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(quick catch up after returning overseas travel)
Quotes of the Day:
"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."
- Marilyn vos Savant
“One key difference between military violence and militant nonviolence is that the latter flummoxes the foe. Police and vigilante groups in the South were well versed in the use of force, but not in this new approach. Ultimately, this righteous insight would be key to the success of the Movement. It was a smart approach not just strategically but tactically. As Richard Gregg, an American disciple of Gandhi, wrote in the 1930s, “Your violent opponent wants you to fight in the way to which he is accustomed. If you utterly decline, and adopt a method wholly new to him, you have thus gained an immediate tactical advantage.” When the civil rights movement was able to keep a nonviolent stance, it generally prevailed.”
- Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 by Thomas E. Ricks
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.
- Viktor Frankl
1. Ukraine: WAR BULLETIN December 16, 5.00 pm EST The two-hundred-ninety-sixths day of the resistance of the Ukrainian people to russian military large-scale invasion.
2. America’s Indo-Pacific Strategy Runs Through Ukraine
3. ‘Wiped out’: War in Ukraine has decimated a once feared Russian brigade
4. DOD’s Irregular Warfare Center: Building Partnerships by Opening Up the Tent
5. Wargame Maritime COIN
6. Asian States Are Worried the U.S. Is a Perennially Distracted Superpower
7. Women in Special Operations: Improvements to Policy, Data, and Assessments Needed to Better Understand and Address Career Barriers
8. Germany Shirks Its Defense Pledge, Imperiling the Asia ‘Pivot’
9. . Who cares who wins - The mythology of the SAS
10. Ukraine air defenses counter Russian barrage but missiles hit energy targets
11. An Army at Sea: Why the New FM 3-0’s Emphasis on Maritime Operations is So Important
12. Patriot missile system not a panacea for Ukraine, experts warn
13. Biden official told members of Congress that Ukraine has ability to retake Crimea
14. Ukraine war: Kyiv says Russia planning major ground offensive in new year
15. Putin adopting style of warfare abandoned by modern armies, says UK
1. Ukraine: WAR BULLETIN December 16, 5.00 pm EST The two-hundred-ninety-sixths day of the resistance of the Ukrainian people to russian military large-scale invasion.
Also posted on Small Wars Journal here: https://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/blog/ukraine-war-bulletin-december-16-500-pm-est-two-hundred-ninety-sixths-day-resistance-ukrainian
Embassy of Ukraine in the USA
WAR BULLETIN
December 16, 5.00 pm EST
In the morning, Russia launched a massive rocket attack on the civil infrastructure of Ukraine: 70 cruise missiles and 4 guided air missiles, 60 cruise missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defense forces. Several energy infrastructure facilities and residential buildings were hit in the Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhia regions. Explosions were recorded in the Desnyan, Dnipro and Holosiiv districts of the capital.
Russia still has enough missiles for several massive strikes, we have enough determination and self-belief to return ours – address of the President of Ukraine
First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine: Grateful to UN member states who supported yesterday the 7th UNGA resolution on human rights in Crimea. This year, its scope is extended to all temporarily occupied territories. Among other things, the document demands Russia stop forcible transfers of Ukrainian children. Russia must be brought to justice for all violations against Ukrainians in Crimea and other occupied Ukrainian territories, halt repressions and release all unlawfully detained Crimean Tatars and other citizens of Ukraine.
Despite current challenges, the impact of forced migration from Ukraine on the economies of recipient countries in the long run will be positive, according to an NBU Staff Discussion Note.
WAR ROOM
General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The total combat losses of the Russian forces from 24.02 to 16.12:
personnel ‒ about 97270 (+680) killed,
tanks ‒ 2980 (+5),
APV ‒ 5952 (+6),
artillery systems – 1946 (+3),
MLRS – 410 (+4),
Anti-aircraft warfare systems ‒ 211,
aircraft – 281,
helicopters – 264,
UAV operational-tactical level – 1648 (+4),
cruise missiles ‒ 592,
warships / boats ‒ 16,
vehicles and fuel tankers – 4563,
special equipment ‒ 172.
https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid037b5i78RfiQrhPLKAKX42psc8kNJdro77E38dHSo3QFCRaAyGyWXeqCFvFmMzLeyal
The two-hundred-ninety-sixths day of the resistance of the Ukrainian people to russian military large-scale invasion.
In the morning, the enemy launched a massive rocket attack on the civil infrastructure of our country. According to updated data, the russian invaders fired 70 cruise missiles and 4 guided air missiles, 60 cruise missiles were shot down by our air defense forces. As a result of the strikes, several energy infrastructure facilities and residential buildings were hit in the Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhia oblasts.
In the Volyn and Polissya directions, the situation has not changed significantly, and no signs of the formation of enemy offensive groups have been detected. Certain units of the armed forces of the republic of belarus and the russian federation continue to be located in the border areas with Ukraine.
On the Siverskyi and Slobozhanskyi directions, the enemy carried out mortar and artillery attacks in the areas of Zapsillia and Popivka settlements in the Sumy oblast and Strilecha, Starytsa, Ambarne, Vilkhuvatka, Dvorichna and Krasne in the Kharkiv oblast.
In the Kupyansk direction, the areas of Sinkivka, Orlyanka, Tabaivka, Berestove and Vyshneve settlements of Kharkiv oblast and Volodymyrivka and Stelmakhivka - Luhansk oblast were hit by shelling from tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery.
In the Lyman direction, the enemy fired at the positions of our troops from tanks and artillery of various calibers near Makiivka, Ploshchanka, Chervonopopivka, Dibrova, and Hirskе in the Luhansk oblast.
In the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions, the enemy continues assaulting our positions, trying to find weak spots in the defense line for a breakthrough. Shelled areas of more than twenty settlements. Among them are Verkhnyokamianske, Spirne, Biohorivka, Vesele, Soledar, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Opytne, Chasiv Yar, Druzhba, Zalizne, Maryinka and Pervomaiske of the Donetsk oblast.
In the Novopavlivka direction, the neighborhoods of Bohoyavlenka, Neskuchne, Prechystivka and Vuhledar in Donetsk oblast were damaged by fire.
In the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions, the enemy continues to shell our positions and the civilian infrastructure of the settlements along the right bank of the Dnipro River. More than 30 settlements were affected. In particular, Plavni, Hulyaipole, Dorozhnyanka, Olhivske, Nikopol in the Zaporizhzhia oblast and Chornobayivka, Antonivka, Kherson, Mykilske, Tokarivka and Mylove in the Kherson oblast.
The enemy continues to strengthen the defense line on the border of the Kherson region and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. It also strengthens the defense and protection of water supply facilities to the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, in particular the North Crimean Canal. For this purpose, units mobilized from the Krasnodar Territory were additionally sent.
Units of missile troops and artillery of the Defense Forces of Ukraine during the current day hit 3 areas of concentration of personnel, a control post and an ammunition warehouse of the occupiers.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=484003573912726&set=a.229159252730494
Kyiv City Administration
Due to damage to the power system and emergency power interruptions, subway trains will not run until the end of the day today.
At the same time, underground stations will operate in shelter mode.
To move around the city, residents of the city are requested to use ground public transport.
Today, there are regular buses in the city, as well as bus routes that replace trolleybuses.
Tomorrow, additional buses will be launched in the capital, duplicating tram routes. In addition, the city will organize buses that will partially duplicate the metro route schemes.
Explosions were recorded in the Desnyan, Dnipro and Holosiiv districts of the capital in the morning during a missile attack by the Russian aggressor on the capital. The movement of the Kyiv metro is temporarily suspended. Underground stations currently operate as shelters. There are interruptions in water supply in all districts of the capital. The mayor of Kyiv announced in his Telegram channel.
"Due to damage to the energy infrastructure, there are interruptions in water supply in all areas of the capital. Specialists are working to stabilize the system. Just in case, prepare a supply of drinking and technical water," - Vitaliy Klitschko appealed to the people of Kyiv.
POLICY
President of Ukraine
Russia still has enough missiles for several massive strikes, we have enough determination and self-belief to return ours – address of the President of Ukraine
Dear Ukrainians, I wish you health!
First of all, I thank our Air Force fighters, our counter aircraft fighters, intelligence and everyone who protects and helps protect the Ukrainian sky. Today's result is 60 shot down missiles. All air commands – Center, South, East and West were active.
And the fighters of the 96th anti-aircraft missile brigade, which protect Kyiv region, were especially effective. Over 40 terrorists' missiles were destroyed in the sky of the central regions of the country and near Kyiv. I thank you, warriors!
But, unfortunately, there is a hit. Terrorists need such a large number of missiles in an attack that at least part of their "products" reaches their intended targets. All their targets today are civilian, and these are mainly energy and heat supply facilities. Probably, as a result of this war, the meaning of the word "terror" for most people in the world will be associated primarily with such crazy actions of Russia.
In Kryvy Rih, the demolition of the rubble of a residential building, which was hit by one of the Russian missiles, continued all day. The list of the dead so far includes three. My condolences to all the relatives... More than ten people were injured, including children. Everyone gets help.
Emergency power outages were applied today across the country – in most cities and regions. In Kyiv and 14 regions, as a result of power outages, water supply halted.
Our power engineers and repair crews have already started working during the air alert and are doing everything possible to restore generation and supply. It takes time. But it will be.
I ask all our people to be patient now and I thank everyone whose job is to restore normality at any time and under any circumstances. I also ask the representatives of regional and local authorities to be more active in creating an additional reserve of energy strength. Please work more actively with business so that more companies join the Points of Invincibility map.
And I ask everyone now – of course, if possible – to take care of those who have the most difficulties... The elderly, families with children, displaced people from war zones or from the occupied territory. If you can help, please help.
No matter what the missile worshipers from Moscow are hoping for, it still won't change the balance of power in this war. They still have enough missiles for several such heavy strikes. We have enough determination and self-belief to return our own after these blows.
And one more.
The European Union approved the ninth package of sanctions against Russia during the war. Ninth, but obviously not the last. Because it is obvious that the pressure needs to be increased.
I thank all those leaders and countries who fought for a stronger package.
But we will work with the European Commission, with the leaders of the EU countries, with the European public, so that the existing sanctions policy works towards the end of the war and does not give Russia wrong signals – signals that someone is ready to ease the pressure.
I thank everyone who keeps to principles!
Glory to all who work for our victory!
Glory to all our soldiers, who heroically repel all attempts of Russian mercenaries to gain a foothold in Bakhmut! 17th separate tank brigade, 46th separate airmobile brigade – glory to you guys!
Glory to all who fight for Ukraine!
Air Force – Thanks again!
And the last. I will repeat constantly. Dear our partners, find an opportunity to provide us with a reliable air defense shield. This is saving people's lives.
Glory to Ukraine!
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/rosiyi-she-vistachit-raket-dlya-kilkoh-masovanih-udariv-nam-79917
Ukraine is very grateful for support of American people in these hard times – Andriy Yermak at meeting with US veterans
On behalf of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak held a meeting with a group of US veterans – activists and philanthropists, who handed over equipment and other important humanitarian aid to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In particular, the military units and units of the Khortytsia operational-strategic military group received vehicles, generators, chainsaws, welding machines, sleeping bags, wood-burning stoves, tablets, batteries, inverters, flashlights, individual first-aid kits from US veterans. Vehicles were also transferred to military units and units of the Tavria operational-strategic group of troops.
Addressing the audience, Yermak said that it is a great honor to welcome such courageous and indomitable people to Ukraine, especially in these difficult days.
"I know you really inspire a lot of people. By your example, your life, but also by today's actions. We see that you came not only to support us, but also brought things that are so necessary for our heroes today," he said.
In his opinion, US veterans have a lot in common with Ukrainians, and they understand our people like no one else, and especially Ukrainian soldiers.
"After all, Ukraine today defends not only itself, but also the entire free world," the head of the President's Office said.
Yermak said that even in a situation where many regions of Ukraine were completely left without electricity after another terrorist missile attack by the Russian Federation, Ukrainians are ready to continue their struggle.
The head of the Office of the President said that Ukraine has enough heroes and bravery, but more weapons and equipment are needed for victory.
"Our soldiers really need vehicles. And that list of important equipment that you brought with you is what our heroes need very much," he said.
Yermak said that Ukraine is very grateful to both the United States authorities and the entire American people for the historic support for our country during such hard trials.
Joe De Sena, the founder and CEO of the world's leading endurance sports Spartan Race, said that people in the United States admire how Ukrainians fight and do not give up, and they really want to support.
"And we want to inspire Americans to help you even more. After all, today you are really at the forefront of the fight for democracy," he said.
The meeting was also attended via video link by the commander of the Khortytsia Defense Forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander of the Tavria Defense Forces, Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavsky, the commander of the Kyiv Defense Forces and Combat Means Group, Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavliuk. They thanked the US veterans for the assistance provided for the needs of the Ukrainian army.
The commander of the Ground Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, said that the mentioned vehicles and equipment will be handed over to the brigades, which in particular are fighting hard battles near the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar in extreme winter conditions.
"We really appreciate this help. Together we are stronger and only together we can win," he said.
Yermak said that the Ukrainians will fight for victory, which they are sure of, and the American guests today have the opportunity to see with their own eyes how our people are holding up and tell everyone about it.
"Once again, on behalf of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, our troops and all Ukrainians, we thank you very much, we appreciate this very much and will never forget it," the head of the President's Office said.
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-nadzvichajno-vdyachna-za-pidtrimku-z-boku-amerikans-79929
Andriy Yermak discusses assistance in restoring Ukraine's energy infrastructure with Geoffrey Pyatt, Bridget Brink
On behalf of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak held a meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey R. Pyatt and US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ukraine Bridget A. Brink.
Yermak said that Geoffrey Pyatt's visit to Ukraine is especially relevant today, on the day when our country was hit by another Russian missile attack.
"You can personally see the atmosphere in which we live, but at the same time we continue fighting," the head of the Office of the President said.
On behalf of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he thanked the United States, President Joseph Biden, and Congress for supporting our country.
Yermak briefed the interlocutors on the consequences of the terrorist state's attacks on the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine, which took place today.
According to the head of the President's Office, our country needs equipment and other assistance for the rapid restoration of heat supply and energy facilities after missile strikes by Russia.
"Nowadays, Ukrainians are more united than ever, they have been showing resilience and courage for nine months. In order for people not to lose this spirit, it is necessary to take care of quality support for citizens in critical moments," Yermak said.
The representatives of the United States, for their part, assured of their commitment to provide assistance to Ukraine, in particular, the necessary equipment, for the effective support of the Ukrainian people.
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/andrij-yermak-obgovoriv-z-dzheffri-payettom-ta-bridzhit-brin-79925
Prime Minister of Ukraine
Denys Shmyhal: The world must respond to russia’s terrorist actions with quick and decisive steps
Ukraine calls on its partners to act to prevent the genocide of the Ukrainian people in front of the whole world. This was stated by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal during a Government meeting on December 16.
“Today, russian terrorists have shelled our energy infrastructure for the ninth time. We consider this terrorist activity of the russian leadership as another attempt to commit genocide of the Ukrainian people. They kill our women and children, destroy civilian infrastructure, shell houses, roads, power grids. They have set a goal to leave Ukrainians without light, water and heat. The world should definitely respond to these actions of russia with quick and decisive steps,” stressed Denys Shmyhal.
The Prime Minister emphasized that the country needs weapons to protect people, infrastructure and critical facilities. There must be strong and adequate sanctions for every shelling.
Denys Shmyhal noted that today the air defense forces did not allow the enemy to plunge Ukraine into darkness. 60 out of 76 missiles were shot down: “We thank the defenders of the Ukrainian sky for this.”
At the same time, he stressed that Ukrainian defenders need more weapons, and power engineers need more equipment.
“There are damaged energy facilities again – high-voltage substations and electricity generation. Once again there is a serious shortage in the power system. And now emergency blackouts are applied almost throughout the country,” the Prime Minister said.
https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/denys-shmyhal-svit-maie-vidreahuvaty-na-terorystychni-dii-rosii-shvydkymy-ta-rishuchymy-krokamy
Government adopted a decision to implement six steps of the President of Ukraine for the stable passing of winter
During a meeting on December 16, the Government adopted a protocol decision aimed at ensuring implementation of the six steps of the President of Ukraine for the stable operation of critical energy infrastructure during the autumn-winter period.
