Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others … Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”

- Katherine Mansfield [1888-1923]

"Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred."

- Carl Sagan

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of govern-ment by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 12, 2023

2. They Are Russians Fighting Against Their Homeland. Here’s Why.

3. Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus

4. ‘Significantly degraded’ Russian force is adapting after losses

5. US jets down 4 objects in 8 days, unprecedented in peacetime

6. China Says U.S. Flew High-Altitude Balloons Over Its Airspace

7. The hidden truth behind China’s spy balloons

8. China Says U.S. Flew Balloons Through Its Airspace

9. Army sees safety, not 'wokeness,' as top recruiting obstacle

10. Expect Pentagon's Cyber-Worker Strategy 'Any Day Now'

11. What Japanese deterrence would look like

12. 433. Gaming Information Dominance

13. Ruling out aliens? Senior U.S. general says not ruling out anything yet

14. Opinion | The West has captured thousands of Iranian weapons. Send them to Ukraine.

15. Glass Cannons from Grozny to Mariupol: What Should the US Military Learn from Russia’s Use of Artillery in Protracted Urban Sieges?

16. U.S. troops providing medical aid to earthquake victims in Turkey

17. Chinese military aircraft, vessels detected around Taiwan after US conducts exercises in the South China Sea

18. The untold story of the world’s most resilient currency

19. To End the War, Ukraine Needs Justice, Not Peace

20. Warning to China: U.S. Navy Has Aircraft Carrier in South China Sea

21. The Cult of Secrecy – America’s Classification Crisis

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 12, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-12-2023

Key inflections in ongoing military operations on February 12:

Ukrainian officials continued to question the Russian military’s ability to launch large-scale strategic offensive operations in Ukraine.[28]
The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Russian forces have likely suffered the highest rate of casualties in Ukraine since the first weeks of the invasion based on statistics obtained from the Ukrainian General Staff, with an average of 824 casualties per day in the past week.[29] The UK MoD stated that they cannot verify the Ukrainian General Staff’s methodology for counting Russian casualties.
A Russian State Duma parliamentarian called for increased censorship legislation to protect Russian military figures from criticism.[30]
The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) released an intercepted call excerpt of Shahed drone operators in Ukraine speaking in Kurdish and Farsi and stated that Russian forces may be using Kurdish mercenaries to operate Iranian drones in Ukraine.[31]
Russian sources claimed that Russian forces are continuing offensive operations northwest of Svatove.[32] Russian forces continued offensive operations around Kreminna with a reported 23 combat clashes in the area.[33]
Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Vuhledar.[34]
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Wagner Group forces seized Krasna Hora north of Bakhmut.[35] Prigozhin also falsely claimed that Wagner Group forces are the only Russian forces within a 50km radius of Bakhmut.[36]
Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces in Kherson Oblast lack the capability to start a full-scale offensive, supporting ISW’s prior assessments.[37]
Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) representative Vadym Skibitsky stated that Ukrainian officials believe that Russian officials will postpone a planned second wave of mobilization because of persisting problems associated with the first mobilization wave.[38]
Russian sources claimed that Russia may build a Black Sea Fleet base in occupied Mariupol.[39]
CNN published an interview with two POWs who were Wagner Group prison recruits who claimed that Wagner Group severely misled recruits about the nature of the war and combat missions.[40] The fighters claimed that Wagner forces used prison recruits in human-wave assaults in summer assaults around Lysychansk and sustained high casualties.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 12, 2023

Feb 12, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko and Frederick W. Kagan

February 12, 8:45 pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

ISW is publishing an abbreviated campaign update today, February 12. This report focuses on the impact of Russian information operations on delaying and deterring Western transfers of high-end weapons systems and other military aid to Ukraine. Russia has partially reconstituted its ability to conduct information operations as part of its hybrid warfare campaigns in support of military operations. These information operations will continue to emerge as Russia attempts to set conditions for upcoming operations and mitigate setbacks, and the West must critically evaluate the context of Russian information operations and avoid simply interacting with them on their own terms.

Russia has partially regained the ability to conduct successful information campaigns in support of strategic objectives and even discrete operational aims. Russian hybrid warfare theory has long called for the integration of information campaigns and military operations, with information operations sometimes taking precedence over kinetic activity.[1] Russia skillfully conducted multiple information campaigns over the two decades preceding the re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most notably those that supported the Minsk II Accords in which Germany and France accepted Russia as a mediator rather than a belligerent in Ukraine.[2] The Biden Administration conducted a remarkable and successful counter-information campaign in the months leading up to the February 2022 full-scale invasion, however, disrupting multiple Russian information campaigns intended to induce Ukrainian surrender, separate Ukraine from the West, and create favorable conditions for the re-invasion.[3] The Biden Administration and the West have also cut off and derailed Kremlin-controlled media operations in the United States and Europe since the start of the re-invasion, causing the Kremlin to struggle to conduct successful information operations.[4] Moscow, as a result, has been unable to achieve the objectives that its pre-re-invasion campaigns had been pursuing. Russia has, however, reconstituted the ability to conduct discrete information campaigns in support of specific strategic objectives and to tailor those campaigns to mitigate battlefield setbacks and to set conditions for future planned operations.

Russian information campaigns have supported a continuous strategic objective of deterring or slowing the West’s provision of material support to Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin likely bought into his own pre-invasion narrative that the West would not support Ukraine but would instead seek to maintain good relations with Russia, fueling his hopes for a speedy victory in Ukraine.[5] Putin soon realized that the war would protract due to his military’s inability to achieve decisive victories and Ukraine’s surprising (to him) determination to resist, and because of the West’s surprising (to him) willingness to support Ukraine’s resistance.[6] Putin thereupon began to focus on feeding the arguments Western leaders were making to themselves about the dangers of providing Ukraine with too much materiel or certain kinds of materiel.[7] These Russian information campaigns have been continuous in their pursuit of the common aim of inhibiting Western support for Ukraine regardless of battlefield conditions. The operational-level information campaigns discussed below nest into this strategic purpose, suitably adjusted for the specific battlefield circumstances of the moment.

Russia’s operational-level information campaigns aim either to set conditions for planned Russian operations or to mitigate Russian military failures. Russia shapes the information space in preparation for offensive operations to impede Ukraine’s ability to retain the battlefield initiative or prepare for the offensives. Russia also uses information campaigns to deter the West from supporting Ukraine’s counteroffensive efforts and exploitation of Russian military setbacks. Some of these Russian information campaigns are also intended to reestablish Russia’s geostrategic deterrence by rebuilding the projection of power that had been the focus and hallmark of Russian information campaigns before the 2022 re-invasion.[8]

Russia uses the narrative that Ukraine is incapable of defeating Russia because of inherent power disparities between the two states to mitigate major Russian setbacks or Russian failures to achieve rapid successes in major offensive operations. Russian information campaigns earlier in the invasion relied on amplifying the assumption that Russia possesses the “second largest military in the world” with advanced military capabilities. These information operations aimed to mislead the West and Ukraine into believing that any transfers of military equipment would be irrelevant because Ukraine would not be able to withstand rapidly unfolding offensive operations from different directions and would be vulnerable to Russian attack. The Kremlin, for example, threatened that Russia would view continuing Western military aid shipments to Ukraine as legitimate military targets in early March 2022.[9] The Russians have not shown the dynamic targeting capabilities needed to strike Western materiel moving into and through Ukraine throughout the first year of the war, however, and have instead resorted to wasting their precision weapons on striking fixed civilian energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine.

The Kremlin reframed its information operations to exaggerate the importance of every tactical advance following the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv Oblast and redeployment to Donbas in spring-summer 2022. The narrative adjusted the idea of Russian military might from sweeping offensive operations that were no longer possible to make much of steady and grinding gains on the frontlines.[10] This narrative aimed to demoralize Ukrainians and convince the West of Ukraine’s inability to stand against the supposedly overwhelming force enabling Russia’s costly advances, which ultimately culminated throughout the theater without achieving decisive strategic effects.[11] The exaggerating of minor victories also allowed the Kremlin to explain away the slow pace of offensives to domestic audiences who were conditioned to expect Russia’s rapid success in Ukraine.[12] Both versions of the narrative—the anticipated blitzkrieg at the start of the war and the impression of an unstoppable, if slow, advance during its second phase—were intended in part to deter Western aid provision. They sought to reinforce pre-invasion perceptions of Russian power and to trivialize Ukraine’s successful resistance in hopes that the West would give up on supporting Ukraine’s efforts to win the war. In this, they failed.

Russia intensified narratives about the risk of nuclear escalation in September-November 2022 to reestablish deterrence and dissuade the West from providing Ukraine the materiel needed to continue its counteroffensives following devastating Russian military failures in Kharkiv Oblast. Putin began making deliberately vague and general references to nuclear use during his annexation speech on September 30 following sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in Kharkiv Oblast.[13] The spike in nuclear rhetoric also followed Putin’s unpopular September 21 mobilization order, which had made Putin vulnerable within both the international and the domestic spheres.[14] Putin and key Kremlin officials intensified nuclear escalation rhetoric throughout October 2022, eventually culminating in early to mid-November likely as a result of growing international dialogue with Russia and pushback against his nuclear threats.[15] Putin has often used thinly-veiled nuclear threats to project the idea that Russia is a great power with which the West should avoid confrontation.[16] The nuclear information operation in fall 2022, however, was likely specifically intended to deter the West from immediately reinforcing Ukraine’s sweeping counteroffensives in eastern and southern Ukraine by stoking irrational and unjustified fears that Putin might react to a Ukrainian victory with nuclear escalation. Putin remains a highly calculating and risk-averse actor who will continue to exploit Russia’s nuclear capabilities and Western fear of nuclear escalation to project his power in the West and Russia without actually risking a nuclear exchange with NATO.[17] Putin also likely sought with these information operations to reestablish Russia’s standing as a great power in the world and to save face domestically following humiliating military setbacks.

It is now clear that the Russian information campaign centering on peace negotiations that intensified in December 2022 was aimed—among other things—at delaying the provision of Western tanks and other advanced equipment essential for the continuation of Ukrainian mechanized counteroffensives in order to set conditions for Russia’s own planned offensives. The Kremlin sharply amplified a false negotiations narrative throughout December 2022, with numerous Russian officials giving intentionally misleading signals of Moscow’s willingness to engage in serious negotiations with Ukraine.[18] The Kremlin originally introduced this information operation in early September 2022 after Ukraine announced the start of counteroffensive operations (ostensibly in Kherson Oblast) but prior to Ukraine’s liberation of much of Kharkiv Oblast, and Putin mentioned the idea of a return to the negotiation table in his September 30 annexation speech.[19] The Kremlin, however, consistently retained its maximalist goals and did not offer any serious bases for negotiations. The intensification of the narrative in winter 2022 coincided with Russian preparations for a major offensive operation planned for early 2023, and the Kremlin sought to capitalize on the Western desire for peace negotiations and thereby discourage the provision of Western tanks to Ukraine before Russia was able to regain the initiative in eastern Ukraine.[20] Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov notably signaled the end of the information operation, for the time, by announcing that Russia would continue to pursue a military solution in Ukraine on December 27.[21] It was too late, by that point, for the West to send tanks in time to interfere with the Russian offensive operation that began roughly a month later. The Russian peace-talks narrative was not, to be sure, the only or even the main reason for the delay in the Western provision of tanks to Ukraine. The timing of its onset, intensification, and dropping by the Kremlin, however, strongly suggests that it was timed to support the now ongoing Russian offensive.

Russia continues its shaping effort targeting Western provisions of long-range weapons and tanks to Ukraine by spreading the narrative that Ukraine will deliberately threaten Russia with these weapons instead of prioritizing the liberation of its Russian-occupied territories. Putin accused the United States of purposely protracting the war on December 22, 2022, following the US authorization to transfer Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine on December 21, 2022.[22] Putin absurdly implied that Ukraine would use Patriots (defensive air-defense systems) to strike Russian territory, even as Ukraine begged for these systems to stop Russia’s ongoing air and missile campaign on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in the fall of 2022. This information operation was intended, like the negotiations information campaign, to stall Western aid that would disrupt ongoing and planned Russian military operations.

Kremlin officials are continuing to foster the narrative that Western transfers of longer-range precision rocket systems and Leopard tanks pose some new threat to Russian security, even though they pose no greater threat than the provision of Soviet tanks or other precision systems.[23] Ukrainians have not used Western-provided HIMARS systems to strike Russian territory even though those systems already brought important locations within Russia into range. And the idea that Ukraine will mount an invasion of Russia with Germany‘s Leopards is laughable. The purpose of this Russian information campaign is two-fold: first, to delay the arrival of Western tanks for as long as possible in order to delay the resumption of Ukrainian counter-offensives and buy time for Russia’s own offensive operations, and second, to disrupt the formulation of a coherent Western approach to shifting Ukraine fully to Western weapons systems—something the West will have to do eventually as it has run through its stocks of Soviet-era weapons and cannot produce or acquire more of them.

Russia will continue to weaponize information operations to directly support discrete military operations in Ukraine—especially after it has regained the initiative on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin is resuming a narrative exaggerating Russian frontline victories with the ongoing offensives on Bakhmut and Lyman. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is proudly parading victories over captured settlements around Bakhmut, but the impact of such information operations is waning—both Ukraine and pro-war Russian nationalists have become less willing to accept claims of inevitable Russian victory at face value because of the year of Russian military incompetence.[24] But these information operations can nevertheless regain traction if Russian forces begin to make significant gains, and Russian information operations that appear to be ineffective now can nevertheless set conditions to become much more potent when circumstances change.

The Kremlin appears to be developing other narratives at the time of this publication as well, with nationalist officials making outlandish nuclear threats as a response to recent Western weapons provisions and transfer pledges.[25] Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin also started to resume the canard of Russia’s willingness to negotiate with Ukraine “without preconditions” on February 11 but “on the basis of the reality that exists today” and with consideration for Russia’s maximalist objectives—conditions, in other words, that still amount to Ukrainian surrender.[26] The Kremlin may also reintroduce the stalemate narrative that it had previously used to discount Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kherson in late August 2022.[27] Vershinin’s statement may be an evolved peace-talks narrative that seeks to pressure the West to force preemptive concessions on Ukraine or preempt the culmination of the Russian operations in Donbas. It may also be a continuation of Russian efforts to delay and disrupt the provision of weapons systems Ukraine needs to take advantage of that culmination. The West should consider that Russian discussions of negotiations may not be about negotiations or conditions for peace at all, but may rather be information campaigns specifically targeted at getting Russia through windows of opportunity or vulnerability on the battlefield.

All these information campaigns will support overarching Kremlin strategic aims of splitting the West from Ukraine, deterring or delaying the provision of Western materiel, and generally undermining Western support for Ukraine and the cohesion of the Western coalition. Many information campaigns will also pursue specific operational objectives setting conditions for planned Russian military undertakings. Western leaders must recognize these operations for what they are within the context of battlefield events and resist the temptation to engage with Russian information operations purely on their own terms. More of these narratives will emerge, and the West must critically consider battlefield realities to undermine the effectiveness of the Russian hybrid-warfare efforts. The West must monitor the emergence and intensification of certain information operations at particular times to properly assess and react to these campaigns, just as the Biden Administration did before the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia’s ability to conduct skillful information campaigns in support of hybrid warfare efforts was severely damaged by the Biden Administration’s skillful counter-information campaign and by Russia’s own actions and failures in Ukraine. But Putin is working to restore his capabilities in this area and is achieving limited but important successes, especially when he can shape information campaigns that resonate with discussions and fears that are already salient in the West.

Key inflections in ongoing military operations on February 12:

Ukrainian officials continued to question the Russian military’s ability to launch large-scale strategic offensive operations in Ukraine.[28]
The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Russian forces have likely suffered the highest rate of casualties in Ukraine since the first weeks of the invasion based on statistics obtained from the Ukrainian General Staff, with an average of 824 casualties per day in the past week.[29] The UK MoD stated that they cannot verify the Ukrainian General Staff’s methodology for counting Russian casualties.
A Russian State Duma parliamentarian called for increased censorship legislation to protect Russian military figures from criticism.[30]
The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) released an intercepted call excerpt of Shahed drone operators in Ukraine speaking in Kurdish and Farsi and stated that Russian forces may be using Kurdish mercenaries to operate Iranian drones in Ukraine.[31]
Russian sources claimed that Russian forces are continuing offensive operations northwest of Svatove.[32] Russian forces continued offensive operations around Kreminna with a reported 23 combat clashes in the area.[33]
Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Vuhledar.[34]
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Wagner Group forces seized Krasna Hora north of Bakhmut.[35] Prigozhin also falsely claimed that Wagner Group forces are the only Russian forces within a 50km radius of Bakhmut.[36]
Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces in Kherson Oblast lack the capability to start a full-scale offensive, supporting ISW’s prior assessments.[37]
Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) representative Vadym Skibitsky stated that Ukrainian officials believe that Russian officials will postpone a planned second wave of mobilization because of persisting problems associated with the first mobilization wave.[38]
Russian sources claimed that Russia may build a Black Sea Fleet base in occupied Mariupol.[39]
CNN published an interview with two POWs who were Wagner Group prison recruits who claimed that Wagner Group severely misled recruits about the nature of the war and combat missions.[40] The fighters claimed that Wagner forces used prison recruits in human-wave assaults in summer assaults around Lysychansk and sustained high casualties.

Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.)

Ukrainian Commander of the Joint Forces Serhiy Nayev reportedly stated on February 11 that there are 9,000 Russian military personnel with 60 armored vehicles and 40 artillery installations in Belarus.[41]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

[26] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/11/02/2023/63e73b7c9a794767073266c0

[28] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/oboronczi-shodu-ukrayiny-vysnazhuyut-voroga-v-toj-chas-yak-gotuyutsya-novi-syly-shhob-zavdaty-rishuchogo-udaru-sergij-cherevatyj/ ; https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/sergij-cherevatyj-kilkist-pid-chas-rosijskoyi-mobilizacziyi-ne-pererosla-v-yakist/ ; https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/02/12/oleksij-danilov-rosiya-kolonialna-imperiya-yaka-ne-zmozhe-isnuvaty-u-nynishnomu-vyglyadi/

[30] https://t.me/sultanhamzaev/3782; https://ria dot ru/20230212/deputat-1851474888.html

[31] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/dlia-orhanizatsii-ataky-droniv-po-terytorii-ukrainy-okupanty-imovirno-zaluchyly-inozemnykh-naimantsiv.html

[33] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/golovnym-napryamkom-udariv-voroga-zalyshayetsya-bahmutskyj-vidtynok-frontu-sergij-cherevatyj/ ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0LeVHrwvgdKzfyT78aiZ...

[34] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0LeVHrwvgdKzfyT78aiZ... ; https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/golovnym-napryamkom-udariv-voroga-zalyshayetsya-bahmutskyj-vidtynok-frontu-sergij-cherevatyj/; https://t.me/readovkanews/52545 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/77908 ; https://t.me/rybar/43543 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/10835 ; https://t.me/grey_zone/17160

[37] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/02/12/na-pivdni-ukrayiny-rosiyany-bilshe-zajmayutsya-imitacziyeyu-aktyvnoyi-diyalnosti-nataliya-gumenyuk/ ; https://www.facebook.com/sergey.khlan/posts/pfbid0BYZrpVBEj9BR7Ei1uAFe5f... ; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[38] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/podalsha-mobilizatsiia-shche-bilshe-vysnazhyt-rosiiu.html

understandingwar.org

2. They Are Russians Fighting Against Their Homeland. Here’s Why.

Useful themes and messages from PSYOP?

Excerpts:

“My task is not just to protect the people of Ukraine,” said Caesar, 50. “If I remain alive after this phase and all Ukrainian territory is liberated, I will absolutely continue fighting, with a weapon in my hand, to overthrow this Kremlin regime.”

Caesar, who has earned a reputation as a kind of eccentric sage within the legion, said he was an avowed Russian nationalist. Yet he nonetheless believes that modern Russia has gone off the rails, particularly when it comes to invading Ukraine, he said.

He was once a member of the Russian Imperial Movement, which the United States has declared a violent extremist group, but said he broke with it in part over its support for Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

A senior Ukrainian military official involved with overseeing the Legion said that Caesar “had spent a long time searching for a path he felt was ideologically correct,” adding that Ukrainian officials had found no reason to distrust him.

Caesar, who moved his wife and four children to Ukraine over the summer, said he did not believe he was fighting against fellow Russians, but “scoundrels and murderers” who have no nationality.

“I’m sitting before you, an example of a Russian man, and an example of a man that Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky wrote about,” he said. “That’s the kind of man I am. Not them. They aren’t Russian.”

They Are Russians Fighting Against Their Homeland. Here’s Why.

The New York Times · by Michael Schwirtz · February 12, 2023

Soldiers with the Free Russia Legion training this month in the Kyiv region in Ukraine in preparation to deploy to the front lines.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

In the Free Russia Legion, soldiers repelled by Vladimir Putin’s invasion have taken arms against their home country, engaged in some of the most heated fighting in the war.

Soldiers with the Free Russia Legion training this month in the Kyiv region in Ukraine in preparation to deploy to the front lines.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

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Michael Schwirtz and Lynsey Addario reported from eastern Ukraine on the activities of a unit comprising Russians fighting for Ukraine.

Feb. 12, 2023

The soldier knelt in the snow, aimed a rocket launcher and fired in the direction of Russian troops positioned about a mile away. He was set up at a Ukrainian firing position, and looked just like the other Ukrainian troops fighting south of the city of Bakhmut in one of the most brutal theaters of the war.

But he and his comrades are not Ukrainian. They are soldiers in a Ukrainian military unit made up entirely of Russians who are fighting and killing their own countrymen.

They have taken up arms against Russia for a variety of reasons: a sense of moral outrage at their country’s invasion, a desire to defend their adopted homeland of Ukraine or because of a visceral dislike of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. And they have earned enough trust from Ukrainian commanders to take their place among the forces viciously fighting the Russian military.

“A real Russian man doesn’t engage in such an aggressive war, won’t rape children, kill women and elderly people,” said one Russian fighter with the military call sign Caesar, ticking off atrocities committed by Russian soldiers that motivated him to leave his native St. Petersburg and fight for Ukraine. “That’s why I don’t have remorse. I do my job and I’ve killed a lot of them.”

Nearly a year into the war, the Free Russia Legion, as the unit is called, has received little attention — in part to protect the soldiers from reprisals by Russia, but also because of reluctance within the Ukrainian military to highlight the efforts of soldiers whose home country has done so much harm to Ukraine. Several hundred of them are concentrated in the area around Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, officials said; they are always grouped with their own but are overseen by Ukrainian officers.

Soldiers from the Free Russia Legion fired against Russian positions a little more than a mile away this month along the front line in the Donbas region, in Eastern Ukraine.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Russian soldiers from the Legion this month at a position on the front line in eastern Ukraine.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

In interviews, some Russian soldiers said they were already living in Ukraine when Russian forces invaded last year, and felt an obligation to defend their adopted country. Others, often with no military experience, crossed into Ukraine from Russia after the war began, moved by a sense that the Kremlin’s invasion was profoundly unjust.

“We haven’t come here to prove anything,” said one soldier with the call sign Zaza. “We’ve come here to help Ukraine achieve the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory and the future de-Putinization of Russia.”

Fearing retaliation against relatives and themselves, none of the soldiers interviewed agreed to be identified by name or to provide specific details about their biographies. Last week, the Russian prosecutor general’s office filed a suit with the country’s supreme court to have the Legion declared a terrorist organization.

The State of the War

Free Russia Legion: Russian soldiers repelled by President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have taken arms against their home country — and they're engaged in some of the war’s most heated fighting.
In the East: The Wagner private military company said its fighters had seized a village outside Bakhmut, as Moscow’s forces continue a brutal campaign that has nearly encircled the strategic city.
Wagner’s Founder: Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the once secretive tycoon who has Mr. Putin’s support, is confounding Moscow’s Kremlin-allied elite by starting to dabble in politics alongside waging war in Ukraine.
Russian Aerial Barrage: Ukrainian utility crews were working to repair new and significant damage to the country’s energy grid, officials said, after Russia unleashed a major wave of missiles and attack drones.

Zaza, a skinny blond who looks barely out of high school, would not even give his age, saying only that he was under 20. After Russian forces invaded, he said, he could not keep his mouth shut. His outspokenness and antiwar posts on social media got him in trouble with his university’s administration, then with the police. When officers from Russia’s security service showed up at his front door in the fall, he said, he decided it was time to leave.

He said he walked across the border into Ukraine and signed up to fight.

“At such a young age, it is a little early for me to talk about my political opinions and worldview, because these are just forming now,” he said. “But when your country has been taken over by one bad man, you need to take things into your own hands.”

At the start of the war, Ukrainian law prevented Russian citizens from joining the armed forces. It took until August to finalize legislation that would allow the Legion to legally join the fight, Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence service, said in a statement.

Legion soldiers training this month near Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Russian soldiers at a training exercise in the Kyiv region. The initiation process is rigorous for Russians hoping to join Ukrainians in the war.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

“There was a large number of Russians who because of their moral principles could not remain indifferent and were searching for a way to enter the ranks of the defenders of Ukraine,” Mr. Yusov said, explaining the military’s motivation to create the unit. “All legionnaires have come with a huge desire to stop Putin’s horde and free Russia from dictatorship.”

The group operates under the umbrella of Ukraine’s International Legion, a fighting force that includes units made up of American and British volunteers, as well as Belarusians, Georgians and others.

It is not easy to join, Russian soldiers said. They have to submit an application and undergo an extensive background check that includes polygraph tests. Only then can they enter basic training. As Russian passport holders, they are inevitably met with distrust. There have been several attempts by Russian spies to infiltrate the Legion, Mr. Yusov said.

In a pine forest in the Kyiv region last week, a group of new Russian recruits nearing the end of a three-month basic training course practiced tactical retreats, firing mortars and basic combat medicine. They exemplified the international hodgepodge that has come to define much of Ukraine’s war effort: Russian soldiers trained on a French-made 155 millimeter mortar and carried American-made M16 rifles.

“It’s better than a Kalashnikov,” one of the soldiers said of the M16. “I’ve fired about 1,000 rounds and haven’t had any problems yet.”

The soldier known as Miami, left, training to use a French mortar with other soldiers with the Free Russia Legion.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

A Russian soldier with the Free Russia Legion pretending to be injured during a medical evacuation training exercise in the Kyiv region.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

The sounds of small-arms fire and heavy artillery echoed through the forest, and an instructor threw a dummy grenade near a small group of soldiers to gauge how they would react. Most of the soldiers will occupy positions back from the front lines, working in artillery or air reconnaissance units using drones.

Though the instructors were all Ukrainian, all spoke in Russian. In interviews, some of the recruits tried to speak a few words of Ukrainian, but quickly switched back to their native language.

“After about one or two months as they’ve settled in, they start to use small phrases like ‘thank you’ or ‘fire,’” said one of the instructors, who declined to provide his name.

The soldiers said they struggled to explain their decision to family back in Russia. Reports of atrocities committed by Russian troops, including the butchering of civilians in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin, are dismissed as foreign propaganda in their homeland.

“They don’t understand the whole truth,” said a 32-year-old soldier with the call sign Miami, who said his parents had urged him to fight on the Russian side. “They’re told that bad people live here, and they believe it. They don’t believe that the second biggest army in the world could kill regular people.”

Back at the front in eastern Ukraine, the shelling never stops for long. Russian forces have been hammering away at Ukrainian positions, trying to dislodge them around Bakhmut in advance of an expected offensive push to take all of the eastern region known as the Donbas.

On a recent visit to a firing position, the precise location of which The New York Times is withholding for security, the ground rumbled and artillery shells crisscrossed a clear sky. That day, Russian forces had launched a volley of Grad rockets that blanketed the area, wounding several civilians but sparing the soldiers.

A soldier known as Zaza, left, and another called Luna, center, training in the Kyiv region.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Soldiers from the Free Russia Legion in a bunker at the front line a little more than a mile away from Russian positions in eastern Ukraine.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

“They’re striking everywhere,” a panting Russian soldier said as he took cover in a dugout in a neighborhood of small, snow-covered cottages.

Soldiers in the Legion said that they were continuing to hold the line, but some have already begun to think beyond the immediate battle, and even beyond the war in Ukraine, to what comes next.

“My task is not just to protect the people of Ukraine,” said Caesar, 50. “If I remain alive after this phase and all Ukrainian territory is liberated, I will absolutely continue fighting, with a weapon in my hand, to overthrow this Kremlin regime.”

Caesar, who has earned a reputation as a kind of eccentric sage within the legion, said he was an avowed Russian nationalist. Yet he nonetheless believes that modern Russia has gone off the rails, particularly when it comes to invading Ukraine, he said.

He was once a member of the Russian Imperial Movement, which the United States has declared a violent extremist group, but said he broke with it in part over its support for Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

A senior Ukrainian military official involved with overseeing the Legion said that Caesar “had spent a long time searching for a path he felt was ideologically correct,” adding that Ukrainian officials had found no reason to distrust him.

Caesar, who moved his wife and four children to Ukraine over the summer, said he did not believe he was fighting against fellow Russians, but “scoundrels and murderers” who have no nationality.

“I’m sitting before you, an example of a Russian man, and an example of a man that Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky wrote about,” he said. “That’s the kind of man I am. Not them. They aren’t Russian.”

The New York Times · by Michael Schwirtz · February 12, 2023

3. Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus

More useful themes and messages? If all the good Russians leave, what will be left? Does this increase or lessen the possibility of change?

Excerpts:

Like the White Russian emigres of the Bolshevik era and the post-Soviet immigrants of the 1990s, many of those leaving Russia because of the war in Ukraine are likely gone for good.

Eidelman, the Russian historian, said that the longer the war, the deeper the scars. “Every extra month leads people to get used to a different country,” she said. “They get a job there, their children go to school, they begin to speak a different language. The longer the war lasts, the longer the dictatorship in the country continues, the fewer people will return.”

But technology makes this exodus unlike its predecessors, guaranteeing Russians abroad will remain connected to their past.

Matthew Rojansky, president of the U.S. Russia Foundation, a Washington-based group, said the Russian expats could become “a repository of relevant skills for a better, freer, modern Russia.” For now, though, Rojansky said, the outflow sends an clear message.

“It’s historic,” he said. “These people are voting with their feet. They are leaving because of the what the Putin regime is doing.”

Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus

By Francesca Ebel and Mary Ilyushina

February 13, 2023 at 1:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Francesca Ebel · February 13, 2023

February 13, 2023 at 1:00 a.m. EST

YEREVAN, Armenia — As Russian troops stormed into Ukraine last February, sending millions of Ukrainians fleeing for their lives, thousands of Russians also raced to pack their bags and leave home, fearing the Kremlin would shut the borders and impose martial law.

Some had long opposed rising authoritarianism and the invasion was a last straw. Others were driven by economic interest, to preserve livelihoods or escape the bite of sanctions. Then, last autumn, a military mobilization spurred hundreds of thousands of men to flee.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war has set off a historic exodus of his own people. Initial data show that at least 500,000, and perhaps nearly 1 million, have left in the year since the invasion began — a tidal wave on scale with emigration following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

Now, like then, the departures stand to redefine the country for generations. And the flood may still be in its early stages. The war seems nowhere near finished. Any new conscription effort by the Kremlin will spark new departures, as will worsening economic conditions, which are expected as the conflict drags on.

The huge outflow has swelled existing Russian expat communities across the world, and created new ones.

Some fled nearby to countries like Armenia and Kazakhstan, across borders open to Russians. Some with visas escaped to Finland, the Baltic states or elsewhere in Europe. Others ventured farther, to the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Thailand, Argentina. Two men from Russia’s Far East even sailed a small boat to Alaska.

The financial cost, while vast, is impossible to calculate. In late December, Russia’s communications ministry reported that 10 percent of the country’s IT workers had left in 2022 and not returned. Russia’s parliament is now debating a package of incentives to bring them back.

But there has also been talk in parliament of punishing Russians who left by stripping them of their assets at home. Putin has referred to those who left as “scum” and said their exit would “cleanse” the country — even though some who left did not oppose him, or the war.

With the government severely restricting dissent, and implementing punishment for criticism of the war, those remaining in the depleted political opposition also faced a choice this year: prison or exile. Most chose exile. Activists and journalists are now clustered in cities such as Berlin, and the capitals of Lithuania, Latvia and Georgia.

“This exodus is a terrible blow for Russia,” said Tamara Eidelman, a Russian historian who moved to Portugal after the invasion. “The layer that could have changed something in the country has now been washed away.”

While Ukrainian refugees were embraced in the West, many countries shunned the Russians, uncertain if they were friends or foes and if, on some level, the entire country was culpable. Some nations have blocked arrivals by imposing entry restrictions, or denying new visas, at times spreading panic among Russians, especially students, already abroad.

Meanwhile, the influx of Russians in countries like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which long sent immigrants to Russia, has set off political tremors, straining ties between Moscow and the other former Soviet states. Real estate prices in those countries have shot up, causing tensions with local populations.

Nearly a year after the start of the invasion — and the new outflow of Russians — Washington Post journalists traveled to Yerevan, and to Dubai for a close look at how the emigres are faring, and to ask if they ever plan to return. Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, a former Soviet republic, is a destination for Russians with lower financial mobility — an Orthodox Christian country where Russian is the second language. By contrast, pricey Dubai, in the Persian Gulf, is predominantly Muslim, Arabic-speaking, and attracts wealthier Russians seeking either glitz or business opportunity.

Yerevan

For many fleeing Russians, Armenia was a rare, easy option. It is one of five ex-Soviet countries that allow Russians to enter with just a national ID — making it a popular destination for former soldiers, political activists and others needing a quick escape.

Given shared religion and common use of Russian language, Russians typically do not face animosity or social stigma. Obtaining residency permits is also straightforward, and living costs are lower than in the E.U.

