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1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 30, 2023

2. Newly Declassified Government Report Suggests Havana Syndrome Might Be Caused by an Energy Weapon

3. Hackers probing contractors for path to Pentagon, DISA chief says

4. Operation Ugly Baby - 10th Special Forces Group | SOF News

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6. F-35s Arrive at Kadena as F-15 Withdrawl Continues

7. DARPA wants a Spec Ops plane with a set of insane characteristics – and it wants it fast

8. ‘Gray Zone’ Competition — The Race for Multi-Domain Capability

9. Why the world needs a strong US navy

10. America’s Looming Munitions Crisis

11. The Open Letter on AI Doesn't Go Far Enough

12. The Enduring Importance of Tactical Counterterrorism for Strategic Competition

13. Americans Are Losing Faith in College Education, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

14. Opinion | How Putin could finally face justice for his illegal war in Ukraine

15. China and Taiwan Relations Explained: What’s Behind the Divide

16. China Wants to Be at Center of New World Order, Top EU Official Says

17. Surrogate warfare is the future of US operations in Ukraine and beyond

18. Russia to Assume Rotating U.N. Security Council Presidency Despite Its War in Ukraine

19. The Future of Army Reconnaissance: Lessons from a Marine Corps Exercise in the Mojave Desert

20. How China’s Spies Fooled an America That Wanted to be Fooled

21. Building A New American Arsenal

22. Defending the Rules-Based Order: The US at a Crossroads (ICC)

23. Marine Corps rejects Pentagon’s pitch for new amphibious ship designs

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 30, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-30-2023

Key Takeaways

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on March 30 launching the semiannual spring conscription cycle, which will conscript 147,000 Russians between April 1 and July 15.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a prominent milblogger and Russian proxy battalion commander as a regional Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) official for Donetsk Oblast.
Western officials reported that Wagner Group and conventional Russian forces have likely lost a substantial amount of manpower in the Bakhmut area.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast on charges of espionage.
Ukrainian National Security Defense Council Secretary Oleksii Danilov stated that Ukrainian authorities do not intend to expel the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra by force.
Russian authorities arrested Bryansk Oblast Acting Deputy Head Elena Egorova and Second Deputy Governor Tatyana Kuleshova for reportedly receiving bribes.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks north of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued offensive operations in and around Bakhmut as well as along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director (IAEA) Rafael Grossi stated that plans to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) have evolved.
Pardoned Wagner Group convicts are continuing to commit crimes in Russia following the end of their contract service with Wagner.
Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to set conditions for September 2023 elections by further integrating occupied territories into the Russian legal apparatus.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 30, 2023

Mar 30, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 30, 2023

Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, George Barros, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson, and Frederick W. Kagan

March 30, 7:30pm 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.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain maps that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on March 30 authorizing Russia’s semiannual spring conscription which will induct 147,000 Russians between April 1 and July 15.[1] Russia conducts two conscription cycles per year with the spring conscription cycle usually conscripting 134,000 Russian men.[2] Russia may use Belarus’ training capacity to support the increase of 13,000 conscripts from previous years. A Ukrainian military official reported on March 4 that Russian personnel training in Belarus do not exceed 9,000 to 10,000 at a time, and ISW previously observed Russian forces training up to 12,000 troops in Belarus.[3] Satellite imagery indicates that Russian forces training in Belarus at the Obuz-Lesnovsky Training Ground recently redeployed to Russia in mid-March, freeing up space for new Russian trainees.[4] The new conscripts will not increase Russian combat power in the short term, as Russian conscripts must undergo months of training and service before they see combat.

Putin remains unlikely to deploy newly conscripted troops to participate in combat in Ukraine due to concerns for the stability of his regime. Chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee Andrey Kartapolov stated on March 30 that spring conscripts will not deploy to Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine during the spring 2023 conscription cycle.[5] Kartapolov also noted that Russian forces will not conscript men from occupied territories. Kartapolov‘s statements may be true given that ISW has not observed the Russian military use conscripts on any significant scale on the frontlines since the first months of the war and especially since the sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, the Moskva, which had some conscripted sailors aboard.[6] Putin’s use of conscripts during the winter-spring period of 2022 sparked social tensions in Russia, and Putin is unlikely to risk his regime’s stability by deploying newly conscripted servicemen to the frontlines.[7] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Putin even publicly instructed Russian authorities to investigate alleged incidents of Russian conscript deployments to Ukraine on March 9, 2022 (which were technically illegal at that time).[8] Putin likely perceives the political cost of deploying conscripts to the frontlines as being higher than that of Russia’s September 2022 mobilization. Putin did not deploy conscripts from the spring 2022 conscription cycles in response to Ukraine’s September 2022 counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast but instead mobilized reservists to stabilize collapsing frontlines. This decision indicated Putin’s policy preference for mobilizing reservists rather than committing conscripts to battle — likely for political reasons — even though conscripts entering the final months of their annual service obligation might fight more effectively than civilian reservists. A prominent Russian news aggregator criticized the Russian conscription system, noting that Russia’s current staffing levels for contract servicemen are insufficient even though Russia has 250,000 available conscripts.[9] The aggregator added that it is “unacceptable” that “half of the Russian army is fighting with all its strength, while the other part is sitting in the barracks.”

The start of the new conscription period, even with a slightly increased number of conscripts, may actually reduce Russian training capacity for reservists and other personnel recruited via crypto-mobilization campaigns. Russia has limited training capacity and allocating it to training conscripts who will not fight in 2023 deprives the Kremlin of the opportunity to train reservists and volunteers who would. The Kremlin may seek to increase its combat personnel in Ukraine by coercing spring 2022 conscripts who are finishing their one-year service into signing military contracts, since these freshly discharged conscriptions would need less additional training before deploying to Ukraine. It is far from clear how successful such an effort will be.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a prominent milblogger and Russian proxy battalion commander as a regional Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) official for occupied Donetsk Oblast, advancing several Kremlin efforts. Multiple Russian milbloggers reported on March 30 that Putin signed a decree appointing former Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Security Minister and current Vostok Battalion commander Alexander Khodakovsky as deputy head of the Main Directorate of Rosgvardia in occupied Donetsk Oblast, making him responsible for Rosgvardia’s special rapid response and riot police (OMON and SOBR) in the region.[10] Khodakovsky announced on March 30 that he received this appointment in early February 2023 and posted a public recruiting ad for Rosgvardia OMON and SOBR units now under his command.[11] Khodakovsky publicly praises Putin and has been a loyal pro-Russian Ukrainian separatist since March 2014.[12] (Khodorkovsky was a Ukrainian SPETSNAZ commander for the Donetsk Oblast Alpha Group under the Ukrainian State Security Service before participating in Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine in 2014.[13]) Khodakovsky’s appointment is analytically significant for several of ISW’s running assessments:

Khodakovsky’s appointment indicates a Russian effort to generate more forces from occupied Donetsk Oblast. Putin passed a bill on March 27 removing the upper age limit and other barriers to entry for Rosgvardia recruits from occupied Ukraine.[14] Khodakovsky — a native of Donetsk City — is well connected with Donetsk People‘s Republic militia fighters, veterans, and pro-Russian patriot groups in Donbas, and can help facilitate recruitment drives.[15]
The appointment advances a Kremlin effort to formalize legacy irregular Russian proxy forces in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and subordinate them to Kremlin-controlled structures.[16]
Putin may use Khodakovsky’s appointment to ensure that Putin maintains reliable control over new Rosgvardia elements in Donetsk Oblast. ISW assessed that Russian authorities may be conducting a sweeping corruption probe within Rosgvardia, possibly to weed out actors who are perceived to be unreliable to Putin.[17]
The appointment could help Putin divide and conquer influential communities that the Kremlin does not fully control. Mixed reactions to Khodakovsky’s appointment from various Russian milbloggers’ — notably among Russian military veterans — indicate a significant fracture within the Russian nationalist veteran community.[18] ISW has previously assessed the Russian nationalist veteran community within the blogosphere to be more or less unified.

Khodakovsky’s appointment also indicates that Putin continues to prioritize loyalty over competence in his subordinates. One Russian milblogger criticized Khodakovsky’s appointment and stated that Khodakovsky’s incompetence as the Vostok Battalion commander in 2014 resulted in an especially bad friendly fire incident in which Khodakovsky’s troops destroyed a Russian volunteer detachment, killing 42.[19] Former Russian officer and convicted war criminal Igor Girkin accused Khodakovsky of being a swindler and a “corrupt slug-traitor" and stated that the Kremlin’s “failed personnel policy” of advancing ”traitors, scum, and mediocrity” will lead Russia to ruin.[20] Putin has appointed loyalists ahead of competent people before. Putin replaced relatively competent Army General Sergey Surovikin, who effectively conducted a politically unpopular but militarily necessary withdrawal from upper Kherson in fall 2022, with Putin loyalist and Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov — who green-lit the disastrous campaign plan for the initial full-scale invasion of Ukraine — as theater commander for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in January 2023.[21]

Western officials reported that Wagner Group and conventional Russian forces have likely lost a substantial amount of manpower in the Bakhmut area, which will further constrain Russia’s offensive on Bakhmut. US Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley reported on March 29 that the Wagner Group has around 6,000 professional personnel and 20,000 to 30,000 recruits, mostly convicts, fighting in the Bakhmut area.[22] US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby reported in late December 2022 that the Wagner Group had 50,000 personnel in Ukraine including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convict recruits.[23] The Wagner Group has deployed the vast majority of its force to support the offensive to capture Bakhmut, and it is likely that the difference between Kirby’s 50,000 figure in Ukraine and Milley’s 26,000 to 36,000 figure in the Bakhmut area is the result of casualties from Wagner’s attritional offensive on Bakhmut. Kirby reported on February 17 that the Wagner Group had suffered 30,000 casualties, with 9,000 dead, in operations in Ukraine.[24] The Wagner Group may lose thousands more convict recruits in the upcoming weeks as convicts finish their six-month military contracts, and the Wagner leadership appears for now to be allowing pre-pardoned convicts to return from the frontlines to Russia at the conclusion of those contracts.[25]