“Dozens of countries are already supplying Ukraine with equipment to increase the resilience of our energy system. At the conference in Paris, Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced 6 steps of solidarity with Ukraine in the energy sector. This is a request to our international partners that will allow our energy system to survive this winter. We will prevail over russia and its energy terror together,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stressed.
Thus, during the International Standing with the Ukrainian People Conference, held in France on December 13, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced six specific things that would help Ukraine survive the winter. In order to implement these steps, the Government instructed the relevant ministries and agencies to work on:
providing Ukraine with the equipment necessary for the restoration of critical energy infrastructure facilities;
assistance in balancing the united energy system of Ukraine, in particular through the transfer and import of electricity from EU member states;
possibility of sending special EU missions to critical infrastructure facilities;
providing financial support for the purchase of about two billion cubic meters of natural gas;
procurement of LED lamps to meet the needs of the population and economy of Ukraine;
creation of a special permanent mechanism for prompt and timely elimination of consequences of terrorist acts of the russian federation on critical energy infrastructure facilities.
https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/uriad-ukhvalyv-rishennia-dlia-realizatsii-shesty-krokiv-prezydenta-ukrainy-shchodo-staloho-prokhodzhennia-zymy
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
@DmytroKuleba
For each Russian missile or drone aimed at Ukraine and Ukrainians there must be a howitzer delivered to Ukraine, a tank for Ukraine, an armored vehicle for Ukraine. This would effectively end Russian terror against Ukraine and restore peace and security in Europe and beyond.
https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1603693495096643584?s=20&t=n6yfrK913_UKJ6F9IqxaGw
2. America’s Indo-Pacific Strategy Runs Through Ukraine
Excerpts:
At this juncture, it would be a mistake to pivot to China with the expectation that European states can preserve deterrence and security on the continent with limited U.S. engagement. The war in Ukraine demonstrates that U.S. political and military leadership remains the center of gravity for any effort to uphold the European security architecture. Put bluntly, it is difficult to explain Russia’s failures in Ukraine without reference to U.S. support for Kyiv. An overly hasty pivot that led to the collapse of Europe’s security architecture would end up demanding far more strategic resources and attention down the line.
Any viable strategy to keep Russia in check will require a sustained U.S. engagement in Europe, especially if we assume Russia will ultimately re-arm and rebuild. However, a Ukrainian victory will enable this engagement to increasingly focus on factors like command and control, fires, and key enablers, which would complement a much-needed build-up in Europe’s own defense capabilities and a stronger European role within NATO. This would then pave the way for the United States to shift forces from Europe to the Indo-Pacific in the event of a crisis in Taiwan or elsewhere. Contrary to what others have argued, dealing with the Russian threat decisively, and significantly degrading Russian power, may actually be the best way to ensure a sustainable U.S. rebalance to the Indo-Pacific. This is not only in Europe’s or America’s interest — U.S. Indo-Pacific allies have a strategic stake in Washington’s success in Europe too.
America’s Indo-Pacific Strategy Runs Through Ukraine - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Luis Simón · December 16, 2022
Over the past year, Washington has helped rally Europe to support Ukraine’s heroic defense of its sovereignty. Yet amidst the enthusiasm that this has generated, some observers remain concerned that the war in Europe will distract the United States from the more profound threat that it faces from China. They shouldn’t be. Given the deepening interdependence between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and the growing cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, decisively defeating Russia remains the best way for the United States to successfully compete against China.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently argued that the United States “wanted to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”. If the United States managed to achieve this, it could neutralize the existence of a threat to the European balance of power for the foreseeable future. And that could set the foundations for redirecting the bulk of U.S. strategic attention towards the threat posed by China in the Indo-Pacific. In contrast, abandoning Ukraine to its own luck could lead to the unraveling of the European security order. That would end up demanding a considerably higher share of America’s strategic bandwidth down the line, and thus constitute a far more serious drag on a much-needed rebalance to the Indo-Pacific.
Tackling Trade-Offs
Properly understanding the relationship between U.S. strategy in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific begins with recognizing three crucial facts. First, the security architecture in both regions is built on U.S. military power. Second, the United States devotes a higher share of its defense resources to these two regions than anywhere else. Third, the United States now faces great-power challenges in Europe and the Indo-Pacific simultaneously.
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The existence of strategic tradeoffs between Europe and the Indo-Pacific is very real. What the United States does in one region impinges on its ability to resource deterrence in the other region. Thus, an over-prioritization of one region — and de-prioritization of the other — can open windows for opportunistic aggression. Indeed, the U.S. National Defense Strategy argues that China and Russia have expanded their cooperation and “either state could seek to create dilemmas globally for the Joint Force in the event of U.S. engagement in a crisis or a conflict with the other.” In this vein, some experts have warned about the challenge of dealing with simultaneous wars in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
The importance of Europe and the Indo-Pacific above all other regions is typically justified on the basis that they are the only two regions that harbor the demographic, industrial, technological, and military potential to allow any power dominating them to seriously challenge and ultimately threaten the United States. Hence, it is important to simultaneously preserve favorable balances in Europe and Asia by ensuring that no single power or coalition of powers controls the resources of either region. The assumption that the balance of power in both regions is structurally delicate — and requires permanent U.S. engagement — has led to recurring concerns about over-prioritizing one region at the expense of the other.
But to what extent does that assumption hold today? In other words, how fragile are the regional balances in Europe and East Asia? The relative importance of each region has varied over time, and so has their degree of strategic interdependence. There is broad agreement that Europe was the center of gravity for Washington during the Cold War. While the Soviet Union did not match U.S. and European economic power, and may have faced structural economic challenges, it enjoyed significant levels of economic growth throughout much of the Cold War and remained an industrial and technological superpower. Moreover, communism enjoyed significant social appeal across Western Europe. Critically, Soviet military strength — nuclear and conventional — and presence across Central Europe posed an acute and persistent threat to the European balance of power. No equivalent threat existed in Asia. China was economically weak and inward-looking, and it was actually the Soviet Union that was considered the main regional threat to U.S. allies and interests in East Asia.
Today the situation has been reversed. It would be premature to draw too many lessons from Russia’s military performance in Ukraine and count Moscow out as a significant power — Russia still poses an acute threat to Europe and the United States given its large nuclear arsenal and ongoing modernization efforts. However, Moscow’s inability to hold on to its early gains in eastern and southern Ukraine and its high rate of equipment loss raise questions about its ability to pose a conventional military threat to NATO. Such problems are further compounded by Russia’s growing economic and political isolation in Europe. Critically, NATO enjoys significant geostrategic depth, with enlargement having pushed the alliance’s defense perimeter across the northern European plain and well into the Baltic and Black Seas. Finland and Sweden will now add further depth — and capability — to NATO.
Other than Russia, there are no serious challenges to the European balance of power. Leaving aside the question of whether greater European strategic autonomy or sovereignty may be beneficial to the United States, Europe remains hampered by diverging national interests and its autonomy largely limited to economic affairs. If anything, the war in Ukraine may have increased Europe’s security and energy dependence on the United States.
Even if Europe must still grapple with a number of economic and security woes, the fundamental European balance of power is not in question. The same cannot be said of the Indo-Pacific, where a rising China poses a formidable, cross-domain threat. Its military modernization and assertiveness have improved China’s regional military position vis-à-vis the United States, and challenged America’s free movement within the Western Pacific theater of operations. The fact that China’s territory hugs much of the Western Pacific and that the U.S.-led defense perimeter in East Asia has limited geostrategic depth puts Beijing in a position to project its power into the high seas. Moreover, many countries in East Asia are part of China’s economic orbit, and maintain good political relations with Beijing.
The United States does in fact recognize the growing disparity between Russia and China. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks recently alluded to Russia as an “acute threat,” meaning “it can be sharp, near term and potentially more transitory.” China, by contrast, is seen a “pacing challenge” that can “bring a comprehensive suite of power” to bear. This distinction is not minor. Moscow still represents a formidable nuclear threat and may be able to threaten U.S. allies in Eastern Europe. But it is not in a position to upset the European balance of power, let alone the global one. China is. In short, the United States faces a balance-of-power challenge in the Indo-Pacific, and a stability problem in Europe. This puts the Indo-Pacific on a higher level strategically.
Arguably, the degree of interdependence between Europe and the Indo-Pacific is greater today than during the Cold War. Back then, if the United States felt it had to step up its contribution to Europe in response to a perceived increased Soviet threat there, the resulting risk elsewhere was less acute. After all, Soviet resources were also limited, and a Soviet prioritization of Europe would automatically limit Moscow’s own strategic bandwidth in East Asia. The sense of geostrategic tradeoffs between both regions and sets of U.S. allies was therefore not as salient as it is today.
Appropriate Priorities
The rise of China means that the current challenge is more closely akin to World War II, when the United States and its allies faced simultaneous challenges from different competitors in different theaters. Fortunately, today the European balance does not appear to be in danger. Having said that, the prospect for endemic instability in Eastern Europe, the ongoing risk to U.S. treaty allies, Russia’s nuclear status, and Washington’s existing commitments suggest that the level of U.S. engagement in Europe may be greater than balance-of-power considerations alone would require. Thus, the region will remain more important to Washington than any other besides the Indo-Pacific. Yet this importance will likely diminish.
At this juncture, it would be a mistake to pivot to China with the expectation that European states can preserve deterrence and security on the continent with limited U.S. engagement. The war in Ukraine demonstrates that U.S. political and military leadership remains the center of gravity for any effort to uphold the European security architecture. Put bluntly, it is difficult to explain Russia’s failures in Ukraine without reference to U.S. support for Kyiv. An overly hasty pivot that led to the collapse of Europe’s security architecture would end up demanding far more strategic resources and attention down the line.
Any viable strategy to keep Russia in check will require a sustained U.S. engagement in Europe, especially if we assume Russia will ultimately re-arm and rebuild. However, a Ukrainian victory will enable this engagement to increasingly focus on factors like command and control, fires, and key enablers, which would complement a much-needed build-up in Europe’s own defense capabilities and a stronger European role within NATO. This would then pave the way for the United States to shift forces from Europe to the Indo-Pacific in the event of a crisis in Taiwan or elsewhere. Contrary to what others have argued, dealing with the Russian threat decisively, and significantly degrading Russian power, may actually be the best way to ensure a sustainable U.S. rebalance to the Indo-Pacific. This is not only in Europe’s or America’s interest — U.S. Indo-Pacific allies have a strategic stake in Washington’s success in Europe too.
Become a Member
Luis Simón is director of the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance, and director of the Brussels office of the Elcano Royal Institute.
Image: President of Ukraine
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Luis Simón · December 16, 2022
3. ‘Wiped out’: War in Ukraine has decimated a once feared Russian brigade
Please go to the link for proper formatting and to view the graphics and photos.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/16/russia-200th-brigade-decimated-ukraine/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere_special_report&location=alert
‘Wiped out’: War in Ukraine has decimated a once feared Russian brigade
By Greg Miller, Mary Ilyushina, Catherine Belton, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Paul Sonne
December 16, 2022 at 1:00 a.m. EST
The Washington Post · by Greg Miller · December 16, 2022
Europe
The bloody fate of the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade is emblematic of Vladimir Putin’s derailed invasion plans
December 16, 2022 at 1:00 a.m. EST
HELSINKI — Nuclear-armed submarines slip in and out of the frigid waters along the coast of Russia’s Kola Peninsula at the northern edge of Europe. Missiles capable of destroying cities are stored by the dozens in bunkers burrowed into the inland hills.
Since the Cold War, this Arctic arsenal has been protected by a combat unit considered one of Russia’s most formidable — the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade — until it sent its best fighters and weapons to Ukraine this year and was effectively destroyed.
The 200th was among the first units to plunge into Ukraine on Feb. 24, as part of a fearsome assault on the city of Kharkiv. By May, the unit was staggering back across the Russian border desperate to regroup, according to internal brigade documents reviewed by The Washington Post and to previously undisclosed details provided by Ukrainian and Western military and intelligence officials.
A document detailing a mid-war inventory of its ranks shows that by late May, fewer than 900 soldiers were left in two battalion tactical groups that, according to Western officials, had departed the brigade’s garrison in Russia with more than 1,400. The brigade’s commander was badly wounded. And some of those still being counted as part of the unit were listed as hospitalized, missing or “refuseniks” unwilling to fight, according to the document, part of a trove of internal Russian military files obtained by Ukraine’s security services and provided to The Post.
The brigade’s collapse in part reflects the difficulty of its assignment in the war and the valiant performance of Ukraine’s military. But a closer examination of the 200th shows that its fate was also shaped by many of the same forces that derailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion plans — endemic corruption, strategic miscalculations and a Kremlin failure to grasp the true capabilities of its own military or those of its adversary.
After months of ceding territory and losing thousands of troops, Putin is now trying to salvage his grandiose aims with an entire force that resembles the 200th: badly depleted, significantly demoralized, and backfilled with inexperienced conscripts.
This reconstruction of the brigade’s decimation is based on the document trove, interviews with members of the unit and their families, as well as accounts from officers in Ukraine’s military units that faced the 200th in battle. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence or, in the case of Russian soldiers, to maintain their own security. The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
The record reveals a brigade in crisis, according to officials and experts who examined the documents at The Post’s request.
“They are barely at 60 percent strength, being forced to rely on reinforcements that aren’t near enough,” Pekka Toveri, former director of Finland’s defense intelligence service, said in an interview. “You have guys who are refusing to fight, guys who are missing. It all tells us that for Russia the war has gone terribly wrong.”
The war continued to get worse for the 200th.
The unit’s commander sustained such severe head injuries in a strike that he was left vomiting, disoriented and unable to remember battlefield events, and would soon have to be hospitalized, the internal brigade documents show. Many of the unit’s most potent weapons, including mobile rocket launchers and tanks, were either destroyed or captured.
In the months since the May inventory, the brigade has sustained further losses in engagements including a July firefight in the northeastern village of Hrakove, and it was among the Russian forces routed in Ukraine’s September offensive to recapture large parts of the Kharkiv region.
All the while, the brigade was being degraded from within. The skilled troops and professional officers sent into battle at the start of the war with state-of-the-art T-80BVM tanks have given way to an assemblage of poorly trained conscripts pressed into service with paltry or outdated gear.
Some of the brigade’s own soldiers described its condition as dire.
“The unit is in a state of decay,” said a soldier now serving in the 200th after being drafted under mobilization orders that Putin issued in September. He and others were initially issued “painted helmets from 1941 and vests without plates,” he said in an interview with The Post this month. “They are not even training us. … They just tell you, ‘You are a shooter now. Here you go, here is a machine gun.’”
In a war that has been disastrous for much of Russia’s military, the dismemberment of the 200th stands out. It entered the conflict with better training, newer equipment and more experience — including prior combat missions in Ukraine — than most other units. Now, given the magnitude of its losses, one European military official said, it “cannot be considered a fighting force.”
‘There will be shooting’
In peacetime, the 200th is garrisoned at spartan bases that lie inside the Arctic Circle, less than 10 miles from Russia’s border with Norway. The location in the municipality of Pechenga, northwest of Murmansk, underscores its mission: to serve as a wedge between the NATO powers to the west and the Barents Sea bases of Russia’s Northern Fleet.
The ports, which served as a point of departure for the fictional submarine in “The Hunt for Red October,” have existential significance in Russian strategic doctrine. The Northern Fleet forms the core of Russia’s “second strike” nuclear capability, meaning that its subs are expected to maneuver into the Atlantic and unleash a final, cataclysmic barrage if the United States manages to knock out Russia’s land-based missile silos.
The 200th is part of an interlocking system of defenses for the fleet and its bases, one that also relies on their remote location, layers of perimeter security and additional units on the Kola Peninsula.
Despite the stakes of this Arctic assignment, the 200th has repeatedly been tapped by the Kremlin for priority missions. Officers were sent to Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad maintain his grip on power and, according to Ukrainian officials and a report by the investigative outlet Bellingcat, the unit was clandestinely involved in Russia’s 2014 attempt to seize territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
In January of this year, two heavily armed battalion tactical groups from the 200th began boarding trains for the Ukraine border. Images online show flatbed rail cars carrying tanks across a snow-swept landscape and soldiers playing cards in packed passenger cabins.