Yerevan has attracted thousands of IT workers, young creatives and working-class people, including families with children, from across Russia, who have established new schools, bars, cafes and robust support networks.

In the courtyard of the “Free School” for Russian children, established in April, Maxim, a construction company manager, was waiting for his 8-year-old son, Timofey. The school started with 40 students in an apartment. Now, there are nearly 200 in a multistory building in the city center.

Maxim, whom The Post is only identifying by first name due to security reasons, flew to Yerevan from Volgograd to avoid the mobilization last September. “We left for the same reason everyone did: There was suddenly a real danger in the country for me and, above all, my family,” he said.

The family has adapted seamlessly to Yerevan. Everyone around them speaks Russian. Maxim works remotely on projects in Russia. Timofey likes his school and is learning Armenian. Maxim said he is sure the family will not return to Russia.

“Perhaps we will move on somewhere else, maybe even to Europe if things start to normalize,” he said.

At a shelter on the outskirts of Yerevan, Andrei, 25, a former military officer from Russia’s Rostov region, said he was also adjusting to his new life, after similarly fleeing conscription. “I did not want to be a murderer in this criminal war,” said Andrei, who is being identified by his first name for safety reasons.

Andrei works as a delivery driver, and shares a modest room with two other men in a shelter set up by Kovcheg, a support organization for Russians emigrants. “Before the war I never followed politics, but after the invasion I started reading about everything,” Andrei said. “I feel so ashamed about what Russia has done.”

Meanwhile, at a co-working space downtown, Russian activist groups organize debates, political meetings and therapy sessions. Messages of support for Ukraine hang on the walls, along with the white and blue flag adopted by Russia’s opposition. At one meeting in late January, dozens of Russians were hunched over tables, writing letters to political prisoners in Russia.

“The more letters, the better,” said Ivan Lyubimov, 37, an activist from Yekaterinburg. “It’s important that they don’t feel they are alone.” He held up a cartoon of a smiling panda. To circumvent prison censorship, they must avoid writing anything political but drawings are certain to be delivered.

Tanya Raspopova, 26, arrived in Yerevan last March, with her husband, but without a plan, overwhelmed and frightened.

Then, she heard another emigre was seeking partners to set up a bar, a space where Russian expats could come together, and she wanted to help. Tuf, named after the pink volcanic rock common throughout Yerevan, opened its doors within a month.

They started with a neon lit bar and kitchen on the ground floor, which soon expanded into a small courtyard. Then they opened up a second floor, then a third. Upstairs there is now a recording studio, a clothing boutique and a tattoo parlor. On a Wednesday night in January, the place was packed with young Russians and Armenians singing karaoke, drinking cocktails and playing ping-pong. “We have since created such a big community, a big family,” Raspopova said. “Tuf is our new home.”

Dubai

Russians are everywhere in Dubai: clutching Dior totes perched atop Louis Vuitton suitcases in the airport, walking around malls in tracksuits, and filming TikToks and Reels near the Burj Khalifa.

Russia’s rich and powerful have long traveled to Dubai, but it was just one of many hot spots. That changed when the war cut Russians off from the West.

Thousands have chosen the UAE, which did not join Western sanctions and still has direct flights to Moscow, as their new home. Russians enjoy visa-free travel for 90 days and it is relatively easy to get a national ID through business or investment, for a longer stay.

The high cost of living means there are no activists or journalists. Dubai is a haven, and the go-to playground, for Russian tech founders, billionaires under sanctions, unpenalized millionaires, celebrities and influencers.

Shortly after the invasion, conversations in Moscow’s affluent Patriarch Ponds neighborhood turned to the best Dubai real estate deals, said Natalia Arkhangelskaya, who writes for Antiglyanets, a snarky and influential Telegram blog focused on Russia’s elite. A year later, Russians have ousted Brits and Indians as Dubai’s top real estate buyers, Russian-owned yachts dock at the marina and private jets zigzag between Dubai and Moscow.

Russians can still buy apartments, open bank accounts and snag designer leather goods they previously shopped for in France.

“Dubai is built on the concept that people with money come here,” Arkhangelskaya said.

The UAE’s embrace of foreign business has enticed a stream of Russian IT workers seeking to cut ties with Russia and stay linked to global markets. Start-ups seek financing from state-supported accelerators. Larger firms pursue clients to replace those lost to sanctions.

A 40th floor apartment in one of the Jumeirah Beach Residence towers, with stunning views, is reserved for weekly meetups open to IT newcomers. On a windy January evening, the organizer, Ivan Fediakov, who heads a consulting company, greeted guests, wearing a black hoodie with “Everyone understands everything” printed on it — a catchphrase popularized by Alexey Pivovarov, a Russian journalist branded by Russia as a foreign agent whose YouTube channel has 3.5 million subscribers.

About a dozen people arrived to discuss opportunities in India, which has maintained ties with Russia despite the war. Most expressed bitterness about the Kremlin’s politics and longing for Moscow when it was an aspiring global hub.

Alexandra Dorf, an IT entrepreneur, moved to Dubai with her two children in April. “No one knew what was going to happen next,” Dorf said.

“Borders can be shut abruptly,” she said. “A decision had to be made, you either stay or you go quickly.”

In 2022, Dorf severed all ties with Russia: She sold her apartment and car, and found a new job in Dubai as a business development officer at an AI-focused company.

“For the first two months, you are constantly stressed, your children have been torn out from their usual way of life, and you can’t enroll them into a school midyear,” she said. “But Dubai is a blooming hub.”

“The most important thing for me is to be able to develop international projects and to integrate my kids into a global community, so they grow up in a free environment,” she added.

Aside from techies, many middle-class Russians followed the money to Dubai — for hospitality jobs, to open beauty salons or simply work remotely far from the warmongering motherland.

Artem Babinov, founder of a co-living space called Colife in Moscow, opened an office in Dubai days before the invasion, hoping to attract British finance specialists. The war changed his plans, and he now rents dozens of properties as short-term housing, mainly to Russians in their 30s. “The community here is key,” Babinov said. “People just need other people.”

Third exodus

Like the White Russian emigres of the Bolshevik era and the post-Soviet immigrants of the 1990s, many of those leaving Russia because of the war in Ukraine are likely gone for good.

Eidelman, the Russian historian, said that the longer the war, the deeper the scars. “Every extra month leads people to get used to a different country,” she said. “They get a job there, their children go to school, they begin to speak a different language. The longer the war lasts, the longer the dictatorship in the country continues, the fewer people will return.”

But technology makes this exodus unlike its predecessors, guaranteeing Russians abroad will remain connected to their past.

Matthew Rojansky, president of the U.S. Russia Foundation, a Washington-based group, said the Russian expats could become “a repository of relevant skills for a better, freer, modern Russia.” For now, though, Rojansky said, the outflow sends an clear message.

“It’s historic,” he said. “These people are voting with their feet. They are leaving because of the what the Putin regime is doing.”

Ebel reported from Yerevan, Armenia and Ilyushina reported from Dubai.

The Washington Post · by Francesca Ebel · February 13, 2023

4. ‘Significantly degraded’ Russian force is adapting after losses

‘Significantly degraded’ Russian force is adapting after losses

Defense News · by Joe Gould · February 10, 2023

WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon’s international affairs chief said Friday that although Russia has lost tens of thousands of soldiers and likely half its main battle tanks in Ukraine, its forces are adapting and there are deep reserves of personnel.

“I think we need to be mindful that as Russia continues to suffer losses in Ukraine, it is learning how to adapt, it is learning tactically, operationally and somewhat strategically,” Celeste Wallander, the assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, said at a Center for a New American Security event.

The comments came amid a fresh Russian offensive timed to the one-year anniversary of its invasion this month, according to an Institute for the Study of War analysis. Russia, amid high casualty rates, has committed elements of a least three major divisions to offensive operations, and the country is stepping up its recruitment campaign.

According to Wallander, Moscow overall has committed 80% of its ground forces to the fight, but has seen them “significantly degraded.” Still, she added, Russia has a “bench of personnel that it can draw from,” which is playing out in the bloody fight for Bakhmut.

Russia presents a “mixed picture,” she explained: As Western economic restrictions weaken Russia’s industrial capacity, it has bought and used Iranian drones to attack Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure ― and it continues to field “substantial” air power.

Asked about Russia’s ability to reconstitute itself, Wallander made clear the country is the Pentagon’s No. 2 strategic challenge after China, and will remain so. “We are not losing sight of the fact that even as Russia is facing a strategic failure in Ukraine, it will remain a militarily capable adversary,” she said.

With an eye on Russia, the U.S. and its NATO allies will use a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, this summer to finalize plans for a new force model, which aligns some NATO units based on geography.

“Right now the NATO military staff is working new plans and a new force model to meet the new security environment, which is a more challenging one in terms of Russian intent and not taking for granted Russian capabilities,” Wallander said. “That would be focused on approving those new plans, those new force models and identifying the new capabilities that will be required for NATO allies to have to be combat credible.”

The U.S. is also leading conversations with allies about limited defense-industrial base capacity aimed at providing military aid to Ukraine over the long term while also maintaining allied militaries. While some munition production boosts have begun, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks is leading an effort to unclog industrial bottlenecks.

“You will begin to see effects over time, and it won’t be just incremental to break some of these bottlenecks,” Wallander said, adding that the war was “an unfortunate wakeup call” about supply chain challenges.

About Joe Gould

Joe Gould is the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He served previously as Congress reporter.

5. US jets down 4 objects in 8 days, unprecedented in peacetime

US jets down 4 objects in 8 days, unprecedented in peacetime

AP · by COLLEEN LONG, LOLITA C. BALDOR and ZEKE MILLER · February 12, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” over Lake Huron on Sunday on orders from President Joe Biden. It was the fourth such downing in eight days and the latest military strike in an extraordinary chain of events over U.S. airspace that Pentagon officials believe has no peacetime precedent.

Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” following a spy balloon from China that emerged over U.S. airspace in late January, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.

Since then, fighter jets last week also shot down objects over Canada and Alaska. Pentagon officials said they posed no security threats, but so little was known about them that Pentagon officials were ruling nothing out — not even UFOs.

“We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase,” said Melissa Dalton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense.

U.S. authorities have made clear that they constantly monitor for unknown radar blips, and it is not unusual to shut down airspace as a precaution to evaluate them. But the unusually assertive response was raising questions about whether such use of force was warranted, particularly as administration officials said the objects were not of great national security concern and the downings were just out of caution.

VanHerck said the U.S. adjusted its radar so it could track slower objects. “With some adjustments, we’ve been able to get a better categorization of radar tracks now,” he said, “and that’s why I think you’re seeing these, plus there’s a heightened alert to look for this information.”

He added: “I believe this is the first time within United States or American airspace that NORAD or United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an airborne object.”

Asked if officials have ruled out extraterrestrials, VanHerck said, “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”

The Pentagon officials said they were still trying to determine what exactly the objects were and said they had considered using the jets’ guns instead of missiles, but it proved to be too difficult. They drew a strong distinction between the three shot down over this weekend and the balloon from China.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz tweeted that airmen in the 148th Fighter Wing, an Air National Guard fighter unit in Duluth, shot down the object over Lake Huron.

The extraordinary air defense activity began in late January, when a white orb the officials said was from China appeared over the U.S. and hovered above the nation for days before fighter jets downed it off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That event played out over livestream. Many Americans have been captivated by the drama playing out in the skies as fighter jets scramble to shoot down objects.

The latest brought down was first detected on Saturday evening over Montana, but it was initially thought to be an anomaly. Radar picked it up again Sunday hovering over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and it was going over Lake Huron, Pentagon officials said Sunday.

U.S. and Canadian authorities had restricted some airspace over the lake earlier Sunday as planes were scrambled to intercept and try to identify the object. According to a senior administration official, the object was octagonal, with strings hanging off, but had no discernable payload. It was flying low at about 20,000 feet, said the official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials were still trying to precisely identify two other objects shot down by F-22 fighter jets, and were working to determine whether China was responsible as concerns escalated about what Washington said was Beijing’s large-scale aerial surveillance program.

An object shot down Saturday over Canada’s Yukon was described by U.S. officials as a balloon significantly smaller than the balloon — the size of three school buses — hit by a missile Feb. 4. A flying object brought down over the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday was more cylindrical and described as a type of airship.

Both were believed to have a payload, either attached or suspended from them, according to the officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Officials were not able to say who launched the objects and were seeking to figure out their origin.

The three objects were much smaller in size, different in appearance and flew at lower altitudes than the suspected spy balloon that fell into the Atlantic Ocean after the U.S. missile strike.

The officials said the other three objects were not consistent with the fleet of Chinese aerial surveillance balloons that targeted more than 40 countries, stretching back at least into the Trump administration.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC’s “This Week” that U.S. officials were working quickly to recover debris. Using shorthand to describe the objects as balloons, he said U.S military and intelligence officials were “focused like a laser” on gathering and accumulating the information, then compiling a comprehensive analysis.

“The bottom line is until a few months ago we didn’t know about these balloons,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the spy program that the administration has linked to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military. “It is wild that we didn’t know.”

Eight days ago, F-22 jets downed the large white balloon that had wafted over the U.S. for days at an altitude of about 60,000 feet. U.S. officials immediately blamed China, saying the balloon was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals and could maneuver itself. White House officials said improved surveillance capabilities helped detect it.

China’s Foreign Ministry said the unmanned balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that had blown off course. Beijing said the U.S. had “overreacted” by shooting it down.

Then, on Friday, North American Aerospace Defense Command, the combined U.S.-Canada organization that provides shared defense of airspace over the two nations, detected and shot down an object near sparsely populated Deadhorse, Alaska.

Later that evening, NORAD detected a second object, flying at a high altitude over Alaska, U.S. officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday and was over the Yukon, a remote territory, when it was ordered shot down by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In both of those incidents, the objects were flying at roughly 40,000 feet. The object on Sunday was flying at 20,000 feet.

The cases have increased diplomatic tensions between the United States and China, raised questions about the extent of Beijing’s American surveillance, and prompted days of criticism from Republican lawmakers about the administration’s response.

___

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Michael Balsamo, Ellen Knickmeyer and Tara Copp contributed to this report.

AP · by COLLEEN LONG, LOLITA C. BALDOR and ZEKE MILLER · February 12, 2023

6. China Says U.S. Flew High-Altitude Balloons Over Its Airspace

Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. (or use whataboutism).

We are accused of 10 balloon incursions since 2022.

China Says U.S. Flew High-Altitude Balloons Over Its Airspace

By Reuters

Feb. 13, 2023, at 3:27 a.m.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-02-13/china-says-u-s-flew-more-than-10-high-altitude-balloons-over-chinese-airspace

FILE PHOTO: Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin speaks during a news conference in Beijing, China March 3, 2022. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia RawlinsREUTERS

By Martin Quin Pollard

BEIJING (Reuters) -China said on Monday that U.S. high altitude balloons had flown over its airspace without permission more than 10 times since the beginning of 2022, widening a diplomatic row after the U.S. military shot down what it says was a Chinese spy balloon.

"Since last year, the U.S.'s high-altitude balloons have undergone more than 10 illegal flights into Chinese airspace without the approval of the relevant Chinese departments," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular briefing in Beijing in response to a question.

Wang did not specifically describe the balloons as military or for espionage purposes and did not provide further details.

Asked how China had responded to such incursions into its airspace, Wang said its responses had been "responsible and professional".

The U.S. defense department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China's assertion comes after the United States shot down what it says was a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4 after it had drifted across the continental United States for days.

In resposne to the Chinese balloon, the United States postponed a visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

China says the balloon was a civilian research craft that had mistakenly blown off course and accused the United States of overreacting.

"The first thing the U.S. side should do is to look at itself, to change its ways, not to smear and incite confrontation," Wang said.

In recent days, the U.S. military has shot down three other flying objects over North America.

Wang said he had no information on the latest three objects shot down by the United States.

(Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard; Writing by Tony Munroe)

7. The hidden truth behind China’s spy balloons

Excerpts:

No one can yet answer the question other than to observe that not flagging the overflights and pushing back on China was a tremendously dangerous US policy misstep. More ominously, there is the additional possibility that top US officials were never told about them, raising the specter of an unaccountable “deep state” operation.

It would be ironic if neither Xi nor Biden – nor Trump before him – were all kept in the dark before the secret was discovered and revealed.

There is a broad consensus in the US that China’s overflights of US territories and US bases abroad (such as Guam) must stop, either by consent or through force.

Despite efforts to continue to cover up and withhold identifying the source of the overflights, any US president as commander-in-chief will have to take forceful action.

But even as this is written, the Biden administration has not made any discernible or significant protest to China. Pressure will grow for that to change, and very soon.

China should be on notice that any free pass it had previously to intrude over US territory is now gone and that if it continues with the overflights they could lead to real and open conflict.

The hidden truth behind China’s spy balloons

Pentagon, State Department and NSC all keen to downplay China’s overflights as specter of a ‘deep state’ deal rises

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen · February 13, 2023

Washington is in a state of confusion about balloons and other unidentified flying objects, four of which have already been shot down. What is their purpose? Will there be more to deal with? Where are they all coming from and at who’s command?

