable to serve as a global response force and a force in readiness today than it was in 2018. United States Marines can no longer claim their traditional role as the Nation’s premier 9-1-1 force. The evidence is overwhelming. Among many examples are the 21 percent loss of Marines in infantry battalions, 100 percent loss of armor, 67 percent loss of direct support cannon artillery, 100 percent loss of bridging, and approximately 30 percent loss of aircraft. There are fewer amphibious ships and nearly a two-third reduction (already made or planned) of Maritime Prepositioning Forces ships, and large reductions in land-based prepositioning. In our judgment, the Corps would find it challenging to get to the fight and sustain itself successfully in a conflict in Korea, Iran, or Europe. It simply does not have the amphibious and MPF ships to deploy, combat power to fight a conventional war or the capacity to sustain itself for more than a few weeks at best. Without MPF, a MEF will have to compete with the other Services for limited Military Sealift Command or other commercial ships. Marines will be significantly delayed arriving in theater and possibly after Army forces have closed.
Infantry battalions have always been the heart of Marine Corps combat formations. At full strength, the three Marine divisions would have a total of twenty-seven infantry battalions. In current plans, they will only have twenty-one and that number is misleading because five of those battalions will be configured or tasked in such a way that they will be unprepared to fight as regular infantry battalions. Bottom line, the Corps will only have sixteen infantry battalions available for missions.
Combined arms is the employment of infantry, artillery, armor, engineers, close air support, and all with needed logistics in a way that places an enemy on the “horns of a dilemma.” If he exposes himself to engage advancing infantry, he is subject to the effects of artillery fire. If he shelters himself from artillery fire, the infantry can advance relatively unmolested. With the divesture of all tanks and the drastic reductions in direct support cannon artillery, Marine Corps units would have great difficulty employing combined arms in the future. We have been dismayed to hear proponents of Force Design 2030 assert that “Cyber and information operations are the new combined arms.” This is pure nonsense. Though these are means to support attacks, as one observer noted, “No military has ever ‘cybered’ a river crossing.” Virtual does not supplant real.
The unnecessary and unwise reductions in needed force structure and equipment were not made to make the Marine Corps more combat-ready. They were made to self-fund unproven, experimental capabilities that will not be fully operational until 2030 or beyond. Rather than making the Marine Corps more relevant for twenty-first-century warfare, the stripping away of proven and necessary capabilities will make the Marine Corps less capable of responding to global crises and contingencies, which poses a significant risk to national security. The Marine Corps is less capable today to fight the Nation’s wars than it was four years ago.
Create Gaps and Risks With the “Divest to Invest” Approach to Modernization
Extremely troubling is the “divest to invest” approach to modernization where the Marine Corps continues to eliminate or reduce current structures and systems to fund future ones. In the process, it is creating gaps of two to seven or more years where there will be insufficient means to field three robust division-wing-logistics teams. In fact, the Marine Corps would be unable to field a single traditional, warfighting Marine Expeditionary Force without globally sourcing essential capabilities and appealing to the U.S. Army for tanks and likely additional cannon artillery. This creates considerable risk to our national security. One infantry regiment (3rd Marines) with its supporting artillery is already gone; its replacement will not achieve full operating capability until 2030 and that capability has yet to be fully tested. A second infantry regiment (8th Marines) and its supporting artillery were deactivated in 2021 as a billpayer for ongoing force design efforts.
The conflict in Ukraine shows the confluence of current capabilities and new technological advances. The premise that technology is “changing the character of war” is far from certain. One thing is certain: the divestiture of proven and necessary capabilities before new technologies are fielded will make the Marine Corps less capable of responding quickly and decisively to global crises and contingencies.
Failure to Use the Combat Development Process
For nearly thirty years the Marine Corps has relied on its robust combat development process to determine how to arm and equip its operating forces. The process moves from emerging ideas to full-blown operating concepts that are thoroughly tested and evaluated before decisions are made to modify, create, or eliminate force structure or to commence acquisition of new weapons and equipment.
Fielding decisions are made to avoid gaps in capabilities. Divestures are concurrent with the fielding of the new equipment. As an example, the need for the increased speed and range of tilt-rotor aircraft became apparent when the Corps recognized that the rising threat of modern coastal artillery and missiles would force amphibious ships to operate from far over the horizon. Thus, vertical lift assets needed greater speed and range. The process to develop and acquire the V-22 Osprey was long and arduous. It was only after the aircraft was in production and the first airframes became available that Marine Medium Helicopters Squadrons began to transition from the CH-46 Sea Knight to the V-22. Gaps were short and risk-limited.
In failing to use this well-understood and highly regarded process in the same manner as it has been used in the past, the Marine Corps has yet to effectively address one of the fatal flaws of Stand-in Forces, the inability to sustain and move them once hostilities commence. This vital combat service support function was not tested in the wargames that supposedly validated the Stand-in Force concept. Yet irreversible decisions were made with the divesture of weapons and equipment and the cutting of force structure. Having taken actions before truly understanding if the concept was viable, the Corps finds itself in an awkward position, half in and half out of the “airplane” as it begins to take off.
For reasons that we find hard to understand, many officers assigned to the small groups working outside of the formal combat development process were required to sign non-disclosure agreements as they sought to create Force Design 2030 and Talent Management 2030. Such a lack of respect for “the special trust and confidence” instilled in every Marine officer before commissioning is not something we experienced while on active service. It is deeply troubling.
Erode the Customs, Tradition, and Ethos of the Marine Corps
Were these operational combat development process considerations not bad enough, the customs, traditions, and warfighting ethos of the Marine Corps are being seriously eroded by the unintended consequences of divesting needed force structure and equipment coupled with personnel policies best suited for a business, not for a force whose culture is “first to fight” and whose ethos is characterized by service and sacrifice. Examples include policies such as deemphasizing the importance of infantry, promotion board opt-outs, encouraging officers to pursue paths other than command, maturing the force, and lateral entry. Such policies risk undermining the attributes that make Marines different from other Services. The unique attributes that define Marines are the underpinnings of Marine Corps combat effectiveness and must be preserved. A business model approach in how we recruit, train, and retain Marines and an institutional shift from focusing on Marine infantry and close combat are recipes for long-term disaster. The new focus is on specialists who watch computer screens and push buttons that fire rockets and missiles in the deep fight. This is not who we are.
To summarize, we believe the path currently charted by the Marine Corps poses a significant risk to national security. We believe the Marine Corps must embrace an operating concept that regains maneuver in the age of precision munitions and use its proven combat development process to field a force that remains capable of responding quickly and effectively to global crises and contingencies. Having now spelled out our concerns, we believe it incumbent upon Chowder II to offer a potential solution that will alleviate or eliminate those concerns. Thus, we follow this article with two articles that explain how to place the Marine Corps on a better path to the future, a path that reduces risk and restores the balance between fires and maneuver.
General John J. Sheehan USMC (Ret) is a career infantry officer. His last assignment was Commander, United States Atlantic Command/Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic.
General James Amos USMC (Ret) is a career aviation officer. His last assignment was Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Image: DVIDS.
The National Interest · by John J. Sheehan · December 12, 2022
11. What Putin’s War in Ukraine Reveals About Russia—and the Likely Path Ahead
Excerpts:
Wars are in some measure societal tests, and this one has revealed the corruption that permeates post-Soviet Russia, and the paranoia that informs its decision makers. When the likes of Vladimir Solovyov or Margarita Simonyan rave on Russian television about the Nazis and Satanists of the West, they are not simply cynical, though they are that. They reflect a pervasive governmental mood and temper.
The invasion of Ukraine has caused a profound change in European attitudes toward Russia; it will lead to the expansion of NATO’s borders as Finland and Sweden join. It has animated Poland and transformed German attitudes, among others. It has caused Ukraine, through its suffering at Russian hands, not only to deepen its hatred of Moscow but also to forge a democratic nationalism that will make it Russia’s most implacable enemy.
Russia may have sympathizers in Africa and Asia, but they can do it little good. The nation runs the risk of becoming a Chinese vassal state, and even lesser powers like Turkey can stare it down. When Russia declared it would stop allowing Ukrainian grain exports, President Tayyip Erdogan threatened to escort grain carriers with Turkish warships, and President Putin backed down.
....
A Cold War of a kind has thus returned. The West will have to stand watch against a threat that will take multiple forms. It will have to rearm itself and fortify its Eastern glacis. It will have to protect its infrastructure against sabotage, while defending its societies against subversion and distraction. Russia will be weaker but still dangerous, and patience and resolve will be needed to block it.
We have been here before. At the end of his summation of the post-World War I decade, Winston Churchill wrote of “Russia, self outcast,” sharpening “her bayonets in her Arctic night,” even as it proclaimed a “philosophy of hatred and death.” But as he also noted, the Russian challenge and others were not greater than those we had already overcome. With Western determination, a weakened and isolated Russia will be thwarted. In decades or generations, it may even find a different way back into a Western world that it has always feared and envied—and secretly admired.
What Putin’s War in Ukraine Reveals About Russia—and the Likely Path Ahead
A military expert argues that too many incorrectly see the attack as the act of a normal state seeking normal guarantees of security
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-war-ukraine-putin-whats-next-11670851829?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_170&cx_artPos=2&mod=WTRN#cxrecs_s
By Eliot A. Cohen
Dec. 13, 2022 8:00 am ET
On Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine on multiple fronts, launching the most violent phase of a war to re-establish the Russian empire. It is a war that did not begin then, or even in 2014 when Russian forces occupied Crimea and pressed into the Donbas. Rather, the conflict began at least 20 years earlier, within years of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Russia began a number of campaigns to restore its former power.
In short, Russia’s attack on Ukraine is no normal power grab. And that is why so many experts have misunderstood it.
Attempts by international-relations theorists to explain Russian behavior in terms of “realism” founder because they think of states apart from their cultures and histories, not to mention the personalities of their leaders. In thinking that the war was the result of NATO expansion, they misread Russia as a normal state seeking normal guarantees of security that in turn meant they misunderstood its predatory and destructive proclivities. As grasping and brutal as Vladimir Putin might be, the issue is much larger than one dictator.
Wars reveal much about societies, and this one is no exception. The invasion of Ukraine is not about legitimate grievance, or even the aspirations of a dictator, but about a more profound problem of Russia’s imperial self-conception. And that is why assuring victory to Ukraine and a defeat of those ambitions is so important.
A mural with Russian soldiers in Moscow.
PHOTO: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
History of empire
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Russia’s history is one of expansion and empire, a past from which it has, with rare exceptions, been unable and unwilling to break. This, and not domestic terror, explains the passive support for this war in its opening phases. Ukraine’s independence and Westernization are simply unacceptable to Russian imperialism.
The assault on Kyiv was the culmination of a project of imperial restoration. It was reflected in such efforts as the creation of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in 1992 to cement Russia’s military presence in Central Asia; attempts to build energy dependence on Russia; subversion and co-optation of former Soviet states; seizure of parts of Georgia; and threats against the Baltic states.
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The 2022 war has been a catastrophe for these ambitions. Russia’s military has been humiliated, its forces driven first from the outskirts of Kyiv, then from Kharkiv and now from Kherson, its arsenals revealed as a jumble of second-rate equipment, its Black Sea flagship sunk, its call-ups an administrative shambles. Its Central Asian alliances have collapsed, as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, in particular, have effectively opposed the Ukraine war while detaching themselves from Russian influence. Its oil and gas weapon has not sufficed to bring Europe to heel. The Russian economy has suffered a battering from sanctions, even as hundreds of thousands of the country’s most talented young people have fled, while others have been swept up in a ruinous press-ganging.
Russian conscripts at a Moscow recruiting office during Russia’s military mobilization this fall as the war dragged on.
PHOTO: YURI KOCHETKOV/SHUTTERSTOCK
Wars are in some measure societal tests, and this one has revealed the corruption that permeates post-Soviet Russia, and the paranoia that informs its decision makers. When the likes of Vladimir Solovyov or Margarita Simonyan rave on Russian television about the Nazis and Satanists of the West, they are not simply cynical, though they are that. They reflect a pervasive governmental mood and temper.
The invasion of Ukraine has caused a profound change in European attitudes toward Russia; it will lead to the expansion of NATO’s borders as Finland and Sweden join. It has animated Poland and transformed German attitudes, among others. It has caused Ukraine, through its suffering at Russian hands, not only to deepen its hatred of Moscow but also to forge a democratic nationalism that will make it Russia’s most implacable enemy.
Russia may have sympathizers in Africa and Asia, but they can do it little good. The nation runs the risk of becoming a Chinese vassal state, and even lesser powers like Turkey can stare it down. When Russia declared it would stop allowing Ukrainian grain exports, President Tayyip Erdogan threatened to escort grain carriers with Turkish warships, and President Putin backed down.
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A destroyed Russian tank on the road from Kyiv to Bucha, Ukraine, in April, after Russia’s military failed to capture Kyiv and withdrew from the area.
PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER OCCHICONE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Difficult road forward
It would be reassuring to believe that the stream of disasters will bring reform if not revolution in Russia. This is possible but unlikely. It is not only that the mechanisms of repression are too strong: It is that, alas, Russian culture seems to be one of acquiescence even if coupled with mistrust of the Kremlin’s plans. Centuries of autocracy, followed by more than two generations of totalitarianism, have left their mark. Russia’s liberal heroes too often end up fleeing, exiled or simply murdered. There is not much to work with here to create a democratic and law-abiding culture, at least in the short term.
Instead, two possibilities loom. One is civil war, as the system comes apart. There are signs that this might happen. Paramilitary organizations have emerged outside the control of the Russian military. There are occasional explosions of anger and dissent, and incidents of mutiny in the armed forces. Sooner or later, Russia’s streets will see a swarm of angry veterans out to avenge humiliation and defeat. Russia has known chaos and civil war before. There is no reason to think it might not again.
The other possibility is that either by stalemate or outright defeat, Russia nonetheless holds together under its present leadership, or perhaps one in which President Putin, like so many of his enemies, mysteriously falls out a window and is replaced by another former secret policeman. This is the more likely and also the more dangerous outcome. Russia will have been defeated and humiliated, and will be scheming for revenge.