The senior military advisor to the United Kingdom’s mission to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Ian Stubbs, reported on March 30 that 30,000 Russian military and Wagner personnel have died or been injured in the Bakhmut area since the Battle of Bakhmut began in July 2022.[26] Stubbs stated that Russian and Wagner forces have particularly suffered significant losses in and around Bakhmut in recent weeks and that they urgently need to replenish their personnel.[27] These losses in manpower will continue to constrain Russian offensive operations in the Bakhmut area as well as the wider theater, and Wagner’s significant losses will likely threaten its ability to maintain its influential role among Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast on charges of espionage on March 30. The FSB claimed that Gershkovich collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of a Russian military-industrial complex enterprise on behalf of the US, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that FSB officers caught Gershkovich “red-handed.”[28] Russian authorities may have arrested Gershkovich as a retaliatory response to the US arrest of Russian national Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov on March 24 on charges of acting as an agent of a foreign power.[29] The Kremlin will likely use Gershkovich’s detention to attempt to extract some type of concession from the United States and possibly may seek to replicate a prisoner exchange similar to the December 2022 exchange of US basketball player Brittney Griner for Russian illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout.[30]

The reported site of Gershkovich’s arrest is noteworthy. Yekaterinburg hosts 12 Russian defense enterprises that specifically produce anti-aircraft rocket systems, long-range anti-aircraft missiles, radio systems, ground support equipment for missiles and aircraft, electronic control systems for missile complexes, missile-related guidance systems and radars, self-propelled artillery systems, highly enriched uranium, rare earth metal alloys, heavy machinery, and optical systems for military aircraft.[31] These enterprises include Russia’s primary producer of self-propelled artillery systems, Uraltransmash; one of Russia’s leading optical enterprises, Urals Optical-Mechanical Plant; and Uralmash, which mass produced tanks during and after the Second World War.[32] It is not evident which military industrial enterprise is associated with the FSB’s claims about Gershkovich’s arrest, but many of them produce systems and equipment that Russian forces have lost or used in significant quantities in Ukraine. Others use microchips, which are in critically short supply in Russia and the object of intense smuggling and sanctions-evasion efforts. ISW assesses that significant equipment shortages are likely constraining the Russian military’s ability to conduct mechanized maneuver warfare in Ukraine and that the Kremlin is trying to gradually mobilize Russia’s Defense Industrial Base (DIB) to meet the Russian military’s needs without conducting full economic mobilization.[33] ISW also previously assessed that the FSB may be trying to penetrate the Russian DIB in a way that is reminiscent of the KGB’s involvement and surveillance of the Soviet military establishment.[34]

Ukrainian National Security Defense Council Secretary Oleksii Danilov stated on March 30 that Ukrainian authorities do not intend to expel the Kremlin-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra by force.[35] Independent Russian news outlet Meduza reported that parishioners of the UOC MP prevented a Ukrainian Ministry of Culture commission from entering the Lavra to conduct an inventory of the property.[36] Meduza reported that Ukrainian officials ordered the UOC MP to leave the Lavra on March 10 by March 29, and the UOC MP stated that it did not intend to comply.[37]

Key Takeaways

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on March 30 launching the semiannual spring conscription cycle, which will conscript 147,000 Russians between April 1 and July 15.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a prominent milblogger and Russian proxy battalion commander as a regional Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) official for Donetsk Oblast.
Western officials reported that Wagner Group and conventional Russian forces have likely lost a substantial amount of manpower in the Bakhmut area.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast on charges of espionage.
Ukrainian National Security Defense Council Secretary Oleksii Danilov stated that Ukrainian authorities do not intend to expel the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra by force.
Russian authorities arrested Bryansk Oblast Acting Deputy Head Elena Egorova and Second Deputy Governor Tatyana Kuleshova for reportedly receiving bribes.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks north of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued offensive operations in and around Bakhmut as well as along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director (IAEA) Rafael Grossi stated that plans to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) have evolved.
Pardoned Wagner Group convicts are continuing to commit crimes in Russia following the end of their contract service with Wagner.
Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to set conditions for September 2023 elections by further integrating occupied territories into the Russian legal apparatus.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1—Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1— Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and continue offensive operations into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks north of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line on March 30. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Berestove (24km northwest of Svatove), Stelmakhivka (12km northwest of Svatove), Kuzmyne (3km southwest of Kreminna), and Vyimka (27km southwest of Kreminna).[38] Geolocated footage published on March 30 indicated a marginal Russian advance near Kuzemivka (14km northwest of Svatove).[39] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Russian forces operate in more doctrinally sound formations using “classic tactics” and therefore are not suffering losses in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction as high as those they suffer in other directions.[40] Cherevaty also stated that Russian forces fired at Ukrainian positions 301 times in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted ground attacks supported by artillery near Novoselivske (14km northwest of Svatove), Nevske (18km northwest of Kreminna), and Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna), and attempted to attack Krokhmalne (20km northwest of Svatove), Stelmakhivka, and Terny (17km west of Kreminna).[41] Combat footage published on March 30 purportedly shows elements of the 144th Motorized Rifle Division (20th Combined Arms Army, Western Military District) attacking Ukrainian positions near Makiivka (23km northwest of Kreminna).[42] A Russian news aggregator claimed on March 29 that the 144th Motorized Rifle Division advanced along the Terny-Torske line (14 to 17km west of Kreminna).[43]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces continued offensive operations in and around Bakhmut on March 30. Geolocated footage published on March 29 indicates that Wagner Group fighters made marginal gains in southern Bakhmut.[44] Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner fighters continued assault operations in the industrial zone in northern Bakhmut, advanced north of the Bakhmut City Market in the center of the city, and have completely cleared neighborhoods in southern and southwestern Bakhmut on March 29 and 30.[45] A Russian milblogger claimed on March 30 that Russian forces captured the Bakhmut City administrative building, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[46] A Russian milblogger claimed that Wagner fighters are changing tactics within Bakhmut and are concentrating forces to pinpoint specific areas of the city for decisive assaults.[47] Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner fighters are focusing on putting pressure on Ukrainian forces in Khromove (2km west of Bakhmut), attempting to break through Ukrainian positions near Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut) and Minkivka (14km northwest of Bakhmut), and conducting assaults near Ivanivske (6m west of Bakhmut) and Predtechyne (14km southwest of Bakhmut).[48] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued assaults on Bakhmut and conducted unsuccessful offensives operations near Orikhovo-Vasylikva (11km northwest of Bakhmut).[49]

A Ukrainian commander serving in Bakhmut reported that the tempo of Russian offensives in the Bakhmut area is declining. Ukrainian Colonel Yevhen Mezhevikin stated on March 30 that Russian assaults in the Bakhmut area have slowed and that Ukrainian forces have thwarted an imminent threat of encirclement.[50] Mezhevikin stated that Russian forces previously were able to launch simultaneous assaults in all directions in the Bakhmut area but that those capabilities are now declining.[51] Mezhevikin stated that Ukrainian forces stabilized their flanks to the north and south of Bakhmut and that Russian forces are now focusing on fighting through the city itself because the buildings and urban environment protect them from Ukrainian fire.[52] ISW previously assessed that Russian forces would face significant delays and losses if the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut forced Russian forces to fight through the urban terrain of central Bakhmut.[53]

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front on March 30. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Avdiivka itself; within 14km north of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka, Novokalynove, and Stepove; and within 27km southwest of Avdiivka near Sieverne, Vodyane, Pervomaiske, Krasnohorivka, and Marinka.[54] A Russian milblogger claimed on March 29 that Russian forces continued positional battles south of Novobakhmutivka (14km northwest of Avdiivka), near Kamianka (5km northeast of Avdiivka), and west of Krasnohorivka (9km north of Avdiivka).[55] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin claimed that Russian forces experienced some unspecified successes north of Avdiivka in the direction of Krasnohorivka and near Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka).[56] A Russian milblogger claimed on March 29 that Russian forces cleared areas on the outskirts of Pervomaiske near the Izmaylovskiye Ponds and advanced further in the area, although geolocated footage published on March 30 — if recent — indicates that Ukrainian forces likely still hold positions in the southern outskirts of Pervomaiske along the E50 highway.[57]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on March 30. Pushilin claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attempts to conduct reconnaissance-in-force operations and to improve tactical positions in the Vuhledar area (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[58]

Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

International Atomic Energy Agency Director (IAEA) Rafael Grossi stated that plans to ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) had evolved. Grossi stated that the plan to ensure the nuclear safety of the ZNPP had changed from the initial proposal to establish a zone around the ZNPP to focus on “what should be avoided to ensure its protection.”[59] Grossi also stated that he discussed the challenges facing the reduced number of staff at the plant with ZNPP management. Advisor to the Head of Rosenergoatom Renat Karchaa claimed that Rosatom plans to increase the number of employees at the ZNPP to 4,500 by the end of April.[60] Karchaa claimed that over 3,100 employees at the ZNPP have signed contracts with Rosatom and 200 applications are in the final stages of consideration and verification. About 11,000 personnel worked at the ZNPP prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.[61] Energoatom reported on October 28, 2022, that of 6,700 ZNPP workers who remained to operate the Russian-occupied ZNPP, 4,300 employees left -Russian occupied territory and 100 employees signed contracts with Rosatom under duress.[62] The Ukrainian General Staff stated on January 10 that Russian forces barred ZNPP access to almost 1,500 employees who refused to receive Russian passports and sign contracts with Rosatom.[63]

Geolocated footage published on March 29 shows explosions at a Russian airbase in Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea.[64] Satellite imagery from early March shows a Russian aircraft sitting at the airbase in the general area of the explosions.[65] A Russian milblogger claimed on March 30 that Russian authorities would dispose of old ammunition in the Sevastapol raion so residents should not be concerned over sounds of explosion.[66] Hvardiiske, in Simferopol Raion, is located 47km northeast from the closest border of Sevastopol Raion.