The general consensus around Washington, voiced by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, is that all of the “objects” are balloons, even though the White House denounced Schumer for saying so.

Likewise, there is a general understanding that all of these “objects” were different types of Chinese balloons.

The latest shootdown, as of February 12, was a balloon hexagonal in shape that was shot down over Lake Huron. This balloon is known to have traversed Montana, like earlier ones, operating over US strategic missile emplacements at Malmstrom Air Force Base.

That is one of three sites on US territory where Minuteman III MIRV missiles are emplaced in underground silos. The other two are at Minot, North Dakota and Francis E Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

It would appear from the White House complaint to Schumer that there is keen interest at the level of the National Security Council, the State Department and Pentagon to try and downplay China’s balloon operations.

It is, for example, more than abundantly clear that these intrusions have been ongoing for at least a few years and have been systematically covered up. The only reasonable explanation for what amounts to a cover-up is to not end up in a confrontation with China.

The main question, however, is why is China so intent on surveilling US strategic bases and missile defenses?

China has an apparent spying interest in the Francis E Warren Air Force Base. Photo: US Air Force / Airman 1st Class Darius Frazier

The answer could be that China is either preparing a first-strike capability against the US homeland or is preparing to checkmate the US if it threatens to intervene in Chinese affairs, or both.

China now has a bigger ICBM capability than the US and most of them are solid-state rockets that can be launched quickly on demand.

Unlike US reliance on missile silos and nuclear submarines, neither of which is a first strike system, the Chinese deployment combines fixed hardened launch sites with ICBMs that can move about on rail lines or roadways, making them hard to find and destroy.

Historically, the US has relied on the mutually assured destruction paradigm for security against nuclear attack. Known as the MAD doctrine, it worked reasonably well during the Cold War period, so much so that both the US and Russia (USSR) agreed to limitations on missile numbers and ballistic missile defenses.

Unlike Russia and the US, however, China never participated in missile limitations and has recently been rapidly growing its tactical and strategic nuclear missile capabilities.

The latest balloon over Lake Huron that was shot down probably is only the balloon component. Pilots tasked with destroying the balloon saw “strings” or wires hanging from the octagonal object, suggesting that the payload had already been detached and perhaps destroyed.

The first large balloon that flew across the United States and was shot down over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, appears to have had an explosives package designed to destroy the payload before it could be recovered.

In video of that balloon takedown, a secondary explosion can clearly be heard well after the AIM-9X disintegrated the balloon. The latest Lake Huron balloon may be a repeat performance. There is no public information on the other two shot down, one off Alaska’s northern coast and the other over Canadian airspace.

Until some of the instrumentation is recovered, US authorities won’t know about the balloons’ capabilities. It is even less likely that the public will get the straight story. To date, the US record is to hide the facts and admit far less than is already known.

The US has in recent days shot down several objects believed to be Chinese spy balloons. Image: ABC News / Screengrab

Meanwhile, there are serious questions about China’s intent. Why would China dispatch a bunch of surveillance balloons over sensitive US sites at a time when China is experiencing serious internal problems and President Xi Jinping’s leadership is under a cloud?

Is the Chinese military operating with Xi’s (and the Politburo’s) explicit approval, or is the balloon escapade a military-led challenge to the current government? Or is it possibly the case that these overflights had become routine as the US knew about them but never protested?

No one can yet answer the question other than to observe that not flagging the overflights and pushing back on China was a tremendously dangerous US policy misstep. More ominously, there is the additional possibility that top US officials were never told about them, raising the specter of an unaccountable “deep state” operation.

It would be ironic if neither Xi nor Biden – nor Trump before him – were all kept in the dark before the secret was discovered and revealed.

There is a broad consensus in the US that China’s overflights of US territories and US bases abroad (such as Guam) must stop, either by consent or through force.

Despite efforts to continue to cover up and withhold identifying the source of the overflights, any US president as commander-in-chief will have to take forceful action.

But even as this is written, the Biden administration has not made any discernible or significant protest to China. Pressure will grow for that to change, and very soon.

China should be on notice that any free pass it had previously to intrude over US territory is now gone and that if it continues with the overflights they could lead to real and open conflict.

Follow Stephen Bryen on Twitter at @stevebryen

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen · February 13, 2023

8. China Says U.S. Flew Balloons Through Its Airspace

China Says U.S. Flew Balloons Through Its Airspace

Beijing says U.S. sent more than 10 balloons through its airspace since start of 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-says-u-s-flew-balloons-through-its-airspace-9739875e?mod=hp_lead_pos2

By Brian SpegeleFollow

Updated Feb. 13, 2023 7:13 am ET

BEIJING—China alleged that the U.S. had flown high-altitude balloons through its airspace more than 10 times since the start of 2022, adding fuel to an escalating diplomatic standoff between the countries that has derailed efforts to reset relations.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a daily press briefing Monday that U.S. balloons regularly flew through other countries’ airspace without permission. It is the first time that China has made such an accusation since a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted over the U.S. earlier this month and later shot down off the coast of South Carolina.

“The first thing the U.S. needs to do is change its ways and reflect on itself, and not to smear and incite confrontation,” Mr. Wang told reporters.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Monday that U.S. balloons regularly flew through other countries’ airspace without permission.

PHOTO: LIU ZHENG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mr. Wang didn’t provide details on how China responded to the alleged U.S. balloon flights at the time beyond saying that China had dealt with the matter responsibly and professionally. He said the U.S. had acted illegally, without elaborating on whose laws the balloons may have flouted and in what way.

The Pentagon and State Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

China has repeatedly said that the U.S. overreacted by shooting down the Chinese balloon, which the Foreign Ministry has described as a civilian balloon for weather research that blew off course. U.S. officials reject this explanation and say they are confident the balloon was for surveillance purposes and that it flew over multiple sensitive sites in the U.S.

In recent days, the U.S. shot down three additional unidentified objects, including one in Alaska and one over Lake Huron, in addition to another over Canada’s Yukon territory.

Asked about these objects on Monday, Mr. Wang declined to say whether any of them were from China.

Separately, China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed Monday that China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, would give a speech at the Munich Security Conference during a visit to Europe beginning on Tuesday. Mr. Wang will also visit Russia during the trip, the ministry said.

Beijing’s allegations appeared to mark a shift in strategy. When the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon’s existence emerged, shortly before a planned trip to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, China expressed regret over the matter.

Video: U.S. Shoots Down Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon

Army sees safety, not 'wokeness,' as top recruiting obstacle

AP · by LOLITA C. BALDOR · February 12, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — While some Republicans blame the COVID-19 vaccine or “wokeness” for the Army’s recruiting woes, the military service says the bigger hurdles are more traditional ones: Young people don’t want to die or get injured, deal with the stress of Army life and put their lives on hold.

They “just don’t see the Army as something that’s relevant,” said Maj. Gen. Alex Fink, head of Army marketing. “They see us as revered, but not relevant, in their lives.”

Addressing those longtime issues has taken on greater urgency as the Army tries to recover from its worst recruiting year in decades, a situation aggravated by the tight jobs market. The Army is offering new programs, advertising and enticements in an effort to change perceptions and reverse the decline.

One incentive gives recruiters bonuses of up to $4,500 per quarter if they exceed their baseline enlistment requirement. A pilot program allows young enlisted soldiers — those in the three lower ranks — to get a promotion if they refer someone who enlists and goes to basic training. Only one promotion per soldier is allowed.

The Army fell about 15,000 soldiers, or 25%, short of its 60,000 recruitment goal last year, when all the branches struggled to meet recruiting goals.

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Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the Army has set a difficult goal for this year: aiming to bring in 65,000 recruits, which would be 20,000 more than in 2022. It’s difficult to predict how it will go, she said, adding that recruiters need to do all they can to surpass last year’s numbers.

“I would say it is a stretch goal,” she said.

Wormuth said she and Gen. James McConville, the Army’s chief of staff, believed they needed to set a big goal.

“I think we are seeing some forward momentum. But It is still too early to tell where we will likely land at the end of this fiscal year. I know we will do better than we did last year,” she said.

Guiding the Army’s efforts are surveys intended to help pinpoint why young people dismiss the Army as a career.

Those surveys were conducted over four months last spring and summer. They involved about 600 respondents, ages 16 to 28, per month. The Army discussed the general findings with The Associated Press but declined to provide detailed methodology, saying the surveys were done by a private research contractor and that licensing agreements limited the public release of some data collection details.

Officials said that based on the surveys, young people simply do not see the Army as a safe place or good career path, and believe they would have to put their lives and careers on hold if they enlisted.

Army leaders said very few say they are deterred from enlisting due to “wokeness.” In fact, concerns about discrimination against women and minorities is seen as a bigger issue, along with a more general distrust of the military.

“Wokeness” is a slang term that originally described attentiveness to issues of racial and social justice. Some people and groups, especially conservatives, now use it in a derogatory sense implying what they see as overreactions.

Republicans in Congress, including Rep. Jim Banks, chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, have pledged to target “wokeness” this year. Banks, R-Ind., has said “exposing and dismantling the Biden administration’s woke agenda that is driving down military recruitment and retention” will be a top priority for him this year. His spokesman, Buckley Carlson, said combating “wokeness” at the Defense Department will be a key issue for the congressman.

Banks and others have complained about the Pentagon’s efforts to target extremism in the military, provide courses in critical race theory and other efforts to expand diversity. They say focusing on partisan issues pushed by the left takes away from the Pentagon’s core missions, weakens the military and turns off recruits.

But the Army says that on average, only 5% of the respondents in the surveys listed “wokeness” as an issue, compared with 13% who say they believe that women and minorities will face discrimination and not get the same opportunities.

Wormuth said the survey data is a tool to “assuage the concerns that some may have, whether influencers or members of Congress, about wokeness or the vaccine mandate — which is now rescinded — and show they are not, by any means, primary drivers of the recruiting challenges we’re experiencing.”

She said the information from the surveys also provides insight on how the Army needs to better explain its benefits.

Fink, the Army’s marketing head, said the top three reasons young people cite for rejecting military enlistment are the same across all the services: fear of death, worries about post-traumatic stress disorder and leaving friends and family — in that order. He said the Army wanted a better understanding of any additional barriers to service, beyond those top three.

By a “significant margin,” he said, the most common response beyond Nos. 1-3 was, “I will be putting my life on hold.” That was cited by more than 1 in 5 people surveyed.

Many young people do not know anyone in the Army and are unfamiliar with the jobs or benefits it offers. Fink said trust in government institutions, including the military, has declined, particularly among this group.

“They just don’t perceive the Army as being in touch with the modern, everyday culture that they’re used to,” he said.

Fink said about 10% in the surveys say they do not trust military leadership, based on the way recent events or missions have been handled. That could include the Afghanistan withdrawal or use of the military during racial unrest and protests in the United States.

Other reasons get much smaller mentions. They include concerns about living conditions on military bases, getting assigned to unwanted jobs, the coronavirus vaccine and the “wokeness” issue.

In some cases, those reasons vary by region. But Fink said the “wokeness” issue was pretty consistent — between 4% and 5% across the nation, without much variance by gender or ethnicity.

AP · by LOLITA C. BALDOR · February 12, 2023

10. Expect Pentagon's Cyber-Worker Strategy 'Any Day Now'

Excerpts:

Gorak said the accompanying implementation plan is “even more important,” since it will help put into place the strategy’s broader pillars by outlining specific initiatives to meet current training, retention and recruitment challenges.

...

A report on the state of the federal cyber workforce, released last October by a federal working group, found that there were “more than 700,000 cyber jobs to fill nationwide and nearly 40,000 in the public sector as of April 2022.” And the cyber talent shortage is impacting the Pentagon’s operations as well, with DOD noting in a November memo that “attracting cybersecurity professionals continues to fall short of demand.”

...

“Right now, part of the problem we have is our workforce, on the military side, is really good with training,” Gorak said. “The civilian side, once you're hired, you're hired. There’s not much incentive to continue your training besides personal incentive. So I want to incentivize that, and then change it over time.”

And while Gorak said that DOD may ultimately lose some of its more trained military cyber professionals to the private sector after investing significant time and money in their education, he said he viewed it as “a win and a loss,” since this high-skilled talent can ultimately help foster stronger partnerships between the private sector and the Pentagon moving forward.

“From a DOD perspective, that could be a bad thing, but I think for national cybersecurity, that's a good thing,” he added. “We're producing a lot of talent for not only the federal government, but also for the nation as a whole.”

Expect Pentagon's Cyber-Worker Strategy 'Any Day Now'

defenseone.com · by Edward Graham

The imminent release of a cyber workforce strategy and implementation plan will buttress new Pentagon initiatives to recruit and retain skilled cyber workers, a Defense official said Thursday.

Mark Gorak, the principal director for resources and analysis in the DOD chief information officer’s office, said the Pentagon expects the cyber workforce strategy—which DOD has been working on for almost a year—to be finalized “literally any day now.” Speaking at a webinar hosted by Billington Cybersecurity, Gorak said it will include four main pillars to guide DOD’s cyber-related staffing efforts, which include identification, recruitment, development and retention.

Gorak said the accompanying implementation plan is “even more important,” since it will help put into place the strategy’s broader pillars by outlining specific initiatives to meet current training, retention and recruitment challenges.

Both the public and private sectors are experiencing cyber workforce shortages, with the number of trained professionals across the country failing to meet the high demand for cyber expertise, amid an increase in ransomware attacks and other digital threats.

A report on the state of the federal cyber workforce, released last October by a federal working group, found that there were “more than 700,000 cyber jobs to fill nationwide and nearly 40,000 in the public sector as of April 2022.” And the cyber talent shortage is impacting the Pentagon’s operations as well, with DOD noting in a November memo that “attracting cybersecurity professionals continues to fall short of demand.”

Gorak said the Pentagon is working to enact a strategy and implementation plan that addresses its total cyber workforce—which he said includes civilian, military and contractors—noting that each component “has certain challenges” when it comes to carrying out their work. This overall approach will also rely on leveraging data, through the use of predictive analytics, to more effectively identify which type of cyber professionals or cyber workforce roles are lacking within DOD, and then work to incentivize hiring for those positions to meet high-risk needs.

To meet both its recruitment and retention challenges, Gorak said the Pentagon is also working to change its requirements for cyber professionals—both for bringing new talent into the agency, as well as for ensuring that current DOD employees remain knowledgeable about evolving digital threats and vulnerabilities. This will include a greater reliance on performance assessments and hiring assessments, and less of an emphasis on degree requirements and certifications, to guide hiring decisions moving forward.

“Now we'll get after some of the population that aren't so great in school, but spend their time on apps or development or software engineering on their own time,” Gorak said. “I want that population to join the department as well, as it's good for the federal workforce, and I also want that population in my contractor pool.”

As for current DOD cyber professionals, Gorak said the implementation plan will require “an annual type of assessment performance, where we then measure each individual, based on their level of skill that’s based on the current requirements.” He said this approach, coupled with the adoption of mentorship and apprenticeship programs to bolster digital skills and offering additional incentives, will help the Pentagon’s cyber workforce better adapt to changing threats and vulnerabilities—particularly DOD’s non-military employees.

“Right now, part of the problem we have is our workforce, on the military side, is really good with training,” Gorak said. “The civilian side, once you're hired, you're hired. There’s not much incentive to continue your training besides personal incentive. So I want to incentivize that, and then change it over time.”

And while Gorak said that DOD may ultimately lose some of its more trained military cyber professionals to the private sector after investing significant time and money in their education, he said he viewed it as “a win and a loss,” since this high-skilled talent can ultimately help foster stronger partnerships between the private sector and the Pentagon moving forward.

“From a DOD perspective, that could be a bad thing, but I think for national cybersecurity, that's a good thing,” he added. “We're producing a lot of talent for not only the federal government, but also for the nation as a whole.”

defenseone.com · by Edward Graham

11. What Japanese deterrence would look like

Sat, Feb 11, 2023 page9

What Japanese deterrence would look like

Without bases on islands near Taiwan, Japan’s militarization would fail to credibly deter a Chinese blockade

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/02/11/2003794145

By Bill Emmott

Japan’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to the “strategic partnership” that Russia and China announced shortly beforehand, has been impressively decisive.

The Japanese government’s proposal for almost doubling the country’s defense budget over the next five years demonstrates political realism and practical determination. The key question is how to spend the money.

In its National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, Japan acknowledges that it must continue to work with allies — especially the US, with which it has had a security treaty since 1951 — if it is to defend itself and help maintain peace in the region.

However, these documents also offer something new. The government has publicly stated its determination to take a leading role in Japan’s self-defense, and to deter others from attempting “unilateral changes to the status quo.”

This commitment to deterrence is the most important task that Japan has set for itself.

However, it is also the most difficult. It means deterring an attack — conventional or nuclear — by North Korea.

It means deterring aggression by Russia — such as from the four Kuril Islands off Japan’s northern coastline, which the Soviet Union seized in the final days of World War II — but most of all, it means deterring moves by China against either Taiwan or Japan’s strategically located Nansei Islands.