Russian conscripts deploying for service prepare to board a train in Omsk, Russia, in November.
PHOTO: ALEXEY MALGAVKO/REUTERS
A Cold War of a kind has thus returned. The West will have to stand watch against a threat that will take multiple forms. It will have to rearm itself and fortify its Eastern glacis. It will have to protect its infrastructure against sabotage, while defending its societies against subversion and distraction. Russia will be weaker but still dangerous, and patience and resolve will be needed to block it.
We have been here before. At the end of his summation of the post-World War I decade, Winston Churchill wrote of “Russia, self outcast,” sharpening “her bayonets in her Arctic night,” even as it proclaimed a “philosophy of hatred and death.” But as he also noted, the Russian challenge and others were not greater than those we had already overcome. With Western determination, a weakened and isolated Russia will be thwarted. In decades or generations, it may even find a different way back into a Western world that it has always feared and envied—and secretly admired.
Dr. Cohen is professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and holds the chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.
12. Ukraine and the shadow of Korea
Analogy aside there must be a political end to the war. if one cannot be obtained an armistice/ceasefire can be the next best thing. But one thing the author did not remind us from Korea is that as negotiations stalled, Eisenhower did make a nuclear threat which apparently drive th eKoreans in the north and the Chinese to finally sign the Armistice. Will Putin make a nuclear threat?
Excerpts:'
Sir Lawrence Freedman, author of the recently published Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine, sees a possibility of “military to military negotiations on disengagement”. While Freedman stresses that there are important differences between the Korean and Ukraine wars, he thinks the Korean armistice points to the possibility of “stopping the fighting, by separating the forces” — without a full peace deal.
Without territorial or political gains to claim, Putin is unlikely to be able to announce an end to the war. But he might be able to accept a halt to the fighting — which could be dressed up as a response to military advice or a goodwill gesture.
But why should the Ukrainians ever accept that? The moral, political and existential case for them to keep fighting is strong. The momentum in the war is with Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised to retake every inch of occupied territory including Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. After the atrocities inflicted on Ukraine by Putin, the idea of any sort of “normal” relationship with an unreformed Russia seems inconceivable to many Ukrainians. And there is also a realistic fear that Russia would simply use a ceasefire to rearm before attacking Ukraine once again.
Opinion War in Ukraine
Ukraine and the shadow of Korea
The war that started with a Russian invasion might be ended by an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty
https://www.ft.com/content/a1340286-772c-4c4e-bc4f-c65f636f5e6a?63bac0e6-3d28-36b1-7417-423982f60790
For some conservatives, every foreign policy crisis is “Munich”. For some leftwingers, every war threatens to turn into “Vietnam”.
But as the Ukraine war moves inexorably into a second year of conflict, a less commonplace analogy is doing the rounds — Korea.
The point of the comparison is that the Korean war never formally ended. It was brought to a close by an armistice in 1953, which stopped the fighting without the signature of a formal peace treaty. Instead there has been a decades-long ceasefire, which essentially froze the conflict.
The hope that an armistice might be a route to the end of hostilities in Ukraine is based on three ideas. First, neither Russia nor Ukraine is in a position to achieve total victory. Second, the political positions of the two countries are too far apart to make a peace agreement possible. Third, both countries are suffering severe losses that could make a ceasefire attractive.
It is true that Moscow still talks the language of victory. Vladimir Putin likens himself to Peter the Great, the tsar who won the Great Northern War after fighting Sweden for 21 years.
But the reality is that Putin has already failed in Ukraine. His forces have been driven back from Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson. His partial mobilisation of civilians has caused thousands of Russian men to flee the country but failed to reverse the tide on the battlefield. About 100,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded — with more dying every week in brutal trench warfare.
It is Putin’s inability to acknowledge the scale of the disaster that he has inflicted on his own country, as well as the war crimes that Russia has committed in Ukraine, that are now the major obstacles to peace.
But it is possible that a Russian decision to wind the war down could be dressed up as an adjustment in military tactics, rather than an acknowledgment of defeat. This was what happened when Russia withdrew from Kherson. Putin distanced himself from the decision, which was announced by military commanders and the defence minister.
Sir Lawrence Freedman, author of the recently published Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine, sees a possibility of “military to military negotiations on disengagement”. While Freedman stresses that there are important differences between the Korean and Ukraine wars, he thinks the Korean armistice points to the possibility of “stopping the fighting, by separating the forces” — without a full peace deal.
Without territorial or political gains to claim, Putin is unlikely to be able to announce an end to the war. But he might be able to accept a halt to the fighting — which could be dressed up as a response to military advice or a goodwill gesture.
But why should the Ukrainians ever accept that? The moral, political and existential case for them to keep fighting is strong. The momentum in the war is with Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised to retake every inch of occupied territory including Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. After the atrocities inflicted on Ukraine by Putin, the idea of any sort of “normal” relationship with an unreformed Russia seems inconceivable to many Ukrainians. And there is also a realistic fear that Russia would simply use a ceasefire to rearm before attacking Ukraine once again.
However, there are also considerations — undoubtedly much harder to voice — that might make a prolonged Korean-style ceasefire attractive to Ukraine. Like the Russians, the Ukrainians continue to take heavy casualties. They are also having to contend with a brutal, but effective Russian tactic — the deliberate targeting of Ukrainian infrastructure. By making winter very hard to withstand, the loss of water and power supplies makes it much harder for millions of Ukrainian refugees to return home. Instead, a further wave of refugees is building. As months of exile stretch into years, it becomes less likely that refugees will ever return to Ukraine — placing a huge strain on families and on society.
In private, some Ukrainians acknowledge that taking back Crimea would involve even more brutal fighting in an effort to reoccupy a territory where many people, including but by no means limited to retired military officers, are loyal to Russia.
So the Ukrainians also have some incentives to freeze the conflict — without giving up their ultimate political aims. The major obstacle for them is a complete lack of trust in Russian intentions. But the fact that Ukraine’s western allies have also had their illusions stripped away about the nature of Putin’s Russia means that a post-ceasefire Ukraine will not be left alone to face the future. Instead, it is likely to be given military aid and security guarantees to turn it into an indigestible “porcupine” that Russia would hesitate to attack.
A ceasefire would also allow Ukraine’s sympathisers to pour in foreign aid that would allow the country to rebuild. South Korea was utterly devastated after the Korean war, but is now a prosperous, advanced nation. By contrast, a Russia that was still led by Putin, and that refused to atone for its crimes in Ukraine, could expect a future of continued international isolation and growing poverty. As that reality sank in, the long-awaited political reconstruction of Russia might finally begin.
gideon.rachman@ft.com
You can bid to have lunch with Gideon Rachman to support the FT’s Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign (FLIC) charity. Go to ft.com/appeal
Financial Times · by Gideon Rachman · December 12, 2022
13. A Putin nuclear strike on Ukraine? A Chinese attack against Taiwan? How the US prepares for global nightmares.
I am a great fan of Eisenhower's quote in the conclusion.
Excerpts:
None of these exercises guarantees perfection — or anything close. But using them — and using the results wisely — may narrow the chances of confusion or failure in national security emergencies. If we can answer those questions about Putin, or game out all the military and political steps that might play out should President Xi Jinping move with force against Taiwan, we have a better chance of success if and when the nightmares come.
Perhaps the clearest wisdom on this comes from then-Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. Having commanded the largest amphibious military operation in history, the D-Day invasion of Normandy, Eisenhower was acutely aware of the many things that could surprise a decision-maker. He had no illusions that he could design a perfect plan that would hold up under the pressures and chaos of battle, but he also knew that not planning would leave him even more exposed to surprise and disaster.
As he put it: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless … but planning is indispensable.”
A Putin nuclear strike on Ukraine? A Chinese attack against Taiwan? How the US prepares for global nightmares.
A former CIA leader on war games, “red teams” and other ways the U.S. prepares for worst-case scenarios.
John McLaughlin
Special Contributor
December 12, 2022
grid.news · by John McLaughlin
For many of the dangerous situations confronting the United States today, there is precious little precedent and little guidance on how to respond. Look no further than the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin might use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine or that China might invade Taiwan. Add the prospects of a fourth nuclear test by North Korea, Iran acquiring a nuclear capability and widespread unrest in China … well, you get the idea.
The potential for global surprises has rarely been greater. And surprise is the enemy of any nation’s foreign policy.
The challenge for U.S. policymakers is to prepare for all these traumas and game out how the U.S. would respond — not just in the moment, but in prolonged and escalating circumstances. For example, not just whether Russia would go nuclear in Ukraine, but what the U.S. would do and what next steps Russia might take. All this to avoid relying on improvisation and potentially chaotic responses, if and when the moment comes.
The good news? Such planning is happening now when it comes to the Taiwan and Russian situations. The bad news? Those are as complex and dangerous as any scenarios in recent memory.
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How does the scenario-planning work? Who does this work? My experience in government taught me that there are many ways to prepare for such uncertainties and entire teams of people whose job descriptions might best be described as “preparing for nightmares.”
War games
The concept dates to the early 19th century and a Prussian army officer who took actual games to his superiors and suggested that they be used to simulate conditions on the battlefield. Today, war gaming in the U.S. happens inside government agencies and private think tanks, and it takes many forms.
There is the geopolitical war game — a kind of chess match of diplomatic moves and countermoves — and then there is the more kinetic variety, with U.S. military officers simulating teams and playing through a series of military “moves” in which the battlefield is constantly changing.
For years, the U.S. has used war games to simulate a U.S. war with China over Taiwan. As Grid’s Joshua Keating has reported, in classified Air Force war games held since 2018, “blue” teams representing the U.S. have repeatedly lost to Chinese “red” teams. That’s partly by design — these games are designed to highlight vulnerabilities — but the simulations have also highlighted specific issues involving China’s geographic advantages and its rapid development of certain weapons (in particular anti-ship ballistic missiles, capable of precision strikes on U.S. ships at a range of more than 900 miles).
The 2021 Air Force game reportedly showed improvement for the U.S. side, though the Air Force game commander highlighted the fact that many of the necessary U.S. military assets were not yet in development or production. His conclusion: “If we change, we can win.” More broadly, these war games have shown the grave damage China could inflict against Taiwan in the early days of a conflict, but also the likelihood of a long and drawn-out war once the U.S. was involved — a war that could be devastating to the U.S. and China both.
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Other war games take into consideration both military capabilities and political factors, sometimes using a team that mixes government players with outside experts. This was the case in a war game in March run by West Point’s Modern War Institute, which simulated a Russia-Ukraine war just weeks after the actual Russian invasion.
That game opened with the U.S. players overestimating Russian capabilities but quickly coming to the prescient view that over time Russia could not sustain the combat power necessary to take and hold a major city. The game also foresaw the eventual need for a Russian mobilization, resulting political tensions in Russia and a long-lasting stalemate on the battlefield.
What’s gained in these games? In the Ukraine case, those conclusions helped underline some of Ukraine’s underlying strengths and, more importantly, to expose weaknesses in Russia’s position.
More broadly, the games help the U.S. “team” take the measure of itself, expose resource and coordination problems among U.S. agencies and with allies, and test how a range of responses might work under the pressure of time and surprise.
Red teaming
“Red teaming,” which also originated with the 19th century Prussian military, is an invaluable variation on this — and one that I’ve seen work effectively. Call it war gaming with a twist.
A team of experts is asked to “become” the country or group whose actions you are trying to anticipate. And “experts” is the key word. The team must consist of people with two qualities: deep expertise on the adversary, and an ability to challenge conventional wisdom and avoid “mirror imaging” (the tendency to assume the adversary will behave as Americans would). The team members must be expert enough to enter the enemy’s social, cultural and ideological milieus and think as they would.
Red teaming differs from war gaming in that there is no opposing side; you don’t want this group reacting to others — you just want them to replicate and channel the thinking, logic and planning of your adversary. In colloquial terms, to get in their heads.
So in my Taiwan example, this team would consist of people schooled in Chinese and Taiwanese culture and history, and ideally with fluency in Mandarin. They might be given two kinds of tasks: playing Chinese policymakers to game out how Beijing would pursue its aims on Taiwan, or playing Chinese officials reacting to setbacks in their strategy. In the Putin-nukes scenario, the same idea — but with the expertise focused on Russia, nuclear weapons and Putin himself.
I know red teaming can work, based on the CIA’s use of the technique after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when the agency felt acutely responsible for ensuring that another attack did not take place. We took our most adventurous and unconventional thinkers and formed a red team with a very specific task: We told them to “become” the terrorists — to imagine how and where they might plot their next attacks. Combined with raw intelligence we collected, the red team’s work guided many of the steps the administration took to harden vulnerable targets in the U.S. and abroad.
This proved important because, in my experience, the U.S. tendency even after 9/11 was to rely almost passively on intelligence to warn policymakers; in other words, wait for a CIA warning and then react. Our message was that we would do our best but — against an enemy that played by no rules — there would always be a chance something might be missed and someone would get through. Better to augment intelligence warnings with proactive protection of potential targets that we could identify.
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It was hard to convince Americans — government officials and ordinary citizens — what an open target the U.S. was at that moment. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, watch lists were not yet systematic and effective; people could board planes with knives; and in the entire aviation system, there were only 33 air marshals. The red team exercise helped expose these and other vulnerabilities.
Devil’s advocacy
It’s a simple, well-known concept, one that appears to have had its origins in an ancient Catholic Church practice of testing the arguments for and against conferring sainthood. In its modern, secular form, it’s another tool that helps government decision-makers narrow the potential for surprise or error.
Devil’s advocacy is most useful when leaders have arrived at a conclusion with confidence but must test that conclusion relentlessly, given the disastrous consequences should they turn out to be wrong.
Unlike war gaming or red teaming, the key here isn’t military or cultural expertise; rather than getting into the adversary’s mind, the idea for a devil’s advocacy team is to clinically evaluate and challenge the mainline judgment — to test it by arraying the data in ways that arrive at a different conclusion, or to detect some missing piece that is distorting the judgment.