Russian forces conducted routine shelling in Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Mykolaiv oblasts on March 30.[67]

Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Pardoned Wagner Group convicts continue committing crimes in Russia following the expiration of their contract service with Wagner. A Russian news aggregator reported that Russian authorities arrested former Wagner convict Ivan Rossomakhin as a suspect in the murder of a pensioner in Kirov Oblast.[68] Rossomakhin returned from the frontline on March 21. The aggregator reported that the convict began threatening to kill people shortly after he left Wagner. Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin stated that it is a pity that Rossomakhin committed a crime and noted that Russians should notify Wagner if pardoned convicts are acting aggressively.[69] Prigozhin noted that Wagner officials would return unruly convicts to the frontlines and claimed that since the release of thousands of convicts and the expungement of crimes from their records there have been only 20 recorded crimes linked to Wagner-pardoned convicts.[70] Russia’s crime rate will likely increase further as most Wagner-recruited convicts have only recently completed their contracts and have not spent much time in Russian society.

Russian servicemen and military command are reportedly sexually abusing Russian female soldiers in Ukraine. Sever Realii interviewed several Russian servicewomen, who revealed that Russian officers rape female soldiers serving within medical detachments.[71] One servicewoman noted that there are numerous instances of sexual harassment on the frontlines as Russian officers often abuse their authority. One former Russian servicewoman noted that the Russian Armed Forces had long cultivated a sexist environment in which female soldiers were treated as “prostitutes.”

The Kremlin continues its efforts to revive its defense industrial base (DIB). Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev visited the Kazan Powder Plant in Kazan on March 29, where he reportedly held meetings about the need for ammunition, gunpowder, and modern weapons.[72] Russian milbloggers also amplified footage published by Russian state media claiming to show employees of the Tambov bread factory constructing “Bekas” drones.[73] A milblogger claimed that the Tambov bread factory opened a specialized workshop designed to produce quadcopters to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The milblogger claimed that the factory assembles up to 200 drones per month using purchased drone parts and 3D printing. The pictures appear to be staged, possibly indicating a Russian information operation to show that Russian authorities are establishing drone production facilities in civilian industries to sell a narrative that all corners of Russian society support the invasion.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to set conditions for September 2023 elections by further integrating occupied territories into the Russian legal apparatus. Head of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Leonid Pasechnik claimed on March 30 that he signed three laws to complete the legal framework of LNR governance as a Russian federal subject in accordance with Russian law.[74] Pasechnik claimed that he signed another law creating an executive authority for Luhansk Oblast in line with other Russian oblasts to replace the abolished LNR government.[75] Pasechnik also claimed that he signed two other laws to define occupied Luhansk Oblast’s system of local self-government, creating city and district bodies whose members will be “elected” in the September 2023 elections.[76] Pasechnik emphasized that connection to the unified Russian legal system will simplify interactions between occupied Luhansk Oblast and other regions of Russia, accelerate socio-economic development, and transition occupied Luhansk to Russian standards.[77]

Russian occupation authorities continue to target Ukrainian children to consolidate political and societal control of occupied territories. Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Denis Pushilin stated on March 30 that youth in occupied Donetsk Oblast may participate in a contest to serve in the Young Parliament of the DNR.[78] Pushilin claimed that the first two convocations of the Youth Parliament of the DNR resulted in youth participating in DNR administrations and districts, the People’s Council of the DNR, ministries, and other departments and organizations.[79] Pushilin stated that the deadline to submit candidacy for the upcoming competition is April 17.[80]

Russian officials and occupation authorities continue to emphasize their benign intentions to support Ukrainian children amid growing global uproar that they are illegally deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated on March 30 that Russia intends to hold a meeting using the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) Arria formula to discuss Russia’s evacuation of children from conflict zones in Ukraine after Russia assumes the UNSC chair in April.[81] Zakharova claimed that Russia intends to meet with UNSC members informally to discuss the measures Russia has taken to protect minors from Ukrainian shelling, prevent other alleged rights violations against children, and place affected youth in safe areas.[82]

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.

The Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will hold elements of its premiere annual joint military exercise in Belarus in 2023.[83] CSTO Joint Staff Press Secretary Vladislav Shchegrikovich stated on March 30 that the CSTO decided to conduct at least five component exercises of the CSTO’s annual joint “Combat Brotherhood 2023” operational-strategic command staff exercises in Belarus.[84] Combat Brotherhood 2023 has five centerpiece component exercises in Belarus: “Interaction-2023,” which consists of combined arms combat planning exercises with the CSTO’s joint Collective Rapid Reaction Force to ”resolve a crisis situation in the CSTO’s Eastern European collective security area”; “Search-2023” special reconnaissance exercises; “Echelon-2023” logistics exercises; “Barrier-2023” chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) protection exercises; and “Rock-2023” special exercises involving unspecified Ministery of Emergency Situations elements with CSTO Rapid Reaction Force elements.[85] The CSTO stated that Combat Brotherhood 2023’s final stage with CSTO ”peacekeeping forces” - likely the capstone combat exercise - will occur in Kyrgyzstan.

It is unclear whether CSTO member states Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan will commit elements to participate in the exercise events in Belarus given Russia’s de-facto occupation of Belarus and ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The CSTO’s recurring Combat Brotherhood exercises typically occur from October through November.[86] The Kremlin may use Combat Brotherhood 2023 exercises in Belarus to support an ongoing Russian information operation against Ukraine and the West to make it appear as if Russian forces will attack Ukraine from Belarus.

Belarusian maneuver elements continue conducting exercises in Belarus. Unspecified Belarusian airborne infantry elements of the Belarusian Brest-based 38th Air Assault Brigade conducted airborne parachute exercises from Il-76 aircraft at the Brest Training Ground on March 30.[87]

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.

[1] http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202303300022

[2] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/explainer-russian-conscrip...

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[8] https://tass dot ru/politika/14013917; https://www.idelreal.org/a/32162347.html

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[11] https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2643; https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2642; https://specnazdnr dot rf/

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[13] https://vz dot ru/news/2014/7/16/695728.html

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[15] https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2642; https://specnazdnr dot rf/

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[19] https://t.me/notes_veterans/8687

[20] https://t.me/strelkovii/4362

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[22] https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-29-2...

[23] https://isw.pub/UkrWar122222 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/us-says-r...

[24] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/white-house-wagner-group-has-suffer...

[25] https://isw.pub/UkrWar032123

[26] https://armyinform doit com.ua/2023/03/30/nekompetentnist-vijskovogo-kerivnycztva-pidirvala-vijskovu-reputacziyu-rf-zayava-brytaniyi-v-obsye/; https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/astounding-levels-of-incompetence...

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[28] https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-security-service-detains-wall-stree... ru/politika/17405799

[29] https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/press-release/file/1576151/download ; ...

[30] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/08/brittney-griner-russia-us-...

[31] https://nuke.fas.org/guide/russia/industry/docs/rus95/y_list.htm

[32] https://nuke.fas.org/guide/russia/industry/docs/rus95/y_list.htm

[33] https://isw.pub/UkrWar032223 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar032823 ; https:...

[34] https://isw.pub/UkrWar031623

[35] https://www.pravda.com dot ua/rus/news/2023/03/29/7395631/

[36] https://meduza dot io/feature/2023/03/30/upts-otkazalas-pokidat-kievo-pecherskuyu-lavru-vopreki-trebovaniyam-vlastey-tserkov-podala-isk-v-sud-veruyuschie-ne-puskayut-v-monastyr-rabotnikov-minkulta

[37] https://t.me/otkachenkokyiv/3182; https://meduza dot io/feature/2023/03/30/upts-otkazalas-pokidat-kievo-pecherskuyu-lavru-vopreki-trebovaniyam-vlastey-tserkov-podala-isk-v-sud-veruyuschie-ne-puskayut-v-monastyr-rabotnikov-minkulta

[38] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0sRfSAfLk1kVPGKUgiup...

[39] https://twitter.com/TeeterSweeper/status/1641479645345267715; https://t.me/karymat/1969

[40] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2023/03/30/na-lymansko-kupyanskomu-napryamku-zsu-znyshhyly-novitnyu-rosijsku-stancziyu-reb-stryzh/

[41] https://t.me/wargonzo/11667

[42] https://t.me/vysokygovorit/11158; https://t.me/vysokygovorit/11157; ht...

[43] https://t.me/readovkanews/55745

[44] https://twitter.com/Danspiun/status/1641195537423556614?s=20; https://t...

[45] https://t.me/rybar/45234 ; https://t.me/readovkanews/55745 ; https:/...

[46] https://rybar.ru/piwigo/upload/2023/03/30/20230330175253-6ce04842.jpg

[47] https://t.me/RVvoenkor/41684

[48] https://t.me/RVvoenkor/41684 ; https://t.me/wargonzo/11667

[49] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0XS53YjZkavNzRZyt1vb...

[50] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/world/europe/ukraine-bakhmut-russia.html

[51] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/world/europe/ukraine-bakhmut-russia.html

[52] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/world/europe/ukraine-bakhmut-russia.html

[53] https://isw.pub/UkrWar03052023

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[55] https://t.me/rybar/45209

[56] https://tass dot ru/politika/17406235

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[58] https://tass dot ru/armiya-i-opk/17411255

[59] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-152-iaea-director-g...