The Taiwan case

By “unilateral changes to the status quo,” the document refers primarily to a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida raised the same issue at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June last year, where he warned in his keynote address that “Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow.”

For those who grew up during the Cold War, “deterrence” calls to mind nuclear weapons and the fearsome, but ultimately reassuring doctrine of “mutual assured destruction.”

However, Japan does not have that option. Speculation about the country’s potential acquisition of nuclear weapons is just that: Japanese are not going down that road any time soon — and certainly not under Kishida, whose hometown is Hiroshima.

Japan’s new defense buildup also reflects the sober recognition that the country might not always be able to rely on US protection, nuclear or otherwise.

That would be especially true if Japan does not make a significant contribution to the broader shared task of deterring China, Russia and North Korea.

That is why the new strategy includes an eye-catching mention of acquiring and building “counterstrike capabilities,” meaning a force of missiles that potential adversaries understand can be used to retaliate swiftly or even to carry out pre-emptive strikes.

Although the idea of a preemptive strike capability remains controversial, the principal aim is not to use the missile force, but rather to be known to have it. That is the essence of deterrence.

Speed and power are the two principal characteristics of such a counterstrike capability.

Top-quality intelligence, whether gathered alone or in collaboration with the US, would also be crucial in establishing the credibility of deterrence, because only then can the power of a counterstrike capability be used at the necessary speed.

Building a credible counterstrike capability would be vitally important in improving Japan’s ability to deter its potential adversaries to the north and west — Russia and North Korea.

However, the adversary to the south, China, presents a more difficult challenge. In recent years, Japan has been much clearer in signaling its opposition to “unilateral changes to the status quo” concerning Taiwan and the East China Sea.

It has also made clear that its self-defense forces would support US forces in the case of conflict with China.

Credible deterrent

However, deterrence in these theaters depends on Japan developing a credibly fast and powerful response capability.

To that end, Japan must not only modernize and expand its maritime, land and air defense forces, it also must change how they are deployed.

Although the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force — the country’s navy — and the large, well-armed Japan Coast Guard fleet operate throughout the country’s territorial waters, neither they nor the army nor air force have any significant base or supply depot in the southern Nansei Islands near Taiwan.

Without such bases, it does not really matter how powerful Japanese forces become, because it would still be too difficult to deploy them rapidly to the most likely conflict zones.

Crucially, it would be impossible to convey to Chinese strategists that Japan is capable of a rapid mobilization.

The potential to contribute to a military engagement only weeks or even months after the fact is unlikely to have a serious deterrent effect.

Joint use of US bases, on the main island of Honshu and on the southern island of Okinawa, could help.

However, the biggest contribution would come from China knowing that any attempted invasion or coercion of Taiwan would be met by a powerful military response from nearby Japanese forces.

That means establishing proper military bases in the southernmost islands.

This would not be easy. The political sensitivities around Tokyo-based rule are as acute in these southern islands as they are farther north in Okinawa. Supplying such bases and making them suitable for long-term, year-round occupation would be costly.

Yet this would be the real test of Japan’s defense strategy over the next five years. Are Japanese capabilities sufficient to change Chinese military planners’ risk calculations?

That is what deterrence requires.

Bill Emmott, a former editor-in-chief of The Economist, is chair of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Japan Society of the United Kingdom.

12. 433. Gaming Information Dominance

China has sought to capture the video game market.

FEBRUARY 13, 2023 BY USER

433. Gaming Information Dominance

https://madsciblog.tradoc.army.mil/433-gaming-information-dominance/

[Editor’s Note: The Mad Scientist Laboratory introduces our new Bit series, exploring a finite but key component of the greater Operational Environment in a succinct post. Today’s post by returning guest blogger Kate Kilgore explores how video games and their streaming platforms are the newest front in the on-going battle for Information Dominance — Enjoy!]

Video games and video game streaming platforms have emerged as an unprecedented element of the information fight surrounding Russia’s war in Ukraine. Online gaming communities driven by shared interests present a unique tool in the war for perception, which Ukrainian military and government officials as well as civilians have leveraged to grow support for Ukraine both within and outside of the country. Often, these games are military-themed or involve tactical gameplay and range from tank and flight simulators featuring vintage and modern military systems to dystopian first-person shooters. While gaming provides unique opportunities due to its role in enhancing global connectivity, these communities may also pose threats to both personal and institutional security.

Online gaming forums and streaming sites enable information operations to reach broad audiences, both domestically and internationally. The Ukrainian developers of the video game series S.T.A.L.K.E.R. used advertising for its upcoming installment to fundraise for the Ukrainian military. International fans of individual Ukrainian streamers like Escape From Tarkov player “Bobi” have gathered their efforts to send these streamers information which enabled their escape from the country. The Polish developers of This War of Mine integrated immersive technology with their 2014 game to create an experience in which gamers take the role of civilians in a war zone designed to resemble modern Ukraine and explain the nation’s experience to international audiences.

International influencers are increasingly using sites like the Amazon-owned live streaming service Twitch to raise relief funds and report on conflict. Many Ukrainian streamers broadcast live photos and videos of their wartime experiences to inform Russian audiences of the conflict’s realities. Popular Western Twitch creators often cover the war in Ukraine, both informing their audiences about the conflict while firmly curating the conversation topics. Most streaming services also include real-time chat functions which allow viewers to interact with the content in real-time and can range from genuine questions to accusations of spreading misinformation. Twitch also slashed Russian streamers’ revenues and banned Russian state media from broadcasting on the platform.

Some countries may ban video games or gaming forums to exert greater control over their domestic information spaces. Russia recently issued bans on many internationally-renowned games, stating they contain content which “violates legislation” and could influence people to “[carry] out socially dangerous acts.” The Federal Security Service (FSB) reportedly shot and killed three men in Voronzeh whom it claimed were a “clandestine cell of supporters of the Ukrainian nationalist ideology.” While these men were likely dressed in tactical gear and carrying airsoft rifles to roleplay as characters from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, the game features a faction which shares the name Svoboda with a Ukrainian ultranationalist political party and online fan forums have devoted significant efforts to curate pro-Ukrainian information and sentiment.

Trends connecting video gaming communities and real-life militaries which predate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have also reemerged. In 2020, the systems-based game War Thunder partnered with the Systems Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense to host a gaming tournament featuring Chinese and Russian tanks. Starting in 2021, however, War Thunder players have repeatedly shared restricted or classified documents about military equipment and technology from the U.K., France, China, and the U.S. to win community arguments and lobby for more realistic gameplay. World of Tanks, which features Twentieth Century armored combat, has nearly twice the number of Russian players than Western players and has had similar issues with document leaks.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict demonstrates how online communities can be a powerful tool in generating support and fighting for national and international information dominance. Video games and online streaming allow individuals to access and interact with information from sources from around the globe and provide a personalized way to combat misinformation. The casual and accessible nature of gaming communities, however, also poses a challenge to protecting sensitive information from dissemination and exploitation in both competition and conflict.

If you enjoyed this post, check out the following related content:

What the Joint Force can learn from K-Pop “Stans” by Matthew Ader

LET’S TWEET, GRANDMA – Weaponizing the Social to Create Information Security, by CDR Sean M. Sullivan

China and Russia: Achieving Decision Dominance and Information Advantage by Ian Sullivan, along with the comprehensive paper from which it was excerpted

Information Advantage Contribution to Operational Success, by CW4 Charles Davis

Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Sign Post to the Future (Part 1), by Kate Kilgore

Weaponized Information: What We’ve Learned So Far…, Insights from the Mad Scientist Weaponized Information Series of Virtual Events, and all of this series’ associated content and videos

About the Author: Kate Kilgore is a TRADOC G-2 Intern and a graduate of Indiana University, where she studied Law and Public Policy, Comparative International Politics, Soviet History, and Russian and Eastern European Studies. Kate has been greatly influenced by her father’s Army career, and she grew up all over the United States and in Germany, which influenced her passion for Eastern European history. Much of her undergraduate research focused on analyzing the path dependence and modern social implications of Soviet laws and in the former Eastern Bloc, with a focus on Hungary. When she’s not reading about culture and politics of the former Warsaw Pact States, she enjoys baking and antiquing.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Army Futures Command (AFC), or Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).

13. Ruling out aliens? Senior U.S. general says not ruling out anything yet

Ruling out aliens? Senior U.S. general says not ruling out anything yet

Reuters · by Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force general overseeing North American airspace said on Sunday after a series of shoot-downs of unidentified objects that he would not rule out aliens or any other explanation yet, deferring to U.S. intelligence experts.

Asked whether he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for three airborne objects shot down by U.S. warplanes in as many days, General Glen VanHerck said: "I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven't ruled out anything."

"At this point we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it," said VanHerck, head of U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command.

VanHerck's comments came during a Pentagon briefing on Sunday after a U.S. F-16 fighter jet shot down an octagonal-shaped object over Lake Huron on the U.S.-Canada border.

The incidents over the past three days follow the Feb. 4 downing of a Chinese balloon that put North American air defenses on high alert. U.S. officials said that balloon was being used for surveillance.Another U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military had seen no evidence suggesting any of the objects in question were of extraterrestrial origin.

VanHerck said the military was unable to immediately determine the means by which any of the three latest objects were kept aloft or where they were coming from.

"We're calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason, said VanHerck.

The incidents come as the Pentagon has undertaken a new push in recent years to investigate military sightings of UFOs - rebranded in official government parlance as "unidentified aerial phenomena," or UAPs.

A cluster of young stars resembles an aerial burst, surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust, in a nebula NGC 3603 located in the constellation Carina, in this image captured in August 2009 and December 2009. NASA/ESA/R. O'Connell/F. Paresce/E. Young/Ames Research Center/WFC3 Science Oversight Committee/Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA/Handout via REUTERS

The government's effort to investigate anomalous, unidentified objects - whether they are in space, the skies or even underwater - has led to hundreds of documented reports that are being investigated, senior military leaders have said.

But the Pentagon says it has not found evidence to indicate Earthly visits from intelligent alien life.

Analysis of military sightings are conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with a newly created Pentagon bureau known as AARO, short for the cryptically named All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

Their first report to Congress in June 2021 examined 144 sightings by U.S. military aviators dating to 2004.

That study attributed one incident to a large, deflating balloon but found the rest were beyond the government's ability to explain without further analysis.

A report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued last month cited 366 additional sightings, mostly things like balloons, drones, birds or airborne clutter. But 171 remained officially unexplained.

"Some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis," the office said in the report.

Sill, Ronald Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, told reporters in December that he had not seen anything in the files to indicate intelligent alien life.

"I have not seen anything in those holdings to date that would suggest that there has been an alien visitation, an alien crash or anything like that," Moultrie said.

Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Tim Ahmann

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Phil Stewart

Thomson Reuters

Phil Stewart has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award.

Idrees Ali

Thomson Reuters

National security correspondent focusing on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Reports on U.S. military activity and operations throughout the world and the impact that they have. Has reported from over two dozen countries to include Iraq, Afghanistan, and much of the Middle East, Asia and Europe. From Karachi, Pakistan.

Reuters · by Phil Stewart

14. Opinion | The West has captured thousands of Iranian weapons. Send them to Ukraine.

Excerpt:

Last year, the Biden administration debuted a National Security Strategy that seeks to marshal the resources of the United States, with those of its partners and allies, to defend the rules-based order. Iran and Russia are prime offenders that have sought to bully their way to greater power and influence through the brutalization of their neighbors. While these two pariah-states deserve each other, there’s poetic justice in turning their malign activities back on them. Sending Iran’s weapons to Ukraine advances the mission in ways both tangible and symbolic. Washington should move without delay.

Opinion | The West has captured thousands of Iranian weapons. Send them to Ukraine.

The Washington Post · by Jonathan Lord · February 13, 2023

Jonathan Lord is a senior fellow and director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security. Andrea Kendall-Taylor is a senior fellow and director of the transatlantic security program at the center.

Last month, both the U.S. and French navies intercepted cargo vessels smuggling thousands of weapons from Iran bound for Yemen. Tehran sent the shipments in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution banning the provision of weapons to the Houthis, Iran’s Yemeni partner and proxy force in the civil conflict. The two seizures alone netted thousands of Russian-style assault rifles and machine guns, dozens of antitank missiles, and over half a million rounds of ammunition. Likewise, last summer, the British navy snagged an Iranian vessel carrying surface-to-air missiles and engines for land-attack cruise missiles.

Instead of allowing these weapons to gather dust, Washington should send them to Ukraine.

The U.S. Central Command (Centcom), through its work with European allies and Gulf partners, is well on its way to turning the critical waterways around the Arabian Peninsula into a panopticon, making it increasingly difficult for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy to operate without detection. The U.S. Naval Forces Central Command’s Task Force 59 has blazed the trail of innovation in maritime domain awareness, which has enabled more and more seizures of smuggled Iranian weapons at sea. Its success in stymying Iran has left Centcom with vast stores of seized weapons. These weapons, once inspected and recorded by the United Nations as evidence of Iran’s violations of U.N. Security Council resolution 2624, are housed in U.S. military facilities across the region.

It’s time to put these weapons in service to a good cause: supporting Ukraine. The Defense Department and NATO allies have mobilized to deliver various weapons to Ukraine, everything from rifles to rockets, and soon tanks. In January, the Pentagon went so far as to raid its weapons stockpile in Israel for artillery shells to support Kyiv. And the need is not going away.

The Pentagon is scrambling, for example, to boost its production of artillery shells by 500 percent within two years, all the while storing thousands of usable Iranian munitions. While these captured Iranian weapons will not fill every requirement of the Ukrainian army, many would certainly help as it approaches the first anniversary of defending its homeland against Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion.

Beyond filling immediate military necessities, the transfer of these weapons would have other positive knock-on effects. Sending Iran’s weapons to Ukraine for use against Russia could drive a wedge between Moscow and Tehran at a moment when their interests are converging. Iran has trained and equipped the Russian military with loitering munitions, which the Russians have unleashed on Kyiv’s civilian infrastructure, in a blatant effort to leave Ukrainians in the dark and cold this winter. Russia and Iran have colluded to evade sanctions, trade and resist the West’s attempts to constrain their respective efforts to destabilize Europe and the Middle East. Turning Iran’s weapons back on Russia might drive Moscow to pressure Tehran to stop smuggling weapons to Yemen, particularly as more and more shipments are intercepted.

Additionally, the transfer of these weapons could also give ammunition to Ukraine in the information war. Volodymyr Zelensky’s government has demonstrated tremendous aptitude for info operations and could easily find innovative ways to translate Iranian weapons not just into battlefield victories but also into public messaging ones as well.

Legal obstacles may exist that prevent President Biden from treating these seized Iranian weapons as U.S. stocks and simply authorizing their transfer under Presidential Drawdown Authority, as he has done 31 times so far since August 2021. But if these weapons are technically still the property of Iran, the president should waste no time in seeking legal action to seize them under U.S. civil forfeiture authorities. The Biden administration and its European allies have already demonstrated tremendous creativity in applying new policy tools in support of Kyiv. Biden could, for example, request legal authorities from Congress to enable this transfer of arms. Already, the Biden administration secured congressional support to allow Washington to send the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to support Ukraine’s reconstruction. Congress would welcome the opportunity to find new, low-cost avenues to support Ukraine — and would likely jump at the chance to poke Moscow in the eye with Tehran’s finger.

Last year, the Biden administration debuted a National Security Strategy that seeks to marshal the resources of the United States, with those of its partners and allies, to defend the rules-based order. Iran and Russia are prime offenders that have sought to bully their way to greater power and influence through the brutalization of their neighbors. While these two pariah-states deserve each other, there’s poetic justice in turning their malign activities back on them. Sending Iran’s weapons to Ukraine advances the mission in ways both tangible and symbolic. Washington should move without delay.

The Washington Post · by Jonathan Lord · February 13, 2023

15. Glass Cannons from Grozny to Mariupol: What Should the US Military Learn from Russia’s Use of Artillery in Protracted Urban Sieges?

Excerpts;

Field artillery plays an important role in developing the initial phases of an urban operation. It shapes the initial phase of a siege, enabling attacking forces to isolate and turn the city into a noncontiguous area of operations for the defender. Commanders should consider that noncontiguous area in its entirety as the close fight. Field artillery then plays a supporting role, servicing essential targets decisive to maneuver under the commander’s high-priority target list.

In a protracted siege, once the target urban area is isolated, artillery’s primary objective on the battlefield is to win the deeper fight. Maneuver commanders should employ artillery to degrade enemy forces attempting to relieve the besieged defenders, neutralize enemy supply nodes, mine avenues of approach to turn or fix the defender’s reinforcements, and neutralize enemy air defenses to enable greater flexibility for friendly aviation. The priority for the maneuver component is to finish the siege as quickly as possible. Employing artillery against enemy attempts to break the siege prevents the defender from reinforcing the isolated forces and prolonging the siege, and thus supports maneuver in the big picture.