This may sound like an academic exercise, but it can have profound impact. When the CIA concluded that Osama bin Laden was in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011, it used this technique to test its judgment. It asked another agency to look at the case and provide a competing assessment to see if it differed from the mainline view — in other words, devil’s advocacy. The agency also conducted what’s known as “competing hypothesis analysis” — asking what other conclusions could have been consistent with the analysis. Could the Abbottabad resident have been someone other than bin Laden? A different terrorist? A man who resembled him? Finally, several other individuals with no experience in the matter were brought in to do an additional cold review of the data and conclusions.
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You might say that there were three rounds of devil’s advocacy, all looking for differences or weak spots in the analysis.
The precise results of those exercises remain classified, but I can say this much: The multiple competing assessments offered the Obama administration a 360-degree view of the information and analysis, and ultimately gave the president and his top advisers confidence that the data had been thoroughly scrubbed and tested as they wrestled with the decision to launch the special forces raid on Abbottabad.
It was a different case, Iraq in 2003, that encouraged the increased and more systematic use of such techniques — given the flawed assessments of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the assumption that the U.S. could overthrow Saddam Hussein without the trauma that followed. As for the Iraq War itself, it’s not clear that any prewar devil’s advocacy exercise would have made a difference given the momentum for going ahead that had built up in the Bush administration and Congress.
“What if” analysis
Here again, the words seem simple, but in practice the technique is important. The idea in a “what-if” analysis is to shift thinking from “How likely is it?” (say, that Putin might use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine) to “How could it actually come about?” You start by assuming that the hypothetical has already happened and work back from there; you assume, for example, that China has attacked Taiwan, Putin has used a nuclear weapon or Iran’s regime has collapsed, and so forth. And as you work your way back, you consider what must have occurred at each step. What would be the indicators or tripwires to watch for? What would we expect to see if the nightmare scenario were coming? And how would we know?
And then you gear your technical tools and best agents to watch for those things.
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Scenarios analysis
Sometimes a global crisis or hot zone will defy nearly all the other tools. An outcome may be too uncertain, complex or controversial to place confidence in any single prediction. Here’s where “scenarios analysis” comes in. This was a technique I relied on often when I was managing what are called National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) from 1995 to 1997 and wrestling with questions about North Korea, Russia, Iran, and nuclear and missile proliferation.
This is not about predicting the future or gaming out moves, but about mapping the range of possible outcomes. One of the most intelligence-savvy policymakers I worked with, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser for President George H.W. Bush, often said the real role of intelligence was to “narrow the range of uncertainty when difficult decisions have to be made.” Scenarios analysis can help you do that.
Here, North Korea may be the most relevant — and nightmarish — example. Policymakers have worried for years about the possibility that a nuclear-armed North Korea could collapse under the combined weight of economic and social problems, grinding poverty, and a brittle dictatorship — and the nightmares that might follow. But the potential ways in which a North Korean collapse might play out are almost limitless; put differently, you’d have to conduct hundreds of war games or red-team exercises to plan appropriate responses.
So rather than war gaming, you start with the forces and events that could determine the outcome. You typically generate at least three or four scenarios — “best-case,” “worst-case,” and one or two in between, along with the indicators that each of those is coming to pass. Ideally, you make a judgment about the relative probability of these outcomes. This gives the government some guidelines for planning against various contingencies. In the case of Ukraine, your best case might be that Ukraine succeeds in pushing Russian forces off all the territory it has taken, including Crimea. Your worst case could be that Russia regroups and roars back to occupy most of the country. And you focus your energies on those that are most likely.
When it works — and when it doesn’t
At the CIA in the spring and summer of 2001, we had strong evidence that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack on the U.S. This was the result of a huge spike in intelligence reporting more than a conscious application of the foregoing techniques — although I think it’s fair to say that we were in a nonstop “scenarios analysis” exercise, weighing different possibilities in terms of potential targets and methods. We know it was coming and that it was coming to the U.S. But we were unable to identify timing and specific targets.
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In the aftermath of 9/11, however, the response benefited from an elaborate “what if” exercise that had been carried out in the year prior. In its final months, the Clinton administration had given the CIA a task in the form of a question, based on the possibility of a major al-Qaeda strike on U.S. soil: What if the CIA and other agencies were unconstrained by resources and given special authorities in the aftermath of such an attack? In those circumstances, what would we do to destroy al-Qaeda?
Our response was to develop what we called a “Blue Sky” plan, a term that reflected the unconstrained conditions the administration had posed. We delivered the plan in December 2000; it came off the shelf at Camp David, where President George W. Bush had assembled the national security team for the first full discussion of response strategies four days after the 9/11 attacks. Two days later, the president told us to put our plan into action. Within weeks, CIA teams on the ground in Afghanistan had prepared the way for U.S. Special Forces — and with the combined effort of CIA and the U.S. military, Kabul and the Taliban fell by November of 2001.
In the case of the Putin-launches-a-nuke scenario, I imagine a mix of all these techniques would be needed: war gaming for the chess match of moves and countermoves; red teaming, to be sure that decisions are made with a sophisticated understanding of the current Kremlin mindset (no small task); and what might be called the mother of all what-if exercises — using that calendar-in-reverse approach to do everything possible to ensure that it never comes to that.
None of these exercises guarantees perfection — or anything close. But using them — and using the results wisely — may narrow the chances of confusion or failure in national security emergencies. If we can answer those questions about Putin, or game out all the military and political steps that might play out should President Xi Jinping move with force against Taiwan, we have a better chance of success if and when the nightmares come.
Perhaps the clearest wisdom on this comes from then-Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. Having commanded the largest amphibious military operation in history, the D-Day invasion of Normandy, Eisenhower was acutely aware of the many things that could surprise a decision-maker. He had no illusions that he could design a perfect plan that would hold up under the pressures and chaos of battle, but he also knew that not planning would leave him even more exposed to surprise and disaster.
As he put it: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless … but planning is indispensable.”
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
grid.news · by John McLaughlin
14. In the Gray Zone, This Much is Black and White: SOF Must Develop Partner and Ally Nation Capabilities
Partnerships are the coin of the realm for SOF
Excerpts:
Using irregular warfare methods, the United States can strengthen deterrence, create robust resistance within partner nations, and use the information environment to influence the decision-making of Chinese and Russian leadership. Moreover, the use of SOF to build relationships in these regions provides placement and access should the worst happen: the eruption of armed conflict. As General Joseph Votel and coauthors have written, it is essential to remember that “a gray zone ‘win’ is not a win in the classic warfare sense,” but rather, “maintaining the U.S. Government’s positional advantage . . . or simply denying an adversary a decisive positional advantage.”
Competitive strategies in the gray zone must include irregular warfare focused on partnerships and US positional advantage. It is time for some unconventional deterrence and the concept must include the use of SOF to work by, with, and through partner nations for foreign internal defense and resistance activities. Forcing China and Russia to expend resources on domestic security lessens the resources available to them to allocate to coercion or expansion in the future. Though creating and training resistance forces may seem antithetical to promoting stability in the region, the objective is to harden the steel that halts the probe with the bayonet.
In the Gray Zone, This Much is Black and White: SOF Must Develop Partner and Ally Nation Capabilities - Modern War Institute
mwi.usma.edu · by Clifford Lucas · December 13, 2022
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Irregular warfare is fundamental to strategic competition with China and Russia. In his recent congressional testimony, General Richard Clarke described the critical space in which this competition will unfold and who should play a key role: “SOF [special operations forces] remain ideally suited to identify an adversary’s challenges in the ‘gray zone’ and counter those malign activities with firmness while managing escalation.” The United States is uniquely postured with this offset capability to dissuade China and Russia from destabilizing activities. Employment of unconventional deterrence methods “by, with, and through” US partners and allies will further enable SOF assets to amplify disincentives. The application of this suite of irregular warfare capabilities is most effective when comprehensively applied to a foreign internal defense enterprise. Accordingly, the United States must fortify the organic capabilities of partner nations, develop a sustainable resistance capacity to increase the potential costs to US adversaries, and ultimately, shape their behavior.
Identifying the Levers of Influence
In the sphere of deterrence, building partner nation competency requires training, advisement, and assistance to improve intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities for domain awareness. Developing the resistance capabilities of partner nations enables the effective imposition of costs through sabotage, subversion, and information warfare. The examples used in this article are focused on China, but similar activities and methods would likely have similar influence against Russia. Ideally, the analysis expressed here is not seen as the only answer, but rather a spark to ignite an ongoing dialogue on the use of irregular warfare as an integral component of a competitive military strategy.
Strategic competition requires implementing strategies that employ one’s inherent strengths against competitors’ inherent weaknesses, compelling them to respond. In its most impactful form, this strategy elicits an overreaction by aggravating visceral fears within a competitor’s strategic culture. Such strategies target the instinctive fear of domestic instability among Chinese and Russian leadership, which often results in a diversion of resources from external activities to internal security. China and Russia perceive this situation as particularly costly because it demands they reorient their focus from the world stage to more insular maintenance and management. In these scenarios, they may also have to tamp down influence from neighboring states that can further foment internal unrest.
Building and Brokering Strategic Cooperation through SOF
Competitive strategies require all instruments of national power to synchronize efforts in the space short of armed conflict, but the focus here is on the asymmetric capabilities that the SOF missions deliver. The activities discussed in this article are not exclusively a function of SOF; however, within the range of military operations, SOF heavily specialize in building relationships to further military engagement, security cooperation, and deterrence. The lines of effort argued here are in support of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, specifically through “campaigning,” which is designed to “undermine acute forms of competitor coercion, complicate competitors’ military preparations, and develop our own warfighting capabilities together with Allies and partners.” Before the United States can build and train resistance forces, it must first work to find willing partners through strategic engagements.
Using US naval assets and SOF in tandem to equip and train maritime forces will harden the resolve of partner nations facing China’s activities in the South China Sea. Leaders in China are known to subscribe to the maxim attributed to Vladimir Lenin. Probe with a bayonet, it advises, and stop if you meet steel, push if you meet mush. The objective of this activity is to forge that steel to persuade China to ease or cease their probing actions. Advising partner nations in capabilities to patrol their shores and enforce international law provides an avenue to hold China accountable for its aggressive behavior more effectively. Training for incident resolution against China’s maritime militia, which operates with impunity and without regard for international law, requires specific de-escalatory measures to avoid potentially violent encounters.
Some argue that China will see increased patrols as a threat and escalate matters to force its will upon smaller states more rapidly, thereby limiting the response time for a third-party intervention from countries such as the United States. Still, combining an increased patrol and law enforcement capability with adept statecraft provides a potential diplomatic and informational advantage to the partner nations. Recently, the Philippines’ government recognized the benefit of such advantage when its increased patrols confronted Chinese militia vessels near Sabina Shoal and escorted them from the area. Increasing maritime patrols and training effective maritime law enforcement protects the shores of partner nations and provides legitimacy under international rule of law to territorial claims and disputes.
No Silver Bullet
Importantly, these capabilities must be contextualized and aligned with other functions. Increasing the effectiveness of maritime patrols will not be efficient without the improved capacity for domain awareness. While conducting destabilizing operations in the South China Sea, “Chinese maritime militia ships simply turn their AIS [Automatic Identification System] transponders off to mask their activity.” The attempts to hide the activity of these Chinese vessels show the need for countries with sovereign claims in the area to ramp up their intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. Through equipment sales and the use of air commandos in an advise-and-assist capacity, countries with aerial capabilities will gain efficiency in their maritime patrols and law enforcement.
Exploiting and disseminating the collection results also creates a deterrent effect by providing technical data to support diplomatic efforts in reducing Chinese aggression. Even though Hanoi has a “Three Nos” defense policy—“no military alliances, no aligning with one nation against another, and no foreign military bases on Vietnamese soil”—continued Chinese aggression provides an opportunity for Vietnam to officially recognize a partnership with US strategic messaging. Simultaneously, building partner capabilities heightens both transparency and legitimacy for the United States with the oversight of international organizations should China attempt to cast aspersions on US actions or intentions.
Information: A Multifaceted Environment and Weapon
A dedicated effort to target Chinese coercive activities could also deter China in the information environment. US SOF, working with and through partner nations, are critical assets for altering Chinese behavior with the use of military information support operations (MISO). The cognitive dimension of a population is the focal point of MISO activities. In his congressional testimony, General Clarke highlighted the Joint MISO WebOps Center as an example designed to “actively engage foreign audiences to illuminate and counter hostile propaganda and disinformation online.”
By broadening awareness of China’s destabilizing actions, foreign partners can help persuade other countries to hold China accountable and strengthen their capacity to do so. Video and technical evidence helps cultivate the necessary psychological impact to bolster the population’s resolve to impel change with respect to malign behavior. A valid argument against this type of operation is the fact that the Chinese government censors the information its population receives, and the people of other nations in the region are already aware of China’s actions. However, exercises in Eastern Europe focused on shaping behaviors regarding Russia showed the power of precision messaging by MISO operators to influence views of a population. The ability to influence the narrative and apply MISO techniques in the South China Sea is necessary for the United States and partner nations to dissuade China from further destabilizing actions.
Also in the psychological realm, resistance activities tend to carry elevated political risk for the United States but also offer a high return on investment in strategic competition. Recruiting dissidents and resistance fighters to execute subversion and sabotage operations allows partner nations to create opportunities that deter Chinese aggression. Additionally, partner nations trained by SOF in nonviolent resistance techniques could provide the ability to impose higher costs for Chinese aggression. US SOF can complicate Chinese decision-making by “supporting resistance activities that undermine sources of adversarial material power.” To effectively deter, a “credible threat of unconventional warfare” must exist, and that takes “years of purposeful relationship nurturing” between SOF and surrogate forces.