[60] https://tass dot ru/ekonomika/17403005

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[64] https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1641200637798154240; https://tw...

[65] https://twitter.com/RedIntelPanda/status/1641116073683570689

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[68] https://t.me/bazabazon/16644

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[70] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/666

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[72] https://t.me/milinfolive/98665

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[78] https://t.me/pushilindenis/3294

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[80] https://t.me/pushilindenis/3294

[81] https://tass dot ru/politika/17408575

[82] https://tass dot ru/politika/17408575

[83] https://t.me/modmilby/24949

[84] https://t.me/modmilby/24949; https://odkb-csto.org/news/news_odkb/v-obedinennom-shtabe-odkb-sostoyali...

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[86] https://community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2/fmso/m/fmso-monographs/360801

[87] https://t.me/modmilby/24951

Newly Declassified Government Report Suggests Havana Syndrome Might Be Caused by an Energy Weapon

Gizmodo · March 30, 2023

Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)

Only several weeks after the intelligence community came out to disavow claims that “Havana Syndrome”—the bizarre rash of neurological disorders plaguing droves of U.S. foreign service officers—was the result of a directed energy weapon, a newly declassified report alleges that may very well be what it is.

The report’s author, the Intelligence Community Experts Panel on Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs), was established by the government to figure out just what the heck had happened to the 1,000-ish U.S. officials who claim to suffer from “Havana”’s bizarre symptoms. Those symptoms, which first started cropping up in Cuba in 2016, include a rash of inexplicable mental and physical ailments—things like hearing and memory loss, severe headaches, light sensitivity, nausea, and a host of other debilitating issues. After a substantial research effort, the panel ultimately released their findings to the government last September, but the contents of the report have remained classified. Well, until now, anyway.

In an exclusive, Salon has published the full 153-page report put together by the panel. The document (which is heavily redacted) was recently declassified as the result of a lawsuit filed by the James Madison Project, a non-profit that lobbies against government secrecy. It had previously been reported that the panel’s findings supported the notion that electromagnetic energy may have been the culprit, but the full findings of the report have not been made public until now.

According to the report, a plausible explanation for the disorders may be “pulsed electromagnetic energy.” It reads:

Electromagnetic energy, particularly pulsed signals in the radio frequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics, although information gaps exist. There are several plausible pathways involving forms of electromagnetic energy, each with its own requirements, limitations, and unknowns. For all the pathways, sources exist that could generate the required stimuli, are concealable, and have moderate power requirements.

The M1 chip delivers 3.5x faster performance than the previous generation all while using way less power. Get up to 18 hours of battery life.

Furthermore, the report speculates that such energy could be “propagated with low loss through air for tens to hundreds of meters, and with some loss, through most building materials.” This could potentially be done using “commercial off-the-shelf technology” and devices exist that “are easily portable and concealable, and can be powered by standard electricity or batteries,” it states.

The report is really interesting but it’s also sort of funny because it appears to say the exact opposite of what the government just came out and told everybody less than a month ago. On March 1st, Haines and CIA director William Burns told journalists that most cases of Havana Syndrome could likely be attributed to “environmental factors” or “conventional illnesses.” While officials left the door open for other explanations, the press conference seemed like a clear attempt to shut down further speculation on the bizarre episode. For most of the cases, the notion that the symptoms were caused by a “directed energy weapon” was considered “highly unlikely,” Haines told the public.

But far from waving off victims’ symptoms as the result of “environmental factors” or some sort of mass delusion, the recently declassified report refers to Havana Syndrome as a “unique neurosensory syndrome” that is “distinctly unusual,” and is “unreported elsewhere in the medical literature.” Aside from the “electromagnetic energy,” it also seems to dismiss most of the other potential explanations for victims’ symptoms.

For example, one frequently proposed explanation for the bizarre disorders has been mass delusion—a sort of weirdly global psychological affliction impacting U.S. officials all over the world. But the report states that psychosocial factors alone “cannot account for the core characteristics [of Havana Syndrome]” and that “incidents exhibiting these characteristics do not fit the majority of criteria” of a “mass sociogenic illness.”

The other, often proposed explanation—that the symptoms are the result of run-of-the-mill environmental factors or previously diagnosed illnesses—is also dispensed with; the report states that based on “literature reviews and discussions with a group of experts gathered from government and academia...the Panel determined that the core characteristics cannot be explained by benign natural or environmental factors.”

The other potential causes of the syndrome that the panel looked into—like ionizing radiation and chemical and biological agents—are given some consideration but the panel ultimately concludes that they are “implausible explanations for the core characteristics in the absence of other synergistic stimuli,” the report states.

Mark Zaid, an attorney with the James Madison Project (and a representative for some of the Havana Syndrome victims), told Salon that he thought the report showed that the government was clearly hiding something. “The U.S. government is covering up evidence as to what AHIs are,” Zaid told the outlet. “It is becoming apparent that these events were perpetrated either by foreign actors, or it is an experiment gone horribly wrong.”

Gizmodo · March 30, 2023

3. Hackers probing contractors for path to Pentagon, DISA chief says

Hackers probing contractors for path to Pentagon, DISA chief says

c4isrnet.com · by Colin Demarest · March 30, 2023

WASHINGTON — Foreign hackers are targeting contractors to the U.S. government not only for their intellectual property and non-public information, but also to find furtive avenues into Pentagon networks, according to the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Lt. Gen. Robert Skinner on March 29 told Congress that hackers backed by China, Russia and other adversaries are applying “very high” levels of effort to digitally infiltrate, surveil and make off with plans or intelligence closely held by suppliers to the Department of Defense.

Also on their radar are means of going “upstream,” he said at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing.

“Some of them see the defense industrial base as a soft underbelly,” said Skinner, who also serves as the commander of the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network. “That’s why our work with [Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification] 2.0 and our work day-to-day with our defense industrial base partners is critical moving forward, because that’s where the adversary is really targeting.”

CMMC 2.0 is a framework launched in 2021 to protect the defense industrial base’s sensitive unclassified information from frequent and increasingly complex cyberattacks.

In October, the National Security Agency, FBI and other federal entities said hackers managed to infiltrate a defense industrial base organization, maintain “persistent, long-term” access to its network and abscond with sensitive data. They did not identify the victim. Years prior, Chinese-sponsored cyberattacks breached a Navy contractor’s computers, jeopardizing info tied to secret work on an anti-ship missile, Defense News reported.

US sent ‘hunt-forward’ team to Albania in wake of Iranian cyberattacks

Iran targeted Albanian networks in July and September, forcing offline key government services including the Total Information Management System.

The Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint seeks $13.5 billion for what it described as “cyberspace activities.” They include zero-trust — a cybersecurity paradigm in which networks are assumed already breached, thus requiring constant validation of users and devices — as well as supply chain risk management.

The latest cyber request is up 20.5% from the FY23 ask. The spending is needed to keep the Pentagon’s virtual pipelines thickly insulated, according to Pentagon CIO John Sherman, who testified alongside Skinner.

“All of our systems, be they for weapons, enterprise IT, command and control, business systems or defense critical infrastructure, must be equipped with the most modern cyber defenses that can stand up to savvy and determined state and non-state actors,” Sherman said.

The Biden administration’s national cybersecurity strategy labels China as the No. 1 cyber threat, capable of siphoning data and contorting information for its own authoritarian gain.

Russia, the strategy says, remains a significant cyber threat and is refining its espionage and influence skills.

“As we’ve seen in Ukraine, today’s battlefields are increasingly digital and connected, with all the opportunities and vulnerabilities that environment presents,” Sherman said.

About Colin Demarest

Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.

4. Operation Ugly Baby - 10th Special Forces Group | SOF News

Graphics at the link: https://sof.news/iraq/ugly-baby/

Operation Ugly Baby - 10th Special Forces Group | SOF News

sof.news · by DVIDS · March 31, 2023

By Steven Alger.

In early 2003, planning between the United States and coalition partners was underway to eliminate Saddam Hussein and his influence throughout Iraq. This operation would later be known as Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). This initial operation was divided into multiple missions, one of which was named “Ugly Baby,” aiming to open a second front in enemy territory.

The goal was to insert the majority of two 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) battalions into the country. The mission was to cross through Turkey’s airspace under cover of darkness to establish a foothold on the northern border of Iraq. Though a reliable NATO ally, Turkey feared that OIF might ultimately reinvigorate Kurdish plans for an independent Kurdistan. However, on March 1, 2003, their military was still against the United States utilizing their airspace due to the internal political situation.

As a result, the Joint Special Operations Aviation Detachment-North (JSOAD-N) and the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-North (CJSOTF-N), which included members from the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), started looking for an alternate route into the north. With the help of the United States European Command, Romania offered the U.S. the use of Mihail Kogălniceanu (M.K.) Air Base near Constanta.

Chief Warrant Officer 5 Jefferey Elwell, then an Operation Detachment Alpha (ODA) team sergeant with the 10th Special Forces Group at the time, shared his experience during the initial operation. “It was about three days of us trying to get into northern Iraq by flying over Turkish airspace, and each time they would deny our flight,” said Elwell, now the Command Chief Warrant Officer for 10th SFG(A). “We had been planning this for months, and we were anxious to get in and get to work.”

Planning was underway to establish a new route that would jump from M.K. Air Base, but that added hours of flight time and required more fuel on the already heavily loaded MC-130Hs.

This new route was also a heavily defended airspace which required that operations be conducted at lower elevations to avoid anti-air bombardment. Regardless, it was deemed the only direct route available. What initially had started as three MC-130Hs turned into six, dispersing as much weight as possible for necessary equipment. Members of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army Green Berets would take off in intervals throughout the night to either Bashur Landing Zone (LZ) or Sulaymaniyah LZ, located on the northern border of Iraq.