The troops, like others in the invading force, were led to believe they were deploying to take part in drills, according to Ukrainian officials citing accounts of captured 200th soldiers. Only at 3 a.m. on Feb. 24 were they told, “There will be shooting,” an official said.
A convoy of about 100 brigade vehicles began streaming across the border that morning. Photos taken by civilians show one of the unit’s tanks being used to set up a roadblock on the northern outskirts of Kharkiv — an attempt to impose order that soon proved futile.
By day’s end, multiple units of the 200th had been ambushed or attacked, dozens of soldiers killed or wounded, and equipment including tanks and “Grad” mobile rocket launchers destroyed or abandoned on roadsides, according to Ukrainian and Western accounts.
Reported locations of the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade this year
Pechenga
Kursk
FIN.
SWE.
Moscow
January
Deploys from Pechenga to Kursk
for “combat drills,” a trip of
roughly 1,200 miles by train.
Detail
Kyiv
February
Moves closer to Ukraine’s border
and takes part in the assault
on Kharkiv from Malinovka.
The 200th, based in Pechenga near the border
with Norway, is tasked with protecting ports inside
the Arctic Circle on the Kola Peninsula that are home
to Russia's Northern Fleet nuclear-armed submarines.
May-July
Withdraws from Ukraine
to regroup in Valyuki.
A “mixed volunteer” force
is formed in Pechenga and
sent to replenish brigade
after heavy losses.
Belgorod
RUSSIA
UKRAINE
25 MILES
25 MILES
25 MILES
KHARKIV
Kharkiv
LUHANSK
September
200th units routed in Kupiansk as
Ukrainian forces retake the Kharkiv
region. Remnants of the 200th are
redeployed to Luhansk.
October
200th combat position
in Arapivka, Luhansk.
The 200th, based in Pechenga near the border with
Norway, is tasked with protecting ports inside
the Arctic Circle on the Kola Peninsula that are home
to Russia’s Northern Fleet nuclear-armed submarines.
Pechenga
FIN.
SWE.
Moscow
Detail
Kyiv
Reported locations of the 200th Separate
Motor Rifle Brigade this year
January
Kursk
Voronezh
RUSSIA
Stary
Oskol
February
50 MILES
May-July
Belgorod
UKR.
Kharkiv
October
KHARKIV
LUHANSK
September
January
Deploys from Pechenga to Kursk for “combat drills,”
a trip of roughly 1,200 miles by train.
February
Moves closer to Ukraine’s border and takes part
in the assault on Kharkiv from Malinovka.
May-July
Withdraws from Ukraine to regroup in Valyuki.
A “mixed volunteer” force is formed in Pechenga and
sent to replenish brigade after heavy losses.
September
200th units routed in Kupiansk as Ukrainian forces
retake the Kharkiv region. Remnants of the 200th
are redeployed to Luhansk.
October
200th combat position in Arapivka, Luhansk.
The 200th, based in Pechenga near the
border with Norway, is tasked with
protecting ports inside the Arctic Circle
on the Kola Peninsula that are home
to Russia’s Northern Fleet nuclear-
armed submarines.
Pechenga
FIN.
SWE.
Moscow
Detail
Kyiv
Reported locations of the 200th
Separate Motor Rifle Brigade this year
January
Kursk
RUSSIA
Stary
Oskol
February
40 MILES
Belgorod
May-July
UKR.
Kharkiv
KHARKIV
October
September
LUHANSK
January
Deploys from Pechenga to Kursk for “combat
drills,” a trip of roughly 1,200 miles by train.
February
Moves closer to Ukraine’s border and takes
part in the assault on Kharkiv from Malinovka.
May-July
Withdraws from Ukraine to regroup in Valyuki.
A “mixed volunteer” force is formed in
Pechenga and sent to replenish brigade after
heavy losses.
September
200th units routed in Kupiansk as Ukrainian
forces retake the Kharkiv region. Remnants
of the 200th are redeployed to Luhansk.
October
200th combat position in Arapivka, Luhansk.
The devastation was due in part to the 200th’s drawing one of the most difficult tasks of the invasion. “The front they were assigned proved to be well defended with very motivated Ukrainians,” a senior European intelligence official said.
The Ukrainian war plan was organized above all around protecting Kyiv, the country’s capital, but it also called for multiple armored units, including the 92nd Mechanized Brigade, to focus their firepower on defending Ukraine’s second-largest city — Kharkiv.
The punishment inflicted on the 200th in those early battles and dozens more that followed remain a point of martial pride for senior Ukrainian officers. “What’s there to know about them?” Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, who later commanded the Kharkiv offensive, said recently in an interview when asked about the 200th. “They run away very well.”
The brigade was also hobbled by problems that plagued other Russian units. It was low on food and fuel after consuming or selling critical stores in the weeks leading up to the invasion, officials said. Putin’s decision to keep even senior advisers in the dark left commanders scant time to prepare troops, let alone coordinate attack plans with other units.
Stunned by Ukraine’s resistance, the 200th spent the ensuing weeks fending off further attacks while digging into defensive positions north of Kharkiv, officials said. It was during this stretch that the brigade commander, Col. Denis Kurilo, 44, was severely injured in a strike that Western officials said obliterated his vehicle. Ukrainian officials initially reported that the strike occurred in late March and that Kurilo had been killed. But internal brigade records refer to a “combat injury dated April 22” that ultimately required him to be hospitalized.
Only hints of the carnage were made public back at brigade headquarters. In mid-March, the governor of Russia’s Murmansk region, which encompasses the 200th’s garrison, announced online that three soldiers and one officer had been killed in Ukraine, calling them “real heroes.”
But these were only a small fraction of the true casualties.
The internal brigade records include a detailed count of surviving personnel in May after they had retreated across the Russian border into the Belgorod region. The authenticity of the documents was confirmed by Western security officials.
One page includes a table that lists 892 servicemen still “present” and attached to the two battalion tactical groups that had deployed from Pechenga in the run-up to the war. Officials with European security services that closely monitor the 200th said those two units had started out with a combined 1,400 to 1,600 soldiers.
One official described the damage that such losses would have done to the unit’s effectiveness and morale as “catastrophic.”
Among those remaining, the table lists 21 as hospitalized, six as missing and nine as “refuseniks.” It also shows that the brigade was awaiting 138 reinforcements, though it does not indicate their training or background.
Wording at the top of the document indicates that it was to be approved on May 28 by Kurilo, suggesting that he was still with the unit despite his recent injury. A medical file in the trove, however, indicates that he was suffering severe symptoms from a “craniocerebral injury,” including nausea, vomiting, memory loss and “short-term disorientation.” It says he left the unit on July 11 to be treated at Burdenko military hospital in Moscow and was released in late August. The medical file also says his duties were temporarily assigned to another officer.
Kurilo, whose passport and military résumé also appear in the trove, could not be reached for comment. On Wednesday, a woman identifying herself as his wife answered a number associated with Kurilo. She said he had not served with the 200th for about half a year, a period that would correspond with the start of his hospitalization. She said he has since been transferred to another military unit and is unreachable.
The avatar for Kurilo’s WhatsApp account is a “Z” sign used by Russian forces in Ukraine, along with Russian words meaning “for victory.”
For all the seeming exactitude of the brigade’s roll call record, certain categories are conspicuously missing. It does not say how many soldiers had initially been part of the two battalion tactical groups, and makes no mention of those wounded or killed to that point in combat.
Toveri, the former Finland intelligence chief, said the record appears to represent an effort by commanders to take stock of their force without accounting for the causes of its attrition.
“They just did new bookkeeping,” Toveri said, adding that doing so would be consistent with a Russian military culture seen as more calloused than its Western counterparts about casualties. “They had been at war for three months and don’t mention any killed in action,” Toveri said. “Let bygones be bygones.”
‘They just bled to death’
The losses created a two-front crisis for the 200th: It was scrambling to find reinforcements back in Murmansk, even as the broken battalions in Belgorod were being ordered to return to Ukraine.
In a sign of growing desperation, the brigade in June began forming what it called a “mixed volunteer battalion” including sailors pulled off Northern Fleet ships, logistics specialists from depots and others often coerced into action despite having little or no experience or training in ground combat, according to Western officials.
The battalion remnants in Belgorod tentatively crossed back into Ukraine in late spring and took positions hugging the Russia border.
Ukrainian military officials described the returning 200th force, though degraded, as more professional than the Russian-backed separatists they had previously faced outside Kharkiv.
The 200th soldiers were less prone to talking on open phone lines, brought far greater firepower and proved adept at targeting, said Taras Shevchenko, commander of an artillery and reconnaissance unit in Ukraine’s 127th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade.
In early June, he said, his unit encountered the 200th in the village of Velyki Prokhody, north of Kharkiv. The Ukrainians were caught off guard by a flurry of strikes, including one that tore off the third floor of a building being used as a base of operations, Shevchenko said, leaving him with a concussion.
After a series of inconclusive exchanges, Shevchenko said, he convinced Ukrainian artillery units to hold their fire for several days, hoping to create the impression they were low on ammunition as quadcopter drones were used to get a clearer fix on Russian positions.
Amid the lull, surveillance images showed 200th troops letting down their guard.
“Nothing was attacking them, so they could safely sunbathe,” Shevchenko said. “They took outdoor showers. They were running around without body armor, without helmets.”
Ukrainian forces took advantage by unleashing a 40-minute barrage involving mortars, tanks and Soviet-era artillery pieces, then launched a follow-on attack the next day after nightfall.
“They didn’t know where to run,” Shevchenko said. After the village was liberated, he said, he spoke with residents who estimated that about 100 Russian troops had died as a result of the two-day engagement, though there are no official numbers. He said the strikes dismantled vehicles that could have evacuated the wounded. “The locals said that many died during the night,” Shevchenko said. “They just bled to death, because those who were injured — they couldn’t evacuate them.”
‘Unauthorized abandonment of military unit’
In that one sequence, the 200th had shown that it could be both lethally effective and fatally undisciplined. The erratic performance is characteristic of a unit that Western security officials describe as one of Russia’s higher-performing brigades but nevertheless plagued by systemic rot and dysfunction.
Attached to the elite Northern Fleet, 200th troops get special gear and training for Arctic conditions and are often first in line for Russia’s most advanced equipment. In 2017, the brigade was the first in Russia’s armed services to receive new T-80BVM tanks rolling off assembly lines.
And yet Westerners who ventured to Pechenga before Russia restricted travel describe the base as a grim garrison where officers neglected troops’ morale and soldiers could seem clueless about the brigade’s identity and mission.
Thomas Nilsen, editor of the Barents Observer — a Norwegian news site that closely follows the 200th — described an encounter several years ago with soldiers at a bar near the base who were oblivious to their proximity to NATO, until he pulled up a map on his phone to show them.
In 2020, three servicemen died — including one by suicide and another by choking on vomit — and several were injured in incidents that raised concerns about brigade conditions and safety, according to an investigation by the Russian news outlet Sever.Realii. One soldier was blinded and another reportedly lost a hand while training with a miniature drone armed with high-power explosives.
That same year, a warrant officer in the 200th posted videos on social media accusing superiors of neglect and corruption. One showed scenes of squalor in apartments reserved for officers, with rusted appliances, mold creeping up walls, and piles of trash stuffed into unoccupied units.
“This is how ensigns and officers of the Russian army live!” the warrant officer, Mikhail Balenko, said on the video, describing the compound with an expletive. “The brigade commander does not even come here. He doesn’t care how his subordinates live.”
In another video, Balenko accused commanders of stealing supplies, bribing military inspectors and selling fuel meant for brigade vehicles. Balenko did not respond to attempts to reach him for comment.
The war appears to have exacerbated these problems of morale and cohesion.
Dozens of soldiers in Pechenga refused to deploy during the initial months of the invasion, according to officials from Western security services. It’s unclear what happened to them.
Ukrainian commanders described battles in which 200th soldiers wouldn’t fight or defied orders. In mid-July, a Ukrainian reconnaissance unit captured audio of a Russian tank commander in Hrakove screaming at subordinates.
“Should I show you how to kill Ukrainians? I’ll get in the tank myself,” the commander shouted, shortly before the tank was destroyed by a Javelin missile, according to Oleksandr, a reconnaissance scout in Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, who spoke on the condition that his surname not be published to maintain his security.
By the end of that battle, dozens of Russian troops had been killed or wounded and 12 tanks had been destroyed, Oleksandr said, adding that additional intercepts indicated that numerous soldiers had at one point or another refused to use their weapons.
The brigade documents also hint at inner turmoil. One set of files lists criminal referrals made to Russian military prosecutors regarding four 200th soldiers — a senior lieutenant, two corporals and a private.
Two were accused of the “illegal sale of explosives,” and two others of “unauthorized abandonment of military unit.” The documents indicate that prosecutors declined to proceed with charges against the soldiers, though no reasons are cited. The soldiers’ surnames appear in the records, but attempts to reach them were unsuccessful.
Accurate casualty counts for the 200th remain elusive. No figures have been released by the brigade, and only a handful of soldier deaths have been acknowledged in public statements from the Murmansk government.
Still, there have been other clues to the war’s toll on military families in Murmansk. In late August, the regional legislature passed a law providing free meals to schoolchildren whose parents were serving in Ukraine or had been killed or wounded, and announced that 1,274 students qualified.
‘It will take years to rebuild’
The 200th’s involvement in the siege of Kharkiv concluded in September when it was routed near Kupiansk in the Ukrainian offensive, said Col. Pavlo Fedosenko, commander of Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, the unit that delivered the blow and has faced off against the 200th more than any other.
Afterward, only fragments of a single battalion were left, composed of a hodgepodge of soldiers that bore little resemblance to the skilled units that had set out for Ukraine seven months earlier, Fedosenko said.
Most of the unit’s officers had been killed or injured, Fedosenko said, and about 70 percent of its equipment — including about 32 tanks and 100 vehicles — had been destroyed or captured.
“Nothing of that brigade is left,” he said in a recent interview with The Post. “It’s completely wiped out.”
Western security officials provided similar assessments. Because so many of its contract soldiers and senior members of its officer cadre were lost, “it will take years to rebuild the 200th,” said a senior European intelligence official.
On Sept. 17, Kurilo left command of the brigade to become deputy chief of another motor rifle division, according to a copy of an order by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that was in the document trove.
Remnants of the 200th later surfaced in the Luhansk region, where intercepted communications provided to The Post by a Ukrainian military official showed Russian officers raging about insubordination. In one exchange, a regimental commander berates a subordinate over soldiers abandoning their positions.
“I am f-----g tired after one and a half months of these people,” the commander said. He goes on to describe platoons melting away and his efforts to drag soldiers back into battle. In one case, “there were 30 people leaving their positions, and now it is f-----g over 60, 75, maybe the entire platoon,” he said. After listing similar problems in other units, he said, “What the f--- are you doing? Are you going to assemble the battalion or not?”
At least 20 of the 200th’s troops were wounded in recent skirmishes in Luhansk, the Ukrainian intelligence official said. A fact sheet provided by the official lists the wounded soldiers’ names and birth dates; their ages range from the low 20s to the early 50s.
Contacted by The Post, one of those soldiers acknowledged that he was at home recuperating, but declined to discuss his deployment or injuries in detail. He described himself as “a civilian person. I have a family, kids. I never even had a thought about needing to go fight” before being swept up by Putin’s mobilization.
“When I was in the hospital, there were guys from Moscow, just simple guys, some worked in car repairs or some other places,” he said. “They were just pulled out of their civilian lives and sent to ‘take villages.’” Many were reassured that “we are going to be in the rear, not on the front line,” he said. “But it turned out to be the opposite.”
The soldier, who could face prison if caught speaking about the war, was one of a tattered group of about 500 conscripts who were sent to Ukraine in October as part of yet another attempt to replenish the 200th there, according to Western security officials. The conscripts’ departure from the Kola Peninsula capped a remarkable hollowing out of a unit that is supposed to defend Russia’s border with Norway, a NATO country, and with Finland, now seeking to join the alliance.
In August and September, Russia moved a squadron of bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons to an air base near Finland, according to satellite images and a report in the Israeli press. Western officials said they interpreted that as a sign Russia is likely to rely more than ever on nuclear deterrence in the Kola Peninsula given the reduced state of the 200th and other units.