Setting the Course for the Future
A deliberate operation needs to start now with the understanding that accomplishing these objectives could take years if not decades. Such operations seek weaknesses in the system and create cognitive influences on the Chinese government and its citizens. If these vulnerabilities do exist, then it is the role of SOF to exploit them in support of US strategic objectives and in cooperation with partner nations. Many will argue a strategy focused on increasing resistance to China’s malign activities is too aggressive and could escalate competition into armed conflict. But if the United States and its partners continue to allow aggressive behavior without risk of response, China will slowly assert its dominance in the region as a fait accompli until it controls all the territory currently in dispute. China’s budding regional dominance demands that the United States, alongside its partners and allies, demonstrates a credible countercurrent. Otherwise, the United States risks losing the strategic competition for partners in the Indo-Pacific.
Using irregular warfare methods, the United States can strengthen deterrence, create robust resistance within partner nations, and use the information environment to influence the decision-making of Chinese and Russian leadership. Moreover, the use of SOF to build relationships in these regions provides placement and access should the worst happen: the eruption of armed conflict. As General Joseph Votel and coauthors have written, it is essential to remember that “a gray zone ‘win’ is not a win in the classic warfare sense,” but rather, “maintaining the U.S. Government’s positional advantage . . . or simply denying an adversary a decisive positional advantage.”
Competitive strategies in the gray zone must include irregular warfare focused on partnerships and US positional advantage. It is time for some unconventional deterrence and the concept must include the use of SOF to work by, with, and through partner nations for foreign internal defense and resistance activities. Forcing China and Russia to expend resources on domestic security lessens the resources available to them to allocate to coercion or expansion in the future. Though creating and training resistance forces may seem antithetical to promoting stability in the region, the objective is to harden the steel that halts the probe with the bayonet.
Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Lucas is an Air Force special operations aviator with over 1,800 combat hours in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. He is a graduate of the US Air Force Weapons School, the College of Naval Command and Staff, and the Secretary of Defense’s Strategic Thinker Program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He has practical experience at the operations squadron and group level, and staff experience at the major command, Headquarters Air Force, and Joint Staff level.
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: Spc. Joshua Oller, US Army
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mwi.usma.edu · by Clifford Lucas · December 13, 2022
15. The Autocrat in Your iPhone
Excerpts:
Ultimately, governments themselves will need to adopt a robust regulatory framework for spyware use. Regulating the industry will likely require the enactment of a complex set of rules that address various aspects of the spyware market. For example, domestic-based spyware companies could be required to make regular public disclosures about their exports, and, in turn, government agencies could be required to report from whom and where they are importing spyware. Export rules need to be strengthened to prevent the sale of spyware to governments or other clients that are likely to use them in violation of international human rights law. Clear rules and standards of oversight for the use of spyware are also necessary. Specific legislation addressing the zero-day market will likely also be needed, although it will have to be carefully crafted so that legitimate security research is not hindered. Governments could also pass legislation giving victims of spyware the right to sue both foreign governments and spyware vendors for harms caused by espionage.
Such efforts could be reinforced at an international level through the development of a global spyware control regime. Military activities, for example, have long been subject to international oversight through such mechanisms as the UN’s Register of Conventional Arms and the policies that have been put in place relating to standards for private military and security contractors or the banning of land mines. A similar process could lead to the international regulation of spyware, including requirements for transparency and reporting about its use. These existing models, however, suggest that success will require the buy-in of a significant number of countries, and more pressure is needed to persuade governments and world leaders that mercenary spyware poses a serious and growing threat to international security and the liberal international order.
No doubt, authoritarian governments and security agencies that currently benefit from spyware will seek to obstruct such regulation, but the growing risks to national security of an unregulated market may prompt a more sober assessment. In November 2022, Sir Jeremy Fleming, a top British intelligence official, warned that the proliferating use of mercenary spyware and “hackers for hire” by countries and malefactors “will increase the future threat to UK cybersecurity.” Should the use of mercenary spyware continue to grow unchecked, the risks for democracy will become acute. If elites in any country can use this technology to neutralize legitimate political opposition on any point on earth, silence dissent through targeted espionage, undermine independent journalism, and erode public accountability with impunity, then the values on which the liberal international order is built may soon be no more secure than the passwords on our phones.
The Autocrat in Your iPhone
How Mercenary Spyware Threatens Democracy
January/February 2023
Foreign Affairs · by Ronald J. Deibert · December 12, 2022
In the summer of 2020, a Rwandan plot to capture exiled opposition leader Paul Rusesabagina drew international headlines. Rusesabagina is best known as the human rights defender and U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient who sheltered more than 1,200 Hutus and Tutsis in a hotel during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. But in the decades after the genocide, he also became a prominent U.S.-based critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. In August 2020, during a layover in Dubai, Rusesabagina was lured under false pretenses into boarding a plane bound for Kigali, the Rwandan capital, where government authorities immediately arrested him for his affiliation with an opposition group. The following year, a Rwandan court sentenced him to 25 years in prison, drawing the condemnation of international human rights groups, the European Parliament, and the U.S. Congress.
Less noted at the time, however, was that this brazen cross-border operation may also have employed highly sophisticated digital surveillance. After Rusesabagina’s sentencing, Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a digital security research group I founded and direct, discovered that smartphones belonging to several of Rusesabagina’s family members who also lived abroad had been hacked by an advanced spyware program called Pegasus. Produced by the Israel-based NSO Group, Pegasus gives an operator near-total access to a target’s personal data. Forensic analysis revealed that the phone belonging to Rusesabagina’s daughter Carine Kanimba had been infected by the spyware around the time her father was kidnapped and again when she was trying to secure his release and was meeting with high-level officials in Europe and the U.S. State Department, including the U.S. special envoy for hostage affairs. NSO Group does not publicly identify its government clients and the Rwandan government has denied using Pegasus, but strong circumstantial evidence points to the Kagame regime.
In fact, the incident is only one of dozens of cases in which Pegasus or other similar spyware technology has been found on the digital devices of prominent political opposition figures, journalists, and human rights activists in many countries. Providing the ability to clandestinely infiltrate even the most up-to-date smartphones—the latest “zero click” version of the spyware can penetrate a device without any action by the user—Pegasus has become the digital surveillance tool of choice for repressive regimes around the world. It has been used against government critics in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and pro-democracy protesters in Thailand. It has been deployed by Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia and Viktor Orban’s Hungary.
But the use of spyware is hardly limited to the world’s authoritarians. As researchers have revealed, over the past decade many democracies, including Spain and Mexico, have begun using spyware, as well, in ways that violate well-established norms of human rights and public accountability. U.S. government documents disclosed by The New York Times in November 2022 show that the FBI not only acquired spyware services from NSO, possibly for counterintelligence purposes, but also contemplated deploying them, including on U.S. targets. (An FBI spokesperson told the Times that “there has been no operational use of the NSO product to support any FBI investigation.”)
The advent of advanced spyware has transformed the world of espionage and surveillance. Bringing together a largely unregulated industry with an invasive-by-design digital ecosystem in which smartphones and other personal devices contain the most intimate details of people’s lives, the new technology can track almost anyone, anywhere in the world. Governments have taken notice. For Israel, which approves export licenses for NSO Group’s Pegasus, the sale of spyware to foreign governments has brought new diplomatic clout in countries as disparate as India and Panama; a New York Times investigation found that NSO deals helped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seal the Abraham Accords with Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE. In turn, client states have used Pegasus against not only opposition groups, journalists, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) but also geopolitical rivals. In 2020 and 2021, the Citizen Lab discovered that several devices belonging to officials in the United Kingdom’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office had been hacked with Pegasus, and that a client of NSO Group in the UAE had used the spyware to infiltrate a device located at 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British prime minister. In November 2021, the tech giant Apple notified 11 staff members of the U.S. embassy in Uganda that their iPhones had been hacked with Pegasus.
In response to these revelations, spyware firms have generally denied responsibility for their clients’ abuses or have declined to comment. In a statement to The New Yorker in April 2022, NSO Group said, “We have repeatedly cooperated with governmental investigations, where credible allegations merit, and have learned from each of these findings and reports and improved the safeguards in our technologies.” The Israeli company has also said that its technology is designed to help governments investigate crime and terrorism. But advanced spyware has now been implicated in human rights violations and interstate espionage in dozens of countries, and spyware companies have few legal obligations or incentives for public transparency or accountability. NSO Group has not provided any specific information to counter the Citizen Lab’s detailed evidence of abuses.
The consequences of the spyware revolution are profound. In countries with few resources, security forces can now pursue high-tech operations using off-the-shelf technology that is almost as easy to acquire as headphones from Amazon. Among democracies, the technology has become an irresistible tool that can be deployed with little oversight; in the last year alone, security agencies in at least four European countries—Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Spain—have been implicated in scandals in which state agencies have been accused of deploying spyware against journalists and political opposition figures. A global market for spyware also means that forms of surveillance and espionage that were once limited to a few major powers are now available to almost any country, and potentially to even more private firms. Left unregulated, the proliferation of this technology threatens to erode many of the institutions, processes, and values on which the liberal international order depends.
We Will Spy For You
The spyware revolution has emerged as a byproduct of a remarkable convergence of technological, social, and political developments over the past decade. Smartphones and other digital devices are vulnerable to surveillance because their applications often contain flaws and because they continually transmit data through insecure cellular and Internet networks. Although manufacturers of these technology platforms employ engineers to find and patch vulnerabilities, they tend to prioritize product development over security. By discovering and weaponizing “zero days”—software flaws that are unknown to their designers—spyware firms exploit the inherent insecurity of the digital consumer world.
But the extraordinary growth of the spyware market has also been driven by several broader trends. First, spyware takes advantage of a global digital culture that is shaped around always-on, always-connected smartphones. By hacking a personal device, spyware can provide its operators with a user’s entire pattern of life in real time. Second, spyware offers security agencies an elegant way to circumvent end-to-end encryption, which has become a growing barrier to government mass surveillance programs that depend on the collection of telecommunications and Internet data. By getting inside a user’s device, spyware allows its operators to read messages or listen to calls before they have been encrypted or after they have been decrypted; if the user can see it on the screen, so can the spyware. A third factor driving the industry’s growth has been the rise of digitally enabled protest movements. Popular upheavals such as the color revolutions in former Soviet states in the first decade of this century and the Arab Spring in 2010–11 took many autocrats by surprise, and the organizers often used phones to mobilize protesters. By offering an almost godlike way to get inside activist networks, spyware has opened up a powerful new method for governments to monitor dissent and take steps to neutralize it before large protests occur.
Finally, the spyware industry has also been fueled by the growing privatization of national security. Just as governments have turned to private contractors for complicated or controversial military operations, they have discovered that they can outsource surveillance and espionage to better-equipped and less visible private actors. Like soldiers of fortune, advanced spyware companies tend to put revenues ahead of ethics, selling their products without regard to the politics of their clients—giving rise to the term “mercenary spyware”—and like military contractors, their dealings with government security agencies are often cloaked in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny. Moreover, just as military contractors have offered lucrative private-sector careers for veterans of military and intelligence agencies, spyware firms and government security services have been building similarly mutually beneficial partnerships, boosting the industry in the process. Many senior members of NSO Group, for example, are veterans of Israeli intelligence, including the elite Military Intelligence Directorate.
Xenia Oliva, an investigative reporter who had her phone hacked seven times, checking her phone in San Salvador, El Salvador, January 2022
Jessica Orellana / Reuters
Although lack of transparency has made the mercenary spyware industry difficult to measure, journalists have estimated it to be worth about $12 billion per year. Before recent financial setbacks brought on by a growing number of lawsuits, NSO Group was valued at $2 billion, and there are other major players in the market. Many companies now produce sophisticated spyware, including Cytrox (founded in North Macedonia and now with operations in Hungary and Israel), Israel-based Cyberbit and Candiru, Italy-based Hacking Team (now defunct), and the Anglo-German Gamma Group. Each of these firms can hypothetically serve numerous clients. Governments that appear to have used Cytrox’s Predator spyware, for example, include Armenia, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Madagascar, and Serbia. In 2021, Mexico’s secretary of Security and Public Safety, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, said that previous Mexican administrations had signed multiple contracts with NSO Group, totaling $61 million, to buy Pegasus spyware, and as Mexican and international researchers have shown, the government has kept using Pegasus despite the present leadership’s public assurances that it would not. (In October 2022, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador denied the findings, stating that his administration was not using the spyware against journalists or political opponents.)
On the basis of such lucrative deals, spyware firms have enjoyed backing from major private equity funds, such as the San Francisco firm Francisco Partners and the London-based Novalpina Capital, thus bolstering their resources. Francisco Partners, which had a controlling stake in NSO Group for five years, told Bloomberg News in 2021, “[We are] deeply committed to ethical business practices, and we evaluate all our investments through that lens.” Novalpina, which together with NSO’s founders acquired Francisco Partners’ stake in 2019, said it would bring the spyware firm “in full alignment with UN guiding principles on business and human rights,” but revelations of abuses of Pegasus have continued, and correspondence published by The Guardian in 2022 indicated that Novalpina sought to discredit NSO Group’s critics, including this author. (Lawyers for Novalpina told The Guardian that these were “tenuous and unsubstantiated allegations.”) After a dispute between Novalpina’s founding partners, the firm lost its controlling stake in NSO Group in 2021.
But the spyware industry also includes far less sophisticated firms in countries such as India, the Philippines, and Cyprus. As the surveillance equivalent of strip-mall phone repair shops, such outfits may lack the ability to identify zero days, but they can still accomplish objectives through simpler means. They may use credential phishing—using false pretenses, often via email or text message, to obtain a user’s digital passwords or other sensitive personal information—or they may simply purchase software vulnerabilities from other hackers on the black market. And these smaller firms may be more willing to undertake illegal operations on behalf of private clients because they are located outside the jurisdiction in which a victim resides or because enforcement is lax.