Jim Donovan, an ODA team sergeant assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 10th SFG(A), said, “When we flew north on the western border of Iraq, that’s when all the Ugly Baby portion really started.”

The planes taking off were staggered, which allowed the Iraqis to adjust fire as each plane flew the route to Bashur and Sulaymaniyah L.Z.s. The last few planes received the most contact from anti-air. Most of the flight had been an average ride until the aircrew started to receive enemy fire. At that point, the airplane initiated evasive maneuvers to avoid taking too much damage. During the rollercoaster of a ride, the pilots had to change elevation throughout the flurry of rounds, sometimes reaching nearly 200 ft off the ground and at near top speeds with as many as 60 Green Berets on board.

“You could see tracers and hear all the rounds outside, but we had all the confidence in the Air Force to get us through,” Donovan stated.

Donovan also said that at the time, he thought about what they would do if they had to make an emergency landing. He hoped it was in a flat enough area for convenience because everyone on the plane was surrounded by necessary equipment while wearing all the necessary gear they would need.

Contact would come in waves as they passed through embedded anti-air. The sound of rounds impacting the aircraft’s fuselage could be heard throughout the flight, and a few stray rounds hit one of the engines, causing fuel and oil to leak. As another engine was struck, the pilots would come on the radio declaring an inflight emergency. Unfortunately, the damaged engine would have the MC-130H land sooner than anticipated. Given the circumstances, the closest and safest place would be to cross the border into Turkey.

“We passed over a small convoy, and they started firing everything from shoulder-fired Surface to Air Missile Systems to pistols and everything in between,” said Elwell as he recounted moments from his experience. “The lights came on, and the pilots declared an inflight emergency which would have them divert landing into Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. As the ramp came down, everyone started running as they realized aviation fluid was spilling over the tarmac.”

During the night of March 22, 2003, the JSOAD-N would successfully insert 19 U.S. Army Special Forces teams along with 4 Company Headquarters elements between Bashur and Sulaymaniyah L.Z.s. No casualties or injuries were sustained throughout the high-risk flight, which ultimately caused Turkey to rethink its decision to allow the U.S. to utilize its airspace to send much-needed supplies to the northern border.

Ugly Baby was remembered as the longest low-level infiltration via aircraft since the Second World War.

“That next day, we proceeded to load up and continue through the mountains to later coordinate close air support down on Iraqi positions across the green line alongside peshmerga fighters,” Elwell said. “They were excellent and very brave, and many had sacrificed their lives alongside us to liberate Iraq.”

**********

This story by Spc. Steven Alger of the 10th Special Forces Group was first published on March 30, 2023 by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. DVIDS content is in the public domain.

The map shows the route flown north along the western border of Iraq during the mission Ugly Baby on March 22, 2003. The mission intent was to insert OD-A teams into two different landing zones to help gain a northern front as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Photo Courtesy of U.S Army)

sof.news · by DVIDS · March 31, 2023

5. AUKUS Agreement Will Help Deter China from Taiwan Invasion, Says Former PACOM CO

Excerpts:

“This will serve certainly as a deterrent in the mindset of the Chinese military when they consider things like acting against their neighbors, acting on the global stage in negative and nefarious ways,” retired Adm. Harry Harris said today at an event co-hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Naval Institute.

“I now agree completely with Sidharth Kaushal, who’s with the U.K.’s RUSI – the Royal United Services Institute – when he said this will make China’s potential aggression against Taiwan a lot less appealing. That’s his words – a lot less appealing. I agree with him,” Harris added.

AUKUS Agreement Will Help Deter China from Taiwan Invasion, Says Former PACOM CO - USNI News

news.usni.org · by Mallory Shelbourne · March 30, 2023

President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Surnak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speak at the AUKUS bilateral meeting in San Diego, Calif, March 13, 2023. DoD Photo

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The technology sharing agreement meant to help Australia build its own nuclear-powered submarines will help deter China from invading Taiwan, the former head of U.S. Pacific Command said today.

“This will serve certainly as a deterrent in the mindset of the Chinese military when they consider things like acting against their neighbors, acting on the global stage in negative and nefarious ways,” retired Adm. Harry Harris said today at an event co-hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Naval Institute.

“I now agree completely with Sidharth Kaushal, who’s with the U.K.’s RUSI – the Royal United Services Institute – when he said this will make China’s potential aggression against Taiwan a lot less appealing. That’s his words – a lot less appealing. I agree with him,” Harris added.

Harris, who led U.S. Pacific Command before it became U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said he doesn’t think selling Virginia-class submarines to Australia will hurt U.S. defense capabilities.

“It’s not a zero-sum game. We’re not going to sell a submarine to Australia and then have some deficit in the global submarine force. Australia is a key American ally,” Harris said.

“So an Australian Virginia- class submarine under sovereign Australian colors is a good thing. It’s good for the free and open Indo-Pacific. It’s good for the reach that Australia will have globally with a submarine of that capacity,” he added.

President Joe Biden, along with his counterparts from Australia and the United Kingdom, earlier this month unveiled how the three nations will pursue the agreement known as AUKUS. The technology-sharing pact will help Australia develop its own nuclear-powered submarine capability that it can eventually build and maintain domestically.

The multi-phase deal would have Royal Australian Navy sailors continue training already underway with U.S. sailors and start training with U.K. sailors. Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. would also pursue a submarine rotational force out of Australia that could operate as soon as 2027.

The RAN could buy up to five Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack boats in the 2030s before Australia’s domestic capability can build and maintain its own submarines. Those boats would likely be a mix of old and new attack boats. Eventually, the U.K. would build the first submarines for Australia, a platform known as SSN AUKUS that’s based on the U.K.’s SSNR design, for a late 2030s delivery. Once Australia builds out its own workforce, it could start the domestic construction of the first boats in the 2040s.

Harris said training the industrial base how to build and maintain nuclear-powered submarines is crucial. But the deal’s success also depends on the industrial bases in both the U.K. and the U.S. While the U.S. Navy is buying Virginia-class submarines at a two-per-year cadence, industry is currently building about 1.2 submarines per year. In order to sell to the Australians, the U.S. industrial base needs to build more than two submarines per year, according to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday.

To help bolster industry, the Navy in its Fiscal Year 2024 budget request is looking to infuse the submarine industrial base with cash.

“That won’t just go to the two big shipbuilders, which are HII Newport News and Electric Boat up in Groton, but those other companies that I talked about that we’re doing the strategic outsourcing with, they need to get some of that money,” Gilday said at the McAleese Conference earlier this month. “They need to make the investments in their infrastructure and their workforce so that we can sustain that 2.0 cadence, which by the way needs to go above 2.0 attack boats per year if we’re going to be in a position to sell any to the Australians.”

For the Navy to sell Australia Virginia-class boats, in addition to building two boats per year the service also needs to work on the spare parts inventory for the class, Naval Sea Systems Command chief Vice Adm. Bill Galinis told reporters earlier this month.

“We’ve made some tremendous progress over the last year or so in kind of replenishing some of the parts that we have. There’s clearly more to do in that area,” Galinis said.

The Navy’s FY 2024 request seeks $541 million for Virginia-class spare across the five-year budget outlook. But Galinis said the Navy also needs to evaluate its long-term maintenance plans for the Virginia boats to ensure the U.S. can sell some of them to the Australians.

“We put them into shipyards – the Virginians – for an extended period of time. And just historically – and whether you’re talking Virginia or any other ship class – the longer you keep a ship in the shipyard, the more difficult it is to execute and finish that availability on time. And as the size and the duration of the avails grow, it gets more difficult,” Galinis said.

Harris during Thursday’s event said the success of AUKUS also means decades-long political and financial support for the endeavor.

“You have to have sustained political support in three countries for three decades, at least. You have to have sustained resourcing by those same three countries for three decades. And you have to be maximally flexible across three decades,” he said.

“Some people would say that those are three impossibles that have to come together to pull this off. I don’t agree with that. I think it is entirely possible because … the criticality of the need for Australia to have this capability against the threats that we all face in a region as vitally important as the Indo-Pacific demands something big bold and creative.”

news.usni.org · by Mallory Shelbourne · March 30, 2023

6. F-35s Arrive at Kadena as F-15 Withdrawl Continues

Excerpts:

“The next batch of F-15s will depart Kadena in phased movements over the coming months,” a spokesperson for Pacific Air Forces told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Departures will occur once sufficient deployed forces are in place and operational to ensure no gap in steady-state fighter presence.”

Kadena is a strategic location for the Air Force, around 450 miles from Taiwan. The base bills itself as the “Keystone of the Pacific.”

After more than 40 years of Eagle operations, Kadena has had nearly every aircraft type in the Air Force’s fighter fleet cycle through the island in recent months: F-35s, F-22s, F-16s, and the original F-15s.

F-35s Arrive at Kadena as F-15 Withdrawl Continues | Air & Space Forces Magazine

airandspaceforces.com · by Chris Gordon · March 30, 2023

March 30, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

F-35 Lightning II fighters arrived on Okinawa this month as the Air Force continues to swap out its permanently deployed F-15 Eagles at Kadena Air Base, Japan.

The 18th Wing at Kadena said the 355th Fighter Squadron from Eielson Air Base, Alaska began the deployment on March 28. It is unclear how many F-35s are now operating there. Air Force officials declined to provide the exact number of F-35s at Kadena or say when more F-15s would depart, citing operational security. However, officials said the F-35 deployment was temporary as part of the DOD’s plan to place more advanced fighters at Kadena on a rotational basis as the old F-15s head out.

“The next batch of F-15s will depart Kadena in phased movements over the coming months,” a spokesperson for Pacific Air Forces told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Departures will occur once sufficient deployed forces are in place and operational to ensure no gap in steady-state fighter presence.”