“In the Murmansk region we now have our borders bare,” the wounded soldier said. “They are all empty now. No one is left there.”
Miller reported from Helsinki, Oslo and London; Ilyushina from Riga, Latvia; Belton from London; Khurshudyan from Kharkiv and Kyiv; and Sonne from Washington. Serhiy Morgunov in Kyiv contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by Greg Miller · December 16, 2022
4. DOD’s Irregular Warfare Center: Building Partnerships by Opening Up the Tent
As we have noted we again have a historic opportunity to get this right.
We need a commitment by all to ensure "a mastery of irregular warfare comparable to that which we possess in conventional combat" and "support the institutionalization of irregular warfare as a core competency of the Department of Defense." Those should be the "prime directives" everyone should sign for and contribute to.
What we need to determine is who in DOD and the National Security community will champion this effort? Without a champion(s) this effort will end up like many past efforts.
How many people remember the Army's Irregular Warfare Center (now "mission complete)?
Army Irregular Warfare Center (AIWC) completes mission
https://www.army.mil/article/128670/army_irregular_warfare_center_aiwc_completes_mission
Irregular warfare center to close Oct. 1
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2014/09/01/irregular-warfare-center-to-close-oct-1/
We hardly institutionalized IW as a core competency within the service that, according to the new FM 3-0, conducts IW more than traditional conventional military operations.
DOD’s Irregular Warfare Center: Building Partnerships by Opening Up the Tent – Irregular Warfare Center
irregularwarfarecenter.org
December 13, 2022
DOD’s Irregular Warfare Center: Building Partnerships by Opening Up the Tent
Dr Dennis Walters
IWC Acting Director
In the three short months since the Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) “opened its doors,” to begin addressing the implications of “struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over relevant populations,” it has been using its broad range of authorities to reach out and begin creating partnerships and collaborations to ensure it fully addresses strategic competition below the threshold of military conflict. Those non-military challenges to international stability and security are political, economic, legal, informational, cyber, sociological, and so much more; areas where the Department of Defense knows it must reach out to partners with the knowledge, experience, and philosophies that are outside its core capabilities.
In the process of designing what is now a unique functional Center alongside the DOD’s established regional centers, Congress gave the IWC the authority to “enter into partnerships and resource agreements with academic institutions.” So, while the IWC began with already close relationships with National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Joint Special Operations University, the team helping to stand up the IWC added its existing relationships to and experiences with civilian universities, both in the US and internationally, as well as bringing key people onto the team who maintain affiliations with civilian colleges and universities. That team is now beginning to invite civilian universities having respected and far-reaching programs addressing irregular activities and strategic competition to participate in the IWC’s future programs.
Congress’s initial guidance to place the IWC alongside the regional centers and under Defense Security Cooperation Agency in Washington, DC, turned out to be a brilliant stroke because of the broad and innovative connections it empowered. The first, easy, step was to create a venue within DOD for the military services’ organizations and educational institutions that were already addressing irregular warfare to better collaborate with U.S. Special Operations Command, the Joint Staff, and DOD agencies. At the same time, the IWC team began reaching out to other government agencies, international partners, and the regional centers to explore near-term and future areas for interaction and collaboration. In the spirit of building while doing, the IWC should soon be sharing its plan to bring the aforementioned academic institutions together with others in the IWC community of interest to create a comprehensive research, education, and outreach plan that will capitalize on the strengths each has to offer. That plan will provide a means for partners and stakeholders from across academia, the interagency, non-governmental institutions, and elsewhere to operationalize their aspirations. The IWC is raising the “big tent” that Congress envisioned from the start.
When the IWC reaches its full operational capability – within about nine months – it will have created a broad consortium that will not be defined by any one participating agency, military service, or institution. That broad and inclusive ethos, intentionally bringing together valued, but often-overlooked, partners that are addressing irregular security challenges, will be the IWC’s “superpower.” Once the IWC reaches full capability, the nation and our broad array of partners will finally have an open-minded and inclusive forum where the communities of interest, scholarship, and practice may explore and create opportunities for engagement, collaboration, and understanding, free from parochial concerns – something that has never existed in the US.
The confident sense of optimism that pervades is not without basis. Yes, the IWC is only three months old. The staff and faculty that has been assembled, however, are working tirelessly to create relationships, processes, and products that will exceed Congress’s vision and expectations. It is no secret that the irregular threats to international stability and security are real, dynamic, and growing. By creating favorable opportunities for working closely with those civilian academic institutions who bring unique perspectives regarding the irregular threats facing the nation, the IWC will become a leading force for global security and stability. We welcome all into that “big tent,” that is, the consortium of scholars, statesmen, thinkers, and practitioners able, willing, and ready to address the challenges of irregular competition.
Download a PDF of this publication by clicking the icon to the left.
irregularwarfarecenter.org
5. Wargame Maritime COIN
Does the "gray zone" equal COIN? Asking for a friend.
Wargame Maritime COIN
By Lesley Wilhelm
December 2022 Proceedings Vol. 148/12/1,438
usni.org · December 1, 2022
Wargaming the “gray zone” is inherently challenging. Because nearly all wargame frameworks are predicated on kinetic interaction, few lend themselves to competitive interactions short of war in which the goal is to “win without fighting” through deterrence and assurance of allies and partners. Even fewer game systems address how new technologies affect competition. Consequently, insufficient attention has been paid to gaming possible ways of countering China’s harassment of Southeast Asian allies and partners below the threshold of violence.
The Wargame for Innovation and Frontline Improvisation (WIFI) seeks to fill this gap, offering a gaming forum to explore ways of countering malign aggression in competition short of conflict. WIFI brings together players from active-duty and science and technology professions to synthesize technology and operational concepts geared specifically to the maritime gray zone.
WIFI draws inspiration from retired Marine Corps Colonel Art Corbett, one of the principal authors of expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO) and related concepts, who encouraged the Navy and Marine Corps to seek forms of disruptive rather than sustaining innovation to regain the strategic initiative across the competition continuum. The predominant incremental, sustaining approach relies on marginal refinements of the current inventory of large, exquisite, and expensive platforms, despite their insufficient numbers and availability, while neglecting the intermediate force capabilities needed for success in the gray zone. This creates a form of cultural confirmation bias in competition phase wargames when players try to shoehorn familiar but ill-adapted tactics such as freedom of navigation operations and joint warfighting exercises to meet gray-zone challenges.
Marines training in an austere, mountain environment. U.S. Marine Corps (Skyler M. Harris)
Gaming New Approaches
In contrast, Corbett sought to open new strategic opportunities to U.S. forces by supplementing or replacing large, brittle platforms with smaller, more agile, risk-worthy ones, leveraging emerging technology and new concepts such as EABO for their employment.1 In keeping with Corbett’s vision, WIFI encourages players to break from the tyranny of existing force structures and operational practices and apply design thinking to deter adversary aggression and assure allies and partners of U.S. commitment to the rule of international law.2
WIFI employs the maritime counterinsurgency theory of victory to help players familiarize themselves with the strategic logic of competition campaigns. Recontextualizing the nature of the challenge as an insurgency can shift how policymakers and commanders think about how U.S. forces can seek to win—and not just wait—in competition. Under the maritime counterinsurgency concept, the confidence of local civilian mariners in their ability to exercise their international legal rights in day-to-day operations is the primary factor in “who will ultimately confer victory in the battle between the competing legal regimes.”3 This framework helps players assess whether proposed technology options adequately deter adversaries and assure partners. Players must develop technology solutions that would achieve competition objectives without escalating to conflict.
Gray-zone wargame designers must choose how they will account for political and geopolitical realities, as these may dictate what success looks like to a much greater extent than in analyses of lethal engagements. For example, many games constrain players by accepting current U.S. policy for using proposed technologies or forces against adversaries short of war. Conversely, these games often discount or make unrealistic assumptions about uncomfortable or inconvenient political realities in allied and partner nations to avoid constraints on U.S. operational freedom of action.
WIFI takes a different approach. Game designers encourage players to push the boundaries in exploring how potential changes to authorities across the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Coast Guard could creatively enable a more effective deterrence posture. Under this mode of thinking, U.S. and internal DoD policy decisions are a variable that can be informed and influenced by developing a wider menu of technology and operational options.4 Policy-makers are invited to help remove existing policy barriers or encourage players to consider alternatives.
In addition, WIFI embraces, rather than papers over, the political and geopolitical complexities of the local operational theater in scenario development and gameplay. WIFI game scenarios are developed with extensive inputs from a diverse body of geopolitical experts, and players are educated about the context of the scenario to recognize potential limitations or strategic opportunities. For the WIFI pilot in July 2021, this process yielded a 2025 scenario that postulated an invitation from the Philippines to increase rotational U.S. forces to help counter Chinese coercion of Philippine civilian fishermen and resource extractors. A key driver was the Philippines’ real-world impending energy crisis when the Malampaya gas field dries up this decade. This forced players to work within a set of constraints similar to those found in the geopolitical environment today (rather than imagine unlikely political upheavals that would conveniently open previously neutral countries to U.S. presence) and devise solutions using technologies and forces that either already exist or are in advanced states of development and could be fielded on a short timeline.
In execution, the WIFI pilot saw Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard operators and technologists from the naval research enterprise develop innovative concepts for U.S. forces to use technologies and transfer them to Philippine partners as part of a combined maritime counterinsurgency campaign. Two teams proposed deploying combined flotillas of manned and unmanned vessels equipped with a range of intermediate force capabilities to corrode, foul, interfere with, or annoy the Chinese Maritime Militia. This approach allowed U.S. forces to impose time, material, and morale costs without resorting to more escalatory kinetic tools.
A third team sought to empower the large numbers of Philippine civilian mariners plying the South China Sea every day to act as sensors and communications nodes, deploying small, modular Starlink-enabled sensor and communications packages on a variety of civilian vessels. This would enable civilians to call for help from U.S. and Philippine forces and backhaul location-tagged video and imagery to a Philippine-owned, U.S.-supported unclassified data center for strategic messaging to impose reputational costs on Chinese forces.5
Each of the teams’ proposed ideas were assessed as actionable and affordable, using existing or maturing technologies rather than reaching for aspirational technical revolutions. The game’s adjudication cell, composed of resource sponsors and subject matter experts on key technologies, Southeast Asian politics, and Chinese maritime strategy, viewed the teams’ proposals as disruptive to the adversary’s maritime insurgency strategy in ways that most current U.S. operations are not. In feedback, players said they came away with a better appreciation of the situation and why a maritime counterinsurgency strategy could achieve objectives in the gray zone without escalating to conflict.
WIFI offers a model for other efforts seeking to game gray-zone campaigning and foster technological and operational innovations in support of integrated deterrence. The next iteration of WIFI, this month, will refine this process and engage more key stakeholders. Disruptive innovation is essential to shaping the character of competition with China so U.S. forces can regain the strategic initiative.
usni.org · December 1, 2022
6. Asian States Are Worried the U.S. Is a Perennially Distracted Superpower
Conclusion:
To its credit, the Biden administration appears to recognize the need to avoid a maximalist, zero-sum China policy and has not adopted a with-us-or-against-us mentality that would alienate allies. In the latest National Security Strategy report, the administration claims to “prioritize maintaining an enduring competitive edge over [China] while constraining a still profoundly dangerous Russia.” On paper, the administration has resisted conflating the dangers posed by China and Russia. The stated U.S. intent is to constrain a dangerous Russia while merely out-competing China. In practice, D.C.’s attention is as fixed on Beijing as Moscow, even if the conflict is less immediately intense—and Asian states can read the language coming out of Washington, from senators to the FBI, as well as anyone else.
While Asian states cannot escape the reality of Sino-American rivalry, they remain wary of outright siding with the United States and the problems that come with it. They have no desire to be pushed to the front of the stage by an unreliable ally. To win and preserve the support of Pacific nations, the United States must demonstrate that it is willing to fulfill its obligations and promises, that it is able to fulfill its obligations and promises, and that it intends to concentrate attention on the Indo-Pacific over the long term.
Asian States Are Worried the U.S. Is a Perennially Distracted Superpower
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/15/asian-states-trade-war-biden-xi-jinping-china-japan-korea-vietnam-pacific-trade/?utm_source=pocket_reader
A more assertive China policy may alienate potential allies.
By Isheika Cleare, a PhD student at the University of Notre Dame.
South Korean marines take positions during a joint amphibious landing exercise with their Philippine and U.S. counterparts at a beach facing the South China Sea in San Antonio town, Zambales province.
South Korean marines take positions during a joint amphibious landing exercise with their Philippine and U.S. counterparts at a beach facing the South China Sea in San Antonio town, Zambales province, on Oct. 7. TED ALJIBE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
DECEMBER 15, 2022, 1:55 PM
When the Biden administration imposed export controls to restrict the transfer of sensitive technology to China, it signaled the United States’ final abandonment of the once-popular political theory that China’s integration into the global economy would make it freer and friendlier. Washington is proactively enacting more aggressive policies to delay China’s rise to global preeminence. But it doesn’t want to do this alone and has already reached out to allies in Europe and elsewhere. The most difficult sell, however, is likely to be to China’s neighboring states.
For Indo-Pacific states, this is a fraught request, as picking sides risks jeopardizing regional stability and economic growth. U.S. officials want Asian states to help it hold back China’s rise by withholding material support and cooperation or, even better, by actively pushing back against Chinese expansion. Most Pacific states, from Vietnam to the Philippines, want to continue to enjoy trade with China, one of their biggest economic partners, while receiving security protection, explicit or otherwise, and regional balance from the United States. This strategy allows them to maintain neutrality and avoid alienating either power. Calm coexistence and the continuance of the status quo is their best bet.
If this is the collective inclination, what level of support can the United States reasonably expect for its China policy? Because Asia is not a monolith, naturally, responses to U.S. policy shifts will vary. Yet there are some strategic concerns that cross borders and, for some of Asia’s main power players, the incentives to resist the region’s security hegemon may outweigh the call to fence in the region’s economic hegemon.
There are three factors that could cause Asian states to recoil from the United States’ preference for a more aggressive stance toward China. First, China is economically powerful. For 13 uninterrupted years, it has been the top trading partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Through the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure and manufacturing in countries throughout the region. China also imports billions of dollars in commodities and products. In 2020 alone, both Japan and South Korea earned more than $130 billion in exports to China.
The United States lacks a coherent economic response to China’s commercial power, although it tried to develop one under former President Barack Obama, when U.S. diplomats led the initiative to establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). When former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP, he weakened U.S. leverage in a region primarily composed of two types of states: “developing” states that are trying to get rich and “developed” ones that are trying to stay rich. Yet trade openness has hardly improved under President Joe Biden, who has yet to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP’s new name, or any other Asian free-trade agreement. Biden has tended to favor nonbinding “unconventional” economic arrangements that leave tariff levels untouched and do not expand market access. This is a huge turnoff for market-hungry, export-dependent states. In addition, the Pacific’s middle and minor powers view free-trade agreements as a robust tool not only for promoting free trade but also for codifying the rules that will eventually regulate trade and investment. Underestimating the profit motive and ceding agenda-setting power is a poor strategy for winning friends and influencing allies.
Second, Pacific states must keep their eyes fixed on China’s growing military power as Beijing is increasingly able to deny these countries aerial and maritime access to contested territories and seas. Take, for instance, the geographic precarity of the United States’ most stalwart Asian allies, Japan and South Korea. They are essentially maritime states, heavily dependent on access to common waterways for trade and for the import of vital resources. Hardening their China posture may pose strategic dangers now that China is the world’s largest naval power and the United States’ military advantages are in relative decline. The United States is a distant friend, while China is a geographical fact.
Yet Japan’s security concerns, like those of many other Pacific states, don’t just cut one way. The United States’ hawkish China policy largely aligns with Tokyo’s own interest in checking Beijing’s aggression. Earlier this month, Japan’s prime minister authorized an considerable increase in defense spending over the next five years, partly driven by wariness of China’s Taiwanese provocations and partly to defend its territorial claim over the disputed Senkaku Islands, known in China as the Diaoyu Islands.