It is hard to overestimate the reach and power of the latest commercial spyware. In its most advanced forms, it can silently infiltrate any vulnerable device anywhere in the world. Take the zero-day, zero-click exploit that Citizen Lab researchers discovered in 2021 on a Pegasus-infected iPhone. Using the exploit, which researchers called ForcedEntry, a spyware operator can surreptitiously intercept texts and phone calls, including those encrypted by apps such as Signal or WhatsApp; turn on the user’s microphone and camera; track movements through a device’s GPS; and gather photos, notes, contacts, emails, and documents. The operator can do almost anything a user can do and more, including reconfigure the device’s security settings and acquire the digital tokens that are used to securely access cloud accounts so that surveillance on a target can continue even after the exploit has been removed from a device—all without the target’s awareness. After the Citizen Lab shared Pegasus’s ForcedEntry with analysts at Apple and Google, Google’s analysts described it as “one of the most technically sophisticated exploits we’ve ever seen,” noting that it provided capabilities that were “previously thought to be accessible to only a handful of nation states.”
Shooting the Messengers
Over the past decade, the rise of authoritarian regimes in many parts of the world has raised new questions about the durability of the liberal international order. As has been widely noted, many ruling elites have been able to slide toward authoritarianism by limiting or controlling political dissent, the media, the courts, and other institutions of civil society. Yet far less attention has been paid to the pervasive role of the mercenary spyware industry in this process. This neglect is partly the result of how little we know about spyware, including, in many cases, the identity of the specific government agencies that are using it. (Given
the secretive nature of spyware transactions, it is far easier to identify victims than operators.) There is little doubt, however, that spyware has been used to systematically degrade liberal democratic practices and institutions.
One of the technology’s most frequent uses has been to infiltrate opposition movements, particularly in the run-up to elections. Researchers have identified cases in which opposition figures have been targeted, not only in authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE but also in democratic countries such as India and Poland. Indeed, one of the most egregious cases arose in Spain, a parliamentary democracy and European Union member. Between 2017 and 2020, the Citizen Lab discovered, Pegasus was used to eavesdrop on a large cross section of Catalan civil society and government. The targets included every Catalan member of the European Parliament who supported independence for Catalonia, every Catalan president since 2010, and many members of Catalan legislative bodies, including multiple presidents of the Catalan parliament. Notably, some of the targeting took place amid sensitive negotiations between the Catalan and Spanish governments over the fate of Catalan independence supporters who were either imprisoned or in exile. After the findings drew international attention, Paz Esteban, the head of Spain’s National Intelligence Center, acknowledged to Spanish lawmakers that spyware had been used against some Catalan politicians, and Esteban was subsequently fired. But it is still unclear which government agency was responsible, and which laws, if any, were used to justify such an extensive domestic spying operation.
In some countries, spyware has proved equally effective against journalists who are investigating those in power, with far-reaching consequences for both the targets and their sources. In 2015, several devices belonging to Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui and a member of her family were sent Pegasus exploit links while she was investigating corruption involving then Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. There is no smoking gun that identifies the responsible party, though strong circumstantial evidence suggests a Mexican government agency. In 2021, a Hungarian journalist investigating corruption in President Viktor Orban’s inner circle was hacked with Pegasus. (The Hungarian government subsequently acknowledged that it had purchased the technology.) And that same year, the cellphone of New York Times Middle East correspondent Ben Hubbard was infected with Pegasus while he was working on a book about Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
With spyware, governments can stop protests before they occur.
Almost as frequently, spyware has been used to undermine judicial officials and civil society organizations that are trying to hold governments to account. Take the case of Alberto Nisman, a well-known Argentine anticorruption prosecutor who was investigating an alleged criminal conspiracy by high-level Argentine officials. In January 2015, Nisman was found dead in suspicious circumstances—his death was later ruled a homicide—the day before he was to provide testimony to Congress implicating then president of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, in a cover-up of alleged Iranian involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. Later that year, the Citizen Lab documented how a South American hack-for-hire group had been contracted to target Nisman with spyware before his death, suggesting that someone in power was keen to peer into his investigations. In Mexico in 2017, a still unknown government agency or agencies used Pegasus spyware against human rights groups and international investigators that were tracking down potential government cover-ups of the notorious disappearance and gruesome murder of 43 students in Iguala, Mexico. Subsequent reports showed that the Mexican government had badly botched the investigations and that government personnel were implicated in a cover-up—findings that might never have come to light without the efforts of civil society watchdogs.
Other common Pegasus targets are lawyers involved with prominent or politically sensitive cases. In most liberal democracies, attorney-client privilege is sacrosanct. Yet the Citizen Lab has identified a variety of cases in which spyware has been used to hack or target lawyers’ devices. In 2015, the tactic was used against two lawyers in Mexico who were representing the families of Nadia Vera, a slain government critic and women’s rights advocate. More recently, multiple lawyers representing prominent Catalans were targeted as part of the Spanish surveillance campaign. And in Poland, Pegasus spyware was used several times to hack the device of Roman Giertych, legal counsel to Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and the leader of the country’s main opposition party. (In early 2022, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski publicly acknowledged that the government had bought Pegasus spyware but denied that it had been used against the Polish opposition.)
As the availability of spyware grows, private-sector clients are also getting in on the act. Consider the activities of BellTroX, an Indian hack-for-hire company responsible for extensive espionage on behalf of private clients worldwide. Between 2015 and 2017, someone used BellTroX’s services against American nonprofits that were working to publicize revelations that the oil company ExxonMobil had hidden its research about climate change for decades. BellTroX has also been used to target U.S. organizations working on net neutrality, presumably at the behest of a different client or clients that were opposed to that reform. BellTroX also has a burgeoning business in the legal world; law firms in many countries have used the company’s services to spy on opposing counsel. In April 2022, an Israeli private detective who acted as a broker for BellTroX pleaded guilty in U.S. court to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit hacking, and aggravated identity theft, but BellTroX’s India-based operators have remained out of reach of the law. (Asked by Reuters in 2020 to respond to the findings, the company’s founder, Sumit Gupta, denied any wrongdoing and declined to disclose his clients.)
Nowhere to Hide
The proliferating use of spyware against political and civil society targets in advanced democracies is concerning enough. Even more threatening, however, may be the ways in which the technology has allowed authoritarian regimes to extend their repression far beyond their own borders. In past decades, autocrats faced significant barriers to repressing citizens who had gone into exile. With spyware, however, an operator can get inside a political exile’s entire network without setting foot inside the target’s adopted country, and with very few of the risks and costs associated with conventional international espionage.
Examples of this new form of transnational repression are manifold. Beginning in 2016, Cyberbit was used to target Ethiopian dissidents, lawyers, students, and others in nearly 20 countries. In 2021, the phones of two prominent Egyptians—exiled opposition politician Ayman Nour, who has been living in Turkey, and the host of a popular news program (who has asked to remain anonymous for his own safety)—were hacked with Cytrox’s Predator spyware. In fact, the phone of Nour, who is an outspoken critic of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, was simultaneously infected with both Predator and NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, each apparently operated by separate government clients—Egypt in the case of Predator and either Saudi Arabia or the UAE in the case of Pegasus. In a statement to Vice News, Cyberbit said that the Israeli government oversees its technology and that “the intelligence and defense agencies that purchase these products are obligated to use them in accordance with the law.” In the Egyptian hacking case, Cytrox’s CEO, Ivo Malinkovski, declined to comment; according to VICE news, he subsequently deleted references to Cytrox in his LinkedIn profile. (The governments of Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have declined to comment about the findings.)
Especially far-reaching has been the Saudi government’s transnational spyware campaign. In 2018, a phone belonging to Ghanem al-Masarir, a Saudi dissident living in the United Kingdom, was hacked with Pegasus spyware. Coinciding with the infection of his device, al-Masarir was tracked down and physically assaulted by Saudi agents in London. Spyware may have also played a part in the notorious killing of the exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. In 2018, a phone owned by Omar Abdulaziz—a Saudi activist, Canadian permanent resident, and close confidant of Khashoggi—was hacked with Pegasus spyware. Abdulaziz and Khashoggi had been discussing their activism against the Saudi regime over what they mistakenly assumed were secure communications platforms. After Khashoggi’s killing, forensic analysis revealed that the devices of several other people closest to Khashoggi, including his Egyptian wife and his Turkish fiancée, had also been infected. To what extent Khashoggi’s own phones were hacked is not known because his fiancée turned them over to Turkish authorities, who have withheld them from independent analysis, but his closest contacts were all under surveillance, providing Saudi agents with windows into Khashoggi’s personal life, political activism, and movements in the months leading up to his murder. (The Saudi government has declined to comment on the revelations. In 2021, NSO Group told The Guardian, “Our technology was not associated in any way with the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”)
A man reading at a stand for NSO Group Technologies at the European Police Congress in Berlin, February 2020
Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters
In fact, targeting regime critics abroad with spyware is only one of several ways the Saudi government has employed digital technology to neutralize dissent. For example, according to a U.S. federal indictment, a top adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman paid a Twitter employee $300,000 and provided other gifts in 2014 and 2015, apparently in exchange for spying on dissidents on the platform. The employee, who left Twitter in 2015, was convicted in U.S. court in 2022. When such tactics are used in combination with the type of highly intrusive surveillance that spyware represents, dissidents can come under extraordinary psychological pressure. Many victims of hacking have experienced debilitating shock knowing that their compromised devices have also put friends and associates at risk and that their every move is being watched. One female Saudi activist explained that being digitally targeted was a form of “psychological and emotional war” that caused her “endless fear and anxiety.” By using spyware, autocrats and despots are thus able to clamp down on civil society networks well beyond their own borders even as they strengthen autocracy at home.
Despite a large and growing body of documentation about spyware abuses around the world, there are several reasons that the technology seems likely to become even more widespread. First, although much scrutiny of mercenary spyware firms has concerned their contracts with national government agencies, many firms market to more than one client in a given country, including local law enforcement. For example, in a fact-finding trip to Israel in the summer of 2022, officials for the European Parliament learned that NSO Group has at least 22 clients in 12 European countries, suggesting that a significant number of these clients are subnational agencies. Such deals raise further questions about accountability, given that research has shown that local law enforcement agencies are often more susceptible to abuses, such as racial profiling or corruption, and tend to have poor transparency and insufficient oversight.
Second, although some mercenary spyware firms such as NSO Group claim that they deal only with government clients, there is little to prevent them from selling their technology to private firms or corrupt individuals. Evidence suggests that some already do: in July 2022, Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center issued a report on an Austria-based spyware and hack-for-hire firm called DSIRF that had targeted individuals in banks, law firms, and consultancies in several countries. Though Microsoft did not specify what type of clients hired DSIRF, the firm advertises “due diligence” services to businesses, implying that these hacking operations were undertaken on behalf of private clients. When Reuters asked DSIRF about the Microsoft report, the company declined to comment. Although it is illegal if done without a warrant, such private-sector hacking is less likely to be deterred when hackers’ firms are located outside the jurisdiction in which the targeting occurs. As protections for privacy rights, freedom of the press, and independent courts, come increasingly under threat in many countries, it will likely become even easier for corrupt firms or oligarchs to deploy mercenary spyware without accountability.
Third, spyware has become a central component of a broader menu of surveillance tools, such as location tracking and biometric identification, used by many government security agencies. The more that spyware is incorporated into everyday intelligence gathering and policing, the harder it will be to rein it in. More ominously, spyware may soon acquire even more invasive capabilities by exploiting wearable applications, such as biomedical monitors, emotional detection technology, and Internet-connected neural networks currently in development. Already, many digital applications aim to drill deeper into the subliminal or the unconscious aspects of users’ behavior and gather data on their health and physiology. It is no longer science fiction to envision spyware that might use covert access to these data about our biological or cognitive systems to monitor and even manipulate a victim’s behavior and overall well-being.
Restraining Orders
For nearly a decade, the mercenary spyware industry has been able to expand its reach across the globe largely without regulation or accountability. But that is a choice governments have made, not an inevitable outcome that must simply be accepted. As civil society watchdogs and journalists have brought to light flagrant abuses, it has become more difficult for major spyware vendors and government clients to hide their operations. In Europe and the United States, committees have held hearings on spyware, and government agencies have begun to develop new policies to limit its use. Notably, the U.S. Commerce Department has placed NSO Group, Candiru, and other hack-for-hire firms on an export restriction list, limiting their access to U.S. products and technology and sending a strong signal to potential investors that spyware companies are under growing scrutiny. Technology platforms have also taken action. Meta (the parent company of Facebook) and Apple have sued NSO Group in U.S. courts, notified victims of spyware infections, and worked to support civil society watchdogs. Apple has also donated $10 million to cybersurveillance research and has pledged to do likewise with any damages awarded from its lawsuit against NSO Group.
But curbing the global spread of mercenary spyware will require a comprehensive approach. To begin with, companies need to devote far more resources to identifying and rooting out spyware and ensuring that their services are properly secured against exploitation. WhatsApp and Apple have already shown how to alert victims when spyware is detected and hold spyware vendors such as NSO Group legally responsible for violations of their terms of service and other legal offenses. Whether through a shift in business culture, or more likely through stronger government regulations, technology platforms should also put more emphasis on security and scale back the relentless quest to vacuum up user data. In turn, the forensic investigations of the Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, journalists, and others will need to be broadened and supplemented by other organizations doing similar work, whether at NGOs, universities, or investigative news organizations. Digital forensic science and digital accountability should be recognized as a formal research discipline that can monitor spyware activity, assist victims and targets, and keep pressure on governments and corporations to be more transparent and accountable for their actions. For such a field to emerge, many years of public, private, and philanthropic support will be needed.
Oliva at the office of GatoEncerrado, an investigative news outlet, in San Salvador, El Salvador, January 2022
Jessica Orellana / Reuters
Ultimately, governments themselves will need to adopt a robust regulatory framework for spyware use. Regulating the industry will likely require the enactment of a complex set of rules that address various aspects of the spyware market. For example, domestic-based spyware companies could be required to make regular public disclosures about their exports, and, in turn, government agencies could be required to report from whom and where they are importing spyware. Export rules need to be strengthened to prevent the sale of spyware to governments or other clients that are likely to use them in violation of international human rights law. Clear rules and standards of oversight for the use of spyware are also necessary. Specific legislation addressing the zero-day market will likely also be needed, although it will have to be carefully crafted so that legitimate security research is not hindered. Governments could also pass legislation giving victims of spyware the right to sue both foreign governments and spyware vendors for harms caused by espionage.