Kadena is a strategic location for the Air Force, around 450 miles from Taiwan. The base bills itself as the “Keystone of the Pacific.”

After more than 40 years of Eagle operations, Kadena has had nearly every aircraft type in the Air Force’s fighter fleet cycle through the island in recent months: F-35s, F-22s, F-16s, and the original F-15s.

The Air Force promised to replace the old Eagles with newer and more capable aircraft, starting with F-22 Raptors from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska and F-16CMs from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. The F-35s of the 355th FS mark the third squadron to head to Kadena as part of the F-15 replacement plan. The F-22s and F-16s remain deployed at Kadena.

F-15s leaving Kadena are destined for the Boneyard or Air National Guard service. Air National Guard director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium March 8 the ANG had some F-15s from Kadena undergoing extensive depot tear-downs.

F-35s from the 355th Fighter Squadron deployed to Kadena as early as March 4, according to photo captions of F-35 operations in the Pacific released by the Air Force. It is unclear if the aircraft in those photos returned to Alaska or stayed at Kadena. The spokesperson for Pacific Air Forces said all of Kadena’s F-35s “scheduled to arrive have done so.” A spokesperson for the 354th Fighter Wing, the parent unit of the 355th, noted the arrival of the aircraft March 28 but added, “to protect operational security, exact details on flight and arrival times cannot be provided.”

U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning IIs taxi on the flightline after arriving at Kadena Air Base, Japan, March 28, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Tylir Meyer

Despite the island’s strategic importance and proximity to the possible flashpoint of Taiwan, the Air Force must remove the permanently deployed F-15s from Kadena because they are simply too old, service officials say.

“F-15Cs: last year when we were here, there were two aircraft at Kadena that were grounded and would never fly again, and two more that could only fly a one-time flight to the Boneyard,” Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore, Jr., deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, told a House Armed Service subcommittee March 29. “Now it’s three that are grounded forever and four that can only that are only capable of one-time flight to the Boneyard. Of every 10 aircraft in the F-15C fleet that we put into depot, only two of them come out.”

The Air Force has used its newer fighter aircraft at Kadena to hop around the Pacific for various Agile Combat Employment exercises, including deployments of F-22s to Tinian and the Philippines—the first time fifth-generation fighters deployed to those locations. The Pentagon wants to invest $88 million in upgrades to Kadena as part of its fiscal 2024 budget request.

The F-35s look set to continue the trend of Kadena’s fifth-generation aircraft being used as a flexible force. The 18th Wing said in a news release that “the F-35 squadron plans to rotate personnel and equipment to multiple operating locations in order to support the Theater Joint Force Air Component Commander and the 18th Wing while maintaining readiness for the high-end fight.”

Air

Operational Imperative 4: Tactical Air Dominance

airandspaceforces.com · by Chris Gordon · March 30, 2023

7. DARPA wants a Spec Ops plane with a set of insane characteristics – and it wants it fast

Artist renderings at the link: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/darpa-wants-a-spec-ops-plane-with-a-set-of-insane-characteristics-and-it-wants-it-fast/?mc_cid=94af96f34f&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Excerpts:

SPRINT, naturally, stands for “SPeed and Runway INdependent Technologies.”

“The SPRINT Demonstrator Project aims to design, build, certify, and fly an X-Plane to demonstrate the key technologies and integrated concepts that enable a transformational combination of aircraft speed and runway independence for future air mobility platforms,” the solicitation states, adding that the project aims to validate technologies that can be adapted to military aircraft of different sizes.

DARPA wants a Spec Ops plane with a set of insane characteristics – and it wants it fast - Sandboxx

sandboxx.us · by Hope Seck · March 30, 2023

It can take off vertically with a lead-up (defined as the length of runway needed for take-off) of less than 300 feet, hover in austere environments, and fly forward at more than 450 miles per hour. And, by the way, it’s probably a fixed-wing plane.

That, at least, is the idea behind DARPA’s SPRINT X-plane, a project in the beginning stages of development for use by the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently called for proposals for a plane with a mind-bending set of capabilities. According to the March solicitation, DARPA wants a scaled demonstrator ready to fly within the next three-and-a-half years.

SPRINT, naturally, stands for “SPeed and Runway INdependent Technologies.”

“The SPRINT Demonstrator Project aims to design, build, certify, and fly an X-Plane to demonstrate the key technologies and integrated concepts that enable a transformational combination of aircraft speed and runway independence for future air mobility platforms,” the solicitation states, adding that the project aims to validate technologies that can be adapted to military aircraft of different sizes.

SPRINT Concept Art. Source (DARPA slide via DefenseOne)

The joint SOCOM-DARPA effort aims to develop an aircraft with the following set of science-bending abilities:

Cruising at speeds equal to or higher than 400 knots true airspeed, or about 460 miles per hour, at elevations between 15,000 and 30,000 feet;
Hovering and stable hover maneuvers;
Transitioning between hover, forward flight, and high-speed forward flight, both forward and back, without losing stability;
Generating and distributing power in all flight modes and during transition between flight modes

The plane should also have a flight radius of at least 200 nautical miles, flight test endurance of at least 90 minutes, and a payload of 5,000 pounds, with a cargo bay large enough to fit a small wheeled vehicle. According to documents, the aircraft will likely weigh between 8,000 and 15,000 pounds unloaded, which is about half the weight of a fighter jet.

A set of MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft fly in formation above the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Sydney, Australia, June 29, 2017. The MV-22Bs belong to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 265 (Reinforced). VMM-265 (Rein.) is part of the Aviation Combat Element of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. (Official U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Amy Phan/Released)

What makes this notional aircraft different from the V-22 tiltrotor Osprey, which can take off like a helicopter and fly like a plane, is velocity: the Osprey reaches top speeds of around 273 knots, or 315 miles per hour, with a slightly lower cruising rate.

DARPA left a lot of mysteries, however, around other specifics, for example, it’s not clear if this future plane would be manned, unmanned, or optionally manned – DARPA’s leaving that up to the companies proposing to build it. And while concept art shows a fixed-wing, streamlined aircraft with windows, it hasn’t excluded the possibility that it will be some kind of rotorcraft or hybrid.

“The need for runway-independent aircraft for combat is growing as publicly available satellite imagery and open-source intelligence communities make it nearly impossible for militaries to hide runways or aircraft,” Technology writer Patrick Tucker wrote at DefenseOne, which published an early report about the project. Runways and airbases are considered particularly vulnerable in a potential near-peer conflict.

Bridging the gap between a helicopter’s freedom of maneuver and an airplane’s speed would indeed be a feat. As Popular Mechanics explained in a 2018 piece, a helicopter’s transition from lift to thrust as it moves forward limits its speed; tellingly, the world’s fastest cars could outrun the Osprey, which remains the world’s fastest rotorcraft.

An AV-8B Harrier with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 163 (Reinforced), 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), prepares to land aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4) during an air power demonstration. The Marines and Sailors of the 11th MEU are conducting routine operations as part of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group in the eastern Pacific Ocean. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Israel Chincio)

The Marine Corps, which needs aircraft that can take off and land on short amphibious ship flight decks, has two fixed-wing jets that can achieve vertical lift and a hover state, the AV-8B Harrier and the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. Both aircraft have powerful nozzles and lift fans, respectively, that direct exhaust downward to create thrust. It’s a fuel-sucking and noisy process, and sometimes comes with side effects: the F-35B’s lift fans generate enough heat that they’ve actually damaged ship flight decks.

DARPA seems to be looking for something different, namely a plane that can hover at will in austere environments, without needing a special surface to take off and land on, and which can then reach cruising speeds similar to that of a Gulfstream or Learjet. And it wants to get there fast. The first design phase is set to take just six months, and flight tests could occur as early as fiscal 2026.

After DARPA completes testing on a SPRINT demonstrator, it plans to hand the aircraft over to SOCOM for additional trials and inspection.

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE: ‘Gray Zone’ Competition — The Race for Multi-Domain Capability

nationaldefensemagazine.org

3/31/2023

By James Terry

Army photo

Warfare is no longer focused solely on the destruction of enemy forces. With today’s rapid technological advancements, success is predicated on the ability to disrupt, degrade, deceive and destroy peer adversaries’ infrastructure.

This approach expands beyond military ways and means and includes political, economic, social and information operations that support a nation’s sphere of influence.

Commensurate with this new paradigm is a race to develop and deploy multi-domain technology that defines a new era in modern warfare, or multi-domain capabilities in gray zone competition.

The use of gray zone actions in the Indo-Pacific — China’s efforts to expand its sphere of influence — are challenging the United States and other countries’ efforts to maintain a free and open region. We expect China to escalate their activities until they are just shy of provoking a military response.

The visit of former U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to Taiwan last year provided a window of opportunity to observe China’s competitive gray zone responses. During the trip, China used a combination of multi-domain air, sea, land and cyber incursions surrounding Taiwan before, during and after the event. Depending on the results of an ongoing investigation, the recent surveillance balloon that flew over the United States could also be categorized as gray zone activity.

While these gray zone actions were not enough to justify an open military response, they illustrate China’s competitive behavior and highlight the importance of U.S. efforts to continue developing future multi-domain capabilities.

Recognizing China as a geopolitical pacing challenge, and the country’s intent to compete in this new era of gray zone competition, the United States is sharpening its competitive edge with military advances in joint all-domain command and control technology, also known as JADC2.

For the United States, planning and conducting gray zone warfare today requires leveraging JADC2’s command, control, communications, computers, cyber intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technology and networks, with data security key to promote deterrence. Across land, air, sea, space and cyber domains, JADC2 is intended to allow U.S. forces to strike faster, more efficiently and from farther away.