From a strategic standpoint, China’s military hostility should push the Pacific’s weaker powers to join the United States’ counterbalancing initiative. Yet Pacific states have reason to worry about U.S. commitment to the region. The United States sometimes struggles to maintain strategic focus on Asia. Such inconstancy prompted Singapore’s former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, to criticize U.S. policymakers for heralding their reengagement with Asia and, thus, treating global politics as though it were a movie they could “pause” when they got distracted and simply press “play” when they were ready to reengage. Lee warned that the United States “cannot come and go” according to its whim and still expect to “substantially affect the strategic evolution of Asia.”
Three months before Biden declared that “America is back,” 15 Asia-Pacific nations went ahead and signed the world’s largest trade agreement—the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—without U.S. participation, delivering “a coup for China.” Preoccupied with the war on terror, then-U.S. President George W. Bush abandoned dealing with China and failed to reengage with the region until years after the 9/11 attacks, which became “an incredible geopolitical gift to China.” By the time then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed on a diplomatic trip to Asia “the United States is back” and ready to “[give] great importance to this region,” China’s emergence as a superpower had already drastically transformed Asia’s security and economic landscape.
The United States is a dominant power in Asia, but it is also a distracted power. The earnestness of U.S. leadership and policymaking is complicated by its competing commitments and globe-spanning interests. As the self-proclaimed “indispensable nation,” U.S. international policy has mission crept its way to encompassing the foreign and domestic policies of most nations and all regions of the world, producing whiplash and policy instability. Obama’s “pivot” to Asia emphasized strategic engagement and was welcomed as a reprieve from years of neglect. However, in 2016, Trump took the United States’ isolationist, nationalist tendencies to new lows. When his administration managed to direct and sustain focus on the Pacific, his policies and especially his personal positions evinced extreme inattention to historical precedent and strategic prudence. Arguably, during the Trump era, the United States in Asia may have devolved into something worse than a distracted power—it became an uninterested one. Now, wizened by the Trump years, many Asian leaders are observing with skepticism Biden’s attempts to undo diplomatic damage, reaffirm the United States’ security commitments and persuade others to help check China’s rise.
But Trump’s 2016 election not only shattered many preconceptions about the steadfastness of U.S. commitment, it also sowed doubts about the nation’s political system. The United States’ dysfunctional response to COVID-19, along with shocking scenes of police brutality and electoral chaos, pushed questions of institutional competency and democratic bona fides to the fore. Such concerns speak not to the United States’ resolve, but to its ability. A house divided against itself cannot stand up to China. Under such conditions, it makes little strategic sense for Asian states to risk their neighbor’s wrath in support of a distracted power with a spotty record of fidelity. Russia’s war in Ukraine has done much to patch up the United States’ image in Europe and showcase its military and economic power. Nevertheless, Asian states remain nervous about stirring up trouble in their own backyard.
To its credit, the Biden administration appears to recognize the need to avoid a maximalist, zero-sum China policy and has not adopted a with-us-or-against-us mentality that would alienate allies. In the latest National Security Strategy report, the administration claims to “prioritize maintaining an enduring competitive edge over [China] while constraining a still profoundly dangerous Russia.” On paper, the administration has resisted conflating the dangers posed by China and Russia. The stated U.S. intent is to constrain a dangerous Russia while merely out-competing China. In practice, D.C.’s attention is as fixed on Beijing as Moscow, even if the conflict is less immediately intense—and Asian states can read the language coming out of Washington, from senators to the FBI, as well as anyone else.
While Asian states cannot escape the reality of Sino-American rivalry, they remain wary of outright siding with the United States and the problems that come with it. They have no desire to be pushed to the front of the stage by an unreliable ally. To win and preserve the support of Pacific nations, the United States must demonstrate that it is willing to fulfill its obligations and promises, that it is able to fulfill its obligations and promises, and that it intends to concentrate attention on the Indo-Pacific over the long term.
Isheika Cleare is a PhD student at the University of Notre Dame.
7. Women in Special Operations: Improvements to Policy, Data, and Assessments Needed to Better Understand and Address Career Barriers
Please go to the link for properformating and graphics: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105168
Women in Special Operations: Improvements to Policy, Data, and Assessments Needed to Better Understand and Address Career Barriers
GAO-23-105168
Published: Dec 15, 2022. Publicly Released: Dec 15, 2022.
gao.gov
Fast Facts
Can gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and other barriers explain why women make up less than 10% of special operations forces?
U.S. Special Operations Command may not have the information needed to fully assess barriers affecting women's careers in the command. For example, the command doesn't have full access to timely, complete data on its assigned personnel, including incidents of discrimination, harassment, and sexual assault. Collaborating with the military services to access such data and assess barriers could help identify trends or address urgent concerns of women in special operations.
Our recommendations address this and more.
Highlights
What GAO Found
The Department of Defense's (DOD) policies to prevent and respond to incidents of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are applicable department-wide. But some of the implementing service policies related to the environments in which U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) operates are inconsistent with DOD policy. The military services, not SOCOM, are responsible for administering service-specific policies on these types of incidents; however, SOCOM service members conduct missions in a joint (i.e., multi-service) environment. Some of the services' policies related to incidents of gender discrimination and sexual harassment occurring in joint environments are not aligned with DOD policies. DOD policies state that, in joint environments, discrimination and harassment complaints are to be processed through the complainant's service. In contrast, Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force policies all assign this responsibility to the alleged offender's service. Without the military services revising their policies for joint environments to help ensure alignment with DOD policies, such cases may be processed inconsistently across DOD.
SOCOM has limited access to timely, accurate, and complete data on its personnel, including incidents of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. While SOCOM has taken some steps to address its data access limitations, the department has not established a collaborative process to ensure SOCOM has access to data maintained in various Office of the Secretary of Defense and military service databases. Without such a process to facilitate SOCOM's access to needed data, SOCOM leadership will not be positioned to identify trends or address urgent concerns.
SOCOM has taken some steps to identify and address barriers, such as gender discrimination and pregnancy-related policies, that may affect women's careers in U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF).
SOCOM-Identified Barriers to Women Serving in U.S. Special Operations Forces
However, DOD has yet to complete a comprehensive evaluation of barriers to women or developed a plan of action for addressing identified barriers. In addition, per a 2016 DOD requirement, SOCOM and the military departments are to conduct annual assessments on the full integration of women into previously closed positions. DOD has not, however, communicated which office has oversight responsibility for the assessments and their intended use is unclear. Without taking action to address these issues, DOD and Congress may be limited in their efforts to understand and address barriers to women in SOF.
Why GAO Did This Study
Women have historically held critical roles in the military. However, women make up less than 10 percent of SOCOM service members, compared with about 19 percent DOD-wide. SOCOM leaders have acknowledged existing issues of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and assault, and career impediments, and the need to do more.
GAO was asked to review the incidence of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and DOD's efforts to assess potential barriers to women in SOF. This report examines, among other issues, the extent to which (1) DOD has developed policies to prevent and respond to such incidents involving SOCOM service members, (2) SOCOM has access to data on these incidents, and (3) DOD and SOCOM have identified and addressed barriers that may impact the careers of women in SOF. GAO reviewed policies; interviewed DOD, SOCOM, and service officials; interviewed officials at five SOF headquarters installations; and interviewed 51 women currently or formerly serving in SOF.
Recommendations
GAO is making eight recommendations, including that the military services revise their policies for incidents in joint environments to align with DOD policy, DOD establish a collaborative process for SOCOM to access data, DOD clarify oversight and use of the annual assessments, and DOD complete a comprehensive analysis of barriers to women in SOF. DOD concurred with all eight. DOD also commented on aspects of the scope, as discussed in the report.
Recommendations for Executive Action
Agency Affected Recommendation Status Department of the Army The Secretary of the Army should revise Army policy for prohibited discrimination—specifically, provisions related to such incidents occurring in joint environments—to ensure that the Army policy aligns with DOD policy. (Recommendation 1)
Open <label class="status-code-label">Open</label><p class="status-code-description"><p> Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned.</p></p>
Department of the Navy The Secretary of the Navy should ensure that the Commandant of the Marine Corps revises Marine Corps policy for prohibited discrimination and harassment—specifically, provisions related to such incidents occurring in joint environments—to ensure that the Marine Corps policy aligns with DOD policy. (Recommendation 2)
Open <label class="status-code-label">Open</label><p class="status-code-description"><p> Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned.</p></p>
Department of the Air Force The Secretary of the Air Force should revise Department of the Air Force policy for prohibited discrimination and harassment—specifically, provisions related to such incidents occurring in joint environments—to ensure that the Department of the Air Force policy aligns with DOD policy. (Recommendation 3)
Open <label class="status-code-label">Open</label><p class="status-code-description"><p> Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned.</p></p>
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, in coordination with the Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command; the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness; and the Secretaries of the military departments, establishes a collaborative process for the timely sharing of accurate and complete data on SOCOM personnel, including data on incidents of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. (Recommendation 4)
Open <label class="status-code-label">Open</label><p class="status-code-description"><p> Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned.</p></p>
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness clearly documents and communicates which office has responsibility for the required annual assessments regarding the full integration of women into previously closed positions. (Recommendation 5)
Open <label class="status-code-label">Open</label><p class="status-code-description"><p> Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned.</p></p>
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness establishes a consistent process for the use of the required annual assessments regarding the full integration of women into previously closed positions. The process should include a plan of action to guide efforts to address any barriers to women's service in U.S. Special Operations Forces identified in the assessments. (Recommendation 6)
Open <label class="status-code-label">Open</label><p class="status-code-description"><p> Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned.</p></p>
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, in coordination with the Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command and the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, completes a comprehensive analysis of barriers regarding women in U.S. Special Operations Forces. (Recommendation 7)
Open <label class="status-code-label">Open</label><p class="status-code-description"><p> Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned.</p></p>
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, in coordination with the Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command and the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, upon completion of a comprehensive analysis of barriers regarding women in U.S. Special Operations Forces, develops a plan of action to address any barriers or career impediments to women's service in U.S. Special Operations Forces identified in the analysis, with goals, objectives, metrics, and milestones. (Recommendation 8)
Open <label class="status-code-label">Open</label><p class="status-code-description"><p> Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned.</p></p>
gao.gov
8. Germany Shirks Its Defense Pledge, Imperiling the Asia ‘Pivot’
If we are basing our "Aisan pivot" on Germany's defense budget we are the ones making a mistake.
Germany Shirks Its Defense Pledge, Imperiling the Asia ‘Pivot’
Japan, by contrast, is rearming, alarmed by China’s aggression and America’s distraction.
By Mike Watson
Dec. 15, 2022 2:55 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-shirks-its-defense-pledge-imperiling-the-asia-pivot-military-budget-spending-japan-china-russia-beijing-11671123354?utm_source=pocket_saves
There have been growing calls in Washington foreign-policy circles for a “pivot to Asia,” a strategic shift of American military, diplomatic and economic resources away from other parts of the world and toward the Indo-Pacific. With China as the main U.S. adversary, the case for the pivot is obvious enough. But it’s a move that comes with costly trade-offs. The U.S. is a global power and has global interests. A pivot can work only if America’s allies tend to those interests in its absence.
Advocates of a pivot have hoped to shift focus to the Indo-Pacific while U.S. allies pick up the slack in Europe. Over the past year, many European states have responded appropriately to Russia’s belligerence. Eight North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies are contributing a greater share of their gross domestic products to Ukraine than the U.S. is. The British and the Eastern Europeans have especially distinguished themselves.
There are laggards, however, the major one being Germany. There was a brief moment of hope in February, when Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany “will now—year after year—invest more than 2% of our gross domestic product in our defence.” But since then Germany has fallen back into old habits. Mr. Scholz’s spokesman offered only a “cautious expectation” last week that Germany will hit its defense spending target by 2025. The buildup is kaput.
This announcement undermined any chance of a safe U.S. pivot away from Europe. For the moment, the Kremlin’s relative power is declining as the Ukrainians slog it out with the Russian military. But Russia still has formidable capabilities, and its ability to rebound from catastrophe is legendary. Without German leadership, other European nations would have a much harder time acting as a counterbalance to Russia. For now, the U.S. needs to keep a foot in Europe.
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Germany’s renege could not come at a worse time. The security situation in the Indo-Pacific is dire and growing more so. China’s military capabilities are increasing, and the U.S. is not keeping pace. Beijing is acting aggressively toward America’s regional allies. Last month Japanese and South Korean fighter jets responded to a joint patrol of Chinese and Russian bombers flying close to their air defense zones. In August Chinese missiles landed in the sea near Japan and its exercises looked to many like a dress rehearsal for a blockade of Taiwan. This week China sent its largest sortie of bombers in two years into the Taiwan Strait.
The situation is so dire that Japan is doubling its defense budget. Although a more capable Japanese military is welcome, Tokyo is rearming because it is losing confidence in its American partner. The Japanese military plans to stockpile munitions and equipment in case of a sudden emergency and acquire new technologies such as long-range missiles. Even the Buddhist Komeito Party isn’t standing in the way. There are few signs more ominous than pacifists greenlighting an arms buildup.
The U.S. must keep one foot in Europe by necessity. The only way to meet the moment in Asia is to follow Japan’s lead and launch a defense buildup of our own. The problem is that, given its current budget and weapons stock, the U.S. is hard-pressed to cover both areas. Any high-demand systems that it sends to Ukraine, such as the Patriot missile, can’t protect locations in the Indo-Pacific. While extra F-35 fighter squadrons are moving to Europe to bolster NATO, the permanent fighters in Okinawa are being replaced with a rotational force. This risks creating gaps in American fighter coverage in a volatile part of the world, calling our regional leadership into question.
Though Congress just authorized an increase in the defense budget, it barely keeps pace with inflation and leaves the U.S. military stretched too thin. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger recently warned that no one should “be comfortable with where we are or the rate at which we’re moving” in the Indo-Pacific. As the region destabilizes, the U.S. needs to send more forces there. But that doesn’t mean drawing back from Europe, which would also hurt our interests. The only solution is to meet greater challenges with greater resources.
Mr. Watson is associate director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for the Future of Liberal Society.
WSJ Opinion: Wokeism in the Military
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With recruitment rates to the U.S. military falling, attention is turning to the rise of woke politics, which is undermining public confidence in America's military leaders. Images: Department of Defense/YouTube/Go Army Composite: Mark Kelly
Appeared in the December 16, 2022, print edition as 'Germany Shirks Its Defense Pledge, Imperiling the Asia ‘Pivot’'.
9. Who cares who wins - The mythology of the SAS
Conclusion:
Tellingly, the SAS’s own report of proceedings for Corporate was heavily amended by Admiral Fieldhouse. It bore little relation to the truth and was merely another exercise in myth-making and legend building on the part of the Regiment. Moore’s myth-busting should therefore act as a sobering check to the recent media frenzy surrounding SAS: Rogue Heroes. Instead the SAS continues to be protected by an exquisite enabling wrap of official secrecy, media cheerleaders, tame historians and institutional echo-chambers. All ensure that daylight is not let in upon the magic — to paraphrase Walter Bagehot’s exhortation, made in his 1867 monograph The English Constitution, to perpetuate the mystique of monarchy. Such sycophancy, however, engenders an environment in which military organisations start to believe their own propaganda. This is ill-advised. As Colonel Ollie Lee, another morally courageous Royal Marines officer who was obliged to resign his commission in protest at the gross mishandling of the “Marine A” incident, once told the Afghanistan veteran and future Tory MP Johnny Mercer, “The precise moment you start to believe your own hype, is the precise moment it all starts to go badly wrong.”
Who cares who wins | Paul Winter | The Critic Magazine
The mythology of the SAS
ARTILLERY ROW
By
Paul Winter
15 December, 2022
thecritic.co.uk · by Podcast · December 15, 2022
Eighty years after rampaging behind enemy lines in the deserts of North Africa, and forty-two years since exploding into the public’s consciousness by dramatically ending the Iranian Embassy siege, Britain’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) is once again the centre of the nation’s attention. This renewed notoriety owes nothing to any stunning military success or dramatic action on the part of the Regiment, as it is referred to, but rather to the new BBC television series, SAS: Rogue Heroes. Based on the best-selling book by Ben Macintyre, who was granted privileged access to the SAS’s own classified regimental archives, SAS: Rogue Heroes depicts the wartime birth and first unsteady steps of the world’s most famous Special Forces unit.