Such efforts could be reinforced at an international level through the development of a global spyware control regime. Military activities, for example, have long been subject to international oversight through such mechanisms as the UN’s Register of Conventional Arms and the policies that have been put in place relating to standards for private military and security contractors or the banning of land mines. A similar process could lead to the international regulation of spyware, including requirements for transparency and reporting about its use. These existing models, however, suggest that success will require the buy-in of a significant number of countries, and more pressure is needed to persuade governments and world leaders that mercenary spyware poses a serious and growing threat to international security and the liberal international order.
No doubt, authoritarian governments and security agencies that currently benefit from spyware will seek to obstruct such regulation, but the growing risks to national security of an unregulated market may prompt a more sober assessment. In November 2022, Sir Jeremy Fleming, a top British intelligence official, warned that the proliferating use of mercenary spyware and “hackers for hire” by countries and malefactors “will increase the future threat to UK cybersecurity.” Should the use of mercenary spyware continue to grow unchecked, the risks for democracy will become acute. If elites in any country can use this technology to neutralize legitimate political opposition on any point on earth, silence dissent through targeted espionage, undermine independent journalism, and erode public accountability with impunity, then the values on which the liberal international order is built may soon be no more secure than the passwords on our phones.
- RONALD J. DEIBERT is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Foreign Affairs · by Ronald J. Deibert · December 12, 2022
16. Taiwan Is Already Independent
Excerpts:
It is clear both from the main tracking poll and from the responses of status quo supporters that fewer people today want unification. But as for the growing support for independence, it is critical to remember that ideas about the meaning of independence have changed. In fact, a 2020 study found that more than 70 percent of Taiwanese people believe that their country is already a sovereign state and that only a tiny fraction felt a need to formally sever ties with China. The increased support for independence over the past few decades, then, does not necessarily indicate that a growing number of citizens are clamoring for a declaration of independence.
This shift in opinion has not always resulted in electoral success for the DPP. During the last two local elections, the party has performed disastrously. On November 26, Tsai was compelled to step down as party chair after the DPP could only win five of 22 mayoral races. But it would be a mistake to interpret these results as a shift in public attitudes toward unification or away from independence. The local elections were all about local government issues such as road construction, welfare programs, and responses to the pandemic—not China. Most of the races are best understood as referendums on the performance of popular KMT incumbents running for reelection. Notably, sovereignty or how to deal with China have largely been absent from the DPP’s postelection discussions about the reasons for the poor outcome. Likewise, no one in the KMT is crowing that this result means it no longer has to worry about being attacked as a pro-unification party.
But although Tsai may no longer be the party chair, her grand vision for Taiwan’s future—situating Taiwan in the international community of democracies, strengthening the country’s own military and bolstering cooperation with other militaries, gradually diversifying Taiwan’s economy, pursuing progressive social welfare policies, defending Taiwan’s sovereignty, and a host of other measures—remains unchallenged inside the DPP. China will inevitably be on the ballot in the 2024 presidential and legislative elections. Unless the DPP forfeits its dominant position as the champion of the status quo by recklessly pursuing formal independence, it should once again have a clear electoral advantage.
Taiwan Is Already Independent
Why Most of the Island’s People Don’t Desire a Formal Declaration
December 12, 2022
Foreign Affairs · by Nathan F. Batto · December 12, 2022
For the people of Taiwan, joining with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never been less appealing. According to a frequently cited tracking survey by National Chengchi University, the share of Taiwanese residents who want to unify immediately with the mainland has always been miniscule, consistently less than three percent. But the percentage that think Taiwan should eventually move toward unification—that is, not necessarily with today’s Chinese regime—has fallen dramatically, from 20 percent in 1996 to five percent today. In the last two presidential elections, the historically pro-unification Kuomintang party (KMT) has suffered landslide defeats, failing to garner even 40 percent of the vote either time.
It's easy to understand why unification is so unpopular. Over the last four decades, Taiwan has transformed itself into a liberal, tolerant, pluralist democracy while China has remained a harsh autocracy, developed an intrusive surveillance state, and executed a genocide against its own population. Unifying with the PRC would mean the end of almost all of Taiwan’s hard-won political freedoms, something that was made manifest when China forcibly integrated Hong Kong into the mainland despite its promise to allow the territory to remain self-governing under a formula called “one country, two systems.” And many, or perhaps most, Taiwanese people would not want to unify with China regardless of the nature of its government. Taiwan has its own history, culture, identity, and sense of national pride.
Yet although public opinion data makes it clear that the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese people have little interest in being ruled by Beijing, that does not mean they want a formal declaration of independence. Among both the general public and political elites, the country’s understanding of independence has evolved significantly over the last generation. In decades past, independence was commonly thought to require an unequivocal, formal break with any legal or professed ties to China. But today, such a move is widely seen as unnecessary. To most people, Taiwan is already a fully sovereign country, not merely a self-governing island that exists in a state of limbo. There is no need to rock the boat by formally declaring what is already the case, especially given that it is certain Beijing would have a furious response to such an action. And since Taiwanese politicians must respond to public opinion, political elites who support independence have largely come to the same conclusion as the country’s people; rather than quixotically challenging the status quo, most of them have decided that any differences between their ideal position and the status quo are minor—and not worth fighting over.
PATH INDEPENDENCE
It surprises many Westerners to learn that Taiwanese independence is not merely rooted in anti-Chinese sentiments, and that it is not an idea that arose only after 1949, when Republic of China (ROC) leader Chiang Kai-shek and his million and a half followers fled to the island after losing the Chinese Civil War. The year 1895, when Beijing ceded Taiwan to Japan after being defeated by Tokyo in a war, was arguably just as pivotal as 1949. A modern sense of Taiwanese national identity began to take shape, and there were calls for Taiwanese autonomy and independence throughout the Japanese colonial era. Taiwan independence activist Su Beng pushes the timeline back even further, arguing in his seminal 1962 work, Taiwan’s 400 Year History, that Taiwan has been a distinct nation and society since large-scale Han immigration to the island began in the early 1600s. For Su, Taiwan’s history was marked by repeated colonization and exploitation by external powers as the Dutch, Spanish, claimants to the throne of the disintegrating Ming dynasty, the Qing dynasty, the Japanese, and Chiang’s Kuomintang party all set up regimes in Taiwan for their own purposes—denying the Taiwanese people control over their destiny.
Chiang’s regime in Taiwan rested on the idea that the ROC had not lost the civil war and was still the legitimate government of all China. Although the ROC positioned itself as a democracy, the KMT could not risk any open challenges to this claim, and so it declared martial law. National-level representatives were frozen in office without the need to face reelection, and the government systematically silenced political opposition. The KMT kept a firm grip on the country’s entire political edifice through its control of the state machinery, especially the military. Any Taiwan-centric appeals, especially for Taiwanese independence, were seen as a direct affront to the regime’s legitimacy and were ruthlessly suppressed. Throughout the KMT authoritarian era, then, the ROC government was the primary obstacle to Taiwanese political power and self-rule.
As a result, Taiwanese nationalists concluded that the way to set the Taiwanese people free was to slough off this entire political structure. The KMT, the ROC, and any ties to China had to go. But as Taiwan democratized in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these activists discovered their vision had limited appeal. In 1991, the country’s geriatric officeholders were finally compelled to retire, and Taiwan was able to fully reelect a national-level representative body for the first time as every seat was at stake in the National Assembly, an institution with the power to elect the president and amend the constitution. (The body was later abolished.) The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)—the KMT’s main opposition—confidently called for replacing the Republic of China with a formally independent Republic of Taiwan. It was a disaster; the DPP won just 23 percent of the vote. The verdict of the electorate was that formal independence was just too radical, and for a generation afterward, the country’s common political wisdom was that Taiwan independence was ballot-box poison.
Taiwan has its own history, culture, identity, and sense of national pride.
At the time, of course, it still seemed possible that Taiwan would eventually unify with the mainland. For decades, the authoritarian regime had taught the population that unification was desirable and inevitable. Taiwan’s gradual democratization did not feature a sharp break with the past, so the KMT remained in power even after people could vote, and pro-unification Chinese nationalists retained outsized cultural and political influence. Meanwhile, China was experiencing the kind of rapid economic growth that Taiwan had undergone in decades past—the type of growth that had helped Taiwan democratize. Many Taiwanese people believed the mainland would surely experience similar political reforms as its economy kept expanding. Chinese nationalists in Taiwan expected that, once China changed and the two states rejoined, Taiwan would play an influential (and perhaps predominant) role in shaping their shared future. Unofficial bodies from the two sides even met in 1992 and 1993, taking the first steps toward establishing regular channels of communication. The question of sovereignty illustrated both hopes for pragmatic cooperation and how difficult compromise would be. Since hammering out a mutually acceptable written statement was impossible, the delegates informally agreed to literally talk past each other in what would later be (ironically) dubbed the 1992 Consensus. Each side orally stated its version of the “one China” principle, pretended not to hear the other side, and refused to acknowledge there could be any other interpretation.
But the hopes that the two sides would gradually become more similar and inch toward a mutually agreeable political union were misplaced. As Taiwan’s democracy deepened, appeals to Chinese nationalism found a smaller and smaller receptive audience among the island’s population. At the same time, instead of democratizing as it grew wealthier and more powerful, the PRC became more rigid and domineering.
The arc of the 1992 Consensus encapsulates these failed hopes. After losing the 2000 presidential election to the DPP, KMT chair Lien Chan rebuilt his party on a vision of making Taiwan rich and ensuring peace by integrating Taiwan’s economy into China’s. To guarantee that PRC officials would be willing to engage with their Taiwanese counterparts, Lien devised a formula based on what the two sides had supposedly agreed to in 1992: "One China, each side with its own interpretation.” Ordinary Taiwanese voters were reassured that the status quo would be preserved since Taiwan’s interpretation was that “one China” meant the ROC. This formula laid the foundation for KMT politician Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency, which featured a great deal of official contact with China and economic interaction. But the PRC became increasingly insistent that the 1992 Consensus was simply that there was “one China”—the PRC—and demanded concrete progress toward unification. It never acknowledged the “each side with its own interpretation” part of the equation, and so unification would mean the ROC ceased to exist. This not only choked the consensus to death by depriving it of any ambiguity or flexibility, it made clear that the KMT and ROC were not equal—or even unequal—partners with the Chinese Communist Party and PRC in determining China’s future. The KMT’s dreams of creating a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic unified China were utterly discredited, and the incompatibility of the PRC’s position with the preservation of the ROC made unification the new ballot-box poison.
AS IT IS
Since its 1991 election debacle, the DPP has steadily moved away from a formal independence platform. By 2000, it took the position that Taiwan was already an independent, sovereign state named the Republic of China, and no declaration of independence was necessary. Current Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, a DPP politician, has developed the idea of Taiwanese sovereignty more fully: eschewing formal independence is not the only way in which she differs from earlier independence activists. Tsai emphasizes the Taiwanese people’s unique, shared history, including the “white terror” (the violent repression carried out by the KMT’s autocracy), military standoffs with Beijing, rapid economic growth, democratization, sporting triumphs, and natural disasters. Her vision of the Taiwanese people, however, is constructed on 70 years, not 400 years, of common experience, so it explicitly includes postwar immigrants as integral parts of the population rather than as colonizing outsiders. She has even positioned herself as a champion of the military, recasting an institution that was once the bedrock of the authoritarian regime and the archenemy of Taiwanese nationalism as the guarantor of Taiwan’s integrity and sovereignty.
Tsai’s ideas do not make traditional independence activists happy; there are many hardcore DPP supporters who dream of an independence referendum and feel slightly queasy when she poses with an ROC flag. But hers is a position that fits quite comfortably with what most Taiwanese people want. The National Chengchi University tracking poll on public attitudes toward unification and independence shows that, although support for independence has risen over time, a comfortable majority of Taiwanese people prefer the status quo. Other polls suggest that the tracking surveys might actually underestimate the depth of support for the status quo. Two postelection surveys, one from 1996 and one from 2020, asked people who preferred the status quo whether they would support unification if political, economic, and social conditions in China and Taiwan were similar (for instance, if China became a wealthy democracy), or if they would support declaring independence if doing so wouldn’t provoke retaliation from Beijing. The share of status quo supporters open to unification, even under these ideal hypothetical conditions, plummeted from 58 to 22 percent. The share of status quo supporters open to independence remained roughly stable, drifting from 57 to 54 percent.
It is clear both from the main tracking poll and from the responses of status quo supporters that fewer people today want unification. But as for the growing support for independence, it is critical to remember that ideas about the meaning of independence have changed. In fact, a 2020 study found that more than 70 percent of Taiwanese people believe that their country is already a sovereign state and that only a tiny fraction felt a need to formally sever ties with China. The increased support for independence over the past few decades, then, does not necessarily indicate that a growing number of citizens are clamoring for a declaration of independence.
This shift in opinion has not always resulted in electoral success for the DPP. During the last two local elections, the party has performed disastrously. On November 26, Tsai was compelled to step down as party chair after the DPP could only win five of 22 mayoral races. But it would be a mistake to interpret these results as a shift in public attitudes toward unification or away from independence. The local elections were all about local government issues such as road construction, welfare programs, and responses to the pandemic—not China. Most of the races are best understood as referendums on the performance of popular KMT incumbents running for reelection. Notably, sovereignty or how to deal with China have largely been absent from the DPP’s postelection discussions about the reasons for the poor outcome. Likewise, no one in the KMT is crowing that this result means it no longer has to worry about being attacked as a pro-unification party.
But although Tsai may no longer be the party chair, her grand vision for Taiwan’s future—situating Taiwan in the international community of democracies, strengthening the country’s own military and bolstering cooperation with other militaries, gradually diversifying Taiwan’s economy, pursuing progressive social welfare policies, defending Taiwan’s sovereignty, and a host of other measures—remains unchallenged inside the DPP. China will inevitably be on the ballot in the 2024 presidential and legislative elections. Unless the DPP forfeits its dominant position as the champion of the status quo by recklessly pursuing formal independence, it should once again have a clear electoral advantage.