China has taken note of the Defense Department’s JADC2 efforts along the Indo-Pacific littoral and is moving quickly to develop its own version called “multi-domain precision warfare.” The system is designed to disrupt decision makers and their communication systems, forcing the United States and its allies into a defensive posture.

Gray zone competition promises to be long-lasting, requiring the undivided attention of the United States and its partners as they prepare to act in a multi-domain environment. This progression toward fully utilizing multi-domain capabilities highlights a new imperative and mindset to command this technology shift and ensure the military forces of the nation and its allies outpace China and other peer adversaries on the world stage.

With China’s rapid advance of its own pacing technology, maintaining strong, interoperable alliances and partner relationships will play an essential role for the United States in winning multi-domain conflicts.

Today’s gray zone warfare is not part of a new Cold War — rather it is a competitive race to enable multi-domain capability. For China, that means growing its sphere of influence around Taiwan and along the Asian-Pacific sea areas and island chains. And for the United States and its allies, that means maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region.

Geopolitics is changing, and we must adopt a realistic approach to gray zone competition and multi-domain warfare. By fostering training and exercise programs throughout the region, we put integrated deterrence into action, building partner capacity while reducing the sphere of influence from our adversaries.

While JADC2 technology promises superior advancements in warfighting capabilities, its optimal effectiveness comes as part of an integrated effort, one that unifies communication, intelligence gathering, sensor-to-shooter effects chains; contested logistics to support the force; and live, virtual and constructive training capabilities that build interoperability and readiness.

By converging current and ready capabilities in this time of gray zone competition, we will realize the capabilities that ensure mission command, deterrence, war-fighting capability and a sense of stability for the U.S. citizens we serve.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Terry is senior vice president of business development of ground strategy at Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions.

Topics: Infotech, Warfare

nationaldefensemagazine.org

9. Why the world needs a strong US navy

Excerpts;

For its part, China’s navy eclipsed the United States’s in raw tonnage in 2020 and shows no signs of slowing down. While the U.S. Navy can undoubtedly boast of better ships and better sailors, raw tonnage matters. Sam Tangredi, a U.S. Naval War College professor, warns that if history is any guide, the navy with the most ships wins — even over more skilled seamen with more technologically advanced ships.

Past presidents and policymakers set aside political differences to strengthen the U.S. Navy. Former President James Madison’s Republican convictions made him leery of a large navy, but in the aftermath of the War of 1812, he set aside his qualms and advocated enlarging the Navy. In the years preceding the Civil War, Democrats from the South advocated bolstering the Navy even as politicians from their region saw it as a Northern-dominated institution. At the beginning of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt pushed for a greater Navy to maintain the United States’ economic prowess.

Throughout its history, the U.S. Navy has acted as a relatively responsible force for maintaining the freedom of the seas — not merely for itself but also its trading partners and allies. Unless Americans would prefer China rule the seas, the United States should maintain its naval superiority.

Why the world needs a strong US navy

Washington Examiner · by Miles Smith · March 31, 2023

In 1892, Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, a lecturer at the Naval War College, published his opus, The Influence of Sea Power upon History. The work made him famous. More importantly, it showed the rest of the world that the United States was committed to using naval muscle to claim its place among the world’s great powers.

For Mahan, the history of sea power was largely “a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war.” In order to “secure to one's own people a disproportionate share,” Mahan wrote, “every effort was made to exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence.”

America’s earliest political leaders understood that the fortunes of the young republic were tied to the sea, even if some of them — most notably Thomas Jefferson — didn’t admit that until much later.

For nearly 200 years, the relationship between American power, American industry, and the U.S. Navy has been understood as vital to maintaining American economic prosperity and preserving the United States's preeminent place among great powers. Former President Theodore Roosevelt inaugurated an era of U.S. naval power at a time when the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy battled for supremacy on the high seas.

Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet sailed around the world from 1907 to 1909, and while the United States did not have the raw number of ships compared to Britain or Germany, it was clear to anyone paying attention that the U.S. Navy would be a force to be reckoned with in the new 20th century. Even as the United States joined the rest of the world in the post-World War I Washington Treaty limiting the creation of battleships, the United States ensured that it would be allowed to maintain parity with the largest navy in the world at the time, the Royal Navy.

Two world wars confirmed bullish attitudes about the U.S. Navy. In the aftermath of World War II and the industrial buildup that accompanied the war effort, the U.S. Navy became the largest in the world and assumed the lion’s share of the responsibility for keeping global seas open for commerce and trade in the wake of the collapse of the British Empire.

Today, former Navy officer and writer Jerry Hendrix warns Americans that they’ve taken the freedom of the seas for granted. He argues that China's rise should prompt the United States to recommit to being the world’s premier sea power.

“Very few Americans — or, for that matter, very few people on the planet — can remember a time when freedom of the seas was in question,” Hendrix noted. “But for most of human history, there was no such guarantee. Pirates, predatory states, and the fleets of great powers did as they pleased.”

Indeed, modern economies rely on this freedom of the seas for successful trade. Yet, the United States has lost its ability, and apparently its will, to make the hard choices necessary to keep its navy powerful enough to reinforce this. China has spent billions of dollars building military ships and a massive merchant marine.

In an interview with 60 Minutes, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday explained that the nation simply doesn’t have enough operable shipyards. Since the Cold War, the United States has gone from 30 operable shipyards to seven.

For its part, China’s navy eclipsed the United States’s in raw tonnage in 2020 and shows no signs of slowing down. While the U.S. Navy can undoubtedly boast of better ships and better sailors, raw tonnage matters. Sam Tangredi, a U.S. Naval War College professor, warns that if history is any guide, the navy with the most ships wins — even over more skilled seamen with more technologically advanced ships.

Past presidents and policymakers set aside political differences to strengthen the U.S. Navy. Former President James Madison’s Republican convictions made him leery of a large navy, but in the aftermath of the War of 1812, he set aside his qualms and advocated enlarging the Navy. In the years preceding the Civil War, Democrats from the South advocated bolstering the Navy even as politicians from their region saw it as a Northern-dominated institution. At the beginning of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt pushed for a greater Navy to maintain the United States’ economic prowess.

Throughout its history, the U.S. Navy has acted as a relatively responsible force for maintaining the freedom of the seas — not merely for itself but also its trading partners and allies. Unless Americans would prefer China rule the seas, the United States should maintain its naval superiority.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICA

Miles Smith IV is an assistant professor of history at Hillsdale College.

Washington Examiner · by Miles Smith · March 31, 2023

10. America’s Looming Munitions Crisis

A surprising amount of people who do not normally write about logistics issues are now addressing some critical issues.

Excerpts:

The military is taking some promising initial steps. The U.S. Army now plans to boost its monthly capacity to produce 155-millimeter shells from about 14,000 to 30,000 in 2023 and eventually to 90,000. The Pentagon is spending $80 million to bring a second source online for the Javelin missile’s rocket motor, and plans to double production to around 4,000 a year. Overall, the U.S. Army hopes to increase production of artillery shells by 500 percent within two years to replenish stockpiles sent to Ukraine—the largest production expansion since the Korean War.

After two decades of operations against al Qaeda and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), the United States has fundamentally shifted its defense strategy from counterterrorism to competition with China and Russia. But words are not enough. The U.S. defense industrial base is sorely lagging. Without urgent changes, the United States will find itself unable to fight a protracted war or deter Russian or Chinese aggression.

America’s Looming Munitions Crisis

How to Fill the Missile Gap

By Seth G. Jones

March 31, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Seth G. Jones · March 31, 2023

Leaders from both political parties in the United States agree that the country is locked in a strategic competition with China. The Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy, released in 2022, bluntly stated that China represents “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security.” Not to be outdone, Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China, a special panel established in January, described U.S.-Chinese competition as “an existential struggle over what life will look like in the twenty-first century.” Now more than ever, it is easy to imagine today’s competition with China turning into a protracted regional conflict, such as a war in the Taiwan Strait.

War is always scary, but it is even scarier when your side is not sufficiently prepared. And indeed, the U.S. defense industrial base is inadequate if the United States and China were to go to war. In 2022, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where I serve as senior vice president, conducted a war game involving a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan in 2026. The exercises revealed how quickly the United States would run through its current supply of weapons in the first few weeks of a major war. Certain critical munitions—such as long-range, precision-guided munitions—would likely run out in less than one week. To avoid these shortfalls, the United States would need to scale up its production of weapons, but doing so quickly would be extremely difficult.

Equally concerning, these gaps undermine deterrence—the linchpin of the United States’ defense strategy—because they reveal to all that the United States cannot endure a lengthy war. China has not made the same mistake. Beijing is acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times as fast as the United States, according to some U.S. government estimates. Additionally, China would fight a war in the Taiwan Strait in its backyard, with easy access to its own industrial base. The United States would have to fight 7,000 miles from the shores of California.

The clock is ticking. In March 2021, Admiral Phil Davidson, then the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, predicted that China might invade Taiwan “during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.” And U.S. President Joe Biden has stated repeatedly that the United States would intervene militarily in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. In this competitive international landscape, the United States needs a national strategy that will reinvigorate its lagging defense industrial base—much like the Roosevelt administration expanded the country’s military capacity in the 1930s and early 1940s. Fortunately, the United States has a strong foundation on which to build, with a highly capable industrial base and a rich tradition of technological innovation.

BURNING THROUGH AMMO

The war in Ukraine provided one of the first indications that there was a problem with the U.S. defense industrial base. Following Russia’s invasion, the United States provided the Ukrainian military with a range of weapons, from Javelin antiarmor systems to High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and Stinger antiaircraft systems. This assistance was critical in helping the Ukrainian military halt Russia’s invasion. But the aid came at a cost. The rate at which soldiers are using ammunition in Ukraine has strained the U.S. defense industrial base.