Described by the media’s usual suspects of military commentators and cheerleaders as an adrenaline-fuelled, “gung-ho”, “rock-star history” of the SAS’s infancy, Rogue Heroes is not only a piece of televisual entertainment. It serves another, more profound purpose — namely the supercharging of the Regiment’s reputation, fighting-record and mythology. It also adds a further stratum to existing layers of legend, which throughout its operational history have afforded the SAS a distinct psychological advantage over its opponents.
Book shelves buckle under the sheer volume and weight of a growing corpus of work on the Regiment. The high-levels of embellishment, hyperbole and dissembling inherent in these literary outpourings, compounded by operational security, plausible deniability and a refusal on the part of the MoD to comment on the activities and very existence of UK Special Forces units, has meant, unsurprisingly, that academics and journalists alike have found it a challenge to penetrate the shroud of secrecy enveloping the activities of the SAS. It is difficult to differentiate, therefore, between what is fact and what is myth.
Ostracism and stigmatisation have answered their heresies
The late Professor Sir Michael Howard, eminent military historian and one-time Chichele Professor of military history at Oxford, addressed the role of myth in a highly-influential essay entitled, “The Uses and Abuses of Military History”. Howard wrote that “the ‘myth’, this selective and heroic view of the past, has its uses”. “The regimental historian”, in Howard’s opinion, had “consciously or unconsciously, to sustain the view that his regiment has usually been flawlessly brave and efficient, especially during its recent past”. “Without any sense of ill-doing,” contended Howard, “he will emphasize the glorious episodes in its history and pass with a light hand over its murkier passages, knowing full well that his work is to serve a practical purpose in sustaining regimental morale in the future”.
Professor Howard believed, however, that “myth” was not an “abuse of military history” if it sustained a soldier on the battlefield “even when he knows, with half his mind, that it is untrue”. Howard, himself a wartime Captain in the Coldstream Guards and recipient of the Military Cross, felt that myth was a form of “nursery history” which could assist in immunising military personnel against the “realities of war”. The only problem with this proposition, however, is that if a military organisation such as the SAS mythologizes its fighting record until it possesses only a passing acquaintance with the truth, then the realities of future combat will rapidly disabuse its personnel of such delusions.
Like the winged Sword of Damocles that features prominently on the Unit’s badge, the “myth” of an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient fighting machine has been a proverbial double-edged sword. For the majority of those who have served in the Regiment over the years, it has sustained them in combat and in adversity. Yet for a select number of “badged” SAS personnel, who have been compelled to question “the myth”, ostracism and stigmatisation have answered their heresies. One of the most high-profile examples of this occurred during the Falklands war of 1982.
Following the sinking of HMS Sheffield in early May by an Argentine Exocet missile, it was directed that the SAS was to undertake a reconnaissance mission, Operation Plum Duff, of the Argentine airbase at Rio Grande, which was home to Exocet-carrying Super-Étendard jets. Plum Duff was a prelude to a much larger Direct Action operation, codenamed Mikado. This envisaged an Entebbe-style raid on Rio Grande involving the force-landing of two C-130 transport aircraft packed with men from B Squadron 22 SAS, whose objective was the destruction of the stationary jets and the death of pilots who flew them. This planned raid was very reminiscent of those conducted by David Stirling, Paddy Mayne and Jock Lewes, the founding fathers of the SAS, against Axis airfields in wartime North Africa — events dramatically depicted in the BBC’s SAS: Rogue Heroes.
Yet a combination of bad weather, poor planning, a paucity of reliable intelligence, navigational errors and the twin tyrannies of time and space forced SAS Captain Andy Legg, commanding the eight-man recce force, to abort the mission and exfiltrate his team across the Argentine border into neighbouring Chile. This was not before Legg had spoken to SAS HQ via satellite communications to deliver a situation report informing them of these insurmountable difficulties. Despite the low probability of completing this near-suicidal mission, Legg had been told to press on regardless.
As Ewen Southby-Tailyour subtly suggests in his book, Exocet Falklands, despite having taken the morally courageous decision to scrub this sub-optimal mission, undoubtedly saving the lives of his men, Legg appears thereafter to have been regarded by SAS high command, quite unjustly, as an individual who had “not maintained” or “perpetuated the myth”. Regrettably, Legg left the SAS shortly afterwards of his own volition, but it is telling that his own Squadron boss back in Hereford had viewed Operation Mikado, which thankfully was never launched, to have been not only “foolhardy” but ultimately “unachievable”.
Setting aside the controversies surrounding Plum Duff and Mikado, Operation Corporate, the British campaign to liberate the Falkland Islands, was not the SAS’s finest hour. In a rare example of official military censure, Major-General Sir Jeremy Moore, a senior Royal Marines officer and commander of UK land forces during the conflict, issued a stinging critique of the SAS in his post-conflict report of proceedings, a document recently declassified at the National Archives, Kew.
Writing to the Commander-in-Chief of the Task Force, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, Moore stated in his introduction that whilst he had “little criticism of the way in which Special Forces, both Special Air Service and Special Boat Squadron, conducted themselves during advance force operations” (i.e. during the shaping phase prior to the amphibious landings on 21 May), he did lament the inability of the SAS, post 21 May, to “integrate with the land force operations as a whole and to provide the accurate and timely reports that I required”. Sir Jeremy concluded by stating that “despite … [the] undoubted quality” of the SAS, there were “improvements which should be made”.
In an annex to his main report, Moore expanded upon these general criticisms, providing granular detail of the SAS’s military shortcomings. Whilst never questioning the individual courage and professionalism of SAS personnel, Moore was highly critical of the SAS as an organisation. Aside from upbraiding the Regiment for refusing to disseminate its own report of proceedings, thereby stymieing efforts to ascertain how the SAS had rated its own performance during the campaign, Moore deprecated it for having routinely “short-circuited” the formal chain of command in the Falklands by using its own satellite communications system. This had effectively shut out the land force commander and the other task group commanders from key SAS planning and decision-making.
The SAS’s “concentration on counter-terrorism and special operations” prior to the Falklands conflict, was also highlighted by Major-General Moore, who postulated that this “may have developed tendencies which are incompatible with the more conventional roles in support of ground forces that they were tasked with after the landing on 21 May”. As a consequence, the SAS had “found [it] difficult” to adjust to supporting “conventional operations”.
Another vexatious issue for Sir Jeremy and his divisional staff had been the fact that “more SF were deployed than were needed or could be supported in the field”. In the view of the commander land forces, the SAS was “expensive in terms of the support and planning effort needed to sustain their activities” and had become “less effective, in relation to results achieved, when deployed in greater numbers” than was “necessary to meet essential tasks”. Regarding this surplus of Special Forces Units, Major-General Moore concluded that one squadron from the SAS’s rivals, the Special Boat Squadron, SBS, could have “met most of our SF requirements”.
Overall, Moore was forced to admit that in the aftermath of Operation Sutton, the amphibious landings at San Carlos on 21 May, the SAS was “given tasks more out of a sense of obligation than from any valid need”. Evidently, Moore and his staff, in addition to those in HQ 3 Commando Brigade, regarded the SAS as a nuisance. Instead of being part of the solution to the Task Force’s challenges during Corporate, the SAS was in reality part of the problem.
This toxic culture has been perpetuated into the 21st century
Forty years of research into the South Atlantic conflict has unearthed a litany of unprofessional behaviour, elementary mistakes and failures on the part of the SAS. These ranged from a “blue-on-blue” incident where an SAS patrol shot dead a member of an SBS team, and the near cancellation of the raid on Pebble Island due to tardiness on the part of the SAS — to the poor skill-sets and discipline of SAS personnel manning a covert observation post overlooking the twin settlements of Darwin and Goose Green, whose sub-optimal report on Argentine force numbers helped convince the CO of 2 PARA that there were far fewer Argentine forces there than was the case; and the failure of the SAS to properly secure Mount Kent prior to the heliborne insertion of “K” Company 42 Commando Royal Marines onto this strategically important feature. Various other examples include non-SF units encountering individual SAS patrols in the field, sitting laughing and talking without posted sentries; and a compromised SAS raid on a fuel depot. Having incurred casualties during the raid, the SAS required the assistance of HQ 3 Commando Brigade, eliciting from one staff officer the comment, “Bloody Special Forces; the whole world has to stop for them, I suppose.”
Perhaps the most serious instance of SAS incompetence, however, focused on Operation Paraquet, the British mission to recapture the island of South Georgia. Instructed by Task Force HQ at Northwood to send only a Mountain Troop from D Squadron SAS, the Regiment took it upon itself to embark the entire squadron for this operation. Furthermore, by ignoring the advice of the mountain and arctic warfare-trained Royal Marines landing force commander to avoid the notorious Fortuna Glacier (hubris that was to lead to the destruction of two Wessex helicopters and near deaths of D Squadron’s entire Mountain Troop), the SAS jeopardised the success of the entire operation. The political timing of this near-disaster could not have been worse. In the words of a senior officer instrumental in recapturing the Falklands, “I believe that had there been a serious loss of life on the Glacier among SAS and aircrew … there would have been demands from many MPs … who were dubious about Operation Corporate, to wrap up the whole operation, including retaking the Falklands.”
Controversy has, to varying degrees, been a constant companion to the SAS since its inception in 1941. During the protracted “troubles” in Northern Ireland, the Regiment was repeatedly accused of pursuing a “shoot to kill” policy, whereby terrorist suspects were shot dead without any attempt to arrest them. This cause célèbre peaked in the aftermath of the ambush and killing of three members of an IRA active service unit in Gibraltar in March 1988. It is little surprise, then, that the SAS has been referred to as the “Hereford gun club” or the “Hereford hooligans” by conventional forces.
This toxic and dysfunctional culture appears to have been perpetuated well into the 21st century. In the last few years, a raft of negative news stories, questioning the culture, ethics and military professionalism of the SAS, have surfaced in the press. These have ranged from contracting sexually transmitted infections whilst on operations, and claims of domestic abuse against the partners and family of serving SAS personnel; to serious allegations, investigated and reported on by the BBC’s Panorama programme, of war crimes committed by particular “rogue” SAS Squadrons whilst on deployment to Afghanistan. The alleged planting of weapons on the dead bodies of unarmed “Taliban ‘suspects’”, and charges that UK SAS squadrons vied with their Australian counterparts to see who could kill the most Taliban on a tour of duty, have been of particular concern.
The timing of SAS: Rogue Heroes could not, therefore, have been more propitious for the SAS’s PR machine and senior leadership who, it has been revealed, permitted serving SAS personnel to assist in the production of the TV series. This glorification of its distant past could be perceived as a cynical attempt to contain and reverse recent reputational damage, to retrieve some of its tarnished glory.
For those “non-badged” personnel in wider UK Defence, who have had to endure the toxic effects of SAS mythology whilst on operations, the apparent “unaccountability” of the SAS has proved professionally upsetting. The SAS’s total disregard, at times, for the rules; and the indifference to the second, third or fourth order consequences of its “cowboy” actions have over the years led to the bastardisation of its famous motto “Who Dares Wins” into “Who Cares Who Wins”.
Other SF units have wearied of the SAS’s voracious appetite for publicity
Resentment towards a maverick and publicity hungry SAS is not the sole preserve of “non-badged” Service personnel. Contrary to the impression engendered by the media, the SAS is not the UK’s only SF unit. The Directorate of Special Forces’ Tier 1 and Tier 2 order of battle is a veritable alphabet soup of SF acronyms. Aside from 22 SAS and its reserve units, 21 and 23 SAS, the UKSF community comprises the Special Boat Service, SBS, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, SRR and their support elements, namely the Special Forces Support Group, SFSG, the Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing and 18 (UKSF) Signals Regiment. Confusingly, The Parachute Regiment’s elite Pathfinder Platoon, the Royal Marines’ Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron, SRS and the British Army’s newly-formed Ranger Regiment operate under Brigade level HQs and are therefore not part of the UKSF community.
Historically, the aforementioned units have conducted their core business professionally and, above all, quietly. The SBS, whose motto is “By Strength and Guile”, hold a particular aversion to media exposure. In a recent review for The Critic of a new revisionist biography of David Stirling, authorised historian of the wartime SBS Saul David revealed the Service’s institutional philosophy toward public disclosure. In a thinly-disguised swipe at its brethren in the SAS, the SBS’s classified handbook affirms that, “Some units like to make a noise about their activities. We take a more discreet approach. Whilst some prefer the limelight, we prefer the twilight.”
14th Intelligence Company (“The Det”), predecessor of today’s SRR, shared a similar ethos and outlook to the SBS. Fierce rival of the Special Air Service, alongside whom it worked closely in Northern Ireland, “The Det” preferred operating clandestinely in the shadows, watching and listening. This was often in stark contrast to the SAS for whom surveillance was merely a prelude to Direct Action. The fact that “The Det” holds the distinction of achieving more “kills” in the Province than their Hereford counterparts, owes more to the incaution of Irish terrorists than any gung-ho, trigger-happy inclination on the part of its covert operatives, whose training espoused the avoidance of armed confrontation.
Understandably, these SF units have wearied of the SAS’s voracious appetite for publicity and credit, particularly if that recognition should have been attributed to its vital operational input. Units such as the SBS and SRR are significantly less obsessed with myth and legend-making, and they are not, institutionally-speaking, prone to the delusion that they alone can win conflicts. After all, UKSF units — despite their acknowledged ability to achieve effect out of all proportion to their size and strength — are but small cogs in a far bigger military machine, one that ultimately relies upon conventional forces to achieve a decision on the battlefield.
Since the terrorist atrocities of 9/11, an epoch judged to have been the “golden age of special operations”, British politicians and officials have increasingly come to trust in and rely upon UKSF units. A recent investigation into the UKSF community by the Oxford Research Group enumerated the reasons for this infatuation. Not only do UK Special Forces units operate covertly around the globe, under the cover of plausible deniability, making them a “low-risk” option, they are also cheaper than conventional forces whose logistical footprint and public profile are significant. This makes UKSF the ideal tool for policy-makers who wish to circumvent the British public’s increased “risk aversion” to foreign conflicts. Consequently, the UKSF community is increasingly taking on more of the UK Defence effort.
This marked increase in defence output by UKSF units has attracted adverse comment, however. Those monitoring its activities have levelled the charges of “unaccountability” and “lack of transparency” against the Directorate of Special Forces. Unlike UK Intelligence and Security Services, who are officially regulated by an oversight committee, no such forum exists for holding UK Special Forces to account. This is compounded by the MoD’s refusal to comment on UKSF operations, and the fact that Britain’s military elite do not come within the remit of the House of Commons Defence Committee or any other parliamentary body. Without public scrutiny, it is impossible to ascertain the extent to which politicians and senior officials can, or cannot, differentiate between myth and reality in the shadowy world of UK Special Forces.
The persistent conviction on the part of politicians and officials, that the UKSF community is a panacea for the nation’s defence challenges, has in turn granted HQ UKSF and the Director Special Forces unprecedented power and influence. This is out of all proportion to their relative size, but over the years it provided the SAS in particular with a powerful lobbying voice within the MoD. Until very recently, all Directors of UKSF have been officers drawn from the SAS, making them primus inter pares within the world of UK Special Forces. The recent formation of the British Army’s Ranger Regiment and Special Operations Brigade, together with the Royal Navy’s plans to convert the Royal Marines’ Future Commando Force, FCF, into a Special Operations Force, SOF, merely serve to confirm an emerging UKSF-SOF primacy in defence matters.
This new growth industry comes at a cost, however. Whilst the current direction of travel is the consolidation and expansion of Tier 1 and 2 UKSF and SOF-capable formations, this growing trend will be at the expense of the conventional “green” Army, in particular infantry, armoured and artillery units who are being substantially cut. By viewing the nation’s future defence requirements through the prism and focus of UKSF-SOF units, Special Forces devotees in Whitehall and Westminster are not only distorting the optics of UK Defence, but are unbalancing and pulling out of shape the UK’s conventional forces.
A foretaste of this step change occurred in April 2006 when 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment — traditionally a specialist light-infantry formation — was converted into a UKSFSG unit, and the Royal Marines were obliged to provide a company group from their existing order-of-battle. Whilst strengthening a growing Special Forces empire, it simultaneously weakened Britain’s frontline infantry strength. It therefore remains to be seen whether this evolving defence model will survive the exigencies of future conventional warfare, or prove to be a costly strategic mistake.