- NATHAN F. BATTO is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
Foreign Affairs · by Nathan F. Batto · December 12, 2022
17. The propaganda of "propaganda"
No one knows propaganda better than Matt Armstrong. When he speaks (or writes), I pay attention.
Excerpts:
My tortured point (and congratulations for reading this far) is the meaning of “propaganda” is elusive. While substantive definitions exist, Doob’s 1935 comment that “In America, the word ‘propaganda’ has a bad odor” seems like a severe understatement nearly ninety years later as the gap between academic discussions and the view of the street, so to speak, has likely grown. If you ask your coworker, neighbor, classmate, or random stranger whether “propaganda” is bad or good, I doubt many would respond with “it is good” or “it depends.”
It is easy to call something propaganda, but the stunning lack of precision and constraints in the definition, whether a precise definition or merely a commonly accepted view of the word, is why entire books are written to define and assign parameters to what is and is not propaganda. Applying the label without specificity is potentially misleading as it will likely impart a negative view of the “propaganda” and the “propagandist” being discussed and analyzed.
If there is one take-away from this dispatch, I hope it is this: Be careful calling something propaganda, doing so might make you a propagandist.
What are your thoughts?
The propaganda of "propaganda"
A word that when used may constitute an act of propaganda
Matt Armstrong
13 min ago
mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong
I heard long ago the lathe was the only machine capable of making itself. I don’t know if that was true, but it stuck with me. I mention that because it seems like there is a loose parallel between that statement and the word “propaganda.” Propaganda is interesting in that it may be the only word in the English language that, when used, may be an act of the very word. In other words, calling something propaganda may be propaganda.
For nearly twenty years, I worked around the word “propaganda” academically and professionally. Whether I facilitated propaganda is a fair discussion, but whenever I was called a propagandist, the term was used as a pejorative and arguably an act of propaganda itself. It was merely a blanket label based on the notion that any communication, active or passive, deserved the title. The flip side of each of these engagements often (nearly always) absolved other actors from the label.
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In public diplomacy, for example, the propaganda label frequently appears in law review articles analyzing the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. I briefly reflect on this issue in recent dispatches, calling out “Apple Pie Propaganda” by Weston Sager from 2015 and “The Smith-Mundt Act’s Ban on Domestic Propaganda” by Allen Palmer and Edward Carter from 2006 as two oft-cited culprits here and here. The authors here employ the word casually, without clarification or specificity, in a wink-and-nod that while it is definitionally neutral, its everyday use is definitively pejorative. The pejorative is easily inferred as the authors’ framing concerns a “ban” on seeing or hearing the “propaganda.”
Propaganda is an easy word to toss out. This or that is propaganda. But being so easy, it lends itself to mischaracterizations and abuse. Is everything propaganda? Is this note propaganda because I intend to change your opinion? What if I was merely informing you, laying out the information for you to make your own choice? Would it be propaganda then? Is it not propaganda because I’m not a government actor?
What do we mean by propaganda? Let’s step back to when, in US English, the word propaganda was not inherently negative. In fact, over a century ago, the word wasn’t very important in American English. There was also a time when it did not appear in American English dictionaries, and when it did, it crept in like, “oh, here’s another definition.” In the 1911 edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language: Based on the International Dictionary of 1890 and 1900 (yes, in fact, I do have a copy of this enormous two-volume tome on my shelf), see the picture above and go 2b to find, “The doctrine or principles thus propagated.” It is worth a moment to glance at the whole definition.
In 1920, a fellow named George Creel wrote a book extolling his virtues and why he should be hired due to his awesomeness as a marketer. (This book has been received, incorrectly, as a factual and complete account of the Committee on Public Information’s purpose, work, reach, and effects is outside the scope of this write-up). In this book, we find a seemingly oft-cited statement by Creel: “We did not call it propaganda, for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with deceit and corruption.” Cool, except Creel went on to use propaganda more than one hundred times in the pages that followed to describe truthful and honest information and disinformation, thereby fudging his own claim.
In 1922, a Funk & Wagnall’s dictionary, The College Standard Dictionary of the English Language, still did not have a separate entry for “propaganda.” Instead, under propagate, there was a part 2 with “propagating a doctrine” and a part 3 with “gaining public support for an opinion or course of action.”
That year, Walter Lippmann described propaganda as an “effort to alter the picture to which men respond.” While this sounds like a description of any communication and applicable to everything Lippmann wrote, he added effective censorship was necessary for the label to apply. In this definition, it is not merely the intent, but parameters around the reception matter.
Edward Bernays followed up three years later and removed the need for selective hearing: “Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea, or group.” This opened up the idea that a message is propaganda if it is part of a mass engagement, though the size requirement isn’t specified.
A decade later, in 1935, Leonard Doob, opened his book Propaganda: Its Psychology and Technique, that, “In America, the word ‘propaganda’ has a bad odor.” This suggests a lack of inherent neutrality of the term, which probably contributed to the label propaganda being accompanied by a qualifier, like “good,” “bad,” “our,” or “their.”
For example, testifying before Congress on February 19, 1946, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes spoke on the applicability of the propaganda label and the need for a qualified use with regard to the pending Bloom bill to authorize the State Department’s global informational efforts through the provision of libraries, speakers, posters, news releases, and more (the Bloom bill had previously been introduced by Rep. Karl Mundt and called the Mundt bill before being renamed the Bloom bill; in 1947, it was reintroduced by Mundt at the request of the State Department and later became the Smith-Mundt Act):
Let us look at the word “propaganda.” We would defeat our objectives in this program if we were to put forth lies, or in distorted or biased selection of the facts, or engage in special pleading. Our purpose is, and will be, solely to supply the facts on which foreign peoples can arrive at a rational and accurate judgment. A fair and balanced picture of American policies, and of the national life that lies behind those policies, is all we want or need to convey. If that is propaganda, it is honest propaganda.
Dishonest propaganda isn't worth the money or effort spent on it. It is easy to detect and expose where any measure of freedom exists. The audience for it is small and growing smaller. But the audience for honest information is large; the world is hungry for reliable information about America. That is what we have been supplying…
(The above two paragraphs immediately preceded quote #7 in the “Who said it, when, and why” quiz a few weeks ago.)
A week later, Elmer Davis, formerly the head of the Office of War Information, emphasized the point propaganda was not inherently bad: “The truth is that a fact — an incontrovertible fact — is often the most powerful propaganda.” (This was quote #10 in the Who said it, when, and why quiz.)
In 1951, the need for a qualifier continued. The US Advisory Commission on Information, established by the Smith-Mundt Act as an oversight body over the government’s international information programs to advise Congress, the Secretary of State, and the President, used the word propaganda:
No propaganda can be any stronger than the policy from which it springs. Thus the information specialists should be at all times and at all levels just as close as they possibly can be to the making of policy… Since most foreign policy is made by the State Department, the closer the information program can be to the State Department, the more effective the propaganda will be.
The 1946 edited book Propaganda, Communication, and Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Reference Guide, edited by Bruce Lannes Smith, Harold D. Lasswell, and Ralph D. Casey (Princeton University Press), stated “Not all use of language is propaganda.” They segregated certain uses, like diplomacy, while applying criteria, like “aimed at large masses” and the intention is to “influence mass attitudes on controversial issues” (italics in the original). To these authors, the “clumsy vehicle of words” meant that “Every government on the globe, whether despotism or democracy, whether at war or at peace, relies upon propaganda—more or less efficieintly harmonized with strategy, diplomacy, and economics—to accompaish its ends.” The label propaganda would become a more “clumsy vehicle.”
A close reading of the countless examples of qualifiers accompanying propaganda suggests Doob’s 1935 observation was accurate. So, why did the word choice persist? Likely because it encapsulated so much, allowing authors to skip discussions about influence, intentions, persuassion, and so on. Propaganda is just this relatively neat package, but is it?
What really is propaganda, is it something known when seen, echoing Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 comment about pornography? On its face, this suggests propaganda is defined by the receiver or witness, and the intent or structure has little to no bearing. Such a broad and subjective interpration is not helpful (and is quite lazy).
Is it simply about the intent to influence? Can one inform without influence? Say the audience is large and you are intentionally affecting behavior and opinions, is it possible this is not influence? Would this be propaganda?
Let me offer an example I’ve used in discussions around the ability (spoiler: inability) to “inform without influence” for more than a dozen years. Imagine you are the public affairs officer at a large military base in the United States and there will be a major construction project at the main gate. This effort will cause significant travel problems for the surrounding communities and not just for the personnel and vendors trying to get on the base. Naturally, you work with the local community to identify ways to mitigate the negative impacts on commuting and travel near the base. You probably help develop and communicate alternatives routes and options, or encourage the development and communication of alternatives, to ease the impact on travelers and businesses. Part – perhaps the majority – of your incentive to engage with the community on this issue is a consideration of the importance of their perception of the base and its personnel. The base maintaining good relations with the community is good politics, the base is a government institution, and the public affairs officer is a government employee, so this must be political communication and propaganda, right?
(My past use of this PAO and the base gate closure example was to suggest public affairs officers can and do influence public opinion and effect behavior, both of which are notionally things “only PSYOP does” since public affairs can magically “inform without influence.”)
Modern definitions seeking precision vary, but let’s check on Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell’s definition in their fourth edition of Propaganda and Persuasion (2006):
Propaganda is the deliberate, systemic attempt to shape percpetions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.
The focus here is intent and means of the “propagandist.” In the absence of qualifying parameters drawn from motives, this definition situates the PAO example above as propaganda by a propagandist. This leads us back to the need to add whether propaganda is good or bad.
Consider efforts to transmit factual, truthful, and honest news (“straight news”). Since the need for a motive is absent from the definition, calling this function propaganda seems appropriate, including when sending information to empower people with factual and truthful information to, for example, undermine the disinformation or misinformation they are otherwise living with. Certainly the gatekeepers trying to ensure only the disinformation is received would claim the true and accurate news is propaganda, and in absolute terms they’d be right. Is propaganda only when a government sends the information? What if the information is from a commercial news service or the content and transmission is controlled by a commercial entity? It would seem the sender doesn’t matter.
We can apply the Jowett-O’Donnell definition backward to Paul Blackstock in The Strategy of Subvesion: Manipulating the Politics of Other Nations (Quadrangle Books, 1964) in his description of the application of “non-military tools of foreign policy”:
In practice, the use of any of these methods of political warfare has been accompanied by propaganda activities ranging from straight news services and cultural relations programs to the most scurrilous forms of “black” or non-attributable proapganda and rumor mongering.
It’s all propaganda. But it’s not, and Jowett and O’Donnell don’t claim everything is. In fact, they go to great lengths to consider differences, bringing in “rhetoric” as an alternative label. In their Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion (2006), for example, they argue for a distinction between rhetoric and propaganda that would place my examples of the PAO and the base gate and “straight news” outside of the scope of propaganda. After all, there must be some way to counter this statement, shared by Donald C. Bryant in his 1953 “Rhetoric: Its Functions and Its Scope” article:
Propaganda, after all, is only a word for anything one says for or against anything. Either everything, therefore, is propaganda, or nothing is propaganda, so why worry?
My tortured point (and congratulations for reading this far) is the meaning of “propaganda” is elusive. While substantive definitions exist, Doob’s 1935 comment that “In America, the word ‘propaganda’ has a bad odor” seems like a severe understatement nearly ninety years later as the gap between academic discussions and the view of the street, so to speak, has likely grown. If you ask your coworker, neighbor, classmate, or random stranger whether “propaganda” is bad or good, I doubt many would respond with “it is good” or “it depends.”
It is easy to call something propaganda, but the stunning lack of precision and constraints in the definition, whether a precise definition or merely a commonly accepted view of the word, is why entire books are written to define and assign parameters to what is and is not propaganda. Applying the label without specificity is potentially misleading as it will likely impart a negative view of the “propaganda” and the “propagandist” being discussed and analyzed.
If there is one take-away from this dispatch, I hope it is this: Be careful calling something propaganda, doing so might make you a propagandist.
What are your thoughts?
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mountainrunner.substack.com · by Matt Armstrong
18. How Doctrine and Delineation Can Help Defeat Drones
Conclusion:
The Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office has, during its short existence, made enormous progress in protecting U.S. forces from drone technology. Like any organization, though, it should assess where it falls short and where it can improve. It has the capacity to set the tone of counter unmanned aerial system strategy for the foreseeable future and develop standard operating procedures that will keep pace with the threat. The unmanned aerial system threat will only evolve. So should the institutions tasked with countering it.
How Doctrine and Delineation Can Help Defeat Drones - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Nicholas Paul Pacheco · December 13, 2022
As Iranian-made drones continue to spread destruction across Ukraine, observers have been reminded once again of the dangers unmanned aerial systems pose. The United States, to its credit, has made significant progress in bolstering its capabilities to combat this threat, particularly through the investment of the Pentagon and the defense industrial base in counter-drone research and development. Washington has also established a senior-level Joint-Force office dedicated to addressing drone attacks within the Department of Defense.
But there remain two areas that have not been properly tackled: base defense and warfighter-policymaker synergy. First, bases have become particularly vulnerable to small drones, in part because there is no clear delineation of roles and responsibilities in defending against them. Second, the fast-paced evolution of drone warfare has made it difficult for policymakers to effectively ensure every echelon down to the operators of counter-drone systems is on the same page when it comes to strategic vision, operational mission, and tactical employment.
Become a Member
To address these gaps, the Department of Defense should begin incorporating its counter-drone research and strategy into new doctrine and professional military education. To facilitate this, the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office should include representatives from Army Training and Doctrine Command and the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery School on its team. At the same time, the Department of Defense should authorize a new joint command center integrating the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps that would fall under J3 Operations to directly oversee base defense. This interagency effort would be tasked with bringing together all relevant stakeholders, alongside the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, to test and deploy new counter unmanned aerial systems technology.