As Ukraine continues to provide lessons on an extraordinarily wide range of aspects modern warfare, it is important for observers like the US military to evaluate what changes those lessons should encourage—including, for example, how to support maneuver in protracted urban operations. Russian forces failed to anticipate and adapt their artillery for the LSCO fight. Their continued poor positioning of their artillery, fixed to support their maneuver’s slog through each urban center, continues to prove detrimental to its survivability. Ukraine’s judicious use of fires, by contrast, provides its own lessons for maneuver commanders on how to employ field artillery in an urban fight against a peer enemy. But whether models to be emulated or cautionary tales of what not to do, we cannot afford to ignore either set of lessons.

Glass Cannons from Grozny to Mariupol: What Should the US Military Learn from Russia’s Use of Artillery in Protracted Urban Sieges? - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Alexander Grinberg · February 13, 2023

How do you win in a siege when the enemy reaches out and ruins your precious artillery? During the Battle of Minas Tirith in the third Lord of the Rings film, Return of the King, the Witch-king faced a unique challenge: seizing a city with multiple layers of defense to include rings of walls armed with trebuchets. The city’s defenders flung giant chunks of stone, destroying siege towers and removing the besieging force’s crude catapults from the fight. The Witch-king knew that it wouldn’t be long before Gondor destroyed his artillery. He also knew what such a loss would mean for the siege’s prospects. He responded by flying his Nazgul to suppress and destroy Gondor’s trebuchet positions, enabling his forces to conduct counterfire of their own.

While fictional, the siege highlights real-world problems commanders can face when besieging an enemy-controlled urban center. Cities will be increasingly likely to play a significant role in large-scale combat operations (LSCO) given global urbanization patterns. Urban areas are the modern-day walls and fortresses of J. R. R. Tolkien’s world, capable of halting advances and bogging down attacking forces. Cities also act as a force multiplier for defenders. While fires can reduce a fortress, field artillery places itself at significant risk by conducting siege operations; lessons from the ongoing war in Ukraine highlight critical vulnerabilities in artillery survivability and sustainability. Moreover, from a US military perspective, habits developed in comparatively more permissive environments and with the benefit of artillery overmatch must be broken. Instead, commanders should encourage judicious targeting that will preserve fires combat power and maximize effects on the defender in a protracted siege.

A Tale of Two Sieges

Though Russia had overwhelming advantages in equipment and manpower over the Chechens during the Second Chechen War, Russian forces needed to conduct a months-long siege before ultimately capturing the capital of Grozny in February 2000. The Russian army relied on artillery to prepare the battlefield before advancing. Maneuver was held in reserve while the city was shelled for weeks. Despite this preparatory bombardment, Russian maneuver forces entering Grozny found themselves heavily engaged by staunch defenders who mounted stiff resistance. Russian forces leveled large parts of the city, suggesting they became increasingly frustrated at their slow progress. While the city eventually fell, the siege demonstrated how a smaller force could resist a larger army in an urban environment.

In November 2004, during the Second Battle of Fallujah, American field artillery offered maneuver commanders tactical solutions to breakthrough urban bottlenecks that pinned down their forces. During the battle, US Marines fired 5,685 155-millimeter artillery rounds in support of coalition ground maneuver. Unit commanders noted that the Marines relied on planned artillery strikes to spearhead their thrusts into insurgent urban strongholds. Artillery preceded advancing units as they moved from block to block. Eventually, after a month of combat, coalition forces were successful—but at a significant cost in lives, ammunition, and time.

In both Grozny and Fallujah, powerful military forces faced a weaker opponent with inferior capabilities and enjoyed several operational comforts that will not be present in a LSCO environment. To better prepare for urban operations, especially protracted sieges, commanders and staffs will need to adjust their framing of tactical employment of fires.

The Counterbattery Threat

Neither Russian nor US forces faced modern or credible counterbattery threats during these urban assaults. Early indirect counterfire became ubiquitous on the battlefield in World War I, where armies attempted to find the point of origin of an artillery strike and fire back at those positions. In World War II, the United States used ground and aerial forward observers to spot for artillery. When Germany attempted to prevent the Allied advance in Western Europe in late 1944, US aerial observers coordinated with ground fire direction centers to silence German artillery batteries. Artillery commanders on both sides adapted to the counterbattery threat by developing procedures to more rapidly displace their guns and better conceal their forces. During the Cold War, counterbattery capabilities further evolved as armies integrated radar systems to find enemy artillery by tracking the trajectory of incoming rounds.

Urban warfare creates an environment where an outgunned defender can disproportionally target and destroy the attacker’s artillery. A siege encourages the defender to bait the attacker’s fire support. Defenders can establish sensor zones such as “critical friendly zones” over areas where the defending commanders expect the attacker to employ fires. Once enemy firing units are acquired by a sensor, the defender’s targeting cells can direct counterbattery fire. The attacking commander could then face a decision—whether to potentially trade artillery pieces and crew for city blocks.

In Grozny, Russian forces did not face sophisticated systems capable of detecting their artillery. The low risk of enemy counterbattery fire encouraged the Russian army to place less emphasis on survivability. Photos of Russian artillery operating in Chechnya show artillery pieces arrayed in close proximity to each other, at times in a linear fashion, reminiscent of World War II Soviet-style employment. The Russian military’s lackadaisical survivability tactics persisted due to a lack of enemy parity, poor Russian training, and outdated Soviet doctrine. Tactics employed in Chechnya furthered complacency and bad habits that are still seen today in Ukraine.

While Mariupol was considered a tactical Russian victory, it furthered an incorrect analysis that the way Russia used artillery was tactically and operationally sound—of which it was neither. Russia’s experience at Mariupol was similar in key respects with its experience at Grozny. Its field artillery did not face a substantial local counterbattery radar threat at the time. As a result, batteries, command posts, and supply points did not emphasize mobility or survivability.

Elsewhere, however, the consequences of Russia’s continued reliance on the same artillery tactics employed in Chechnya—especially in the opening months of the war—were much clearer. This has been especially true when Russian forces faced Ukrainian defenders with capabilities to find and destroy the attacker’s artillery. Russia’s decision to fight in a siege-like fashion exposes its artillery to Ukrainian counterattack. And the decision to saturate the area of operations with targets, without careful consideration for their artillery’s survivability, gave opportunities for Ukraine to mount localized strikes to attrit Russian fires. The Ukrainian military exploited Russian forces’ indiscriminate targeting to find and destroy their artillery. In contrast to Russia’s profligate ammunition expenditure, Ukraine quickly understood that the artillery force ratio at the start of the war was unbalanced, nearly five-to-one in Russia’s favor, so it had to be judicious in its artillery employment.

Stationary Targets

Artillery survivability drastically decreases the longer the siege continues. When committing forces to besiege an urban target, an attacker must isolate the target to the maximum extent possible and maintain pressure on the defenders. Because the attacking forces tend to get canalized as they move to clear a city, they reveal their avenues of approach. Once an attacker commits to a siege, its force is also limited to a smaller area of operations unless the attacker decides to bypass or withdraw.

While field artillery provides fire support at a much greater distance, it is nonetheless fixed as well if it is to support its force’s maneuver. Planners, for both the attacker and the defender, have a general understanding of maximum effective ranges and capabilities. A 155-millimeter battery, for example, while potentially more than twenty kilometers away, must still be within a certain distance to effectively support maneuver. Therefore, planners can draw threat rings and conduct threat analyses to deduce where enemy artillery positions are likely to be located. While field artillery commanders work with maneuver elements to establish position areas for artillery, there are only so many areas a unit can occupy before having to reuse locations. Furthermore, not every type of terrain is conducive for artillery, thus limiting a battery’s emplacement options even further. If the enemy can narrow down where you position your artillery, it makes the enemy’s counterbattery fight easier.

The massive and technology-enabled expansion of open-source intelligence creates new challenges for artillery formations to survive in a LSCO environment. Footage of Russian artillery movement, deployment, and destruction is commonplace on social media. For artillery, movement and displacement are the best defenses in such an information-rich environment. Stationary units place themselves at greater risk where satellite footage can find and trace vehicle tracks and locate artillery positions. In a siege, field artillery units become trapped with limited space to relocate while still having to service targets for the maneuver commander.

Professionals Talk Logistics

Field artillery sustainment becomes especially problematic in a protracted siege. Besides fuel, replacement parts, food, and water, ammunition supply remains a monstrous headache. As the US Army sends units to test their capabilities at combat training center rotations, artillery ammunition sustainment is almost inevitably a point of friction. Units realize they never have enough ammunition, nor do they have the physical capability to support their desired rates of expenditure. Commanders must decide whether to use their logistics assets to haul ammunition or other classes of supply. Dilemmas created at combat training centers show a gap between what units can sustain and what they would ideally want to shoot.

Similarly, ammunition sustainment shortfalls are evident in Ukraine, where the intensity of combat operations outpace supply. Ukraine regularly asks the United States for more ammunition, especially for its newly received M777-series howitzers. In June 2022, the United States offered a security assistance package with 260,000 complete 155-millimeter artillery rounds and 126 M777 howitzers. Even with this support, Ukraine argues that it desperately needs more to sustain combat operations against Russia.

Russia’s current employment of artillery as it conducts siege warfare is unsustainable. Based on the Russian Ministry of Defense’s daily briefings, RUSI determined Russian forces were firing approximately 585 fire missions per day in late May 2022. RUSI assumed that each artillery strike was conducted by a battery with four guns and four rounds fired per gun. Including estimated wastage, Russian tube artillery fires over seven thousand rounds per day. Ultimately, Russian forces’ ammunition dilemma asks how long their controlled supply rate can match their required supply rate. Evidence suggests that the Russian army has not matched those needs.

Furthermore, tube artillery can only fire a finite amount of ammunition before a howitzer needs a new cannon tube due to wear and erosion. For example, an M777 can ‌fire approximately 2,500 rounds before the barrel must be replaced. In a prolonged siege, it is possible for an artillery battery to lose combat effectiveness simply by burning out its guns. Even before needing replacement, worn barrels reduce accuracy, limiting the effectiveness of each volley. In a combat environment, it can become difficult to receive replacement parts, further slowing the replacement process for a cannon tube.

Preparing for Urban Fires in LSCO

Artillery, for all its capability and firepower, will be vulnerable if used as it was in Grozny or Fallujah. As we shift toward LSCO, ubiquitous use of artillery in the close fight during a protracted siege is an archaic tactic that does more harm than good in the long run. While Russia may have won some early victories by using artillery as a brute force weapon, prolonged combat operations against a supplied and determined enemy with comparable capabilities will create unsustainable long-term costs.

Field artillery plays an important role in developing the initial phases of an urban operation. It shapes the initial phase of a siege, enabling attacking forces to isolate and turn the city into a noncontiguous area of operations for the defender. Commanders should consider that noncontiguous area in its entirety as the close fight. Field artillery then plays a supporting role, servicing essential targets decisive to maneuver under the commander’s high-priority target list.

In a protracted siege, once the target urban area is isolated, artillery’s primary objective on the battlefield is to win the deeper fight. Maneuver commanders should employ artillery to degrade enemy forces attempting to relieve the besieged defenders, neutralize enemy supply nodes, mine avenues of approach to turn or fix the defender’s reinforcements, and neutralize enemy air defenses to enable greater flexibility for friendly aviation. The priority for the maneuver component is to finish the siege as quickly as possible. Employing artillery against enemy attempts to break the siege prevents the defender from reinforcing the isolated forces and prolonging the siege, and thus supports maneuver in the big picture.

As Ukraine continues to provide lessons on an extraordinarily wide range of aspects modern warfare, it is important for observers like the US military to evaluate what changes those lessons should encourage—including, for example, how to support maneuver in protracted urban operations. Russian forces failed to anticipate and adapt their artillery for the LSCO fight. Their continued poor positioning of their artillery, fixed to support their maneuver’s slog through each urban center, continues to prove detrimental to its survivability. Ukraine’s judicious use of fires, by contrast, provides its own lessons for maneuver commanders on how to employ field artillery in an urban fight against a peer enemy. But whether models to be emulated or cautionary tales of what not to do, we cannot afford to ignore either set of lessons.

Alexander Grinberg is a field artillery officer in the US Army. He is pursuing a master’s degree in war studies from King’s College London.

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

Image credit: mil.gov.ua, via Wikimedia Commons

mwi.usma.edu · by Alexander Grinberg · February 13, 2023

16. U.S. troops providing medical aid to earthquake victims in Turkey

U.S. troops providing medical aid to earthquake victims in Turkey

militarytimes.com · by Meghann Myers · February 10, 2023

Army, Air Force and Navy personnel are responding to requests for assistance from Turkey’s government following a 7.8 earthquake on Monday that devastated parts of that country and neighboring Syria. The death toll has now surpassed 22,000 people.

The U.S. began amassing a response to the earthquake on Tuesday, according to a Friday U.S. European Command release.

“From search and rescue to medical assistance and humanitarian aid, our command is working with other U.S. government agencies to provide assistance requested by the government of Türkiye in the aftermath of this natural disaster,” Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, EUCOM’s commander, said in a statement Friday. “Compassion and determination are the driving forces behind every U.S. military member and civilian assisting Türkiye during these difficult days.”

Army helicopters are bringing medical personnel from the U.S. International Aid Agency into the parts of Turkey hardest hit, according to the release, and transporting the injured to a medical facility.

Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base is the main hub for relief, where airmen are helping Turkish forces offload international aid, receiving over 1,300 aircraft since efforts began.

The George Bush Carrier Strike Group moved into the eastern Mediterranean Sea Tuesday, according to the release.

People grieve Friday as they bury their loved ones, victims of Monday's earthquake, in Adiyaman, a city in southeast Turkey. Emergency crews made a series of dramatic rescues Friday, pulling several people, some almost unscathed, from the rubble, four days after the catastrophic quake killed more than 22,000. (Emrah Gurel/AP)

The Treasury Department on Thursday announced it had granted a six-month license to provide humanitarian aid to Syria, a workaround for sanctions that prevent dealings with the country.

“As international allies and humanitarian partners mobilize to help those affected, I want to make very clear that U.S. sanctions in Syria will not stand in the way of life-saving efforts for the Syrian people,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a release.

About Meghann Myers

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

17. Chinese military aircraft, vessels detected around Taiwan after US conducts exercises in the South China Sea

Chinese military aircraft, vessels detected around Taiwan after US conducts exercises in the South China Sea

China's incursions around Taiwan have become an almost daily occurrence in recent months

foxnews.com · by Paul Best | Fox News

Video

China is ‘testing’ the US, we must respond in ‘strength’: Lt. Col. Darin Gaub

Fox News’ Arthel Neville welcomed Lt. Col. Darin Gaub on ‘Fox News Live’ to discuss the U.S.’s latest decision to shoot down a flying object over Northwestern Canada.

Nearly two dozen Chinese military aircraft and ships were detected around Taiwan on Monday morning after the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps held joint exercises in the South China Sea over the weekend.

Taiwan's Defense Ministry said that 18 People's Liberation Army aircraft were detected, 11 of which crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial buffer zone in between the island and China. Four vessels were also detected around Taiwan.

China's incursions have become an almost daily occurrence in recent months, but the latest sign of aggression comes just days after the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps conducted joint drills in the South China Sea.

FILE PHOTO: A Chinese military jet flies over Pingtan island, one of mainland China's closest points to Taiwan, in Fujian province. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

The USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit carried out "integrated expeditionary strike force" operations on Saturday.

CANADIAN RECOVERY TEAMS SEARCHING FOR THIRD FLYING OBJECT SHOT DOWN OVER NORTH AMERICAN AIRSPACE, TRUDEAU SAYS

"The mobility and sustainability provided by amphibious platforms gives the Navy and Marine Corps team an asymmetric advantage in a maritime environment," the 7th Fleet explained.

"This seamless naval integration established a powerful presence in the region, which supports peace and stability."

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An MV-22 Osprey flies by the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz on Feb. 11 during exercises in the South China Sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin McTaggart)
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The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps held joint drills in the South China Sea over the weekend. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin McTaggart)

China's claim to a wide swatch of the South China Sea has put the country at odds with its neighbors in the region.

CHINESE SPY CRAFT PAYLOAD LOCATED OFF WATERS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, MOSTLY INTACT: US OFFICIAL

In December, the State Department called on China "to respect the international law of the sea in the South China Sea," saying that their actions "reflect continuing disregard for other South China Sea claimants and states lawfully operating in the region."

The latest exercises by the U.S. also come amid heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, D.C.

The Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, U.S. February 4, 2023. (REUTERS/Randall Hill )

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The U.S. shot down a 200-foot tall Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4.

"Make no mistake: as we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did," President Biden said in his State of the Union address last week.

Paul Best is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Story tips and ideas can be sent to Paul.Best@fox.com and on Twitter: @KincaidBest.

foxnews.com · by Paul Best | Fox News

18. The untold story of the world’s most resilient currency

Why does every 1st SFG soldier buy Baht chains at Venus Jewelry in Bangkok? Oh, not the same thing?