Forty years ago, Major-General Sir Jeremy Moore had the moral courage and professional standing to openly question and challenge, albeit in an official context, the SAS legend. Moore’s ultimate aim was to ensure that the right lessons concerning the employment of Special Forces units in a medium-level, high-intensity war against a near peer adversary were properly identified, and more importantly, learned. Moore’s post-operational report also ventured to underscore the fact that conventional forces ultimately win campaigns and wars. In Moore’s view, by concentrating solely on counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency operations in the years preceding the Falklands, the SAS in 1982 was physically, conceptually and morally unfit to conduct maritime operations alongside conventional forces.
Tellingly, the SAS’s own report of proceedings for Corporate was heavily amended by Admiral Fieldhouse. It bore little relation to the truth and was merely another exercise in myth-making and legend building on the part of the Regiment. Moore’s myth-busting should therefore act as a sobering check to the recent media frenzy surrounding SAS: Rogue Heroes. Instead the SAS continues to be protected by an exquisite enabling wrap of official secrecy, media cheerleaders, tame historians and institutional echo-chambers. All ensure that daylight is not let in upon the magic — to paraphrase Walter Bagehot’s exhortation, made in his 1867 monograph The English Constitution, to perpetuate the mystique of monarchy. Such sycophancy, however, engenders an environment in which military organisations start to believe their own propaganda. This is ill-advised. As Colonel Ollie Lee, another morally courageous Royal Marines officer who was obliged to resign his commission in protest at the gross mishandling of the “Marine A” incident, once told the Afghanistan veteran and future Tory MP Johnny Mercer, “The precise moment you start to believe your own hype, is the precise moment it all starts to go badly wrong.”
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thecritic.co.uk · by Podcast · December 15, 2022
10. Ukraine air defenses counter Russian barrage but missiles hit energy targets
Ukraine air defenses counter Russian barrage but missiles hit energy targets
By David L. Stern and Jeff Stein
December 16, 2022 at 12:48 p.m. EST
The Washington Post · by David L. Stern · December 16, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched another ferocious barrage of missiles at Ukraine on Friday, once again pummeling critical infrastructure. At least three people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a residential building was hit in Kryvyi Rih, one of seven cities targeted in the attack.
Damaged cities, including Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, Poltava, Dnipro, and Kyiv, the capital, reported power outages following the strikes, even though Ukrainian officials said that their bolstered air defenses had succeeded in intercepting and destroying 60 of 76 missiles fired by the Russians.
It was not possible for The Washington Post to independently verify the Ukrainian claims, but Kyiv’s Western supporters have been rushing to send additio0nal air defense systems to the country since Russia began its bombing campaign against infrastructure in early October.
Ukraine’s Air Force said in a statement that Friday’s strikes were a “massive” attack on “critical infrastructure facilities and fuel.” The missiles were launched from ships and aircraft in the Caspian, Azov and Black Seas, as well from areas further inside Russia mainland Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has openly acknowledged Russia’s efforts to destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, accusing Kyiv and the West of provoking the attacks, though it was Russia that initiated a full scale invasion of Ukraine nearly 10 months ago, seeking to topple its government. Western leaders have said the attacks could be a war crime because they have no military purpose.
Friday’s barrage confirmed that the Kremlin has no intention of relenting in its bombing campaign and indeed may make good on threats to step up its strikes in response to recent announcements by the U.S. and other Western nations of plans to send additional, increasingly high-powered weapons to Ukraine, and to increase training for the Ukrainian military.
The European Union on Thursday said adopted a ninth package of sanctions, as part of the continuing Western effort to punish Russia for the war by isolating its economy. “We have acted in unprecedented unity and speed,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a news conference. “We have legendary sanctions.”
Putin last this month is planning to visit Belarus, which has allowed Russian forces to use its territory as a springboard for attacks and there is rising concern that Russian may attempt another incursion into Ukraine from the north — not necessarily to retry its failed attempt to seize Kyiv, but perhaps to hit from behind at Ukrainian forces pushing east into Russian-occupied territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The Pentagon has acknowledged Ukraine’s concerns, but says it sees no signs that such an attack is imminent.
Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian proxy leader in occupied Luhansk, said on Telegram that Ukrainian artillery fire had killed eight people injured 23 in the village of Lantratovka and the town of Stakhanov early Friday.
Despite repeated setbacks on the battlefield, Russia has had greater success in its bombing campaign, and the severe destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has pushed the country to the brink of humanitarian and economic crises, by depriving citizens of heat and hot water in winter, and cutting off electricity used to power homes and businesses.
Air raid sirens sounded out across Ukraine at around 8 a.m. It was the ninth heavy missile attack since Russia began targeting Ukraine’s energy systems on Oct. 10, officials at Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s primary power operator, said in a statement.
Soon after the sirens went off, explosions could be heard in the capital Kyiv, in Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, Poltava in central Ukraine, and numerous other locations. For citizens it was generally impossible to know if the booms represented successful strikes, or were the sound of air defenses destroying the missiles in midair.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said in a post on Telegram that the capital “withstood one of the biggest missile attacks since the beginning” of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, nearly ten months ago.
About 40 missiles were fired at Kyiv, Klitschko said, of which 37 were shot down. The Post could not verify those numbers
However, Klitschko also said in a television interview that three districts of the city were hit by missiles, and because of the attack, “several energy-providing facilities” had been damaged and Kyiv was experiencing “interruptions with electricity, water and heat.”
In Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, three people were killed when a Russian missile hit a residential building, “a 64-year-old woman and a young couple,” Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region said in a Telegram post. Thirteen people were also injured, including four children, Reznichenko said.
“Everyone is in the hospital,” he said.
Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said that 10 missiles were fired at the region, cutting electricity to more than 1 million people. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov also described “colossal destruction” to the city’s infrastructure and said residents had lost electricity, heating or water supplies.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed Friday to have destroyed a “missile and artillery arms depot” in Kharkiv, and to have hit Ukrainian command posts in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions — two of the Ukrainian regions that Putin has claimed to have annexed in violation of international law.
Ukrenergo, Ukraine's energy operator, said that the attacks had “substantially increased” Ukraine's energy deficit, with emergency shutdowns taking place in all regions of Ukraine.
“The northern, southern and central regions were the biggest impacts,” Ukrenergo said in a statement on Facebook. “Where this is now possible, maintenance crews are already assessing the extent of damage and beginning emergency repair work.”
Friday’s attacks reverberated through Pavlohrad in southeastern Ukraine, where some residents complained about losing water this morning for the first time since the war began.
Yevgeniy Velichko, 33, carried two five-liter jugs of water through the city after his taps stopped running at home.
His neighborhood supermarket had lost power earlier in the day and began turning customers away, before locking its doors and leading a handful of women to stand outside and discuss where they could go for groceries.
“The lack of electricity is manageable — we have candles; we have food,” Velichko said. “But the water is a different case — you have to shower, you have to do laundry, or be able to have tea and drink water.”
With an automatic water pump shut off a few blocks away due to the outages, about 30 residents lined up on Poltavska Street to use a manual pump, carrying large plastic jugs, which they would then lug home.
Natalia, 40, a social worker, said she had been working since 7:30 a.m. to distribute food, medicine, and water to elderly residents. One of her clients, a 76-year-old woman with a disability, lives on the fourth floor of her building and cannot get up and down the stairs.
Natalia brought two large aluminum jugs with her to the pump at around 3 p.m., which she then had to deliver to one person before returning to the pump again on Friday for her last elderly client.
With his father off fighting in the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut, Vova Shtonda, 20, accompanied his mother Oksana, 41, and his brother Dina, 10, to the manual water pump, carrying five plastic bottles in addition to the 10 liters he could fit in his backpack.
“It’s not as scary as when your city is being bombed,” Shtonda said, craning his neck to see how long the line in front of him was. “I’m concerned, but I’m trying to keep my hopes up.”
Stein reported from Pavlohrad, Ukraine. Emily Rauhala in Brussels and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by David L. Stern · December 16, 2022
11. An Army at Sea: Why the New FM 3-0’s Emphasis on Maritime Operations is So Important
The Army cannot get anywhere without the Navy (and sealift).
Conclusion:
In the final analysis, the new FM 3-0 signals a new commitment to embrace a more comprehensive multidomain approach to maritime operations. As argued by Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, the institution will “serve as the linchpin service for the joint force” and “provide command and control at multiple operational levels to coordinate, synchronize, sustain, and defend ongoing joint operations.” This means that the Army, though traditionally focused on winning in land campaigns, will evolve to play an expanded and multifaceted role in maritime contests. Seeking to complement, rather than replace, traditional naval and marine competencies, the shift in doctrinal emphasis represents a return to previous eras where Army soldiers stormed beaches and scaled heights to secure interests abroad and safeguard freedom at home.
An Army at Sea: Why the New FM 3-0’s Emphasis on Maritime Operations is So Important - Modern War Institute
mwi.usma.edu · by Nathan Jennings · December 16, 2022
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The newest iteration of the Army’s capstone doctrinal publication, Field Manual 3-0, Operations, establishes multidomain operations (MDO) as its primary operating concept. Building on previous evolutions in combined arms and joint integration that have defined warfare in the modern era, this advancement signals the Army’s intent to modernize and improve its capability to achieve successful outcomes across competition, crisis, and conflict paradigms globally. For the Army, the arrival of the new doctrine represents nothing less than a leap forward in its preparedness to deter, and if required, defeat adversary ground forces. Equally important, the adoption of a forward-thinking concept that prizes multidomain cooperation will allow it to more effectively lead and support joint and coalition efforts in expeditionary campaigns.
In addition to introducing MDO, the new FM 3-0 takes an unprecedented step: it dedicates an entire, stand-alone chapter to describing the Army’s unique and fundamental role in maritime operations. Recognizing the rising geopolitical importance of places such as the Indo-Pacific, Arctic, and Baltic Sea regions, the manual describes how the Army, as a land-centric service, can provide critical warfighting capabilities that enable joint and coalition success in maritime environments. The chapter, which details the characteristics of the domain and the roles and requirements of Army formations, strongly emphasizes the interdependence of naval, air, and ground forces in achieving strategic objectives across expanded distances typically associated with oceans and seas.
This emphasis reflects a critical aspect of the emerging MDO concept that fulfills, in part, the promise of the long heralded Pacific pivot for the US military. As explained by retired Colonel Rich Creed, the director of the US Army Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, Army leadership “felt it particularly important to help the force visualize what was different for Army forces in theaters where campaigning would be heavily influenced by maritime considerations” —particularly in the “increasingly dynamic” India-Pacific region. Creed further described the subsequent doctrinal development, which he said stemmed from the historical appreciation that “the ability to project enduring power in maritime dominated domains is best achieved through multidomain approaches that include land forces.”
Past is Prologue
This shift to, or perhaps readoption of, a revitalized maritime focus in FM 3-0 finds ready precedent in the institution’s robust historical experience with conducting combat operations in riverine, littoral, and oceanic settings. Harkening back to storied amphibious offensives such as Winfield Scott’s coastal assault on Veracruz in 1847 and Ulysses Grant’s capture of Vicksburg along the Mississippi River in 1863, the Army has frequently cooperated with the US Navy, the US Marine Corps, the US Coast Guard, and, more recently, the US Air Force to enable the projection of American power in distant theaters. While technology has changed, effectively meeting the requirement for joint approaches that include proactive Army efforts has remained central to US military success.
Yet despite its early foundations, the Army’s seminal experience with maritime combat emerged in the crucible of World War II. When the US military suffered the shattering attacks by the Japanese Empire across both the Hawaiian and Philippines archipelagos in 1941, the losses catalyzed a massive reinvention by the Army to expand, modernize, and project landpower across the vast distances of the Pacific Basin in order to regain theater access and defeat Japanese defenders throughout a challenging and costly “island-hopping” campaign. If the initial Philippines disaster revealed the price of unpreparedness to contest the maritime domain, the eventual creation of an entire army group to retake Luzon and threaten the Japanese home islands reflected the capacity to adapt and persevere.
Simultaneous to the Army’s offensives in the Pacific, the institution undertook another amphibious event in Europe that would dwarf all others: the assault on the Normandy coast on June 6, 1944. Learning from previous—and sometimes troubled—landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, the Army’s experience with attacking German fortifications at places like Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, and Pointe du Hoc required it to fight through harrowing conditions in order to regain continental access. An operation that Winston Churchill described as the “most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred,” the challenge of landing, breaching, and expanding lodgment required an unprecedented combined arms synchronization by airborne infantry, amphibious infantry, armor, and engineer units to carry the bloody assault.
However, these experiences with combat in the maritime domain required more than just inspired combined arms; the modernizing character of warfare demanded a sophisticated, symbiotic approach to joint operations to achieve victory. This entailed, in particular, close cooperation between the Army and the Navy to transport forces across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, establish intermediate basing in Australia and Britain, and then employ naval and air power to create favorable conditions for assault troop landings. In both the Philippines and northern France, perhaps representing the most intensive multidomain combat to that point in history, the Army accomplished its objectives only by enabling, supporting, and often leading task forces comprising diverse elements from across the US military.
This cooperative amphibious approach extended beyond the US services and into vital coalition efforts that resonate in today’s maritime environments. Recognizing the importance of gaining and preserving access, basing, and lodgment in expeditionary settings, Army commands in both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters worked closely with the armed forces of allied nations to secure forward positions, expand combat power, improve tactics, and ensure legitimacy. While British, Australian, and indigenous partners proved critical to enabling Army success in Guadalcanal, New Guinea, and the Philippines, similar partnerships with British, Canadian, and French contingents in Northwest Europe were equally foundational to American success and established an enduring doctrinal precedent for coalition integration.
Multidomain Operations
The dedicated focus on maritime operations in FM 3-0, as part of its capstone design to establish MDO as the Army’s primary warfighting concept, thus reflects a return to, rather than a divergence from, historical norms. Just as in previous eras, the US Army in the twenty-first century is now recognizing the critical roles it must contribute to multidomain efforts by joint and coalition teams in contested areas such as the Pacific, Baltic, or Black Sea regions. This imperative takes on particular importance as the United States seeks to compete with, and if need be defeat, hegemonic adversaries such as China and Russia that seek to undermine international stability. The broadening of the Army’s doctrinal emphasis beyond traditional land campaigns marks an important step toward maturing that capability to better safeguard American interests.
Much of the Army’s contribution to joint efforts in the maritime domain is consequently evolving along familiar patterns. As the largest US military organization with a unique responsibility to provide theater logistics, develop theater infrastructure, field air and missile defense, and secure forward basing, the nation’s oldest service will continue to enable joint efforts in expeditionary settings. Given the vast expanses and noncontiguous terrain that often characterize maritime environments, the Army’s ability to modernize and maintain these capabilities will remain crucial for the US military to defend forward bases and, if need be, conduct joint offensives to secure vital interests. Of these contributions, the fielding of robust and layered air defense shields, in particular, represents an irreplaceable prerequisite for American campaigns that only the Army can provide at a persistent scale.
To that end, as described by the new doctrine, Army forces contribute to joint efforts by applying the tenets of agility, convergence, endurance, and depth to achieve multidomain effect. The requirement for achieving convergence in maritime theaters, in particular, reflects a central emphasis where ground elements fight to “create exploitable opportunities” and help “maintain freedom of action and associated positions of relative advantage,” which in turn enable mission accomplishment.” This integration and synchronization, moving beyond traditional combined arms tactics by leveraging capabilities from across all domains, services, agencies, and partners to penetrate and dis-integrate enemy layered and standoff architectures in detail, becomes especially acute during large-scale combat operations where the Army can create more durable “windows of opportunity” for maneuver by naval, marine and air forces.
Looking toward an uncertain future, the new capstone doctrine thus sets conditions for the Army to expand and modernize its irreplaceable contributions to joint and coalition maritime success. While the Multi-Domain Task Force initiative has made progress in providing enhanced kinetic, informational, and electronic fires to joint teams in the Indo-Pacific region, the Ukrainian army’s sinking of the Russian cruiser, Moskva, though anecdotal, illustrates the potential for land-based strike systems to influence and enable sea control. This capacity to cultivate conditions for joint maneuver and to defend maritime areas from land will likely only increase in the near future as Army modernization programs integrate long-range fires, next-generation air defenses, an array of emerging drone capabilities, cyber and space effects, and artificial intelligence–enabled targeting.