Understanding the Drone Threat
Global procurement of military unmanned aerial systems is up 57 percent from 2021. In the Middle East, Houthi attacks on the Gulf States have shown how legacy air defense systems like the American MIM-104 Patriot have proven ineffective in combating the threat. Even the U.S. military’s most effective legacy system against drones, the Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar Intercept, is at risk against a large enough drone swarm with decentralized flight patterns.
Understanding America’s drone vulnerability begins with distinguishing between two potential threats: massed attacks and swarming methods. The first resembles several birds with decentralized flight patterns picking and choosing different prey while the second resembles an organized flock of birds converging on a single target. Massed attacks are much less organized and often can have several operators using decentralized drones that are not coordinating. This makes it difficult to neutralize a source, but also makes the capacity of the attack less lethal. Swarms on the other hand feature coordinated command and control, usually with one operator using an algorithm or tactical operations center. These are more likely to be practiced by state actors and involve large numbers of drones employed for increased lethality. This makes swarms more vulnerable to being deterred but also more deadly and useful for offensive penetration.
Historically, the usage of drones in global conflict — particularly low-intensity conflict and irregular warfare — has featured mass attacks since the command side has been limited to human-in-the-loop control. But the primary drone threat to U.S. forces today comes from small unmanned aerial systems used in swarm attacks, particularly as China and Russia have focused on this technology.
These systems possess two characteristics that make them more militarily useful than larger unmanned aerial systems. First, their diminutive size, slow speed, and plastic construction allows them to avoid detection by traditional anti-aircraft sensors. Second, because small unmanned aerial systems are relatively inexpensive, they can be procured and deployed in large numbers. This poses a distinct challenge to base defense because the legacy systems that make up the robust U.S. air defense apparatus do not have capabilities to counter large numbers of drones all at once. The ability of small unmanned aerial systems to coordinate with one another and pick and choose targets enables them to deliver high explosive volume coupled with rapid decision-making and precise direction of attack. With quickly developing AI integration, these swarms are becoming increasingly deadly.
The Current State of Play
The Department of Defense is already in the process of implementing new strategies to confront the risk posed by drone swarms. In December 2019, the organization streamlined its various counter unmanned aerial systems programs, naming the Army as the executive agent tasked with overseeing all Department of Defense counter unmanned aerial systems development efforts. Then, in 2020, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper approved the implementation plan of the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. Thus far, in conjunction with the combatant commands and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, this office has proved to be an effective part of the Pentagon’s brain trust, assessing over 40 fielded counter unmanned aerial systems. There are now seven more of these systems slated for development along with one standardized command and control system.
The war in Ukraine demonstrates the nature of the remaining challenge. Iranian Shahed-136 kamikaze drones have replaced long range precision fires as Russia’s go-to method of aerial offense-defense integration. The Ukrainian military has responded with some success, using NATO-provided jammers and existing air defense systems to down two-thirds of Russia’s deployed drones. This achievement bodes well for counter drone strategists and offers lessons for the future. Specifically, on the technology side, it has shown the potential for communication jammers, which can be particularly valuable for defending bases.
As for actually shooting down the pilotless birds, the military has for some time had systems in the pipeline prepped to answer this task. In 2019, the Navy announced successful trial runs of its High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, a 60-kW laser for close defense against unmanned aerial systems and surface craft. There is also the Tactical High Power Operational Responder system, which uses short bursts of high-powered microwaves to disable unmanned aerial systems at short ranges. To date, this represents the most robust swarm-specific technology created. The commercial market also offers a trove of emerging technologies. At the Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems Technology USA 2021 Convention, companies like Israeli D-Fend Solutions unveiled technologies which the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office subsequently adopted and recommended to the joint force.
But while the technology side of defense is developing apace, the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office has more work to do engaging the warfighters who will have to use this technology, specifically air defenders and base security force units. The latest U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command air defense doctrine, Army Techniques Publication 3-01.7 “Air Defense Artillery Brigade Techniques,” contains only two mentions of “unmanned aerial systems” and has no current measures for officers and noncommissioned officers to review. Likewise, the principle doctrine for base defense, Joint Publication 3-10 “Joint Security Operations in Theater,” does not address unmanned aerial systems enough and ignores swarming methods completely.
Bringing the warfighters into the Fray
To address these gaps, senior Department of Defense staff should begin by including representatives from Army Training and Doctrine Command and the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery School in the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. Here, these representatives could assist in implementing new doctrine and professional military education based on the latest technological developments and findings in counter unmanned aerial systems research.
These changes will help enable warfighters on the ground to drive the strategic direction of counter drone planning with operational fielding and testing. Warfighters and their chain of command should both be informed of counter unmanned aerial systems planning and have a mechanism to effectively communicate the dynamics of the battlefield. Since the Army serves as the primary air defender branch, incorporating its higher echelons into counter-drone efforts would eliminate stovepipes between the warfighters and strategic planners and give future generations of air defenders access to updated doctrine in their education. Integrating the U.S. Marine Corps would also facilitate better planning and the creation of a joint-force approach. Indeed, this is something that has already been recommended by the recent Department of Defense “Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Strategy.” In “Force Design 2030”, the Marine Corps has made significant strides in counter-drone technology. This includes not only air defense systems but the fully-fielded Installation-Counter small Unmanned Aircraft Systems which incorporates monitoring and sensor systems that track and provide warning signals for drone incursion in nearby air space. Incorporating the Marine Corps into counter-drone planning could help systems like this become a part of U.S. base defense memorandums of understanding.
Creating greater burden sharing and coordination at the higher echelons of the joint force is also important because of the rapid change in the unmanned aerial system strategy. Senior commanders at the theater level have the best vantage point to see how the enemy is shifting operations, tactics, and strategy in response to U.S. countermeasures. Incorporating their voices will ensure that the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office does not continue working on assumptions and testing that do not correspond to the real world.
Building Joint-Force Synergy
The Pentagon should also authorize a new joint command center that integrates the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Working under the J3 Directorate, this center would be directly responsible for base defense, with the task of working with all necessary stakeholders to field new counter unmanned aerial systems technology and coordinate field tests.
The Air Force and the Army should be the focus of institutional reform. The Air Force is the only military service that lacks clear authority to develop and procure surface-based air and missile defense systems to protect its own forces. The Army, in turn, employs the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system and Patriot missiles to defend operational theaters from air and missile attack, as well as Counter-Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar Intercept systems for smaller threats. This has created disagreement over base defense oversight between the Air Force and the Army for most of the past 70 years, and there is often not a clear memorandum of understanding between the two over the operational authority for base security. With the Army taking the lead in the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, it has the greater interest in moving assertively to create greater synergy. The Air Force should also share this urgency since they are the branch tasked with maintaining America’s air supremacy.
Fostering greater synergy fits best under the J3 mission statement, since this directly deals with operations-related matters. Creating a joint command center would centralize and enhance command and control for base defense, properly distributing roles and responsibilities for the joint force while also assisting in implementing new counter unmanned aerial systems. A new joint command center in the J3 would allow for a unitary approach bringing together the Army and Air Force that can focus solely on base defense and serve as higher command for base security forces globally. The J3 could ensure that units tasked as security forces were specifically identified, trained, and deployed for that mission. This center could also play a valuable role in coordinating field tests for new technology. Alongside the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, it could offer a direct mechanism through which the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the defense industrial base could test newly designed systems in active combat zones.
Conclusion
The Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office has, during its short existence, made enormous progress in protecting U.S. forces from drone technology. Like any organization, though, it should assess where it falls short and where it can improve. It has the capacity to set the tone of counter unmanned aerial system strategy for the foreseeable future and develop standard operating procedures that will keep pace with the threat. The unmanned aerial system threat will only evolve. So should the institutions tasked with countering it.
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Nicholas Paul Pacheco is a policy support analyst at the Department of Defense and an Army Reserve officer as well as a former resident Anna Sobol Levy fellow at the Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel. He has written for the National Interest, InkStick Media, and the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Army or Department of Defense.
Image: Department of Defense
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Nicholas Paul Pacheco · December 13, 2022
19. Don’t Drag the Military into Politics by Kori Schake
Excerpts:
The main driver of declining confidence in America’s military leaders is the relentless hectoring of them on political issues by politicians. It is politicians who serve up the circumstances, whether it’s the Trump White House orchestrating Lafayette Square, the Biden White House setting marines to flank the president during a political speech, or congressmen and congresswomen scoring political points by dragging uniforms into the political arena.
Instead of continuing to prosecute those polarizing issues or turning Milley on a spit over a fire, Congress could instead take steps that actually support the men and women in uniform. If Congress is alarmed about the state of our military, they should pass the National Defense Authorization Act and defense appropriations bills on time. They should rigorously question whether the Biden defense budget is adequate to carry out the president’s national security strategy. They could also reform acquisition processes to draw tech talent into the defense enterprise and confirm or deny appointees in a timely manner so elected leaders have staff in place. There is serious work to be done to defend America. Politicizing the military will make it weaker — not stronger.
Don’t Drag the Military into Politics - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Kori Schake · December 13, 2022
American respect for its military is plummeting. It has dropped by 30 points in the past five years in surveys conducted by the Reagan Foundation. In their recently released poll, less than half of respondents have a great deal of trust and confidence in America’s military. Unless both civilian and military leaders take corrective actions to repair the breach, this will impede recruiting, diminish unit cohesion, and damage the bond between the military and the public it serves.
As concerning as the drop itself is the reason. 62 percent of respondents said they were losing trust and confidence because the military leadership is becoming overly politicized. Nor is the attitude partisan: 60 percent of Democrats gave that answer, as did 60 percent of Independents and 65 percent of Republicans. Only 35 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the military’s ability to act in a professional and nonpolitical manner.
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If America wants to retain a military that recruits from all parts of the citizenry and brings them together into an effective fighting force, it should both correct that public perception and better insulate the military from being a pawn in partisan political disputes. This will require more discipline from military leaders and greater recognition by politicians of the damage they are doing to our national security by castigating the professionalism and non-partisan commitment of America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and their leaders. Military leaders should stick to the core functions of the profession and master saying “that’s a more appropriate question for the secretary of defense.” Politicians should stop hiding behind uniforms when enacting unpopular policies, and expend their efforts on passing relevant legislation in areas urgently in need of attention.
The Path to Polarization
The Reagan Foundation’s findings are at strong variance with how the military views itself. America’s military believes it is a paragon of non-partisan professionalism, and works hard to inculcate that attitude through professional military education. Military leaders worry about veteran political activism reflecting on the active-duty force. But they don’t believe public concerns about politicization of the military are affecting the force. Gen. David Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said recently that “I don’t see and hear a conversation or an impact of woke-ism in the rank and file, at all.” The Army’s head of recruiting believes the concerns are having no effect on Americans’ willingness to serve.
But there have been a number of developments over the past several decades that have contributed to the perception of the military’s politicization. Veterans’ endorsement of presidential candidates has been an escalating arms race since retired Marine Commandant Paul X. Kelly endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980. Presidential campaigns now routinely roll out lists of hundreds of retired flag officers and include uniformed military in campaign ads. The Bush administration left it to the military to persuade Congress to support the Iraq surge. In 2016, retired Gen. John Allen spoke at the Democratic National Convention to endorse the Democratic candidate while, in a more egregious move, retired Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn led chants of “lock her up” at the Republican National Convention.
Furthermore, Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both nominated record numbers of high-ranking veterans into senior civilian appointments. Like his predecessor, President Joe Biden nominated a recently retired veteran to be secretary of defense. More recently, Biden placed uniformed marines beside him as he gave a highly political speech about the threat to democracy in the country. All of these actions are shaping public perceptions of the military as a partisan political force.
Some active-duty military leaders have also increasingly engaged in political acts. In particular, the serving chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff marched with the president in battle dress through a public square that had been forcibly cleared during the 2020 social justice protests. Gen. Mark Milley admirably apologized, but the image is likely to be what most in the public remember long after. Milley has leaned into other political controversies too: offering his view of critical race theory during Congressional hearings and backgrounding virtually every journalist’s account of the Trump administration in order to cast himself as the savior of the republic.
Milley’s supporters may argue he was defending the civilian secretary, or that as a soldier and hockey player he couldn’t be expected to sit on the sidelines. But the civilian secretary of defense does not require protecting by his military subordinates. Political fights are properly the province of civilian appointees. And you don’t just get the upside of playing politics. If you’re going to act like a hockey player, you’re going to get hit in the mouth with a puck from time to time. Milley clumsily engaging on political topics has made it fair game for Congress to press him and other military leaders — including every flag officer that is put forward for three-star promotion — on political issues.
Congress should resist that temptation, however. Republicans in the House of Representatives are frothing at the mouth for the chance to drag Milley up to testify, an extended repeat of the disgraceful spectacle last year of representatives accusing him of treason. Repeating that political theater would be a terrible thing to do both to America’s security and civil-military relations. The overwhelming majority of the military — including and especially its leadership — are pleading to be left out of the febrile partisan politics of the moment. For the good of the country, politicians should heed that plea.
The main driver of declining confidence in America’s military leaders is the relentless hectoring of them on political issues by politicians. It is politicians who serve up the circumstances, whether it’s the Trump White House orchestrating Lafayette Square, the Biden White House setting marines to flank the president during a political speech, or congressmen and congresswomen scoring political points by dragging uniforms into the political arena.
Instead of continuing to prosecute those polarizing issues or turning Milley on a spit over a fire, Congress could instead take steps that actually support the men and women in uniform. If Congress is alarmed about the state of our military, they should pass the National Defense Authorization Act and defense appropriations bills on time. They should rigorously question whether the Biden defense budget is adequate to carry out the president’s national security strategy. They could also reform acquisition processes to draw tech talent into the defense enterprise and confirm or deny appointees in a timely manner so elected leaders have staff in place. There is serious work to be done to defend America. Politicizing the military will make it weaker — not stronger.
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Kori Schake leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony.
Image: Department of Defense
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Kori Schake · December 13, 2022
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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