The untold story of the world’s most resilient currency

After Thailand became ground zero in the Asian financial crisis, the baht achieved a long-running stability

Financial Times · by Ruchir Sharma · February 12, 2023

The writer is chair of Rockefeller International

In February of 1998, 25 years ago this month, I was in Bangkok, ground zero of the Asian financial crisis. The implosion of the Thai baht had triggered a serial meltdown of currencies and markets with protesters in the streets across the region and chaos spreading. As world leaders raced to slow the global contagion, Thailand and its neighbours had sunk into a depression.

The Thai economy contracted by nearly 20 per cent, as stocks fell by more than 60 per cent and the baht lost more than half its value against the dollar. Prices in Bangkok felt unbelievably cheap. I did not dare buy Thai stocks, with so much unsettled. But I did leave with many shopping bags and two golf sets, one to give away.

While the drama of that year is etched in history, the epilogue comes as a surprise. Since early 1998, Thailand has faded on the global radar but the baht has proved uncommonly resilient, holding its value against the dollar better than any other emerging world currency and better than all but the Swiss Franc in the developed world.

In contrast, in Indonesia, where the 1998 crisis toppled the dictator Suharto, the rupiah trades near 15,500 to the dollar, down from 2,400 before the crisis. The baht trades at 33 to the dollar, not much lower than 26 before the crisis.

Yet Thailand hardly feels expensive: a foreign visitor can find a 5-star hotel room for under $200 a night, a fine dinner in Phuket for $30. Despite the strong baht, Thailand is globally competitive. The epicentre of the crisis became an anchor of stability, and a lesson to other emerging economies.

After 1998, many emerging societies turned financially conservative, especially those hardest hit in south-east Asia. Indonesian banks went from opaque dens of cronyism to models of good management. The Philippines and Malaysia moved to rein in deficits. But nowhere in the region did a government turn more economically orthodox than in Thailand, avoiding the excesses that can scare off outsiders and tank currencies.

South-east Asia was in recovery by 2000. Since then, Thailand’s government deficit has averaged 1 per cent of gross domestic product, less than half the average for emerging economies. Its central bank has been similarly cautious, keeping rates relatively high and broad money supply growing at 7 per cent a year, third lowest among major emerging economies.

The ultimate pay-off for orthodoxy is low inflation. Thai inflation has averaged just over 2 per cent, the same as the US, a rare feat for an emerging country. Among other emerging economies, only China, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia have had lower inflation than Thailand since 1998.

Before the crisis, Thailand pegged the baht to the dollar, which allowed it to borrow heavily abroad, and run up huge current account deficits. As foreigners lost confidence in Thailand, the government was forced to drop the peg and allow the baht to float freely. Its crash followed, but the baht would go on to recover its losses and become one of the least volatile currencies.

Steady foreign income helped. Thailand remains among the most open emerging economies. Trade has risen from 80 per cent of GDP in 1998 to more than 110 per cent today. The external deficits that foretold the crash gave way to surpluses, as Thailand built on its strengths in tourism and manufacturing, which generates a quarter of GDP.

During the crisis I drove on a new four-lane highway out of Bangkok to see the factories rising on the green pagoda-dotted hills of the eastern seaboard. This manufacturing base in paradise continues to evolve, lately for example from cars into electric vehicle parts, and to draw heavy foreign investment.

Meanwhile the tourist hotspots around Phuket and Koh Samui expand alongside new forays into medical and wellness services. Since the crisis, tourism has more than doubled as a share of GDP to 12 per cent, becoming an unusually large source of foreign exchange. Most countries with tourist sectors that big are tiny islands.

Thailand also has its flaws, including heavier household debts and a more rapidly ageing population than most of its peers. Despite that, its per capita income has more than doubled to nearly $8,000, up from $3,000 before the crisis.

Moreover, Thailand has achieved financial stability despite constant political upheaval, including four new constitutions in the last 25 years. By overcoming challenges the Swiss franc never faced, the Thai baht has sealed its unlikely claim to be the world’s most resilient currency — and a case study in the upsides of economic orthodoxy.

Financial Times · by Ruchir Sharma · February 12, 2023

19. To End the War, Ukraine Needs Justice, Not Peace

Conclusion:

Pursuing these measures is not likely to persuade Putin to negotiate. However, given the realities of this war, these measures vindicate the rights of Ukrainians even if the military capacity does not exist to fully restore them. Moreover, they provide an alternative to fighting that leaves Russia in a position where its ability to continue to provoke its neighbors is significantly diminished. Whether over the mid to long term, these conditions lead to a Russian government collapse or increased Russian resilience is difficult to say. But either way, they should make Ukraine more secure while placing the United States and NATO in a better position to address either Russian collapse or continued provocation and aggression.

To End the War, Ukraine Needs Justice, Not Peace

The proper goal of a just war is a better state of peace, which requires at a minimum the vindication of the rights of the aggressed party.

by C. Anthony Pfaff

The National Interest · by C. Anthony Pfaff · February 12, 2023

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its second year, there is endless speculation not only on how it could end but also on how it should end. What is clear is that the Ukraine conflict could go on indefinitely. The problem for the West is that time is probably on the side of the Russians. Moscow will be able to continue exerting pressure on Ukraine not only by threatening its critical infrastructure but also by interfering with its grain shipments and other exports. Russia can also threaten greater ecological damage should it, for example, allow the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia to leak radiation.

Adding to the urgency is the fact that strains on NATO defense industries, increasing domestic war-weariness, or higher priorities such as deterring China could force Ukraine’s partners to reduce, if not end, their support. Should that happen, the contest will become one of endurance, which is a contest Russia could win.

So it is time to talk specifics about what a just settlement might look like. Determining those specifics requires answering three questions: 1) should Ukraine revise its military objectives to make settlement more likely; 2) at what point are the United States and NATO permitted to reduce or end assistance even if there is not a just settlement; 3) at what point are the United States and NATO permitted to escalate to bring a more rapid—and just—end to the conflict.

The proper goal of a just war is a better state of peace, which requires at a minimum the vindication of the rights of the aggressed party. To vindicate an aggressed party’s rights, also at a minimum, the aggressor must publicly end hostilities, exchange prisoners of war, apologize, demilitarize at least to the point it cannot renew hostilities, and be held accountable for war crimes. Without meeting these minimum conditions, grievances will fester and aggressors will buy time to rebuild military capability and renew hostilities. However, if one accepts that Ukraine, even with foreign assistance, will not realize its goal of restoring its full sovereignty, then even this minimal standard may not be realistic.

Moreover, even if Ukraine’s goals are realistic, it must also consider the cost of attaining them. As Ukraine liberates more territory, Russian president Vladimir Putin will become increasingly desperate. Even if he does not use nuclear weapons, the Russian military will very likely continue its indiscriminate attacks against civilians and critical civilian infrastructure to force Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to negotiate. Moreover, given the expected resistance by Russian and separatist forces, the occupied areas will also experience significant destruction with any Ukrainian military operation to liberate them.

These points do not suggest that Ukraine should offer to negotiate terms now. Ending the war on any terms favorable to Russia would likely incentivize future aggression and set the stage for a renewal of hostilities when the Russians believe they have sufficiently recovered. If nothing else, Russia will be in a position to continue provoking Ukraine and the West, leading to further instability.

What these points do suggest, however, is that Ukraine should first consider under what conditions continued fighting will become either ineffective or disproportionate. Second, they should consider what conditions they can offer that Russia will accept while establishing a better, if not optimal, state of peace. This may sound like appeasement, but it does not have to be.

Thus, the answer to the first question posed at the outset—should Ukraine revise its military objectives—is provisionally “no.” But getting to a solution that the Russians can accept requires putting Moscow in a position where accepting a settlement and ceasing hostilities is preferable for them to continue fighting. Getting to that point will likely require greater Ukrainian military success before any diplomatic initiative has a chance of success.

To make the Russians better off if they stop fighting, the United States and NATO should consider addressing their security concerns, especially regarding NATO expansion. In the past, NATO has refused to offer such guarantees on the principle of respecting state sovereignty. However, given the costs of fighting and the urgency to resolve the conflict, compromising on this principle seems reasonable and low. For example, such an agreement does not prevent the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with security guarantees should hostilities renew. NATO leaders should also continue efforts to admit Finland and Sweden as a cost for initiating hostilities in the first place and make it clear to the Russians that the alliance will continue to expand, and will admit Ukraine, should Russia not cease hostilities and negotiate a settlement.

The answer to the second question (i.e, at what point can the United States and NATO reduce or end their assistance even without a just settlement) is that the United States and NATO should continue to assist Ukraine until Russia is ready to negotiate a minimally just settlement. Even if the fighting does stop, Ukraine will need to continue to improve its military capabilities to deter Russia from trying again. The difficulty with this response, of course, is that it ignores certain political and economic realities. The first is that support to Ukraine has strained U.S. and NATO defense industries, which must significantly increase the production of critical materials not just to keep Ukraine in the fight but also to allow the West to maintain its deterrent threat against other adversaries like China. The second is that domestic politics in each of these countries could result in an abrupt end to assistance. In the United States, for example, there is a movement in Congress to end assistance and use these funds to improve the U.S. economy. Should the economy worsen, this argument will seem more compelling.

The morally obvious response here is for Western political leaders to remain resolute. Should the United States and NATO abruptly reduce assistance to the point where Ukraine cannot sustain the fight, the blame for the resulting injustice will partially lie with them. To avoid reaching the point where assistance to Ukraine is no longer politically viable, the United States and NATO should consider how much assistance they would provide to avoid a Ukrainian defeat and provide that now rather than providing it piecemeal in reaction to Russian successes. While the United States and Germany have recently announced their intention to provide modern battle tanks and better air defense systems, this assistance comes a year after the war started and its effects will take some time as Ukrainian crews will have to be trained on the new equipment.

While it may have made some ethical sense to limit assistance to Ukraine in the beginning to avoid escalation, that is no longer the case. If time is on the Russian side, providing assistance in reaction to Russian successes is a recipe for failure. This point does not entail giving the Ukrainians a blank check or undermining the necessity to manage escalation. However, it does suggest that it makes sense to provide now all the assistance one would eventually provide later should the tide turn more in the Russian favor.

This point naturally segues into the third question regarding escalation by the United States and NATO to bring a more rapid end to the conflict. Doing so, of course, increases the chances of direct conflict between Russia and NATO forces. Moreover, unilateral escalation by the United States and NATO will play into Putin’s narrative of NATO as a security threat, which will strengthen his hand domestically and make it more difficult to isolate him internationally.

Having said that, as Russia escalates, as it has done with attacks on civilians, the United States and NATO should find ways to increase costs to Russia as well as assistance to Ukraine to mediate the effects of that escalation. Doing so will underscore Western resolve while undermining the Russian narrative and its ability to build international support.

In considering what one should do, one first must establish what will happen if one does nothing. At current levels of assistance and Ukrainian military capability, the conflict will likely freeze. Such a freeze favors the Russians, who will continue threatening Ukraine while it consolidates its gains in the east, making their annexation a fait accompli. On the other hand, giving Russia a way out does not necessarily entail abandoning the vindication of Ukraine’s right or the demands of a better state of peace. It just means finding other ways to impose them. Thus, the ethics of conflict termination, as described here, suggest the following path to a just termination of the conflict.

First, Ukraine should continue to fight, and the United States and NATO should continue to provide assistance as long as the former’s military goals are feasible and the means to achieve them are proportionate.

Second, as long as Russia fails to return occupied Ukrainian territory, the United States and NATO should continue to impose sanctions and other costs to incentivize meaningful participation in negotiations.

Third, to ensure Russia is not able to exploit any pause a frozen conflict allows, the United States and NATO should continue military cooperation with Ukraine to improve its ability to defend itself in the future. The United States and NATO should also consider offering Zelenskyy the security guarantees he has asked for to further deter future Russian aggression.

Fourth, the United States and NATO should address Russia’s security concerns, while not recognizing Russia’s illegitimate claims to Ukrainian territory.

Fifth, the United States and NATO should not lift sanctions until Russia compensates Ukraine for the destruction it has caused and holds the soldiers who have committed war crimes, as well as their leaders, accountable. While there may be some room to negotiate whether this accountability occurs in domestic or international courts, any outcome that diminishes or ignores these crimes should be sufficient justification for continued sanctions and isolation.

Sixth, should Russian domestic conditions change, and it agrees to a minimally just settlement, the United States should consider a more rehabilitative approach and not just lift sanctions, but also assist Russia to improve its economic conditions and restore its relations with the international community.

Pursuing these measures is not likely to persuade Putin to negotiate. However, given the realities of this war, these measures vindicate the rights of Ukrainians even if the military capacity does not exist to fully restore them. Moreover, they provide an alternative to fighting that leaves Russia in a position where its ability to continue to provoke its neighbors is significantly diminished. Whether over the mid to long term, these conditions lead to a Russian government collapse or increased Russian resilience is difficult to say. But either way, they should make Ukraine more secure while placing the United States and NATO in a better position to address either Russian collapse or continued provocation and aggression.

Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff is the Research Professor for the Military Profession and Ethics at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College. He is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. The views represented here are his own and do not necessarily reflect that of the United States Government.

Image: kibri_ho / Shutterstock.com

The National Interest · by C. Anthony Pfaff · February 12, 2023

20. Warning to China: U.S. Navy Has Aircraft Carrier in South China Sea

Warning to China: U.S. Navy Has Aircraft Carrier in South China Sea

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · February 12, 2023

A day after Chinese media mocked the Biden administration for pitting fighter jets against a surveillance balloon and other unknown “objects,” a United States Navy carrier strike group was deployed back to the international waters of the South China Sea.

Watching China from the South China Sea

The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group (NIMCSG) and Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group (MK ARG), with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (13th MEU), began integrated expeditionary strike force (ESF) operations in the neutral waters that area claimed by Beijing as sovereign territory.

The drills involved a number of warships, ground forces, and aircraft.

China claims nearly the entirety of the South China Sea and strongly objects to any military activity by other nations in the waterway – through which $5 trillion in goods are shipped annually.

Washington has no official position on the sovereignty of the waters but maintains that freedom of navigation and overflight must be preserved.

The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group is currently underway in the 7th Fleet conducting routine operations – and it is the U.S. Navy’s largest forward-deployed numbered fleet. It routinely interacts and operates with Allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region.

Show of U.S. Strength

The recent drills are meant to highlight the abilities of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to maintain an asymmetric advantage in a maritime environment.

The Nimitz ESFs ability to operate seamlessly and simultaneously on the sea, ashore, and in the air, represents the unique value of amphibious capability provided by the Makin Island ARG and 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the Navy announced on Sunday.

“The Nimitz Expeditionary Strike Force operations reinforce our integrated joint force capabilities,” said Rear Adm. Christopher Sweeney, commander, Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 11. “Combining the capabilities of CSG 11 with ARG/MEU, we expand the options this blue-green team provides the joint force commander, and increase our ability to create theater-wide effects in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Participating NIMCSG units include the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), the lead ship of the U.S. Navy’s class of nuclear-powered multiple-mission aircraft carriers; and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Decatur (DDG 73), USS Chung-Hoon (DDG 93), and USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108) of Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 9; and the squadrons of embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 17.

The Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group includes units from Amphibious Squadron (PHIBRON) 7 and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU).

PHIBRON 7 consists of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8), a warship larger than the aircraft carriers of many foreign navies; and the amphibious transport docks USS Anchorage (LPD 23).

The 13th MEU also includes Battalion Landing Team 2nd Marines, 4th Battalion, Combat Logistics Battalion 13, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 362 (Reinforced), and Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122.

“Makin Island’s ability to integrate with Carrier Strike Group 11 amplifies the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ dedication to our Allies and partners in the region by providing that persistent presence,” said Capt. Tony Chavez, commanding officer of Makin Island.

“As a ready response force, we underpin a broad spectrum of missions including landing Marines ashore, humanitarian disaster relief, and deterring potential adversaries through visible and present combat power.”

The weekend’s exercises were planned in advance but came as tensions remain high between Washington and Beijing. The presence of the warships won’t likely calm matters, but could be seen to solve America’s resolve. China is surely watching closely.

BONUS: A Nuclear War over Ukraine?

Author Experience and Expertise

A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · February 12, 2023

21. The Cult of Secrecy – America’s Classification Crisis

Excerpts;

For the moment, the machine is still in its infancy, with a beta version concocted by the History Lab at Columbia serving as a sort of proof of concept. To date, it has only worked with material that has already been declassified. But Connelly and his team wanted to improve its capability and accuracy by pilot testing it on historical classified information, and for that, they needed government buy-in. One might suppose that this would not be difficult to obtain. After all, across the federal government, a great deal of lip service has been paid to the idea that overclassification has reached crisis proportions. Here was a way of solving it that would be cost-effective, especially as compared with engaging human reviewers to manually process old classified material before releasing it to the public.

So Connolly and his band of data scientists and mathematicians went to Washington to plead their case. They met with the State Department, the National Declassification Center, the CIA, the Public Interest Declassification Board, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. There was certainly interest. At the State Department, which produces more than two billion emails each year, one official informed them that the need for the sort of technology they were offering was “frighteningly clear.” But the department had no money to authorize a pilot program or fund their research. Someone suggested that perhaps Columbia students could be enlisted to work on the initiative and paid in course credit. “I was struck by the notion that declassification could be treated as a kind of school project,” Connelly writes.