In the final analysis, the new FM 3-0 signals a new commitment to embrace a more comprehensive multidomain approach to maritime operations. As argued by Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, the institution will “serve as the linchpin service for the joint force” and “provide command and control at multiple operational levels to coordinate, synchronize, sustain, and defend ongoing joint operations.” This means that the Army, though traditionally focused on winning in land campaigns, will evolve to play an expanded and multifaceted role in maritime contests. Seeking to complement, rather than replace, traditional naval and marine competencies, the shift in doctrinal emphasis represents a return to previous eras where Army soldiers stormed beaches and scaled heights to secure interests abroad and safeguard freedom at home.
Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jennings, PhD, is an assistant professor and Army strategist at the US Army Command and General Staff College.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class John Bellino, US Navy
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mwi.usma.edu · by Nathan Jennings · December 16, 2022
12. Patriot missile system not a panacea for Ukraine, experts warn
Patriot missile system not a panacea for Ukraine, experts warn - Breaking Defense
“We need to be careful about these scarce precious assets,” said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “While we're only sending one battery, once it's there, it's probably not going to come back."
breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · December 16, 2022
U.S. Army Spc. Hipp and Sgt. Osuna perform ‘prepare for movement and emplacement’ as part of their ‘Table VIII’ evaluations as a Patriot missile battery on August 3, 2022, in Slovakia. (U.S. Army photo by 2nd. Lt. Emily Park)
WASHINGTON — The US government appears to be finalizing plans to deliver the Raytheon-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system to Ukraine, with multiple outlets reporting that the Biden administration could announce its intent by the end of the week to transfer a single battery from US stocks.
And while the weapon system would provide the Ukrainian military with a leap forward in air defense capability — particularly in the realm of ballistic missile defense — experts raised questions about the impact that one Patriot battery could make on the battlefield, as well as the long-term ability for the United States to continue supplying Ukraine with replacement missiles for the expensive system.
With “no realistic prospect” for Russia to retake a large amount of territory after the Ukrainian liberation of Kherson, Russian President Vladimir Putin is directing attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, banking on Ukrainian resolve to weaken as more people face harsh living conditions and bitter cold, said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.
In this context, Patriot would be one more tool the Ukrainian military could use to protect apartment buildings, hospitals and energy infrastructure, he said.
“There’s no doubt that this series of Russian aerial bombardments of Ukraine has become the number one strategic challenge to Ukraine’s short term survival,” O’Hanlon told Breaking Defense. “I think Putin has correctly identified a weak spot, and he doesn’t even have to kill that many people to make the strategy potentially work. So anything and everything we can do to challenge that strategy, we should do.”
United Kingdom defense officials have repeatedly raised alarms this month that Russia is seeking to obtain hundreds of ballistic missiles from Iran, according to multiple outlets such as Reuters.
Should the Biden administration greenlight the delivery of Patriot to Ukraine, it could be used to counter that threat. But while Ukraine has been asking for Patriot for months, the system is not a panacea that will completely solve its problems, said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“This is a political gesture of support,” he said. “What we’re sending, which I believe is one battery, is not going to protect Ukrainian cities, plural. It’s going to protect one spot somewhere. … The defended area of what we’re sending is going to be rather limited.”
During a Dec. 15 briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to comment on US plans to provide Patriot to Ukraine. However, he did address statements by Russian officials that such a move would be provocative, saying that Russia would not be allowed to dictate what security assistance the United States provides to Ukraine.
The Raytheon Technologies-made MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile system designed to combat a range of threats, including aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, loitering munitions and drones.
A Patriot battery typically consists of anywhere from six to eight truck-mounted launching systems, each with four launch canisters that can accommodate up to four missiles at a time. A battery, which is manned by about 90 soldiers, also includes a radar used to detect and track targets, the control system, a high-frequency antenna mast and power generators, according to CSIS’s Missile Defense Project.
Patriot has been sold to more to more than a dozen operators worldwide, with the US Army as the system’s biggest user. Currently, the Army has about 60 Patriot batteries, said a spokesperson for the Army’s program executive office for missiles and space.
While that may seem like a lot, the Army’s Patriot battalions are in constant demand by combatant commanders, with some of the highest operational tempos across the joint force, Karako said. That will make it difficult for the US military to spare additional systems or missiles if Ukraine needs replenishment.
“We need to be careful about these scarce, precious assets,” Karako said. “While we’re only sending one battery, once it’s there, it’s probably not going to come back. And if they start expending munitions, they’re going to ask for more, right? And we don’t have just tons and tons of PAC-2s and PAC-3s [missiles] lying around that we can afford.
“That’s unfortunate. It’s sad, but this is a very high value asset,” he said. “And we do need to steward those assets for deterring a Taiwan conflict.”
Many of the details surrounding the long-term plan for training, equipping and sustaining a Ukrainian Patriot battery are still unclear, including how many launchers will be sent to Ukraine or what kinds of interceptors could be delivered.
Both the Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2), which is a larger blast fragmentation weapon, or the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3), which is a hit-to-kill capability that directly strikes more maneuverable targets, could have utility for the Ukrainian military, Karako said.
Another potential obstacle is training and sustainment. It takes nine months for US operators to go through the Patriot training program at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, said the Army PEO missiles and space spokesperson.
“That could probably be compressed,” Karako said. “But it’s a not insignificant period of time.”
Experts also raised questions about the cost imposition of using a sophisticated and costly system like Patriot, which launches missiles that can cost millions of dollars, to shoot down cheap drones that have been part of Russian assaults.
“Patriot has been used in Saudi Arabia and [the United Arab Emirates] to defend against Iranian-supplied Houthi drones and missiles, but it’s an expensive way of doing business (though maybe not so expensive when avoidance of casualties and damage to infrastructure is considered),” said Byron Callan, a defense analyst for Capital Alpha Partners, in a Dec. 14 message to investors.
“Using a multi-million-dollar interceptor to shoot down a drone that costs $15,000 or more is an equation that will eventually not favor the defender.”
13. Biden official told members of Congress that Ukraine has ability to retake Crimea
Biden official told members of Congress that Ukraine has ability to retake Crimea
No offensive is imminent, but officials worry that a large-scale attack that threatens Russia’s hold on the peninsula could push Putin to use nuclear weapons.
NBC News · by Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube and Dan De Luce · December 16, 2022
A Biden administration official recently told members of Congress that Ukraine has the military capability to retake Crimea, but some officials are concerned any large-scale offensive that threatens Russia’s hold on the peninsula could push Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons, say two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The late November Ukraine briefing to some members of Congress included discussion of the reasons Ukraine will continue to need U.S. weapons and equipment for the foreseeable future. The two officials said a Biden official, when asked during the briefing about continued support for the Ukrainian military and whether it would try to retake Crimea, responded that Ukraine now has the ability to take it back.
Asked about the response, a U.S. official said Ukraine has no near-term objective to retake Crimea and that a military offensive is not imminent but did acknowledge that Ukraine has shown resilience and perseverance throughout the war. Administration officials say they believe three recent deadly drone strikes against Russian military bases were carried out by Ukrainians, although they say it’s still not clear whether the Zelenskyy government ordered them directly.
Washington and other governments have provided Kyiv with more powerful weapons, including HIMARS artillery, that have inflicted serious damage on Russian forces. U.S. and Western perceptions of Ukraine’s armed forces have changed since the February invasion, when U.S. and European officials worried Russian troops and tanks would crush their adversaries in a matter of days or weeks. Senior U.S. military officers and Western governments say Ukraine has shown ingenuity and grit in fighting a larger, better-armed military and quickly incorporated new weapons systems provided by NATO members.
The Ukrainians “continue to shock the world with how well they’re performing on the battlefield,” a U.S. official said.
Dec. 5, 202201:00
The Biden official’s apparent confidence in Ukraine’s capabilities comes as the administration debates whether to grant the continued requests of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government for more powerful weaponry, like ATACMS missile systems and tanks, and as Ukraine says Russia is preparing to send 200,000 fresh troops to attack Kyiv.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council declined to comment.
‘The red line’
No Ukrainian offensive in Crimea is believed to be imminent, officials and experts say, mainly because the current fight does not support it.
Ukraine is struggling and has lost some ground around Bakhmut in the east. The two sides are in a virtual standstill there, and U.S. officials assess that based on where the Ukrainian troops and battlefield lines are now, the Ukrainian military will move northeast in the coming months, rather than south to Crimea.
“A lot would have to happen militarily first” before Ukraine could begin a real offensive to retake Crimea, a U.S. official said.
Some administration officials, however, are privately discussing what could happen if Ukraine launches an offensive into Crimea, which Russia has held since 2014, and U.S. officials are concerned Putin could feel backed into a corner.
“Putin may react more strongly to Crimea,” a U.S. official said.
The destroyed Antonovsky bridge, which was the only transportation route from Kherson to Crimea.Metin Atkas / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A central concern is that a real threat to Russian control could push Putin to use a dirty bomb or other nuclear device, one former and two current officials said. “That’s the red line,” a former U.S. official said.
Three U.S. officials stressed that the U.S. has not seen any indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb right now.
In addition, a real fight for Crimea would include heavy battlefield losses on both sides, and taking it back would be a daunting task for Ukrainian forces because of the heavy Russian military presence and the difficult geography, military experts say. Bloody battles were fought over the area in the Russia civil war and World War II.
The peninsula, which juts south into the Black Sea, is connected to mainland Ukraine by a narrow isthmus. Russia has up to 70,000 troops defending the peninsula’s northern approaches, and they are dug in, two U.S. officials said.
Ukraine lacks sufficient airborne or naval forces that could launch effective attacks against the dug-in forces.
The Ukrainians would have better prospects attacking other Russian targets on the mainland in eastern Ukraine, where Russian troops are more exposed, experts and a U.S. official said.
If Ukraine made more advances against Russian forces in eastern and southern Ukraine, it could be better placed to eventually strike at Crimea, experts and a U.S. official said.
Unclaimed attacks
Some Biden administration officials are already concerned about continued Ukrainian strikes inside Russia that could provoke a stronger response from Putin and spread the conflict to Ukraine’s neighbors.
A series of unclaimed attacks have targeted Russian forces in Crimea since July, including a drone strike that hit Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol and explosions at a suspected Russian ammunition dump. In October, Ukraine indirectly claimed credit for damaging the Kerch Bridge in eastern Crimea, which connects it to mainland Russia.
Dec. 7, 202201:35
While administration officials believe Ukrainians carried out the three recent drone strikes against Russian bases, they don’t think they were made with drones provided by the U.S.
The White House was surprised by the strikes, two U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official said, creating a moment of frustration with the government in Kyiv, as occurred after the Kerch Bridge attack and the killing of the daughter of a close Putin ally. But other officials said that the frustration has been going on since the invasion and that in some cases it helps the U.S. to have plausible deniability about an incident.
U.S. officials concede that Ukraine has taken a series of escalatory actions against Russia without informing the U.S. or Western allies in advance.
A U.S. official said Ukraine does make its own battlefield decisions, but the White House is confident that Ukraine would not begin an extensive operation like re-taking Crimea without notifying the U.S. in advance.
Attacks deep inside Russian territory, which the Kremlin has blamed on Ukraine, have also raised concerns in Washington and European capitals that Kyiv could overplay its hand and provoke more escalatory action from Russia and derail any chance of peace talks, Western officials said.
Nuclear tensions with Russia spiked in October, but they have since calmed considerably, the officials said, and there are no U.S. intelligence assessments that Putin plans to use a nuclear weapon at this time.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, held a closed briefing for House members on Ukraine on Thursday morning.
Carol E. Lee
Carol E. Lee is an NBC News correspondent.
Courtney Kube
Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Dan De Luce
Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
NBC News · by Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube and Dan De Luce · December 16, 2022
14. Ukraine war: Kyiv says Russia planning major ground offensive in new year
Ukraine war: Kyiv says Russia planning major ground offensive in new year
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Ukrainian servicemen near Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, where heavy fighting has been taking place
By Marita Moloney
BBC News
Ukraine has accused Russia of planning a wide-ranging ground offensive for early in the new year, despite recent Russian military setbacks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky and senior officials have warned that Kyiv and its allies must guard against complacency.
The offensive could come in the eastern Donbas region, in the south, or even towards Kyiv, senior generals say.
Western analysts say Russia's ability to conduct successful offensive ground operations is rapidly diminishing.
Britain's most senior military officer Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said this week that the war would only get worse for Moscow, which he added was now facing a critical shortage of artillery munitions.
In a series of briefings to the media, Ukraine's Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said evidence was mounting that Russia, which has suffered a series of battlefield losses, plans a broad new offensive.
He speculated this could occur in February when half of the 300,000 troops conscripted by Russia in October to support the Ukraine war would complete training.
"The second part of the mobilisation, 150,000 approximately... do a minimum of three months to prepare. It means they are trying to start the next wave of the offensive probably in February, like last year. That's their plan," Mr Reznikov told the Guardian.
"The Kremlin is trying to find new solutions [for] how to get the victory," he added, stating that he expects Russia to further mobilise more citizens.
Moscow's new offensive could happen as soon as January but more likely in the spring, the Economist reported on Thursday, saying the assessment came from President Zelensksy, General Valery Zaluzhny and General Oleksandr Syrskyi in recent interviews.
"The Russians are preparing some 200,000 fresh troops. I have no doubt they will have another go at Kyiv," said General Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine's armed forces.
Russia is "100% being prepared", he said, adding that Ukraine's "very important strategic task...is to create reserves and prepare for the war, which may take place in February, at best in March, and at worst at the end of January".
"It may start not in Donbas, but in the direction of Kyiv, in the direction of Belarus, I do not rule out the southern direction as well," he said.
Both sides have ruled out a Christmas truce and there are currently no talks aimed at ending the conflict.
Military analysts say a winter deadlock could set in, even as fierce fighting continues, especially in the Donetsk region, where Russian forces are pushing to capture the town of Bakhmut.
Ukraine has significantly improved its air defences against Russian missiles with Western support, but is calling for more advanced weaponry.
On Thursday, western allies stepped up their support with additional funding and military training.
European Union leaders agreed to provide €18bn (£15.7bn) in financing to Ukraine next year and hit Moscow with a ninth package of sanctions.
In Washington, the US military announced it will expand training in Germany of Ukrainian military personnel. Starting in January, 500 troops a month will be trained, building on more than 15,000 Ukrainians trained by the US and its allies since April.
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15. Putin adopting style of warfare abandoned by modern armies, says UK
Putin adopting style of warfare abandoned by modern armies, says UK
London Evening Standard · by Rachael Burford · December 16, 2022
V
ladimir Putin's army has adopted a style of warfare abandoned by most modern militaries, the British Ministry of Defence said on Friday.
The Russians have used huge amounts of energy and resources constructing "extensive defensive positions" and digging trenches along the front lines in Ukraine.
Russia's military planning has remained "largely unchanged since the Second World War", the MoD said.
In it's morning briefing, it added: "As shown by imagery, in recent weeks, Russian forces have continued to expend considerable effort to construct extensive defensive positions along the front line.
"They have likely prioritised the northern sector around the town of Svatove.
"The Russian constructions follow traditional military plans for entrenchment, largely unchanged since the Second World War. Such constructions are likely to be vulnerable to modern, precision indirect strikes.
"The construction of major defensive lines is further illustration of Russia’s reversion to positional warfare that has been largely abandoned by most modern Western militaries in recent decades."
For the second time in days, a barrage of rockets were fired at several regions across the country in an apparent bid to further destroy Ukraine’s power grid.
Explosions were heard in the capital, the south western district of Holosiivsky, on Ukraine’s right bank, as well as the eastern districts of Dniprovskyi and Desnyanskyi, according to Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko.
It is not yet clear if any Russian rockets hit their targets.
Kyiv has warned that Moscow is planning a further deadly extensive ground offensive early in the new year, despite recent Russian military setbacks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and senior officials accused Russia of plotting to attempt more devastating strikes in early 2023.
Moscow's ability to conduct successful offensive ground operations is rapidly diminishing after a series of battlefield losses and an anti-war sentiment reportedly sweeping through Russia.
Ukraine's Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said evidence was mounting that Russia plans a broad new offensive in February when half of Putin's 300,000 newly conscripted troops complete training.
London Evening Standard · by Rachael Burford · December 16, 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
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