His group ended up in a meeting at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, which has been delegated to work with the National Archives to explore technological solutions to the problem of overclassification. After listening to their pitch, an IARPA official told the visitors that she had been trying for years to build a similar engine—not to declassify, but to classify. She found their ideas intriguing but explained that building a technology to help review and release classified documents would represent an “insufficient return on investment.”

It is a dispiriting coda to Connelly’s fascinating and urgent book, and one hopes that he and his colleagues will ultimately find other, more hospitable points of entry in the federal government that would allow them to test and improve their declassification algorithms with actual classified raw data. If you believe in the founding principles of the American form of government, then the stakes could scarcely be higher. As Connelly recalls thinking after he was shown the door at IARPA, “We cannot assign a dollar value to democratic accountability.”

The Cult of Secrecy

America’s Classification Crisis

By Patrick Radden Keefe

March/April 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland · February 13, 2023

In August 2016, the United States suffered one of the most cataclysmic leaks of classified information in history. An anonymous entity calling itself “the Shadow Brokers” exposed an arsenal of cyberweapons that had been developed—in great secrecy—by the National Security Agency. The intelligence community sprang into damage-control mode. Because the NSA’s hackers rely on a degree of plausible deniability, the disclosure of such clandestine tools and their connection to the U.S. government meant that the agency would be forced to devise new ones. But there was also a more pressing danger: with the source code for these powerful weapons now published on the Internet, any unscrupulous actor could deploy them. It was the digital equivalent of “loose nukes.”

Practically overnight, cybercriminals repurposed the NSA’s proprietary exploits to launch audacious ransomware attacks, ultimately shutting down millions of computers around the world and paralyzing thousands of private businesses, from an auto plant in France to a chocolate factory in Australia. Foreign governments took advantage of the tools, as well. North Korea used the NSA’s malicious code to attack the British health-care system, forcing hospitals to turn away patients. Iran used it to target airlines in the Middle East. Russia used it against Ukraine.

Even as these cyber-assaults proliferated, officials in Washington had no idea who was responsible for the breach. They did not know whether it was a foreign intelligence service that had compromised the NSA’s vaunted digital defenses or some disillusioned agency coder gone rogue. As if to compound the government’s humiliation and alarm, the Shadow Brokers taunted the agency in a series of online posts, mocking the investigation in playfully broken English: “Is NSA chasing shadowses?”

In 2017, The New York Times reported that after 15 months of investigation, authorities were no closer to an answer. If they have since managed to identify the perpetrator, then that, too, remains classified. But the whole debacle highlights the subtle Achilles’ heel of government classification. The NSA is famously secretive; as the old joke has it, its initials stand for “no such agency.” Yet here was a massive leak in which some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets were spilled out for the world to see. Nor was this the only recent jumbo leak of highly classified material: there was the 2017 leak of CIA hacking tools by an agency software engineer, Joshua Schulte; the 2013 leak of surveillance programs by an NSA contractor, Edward Snowden; and the 2010 leak of cables and videos by an army private, Chelsea Manning.

This, as Matthew Connelly lays bare in his timely new book, The Declassification Engine, is the paradox of contemporary government secrecy. For decades, blue-ribbon panels and incoming presidents have observed with surprising unanimity that overclassification has grown out of control—and vowed to fix it. Yet every year, more new documents are marked “top secret,” and more realms of official activity are placed beyond the scrutiny of citizens, journalists, and even Congress. In 2017, the federal government spent over $18 billion maintaining this classification system, almost double what it spent five years earlier. But precisely because so much government work now transpires behind a veil of secrecy, it is necessary to grant clearances to an ever-larger cadre of federal employees. Some 1.3 million Americans now hold top-secret clearances, roughly double the population of the District of Columbia.

The math becomes simple. Combine the vast dimensions of the classified world with the huge numbers of people who need access to it to do their jobs, and factor in the increasing ease of copying and transferring enormous volumes of digital information, and it seems almost certain that wholesale leaks of classified data will continue. Decades of bad habits practiced by government agencies hooked on classification clearly undermine transparency and democratic accountability, and this impulse to classify indiscriminately is often justified by invoking national security. But as Connelly points out, when everything is secret, nothing is secret: the “very size of this dark state . . . has become its own security risk.”

If the dangers of excessive government secrecy are so widely acknowledged, why has nothing been done about it? One reason, Connelly suggests, is that the authority to classify has become a cherished prerogative of government power—a tool used by presidents, generals, and various chieftains of lesser fiefs to enshroud their decisions in mystery and ward off scrutiny or accountability. Reform efforts founder in the face of bureaucratic recalcitrance. But another challenge is the sheer volume of restricted documents: because the government classifies more quickly than it declassifies, the amount keeps growing every year. How do you begin to declassify all this information, and if you cannot, what becomes of the historical record? In his book, Connelly proposes what might just be an inspired solution—but only if the government takes him up on it.

OPEN AND SHUT

Connelly is a historian at Columbia University, where he runs the History Lab, a group that focuses on applying the tools of data science to the problem of overclassification. When one considers the full sweep of American history, he argues, widespread classification is not just a betrayal of the United States’ founding principles but also a relatively recent anomaly. The first century and a half of the republic was characterized by “radical transparency,” Connelly contends: when the nation was at war, it engaged in espionage and secrecy, but during peacetime, these practices receded. The United States had no permanent intelligence agency until the Office of Naval Intelligence was created, in 1882. As late as 1912, Woodrow Wilson could remark, while campaigning for president, “There ought to be no place where anything can be done that everybody does not know about.”

Connelly demonstrates the degree to which this ideal of accountability was explicitly linked to a tradition of record keeping and publicly accessible archives. In 1853, long before President Donald Trump took to flushing official papers down a White House toilet, it was declared a felony to destroy any federal records. A century and a half before WikiLeaks published purloined State Department cables, the department began publishing such records on its own, voluntarily disclosing volumes of letters that had recently been received through embassies abroad. In one poignant anecdote, Connelly recounts that when construction began on the Pentagon, in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt anticipated that the postwar military establishment would be too small to fill it—and would vacate the building when the fighting stopped so that it could be repurposed as an annex to the National Archives.

Classification is an exertion of power.

It did not pan out that way. Indeed, it was the rise of the permanent defense bureaucracy and the military-industrial complex in the immediate aftermath of World War II that gave birth to the juggernaut of official classification. Rather than roll back the culture and institutions of secrecy that had prevailed during wartime, the Truman administration institutionalized them with the advent of the Cold War. The creation of the CIA and other intelligence agencies and the secrecy surrounding the United States’ growing nuclear arsenal accelerated the professionalization of the classified state. “Our present security system is a phenomenon of only the past decade,” Senator Hubert Humphrey remarked in 1955. “We have enacted espionage laws and tightened existing laws; we have required investigation and clearance of millions of our citizens; we have classified information and locked it in safes. . . .We have not paused in our necessary, though frantic, quest for security to ask ourselves: What are we trying to protect, and against what?”

In theory, the passage of time should enable Americans to look back at the ostensible rationale offered for classifying various government activities and determine, in retrospect, whether all that secrecy was justified. This is the sort of enterprise that Connelly and his fellow scholars at Columbia are engaged in. But such a project is frustrated in practice by the slow pace of declassification. Reams of important historical documents remain classified more than half a century after the events they describe. Even as the government spends more money classifying more documents each year, funding for declassification efforts has steadily eroded. The entire federal government now budgets only about $100 million annually for that purpose. As Connelly dryly notes, “The Pentagon spends four times that just on military bands.”

But Connelly and his colleagues have developed an innovative solution, studying the records that the government has unsealed to see what they reveal about the dynamics of official secrecy. Over the last decade, his researchers have assembled the world’s largest database of declassified documents. Drawing on the tools of big data and machine learning, they have developed a series of techniques to analyze this archive for patterns and anomalies. When Connelly suggests that in some corners of the federal bureaucracy, the devotion to secrecy has evolved from a culture into “a cult,” it might seem hyperbolic. But consider that when he undertook this academic project—scanning the redactions in declassified documents in search of lessons about the pathologies of overclassification—the project was perceived to be sufficiently threatening that former government lawyers advised him and his team that they could be accused of violating the Espionage Act.

THE LEAKERS

It should come as no surprise that the gatekeepers of the classified world might feel defensive about such an inquiry. Even the staunchest critics of overclassification generally acknowledge that the government must maintain at least some secrets. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the NSA should be developing an arsenal of cyberweapons, but most observers would concede that such an arsenal, if it exists, should not be freely accessible to the public. The same goes for sensitive details associated with nuclear weapons or the names of people spying for the United States. (In the case of covert assets’ identities, there are compelling grounds for maintaining such secrets even decades after the conduct in question, since prospective spies abroad will be less likely to betray their countries if they believe that the details of their betrayals may be automatically declassified a mere 20 years later.)

If, from the beginning, official classification had been carefully confined to these sorts of tailored categories, it would never have blossomed into such a rampant problem. But the basis for most classification is less coherent. At some point early in that postwar expansion of government secrecy, the authority to mark something classified gave rise to a bureaucratic reflex. For any government officer making a quick decision in the course of a busy workday, the penalties for underclassifying are quite salient, whereas penalties for overclassifying do not exist. One way of accounting for how the nation got to this juncture is to look at the incentive structure for that officer deciding whether to classify a single document and extrapolate outward to all the other functionaries invested with the power to deem something “secret” in all the other agencies every day of every year over the last eight decades. The problem has assumed proportions that can be difficult to comprehend. In a single year, 2012, U.S. officials classified information more than 95 million times, or roughly three times per second.

But that version of the story—in which genuine national security imperatives merged with bureaucratic path dependence and risk aversion and simply snowballed—is the benign interpretation. For Connelly, who has scrutinized actual classification decisions made over those eight decades, the real explanation points to something more pernicious. Classification is an exertion of power, he argues, and as such, it has often been motivated not by the dictates of national security but by considerations of raw political or bureaucratic leverage.

John Lee

“It turns out that, from the very beginning, what’s secret has been whatever serves the interests of the president and all those around him who are invested in executive power,” he writes. In any bureaucracy, the ability to render something secret becomes an irresistible trump card—a way to evade oversight, tout parochial priorities, and obscure shortcomings. “After conjuring the power of secrecy, and setting it loose, presidents found that it had a power all its own,” Connelly continues. “Thousands more people, many career civil servants, began creating their own secrets, and jealously protecting them, making it harder to identify and protect what mattered to the president personally. At the same time, they could leak whatever they liked, undermining the president’s ability to manage the news cycle.” Connelly is particularly scathing about the role of military leaders, such as Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay, who “employed leaks and spin no less than secrecy to protect their perquisites and push their agendas,” lobbying to expand military spending and outright defying civilian authority. In 1978, he notes, the Joint Chiefs of Staff stopped preserving notes from their meetings, “as if America’s most senior military leadership were running a numbers racket, committing nothing to paper.”

In a system in which so much information ends up classified, selective leaking might come to seem like a safety valve for when certain matters of national importance need to get out. The legal scholar David Pozen has argued that the “leakiness” of the executive branch is not a sign of institutional failure but, on the contrary, a strategic adaptation to prevailing realities, one that enables an administration to send “messages about its activities to various domestic and international audiences without incurring the full diplomatic, legal, or political risks that official acknowledgment may entail.” As William Daley, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, once admitted, “I’m all for leaking when its organized.”

Every White House has regularly leaked sensitive and often classified information to the press. Whereas penalties for rank-and-file employees who make unauthorized disclosures are often severe, consequences for deliberate leaks by highly placed officials are practically unheard of. Consider the contrast between Reality Winner, the NSA contractor who leaked an intelligence report about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, and David Petraeus, the CIA director and four-star general who shared several notebooks full of highly classified information with his biographer (who was also his mistress) and then lied to federal investigators about it. Winner was sentenced to five years and three months in prison; Petraeus received two years’ probation and a fine. Connelly invokes a quip by Sir Humphrey Appleby, of the BBC sitcom Yes Minister: “The Official Secrets Act is not to protect secrets. It is to protect officials.”

LOCKED IN THE ARCHIVES

What is maddening about the lack of progress on overclassification is that anybody who has given the issue serious consideration would likely agree with the broad contours of Connelly’s arguments. Nearly two decades have elapsed since the 9/11 Commission concluded that too much classification can actually jeopardize national security. “Secrecy, while necessary, can also harm oversight,” the report argued, adding that the “best oversight mechanism” in a democracy is “public disclosure.” But it is one thing to acknowledge the problem and quite another to do something meaningful about it. Obama came into office vowing to create “the most open and transparent administration in history,” yet in the end, as Connelly points out, “he presided over exponential growth in classified information.” (He also initiated more criminal prosecutions of leakers than all his predecessors combined.) When outside groups have tried to pressure the federal government into greater transparency, they have aroused staunch resistance and occasionally retaliation. Connelly relates one galling story: in the 1980s, after the National Security Archive, a nonprofit group affiliated with George Washington University, filed Freedom of Information Act requests and initiated lawsuits to uncover abuses of government power by the Reagan administration and the FBI, the FBI responded by placing the National Security Archive itself under surveillance.

Meanwhile, the daunting tonnage of classified documents has compounded every year, to the point where even those who earnestly want to do something about the problem fear that it may simply have become unmanageable. By one estimate, it will take 250 years at the government’s current processing rate to respond to the backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests at the George W. Bush Library alone. No effective system exists to automate declassification, and the relevant federal agencies lack the personnel and resources to manually review and redact billions of classified documents. “If instead these records were withheld indefinitely, or destroyed, it would be impossible to reconstruct what officials did under the cloak of secrecy,” Connelly points out. Thus, a problem that on its face might seem like a dry technocratic riddle—with billions of new classified documents generated every year and no scalable method for safe and reliable declassification, what happens to the historical record?—assumes an existential urgency. If the U.S. government is “not even accountable in the court of history,” Connelly writes, then “it truly is accountable to no one.”

As it happens, Connelly has a solution. Because the aggregate volume of still classified information is so overwhelming, the only way to tackle it will be to employ the wizardry of big data. By scanning hundreds of thousands of declassified documents (some still redacted, others not), Connelly and his colleagues were able to search for certain words, themes, and connections to identify areas of particular sensitivity. Comparing redacted and unredacted versions of the same declassified documents from a given period, they compiled a jokey “America’s Most Redacted” list of names most frequently blacked out (including Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, both targets of CIA operations). They devised a series of technological methods to rapidly sort through extensive archives and select documents that met certain criteria. If such techniques were harnessed for the declassification effort, they realized, it might be possible “to train algorithms to look for sensitive records requiring the closest scrutiny and accelerate the release of everything else.” This is the “declassification engine” of the book’s title: an ingenious technical solution to an impossible bureaucratic problem.

The daunting tonnage of classified documents has compounded every year.

For the moment, the machine is still in its infancy, with a beta version concocted by the History Lab at Columbia serving as a sort of proof of concept. To date, it has only worked with material that has already been declassified. But Connelly and his team wanted to improve its capability and accuracy by pilot testing it on historical classified information, and for that, they needed government buy-in. One might suppose that this would not be difficult to obtain. After all, across the federal government, a great deal of lip service has been paid to the idea that overclassification has reached crisis proportions. Here was a way of solving it that would be cost-effective, especially as compared with engaging human reviewers to manually process old classified material before releasing it to the public.

So Connolly and his band of data scientists and mathematicians went to Washington to plead their case. They met with the State Department, the National Declassification Center, the CIA, the Public Interest Declassification Board, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. There was certainly interest. At the State Department, which produces more than two billion emails each year, one official informed them that the need for the sort of technology they were offering was “frighteningly clear.” But the department had no money to authorize a pilot program or fund their research. Someone suggested that perhaps Columbia students could be enlisted to work on the initiative and paid in course credit. “I was struck by the notion that declassification could be treated as a kind of school project,” Connelly writes.

His group ended up in a meeting at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, which has been delegated to work with the National Archives to explore technological solutions to the problem of overclassification. After listening to their pitch, an IARPA official told the visitors that she had been trying for years to build a similar engine—not to declassify, but to classify. She found their ideas intriguing but explained that building a technology to help review and release classified documents would represent an “insufficient return on investment.”

It is a dispiriting coda to Connelly’s fascinating and urgent book, and one hopes that he and his colleagues will ultimately find other, more hospitable points of entry in the federal government that would allow them to test and improve their declassification algorithms with actual classified raw data. If you believe in the founding principles of the American form of government, then the stakes could scarcely be higher. As Connelly recalls thinking after he was shown the door at IARPA, “We cannot assign a dollar value to democratic accountability.”

Patrick Radden Keefe is a Staff Writer at The New Yorker and the author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.

Foreign Affairs · by Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland · February 13, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

V/R

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Phone: 202-573-8647

Personal Email: d avid.maxwell161@gmail.com

Web Site: www.fdd.org

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Subscribe to FDD’s new podcast, Foreign Podicy

FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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