A year into the Ukraine fight, American military aid reached a staggering $32 billion. Many of the weapons systems and munitions came directly from U.S. inventories, depleting the country’s stockpiles. The United States, for example, provided Ukraine with over 8,500 Javelin antitank systems, 1,600 Stinger antiaircraft systems, and 38 HIMARS between February 2022 and March 2023. Providing this aid was the right decision because it helped prevent a successful Russian invasion of Ukraine. But these are systems the United States could have used to train U.S. troops or to stockpile in the Indo-Pacific for a future war.

The number of Javelins transferred to Ukraine over the first six months of the war is the same number the United States would normally produce over seven years. This volume strained the Javelin production line, which needed a major infusion of funding from the Department of Defense to restock. Even at accelerated production rates, it is likely to take several years to replenish the inventory of Javelins, Stingers, and other in-demand items. In addition, the rate at which several weapons systems are being exported—such as Javelins, Stingers, HIMARS, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS), and Harpoon antiship missiles—may mean there will not be enough munitions in stock to match the requirements of U.S. war plans for China and Russia.

More broadly, the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that great-power wars—particularly wars of attrition—are industrial conflicts. The effort to deploy, arm, feed, and supply forces is a monumental task, and the massive consumption of equipment, systems, vehicles, and munitions requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply. On some days, the Russian military has launched 50,000 artillery shells at Ukrainian military and civilian positions. Ukraine is also burning through munitions at a frenzied rate, firing as many 155-millimeter rounds in five days as the United States produces in a month. Meanwhile, fighter aircraft, main battle tanks, artillery, and drones have also been destroyed or have broken down and constantly need to be replaced or repaired.

MORE MISSILES

The U.S. defense industrial base would face even greater challenges if war broke out in Asia. To help understand the complexities and challenges of a war in the Taiwan Strait, CSIS conducted two dozen iterations of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In the war game, retired military officers and civilian experts played the roles of military leaders from China, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States and other participants. Using an operational map of the western Pacific and a map of Taiwan for ground combat, players took turns conducting military actions, such as firing ballistic missiles and deploying aircraft carriers.

In virtually every iteration of the war game, the United States expended more than 5,000 long-range missiles of various types in three weeks of conflict. Among the most important munitions to prevent a Chinese seizure of all of Taiwan are long-range precision missiles, including missiles launched by U.S. submarines, and these ran out quickly in the war game. The same is true of ship-based munitions, such as the SM-6, which would also be expended in large quantities in such a conflict.

Antiship cruise missiles offer a useful case study. In every iteration of the CSIS war game, the United States expended its inventory of antiship cruise missiles within the first week of the conflict. These missiles were particularly useful because of their ability to strike Chinese naval forces from beyond the range of Chinese air defenses. These air defense systems are likely to be formidable—especially early in a conflict—and may be able to prevent most aircraft from moving close enough to drop short-range munitions. Bombers used in the war game generally employed these munitions because they could be based outside the range of Chinese missiles.

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that great-power wars are industrial conflicts.

There are no quick solutions to ramping up missile production capacity to meet these needs, but that is all the more reason to start now. The first step is to incentivize U.S. defense companies to build more. But these firms are generally unwilling to ramp up arms production and take financial risks without having contracts in place, especially multiyear ones. Given the large capital and personnel investments required, it is not a sound business decision to produce more munitions or weapons without a clear demand signal and clear financial commitments from the U.S. government. Although the Department of Defense signs multiyear contracts for ships and airplanes, it generally does not sign multiyear contracts for many munitions. In addition, the U.S. military services frequently cut munitions from their budgets at the end of each fiscal year to make room for other priorities or to fix problems that arise during the acquisition of larger weapons systems.

Workforce and supply chain constraints also prevent companies from increasing the production of weapons systems and munitions that would be needed in a major war. Companies need to hire, train, and retain workers. Moreover, supply chains for the U.S. defense sector are not as secure as they should be. In some cases, just a single company makes a key component. The Javelin, for instance, relies on a rocket motor that is currently produced exclusively by the company Aerojet Rocketdyne. Only one company, Williams International, builds turbofan engines for most cruise missiles.

There are also significant vulnerabilities with some rare-earth metals, which China has a near monopoly on, that are critical for manufacturing various missiles and munitions. China dominates the advanced battery supply chains across the globe, including the refining of cobalt, copper, lithium, and nickel, as well as the production of anodes, separators, and electrolytes. China is the global leader in cast products, which are used in most military platforms and munitions from ships to missiles. Beijing produces more than the next nine countries combined, including over five times as much as the United States. The Department of Defense depends on foreign governments, including China, for large cast and forged products, which are utilized in some defense systems and machine tools.

Finally, lead time is a significant constraint. Missiles, space-based systems, and ships face the longest replacement times. It can take roughly two years to produce many types of missiles, and this is generally based on the time needed to deliver the first missiles—not the last ones.

START BUYING NOW

The United States needs a new industrial base strategy designed to produce sufficient quantities of the most important weapons systems and munitions to deter and—if deterrence fails—effectively fight not only Russia but also China. The goal should be to assess the wartime demands on a limited set of weapons systems and munitions, as well as to establish a more certain production future for weapons manufacturing. Added capacity is also important to deter adversaries, such as China, and to credibly demonstrate that the United States and its allies have the capability to conduct a sustained military campaign if necessary. Greater industrial capacity would also support U.S. efforts to provide additional capacity to Asian and European allies.

The key to improving defense industrial base capacity is a reassessment of total munition requirements for deterrence and going to war against China and Russia. Important munitions questions that should be addressed include whether military planning is aligned to the realities of high-intensity combat in one—or more than one—theater. This might include modeling the expenditure rates of critical guided munitions among land, naval, and air forces in a major conflict at various levels of intensity and duration, including how long it would take to restart or increase production. Today, the Defense Department bases its procurement on its operational plans, which are generally for short wars. Instead of asking defense industries to assess their capacity to produce specific munitions or weapons systems, as sometimes occurs, a better option would be for the Department of Defense to analyze what it needs based on wartime scenarios and analyses. The Pentagon could then provide direction and resources to defense suppliers to fill the gaps.

Another step would be to accelerate manufacturing by using advance-purchase agreements and multiyear contracts. These options have often been limited to large programs such as ships and aircraft, but they could help with munitions. This should include signing multiyear contracts for specific munitions and weapons systems necessary to deter—and to fight if deterrence fails—adversaries such as China and Russia. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act was a good start to approving multiyear contracts for some munitions, but Congress needs to expand these efforts.

There are no quick solutions to ramping up missile production capacity.

Finally, the Department of Defense needs to look for more opportunities to codevelop and coproduce weapons systems with friendly countries, what some have called “ally shoring.” Coproduction facilities can have multiple benefits, including strengthening the production capacity of allies and increasing the economies of scale. And American companies have done it before: including manufacturing HIMARS with Poland; a new tactical ballistic missile, known as the PrSM, with Australia; a new antiship missile with Norway; and SM-6 components and Tomahawks with Australia and Japan.

The military is taking some promising initial steps. The U.S. Army now plans to boost its monthly capacity to produce 155-millimeter shells from about 14,000 to 30,000 in 2023 and eventually to 90,000. The Pentagon is spending $80 million to bring a second source online for the Javelin missile’s rocket motor, and plans to double production to around 4,000 a year. Overall, the U.S. Army hopes to increase production of artillery shells by 500 percent within two years to replenish stockpiles sent to Ukraine—the largest production expansion since the Korean War.

After two decades of operations against al Qaeda and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), the United States has fundamentally shifted its defense strategy from counterterrorism to competition with China and Russia. But words are not enough. The U.S. defense industrial base is sorely lagging. Without urgent changes, the United States will find itself unable to fight a protracted war or deter Russian or Chinese aggression.

SETH G. JONES is Senior Vice President and Director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Seth G. Jones · March 31, 2023

11. The Open Letter on AI Doesn't Go Far Enough

Excerpts:

This 6-month moratorium would be better than no moratorium. I have respect for everyone who stepped up and signed it. It’s an improvement on the margin.

I refrained from signing because I think the letter is understating the seriousness of the situation and asking for too little to solve it.

The key issue is not “human-competitive” intelligence (as the open letter puts it); it’s what happens after AI gets to smarter-than-human intelligence. Key thresholds there may not be obvious, we definitely can’t calculate in advance what happens when, and it currently seems imaginable that a research lab would cross critical lines without noticing.

The Open Letter on AI Doesn't Go Far Enough

BY ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY MARCH 29, 2023 6:01 PM EDTYudkowsky is a decision theorist from the U.S. and leads research at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He's been working on aligning Artificial General Intelligence since 2001 and is widely regarded as a founder of the field.

TIME · by Eliezer Yudkowsky · March 29, 2023

An open letter published today calls for “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

This 6-month moratorium would be better than no moratorium. I have respect for everyone who stepped up and signed it. It’s an improvement on the margin.

I refrained from signing because I think the letter is understating the seriousness of the situation and asking for too little to solve it.

The key issue is not “human-competitive” intelligence (as the open letter puts it); it’s what happens after AI gets to smarter-than-human intelligence. Key thresholds there may not be obvious, we definitely can’t calculate in advance what happens when, and it currently seems imaginable that a research lab would cross critical lines without noticing.

Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in “maybe possibly some remote chance,” but as in “that is the obvious thing that would happen.” It’s not that you can’t, in principle, survive creating something much smarter than you; it’s that it would require precision and preparation and new scientific insights, and probably not having AI systems composed of giant inscrutable arrays of fractional numbers.

Without that precision and preparation, the most likely outcome is AI that does not do what we want, and does not care for us nor for sentient life in general. That kind of caring is something that could in principle be imbued into an AI but we are not ready and do not currently know how.

Absent that caring, we get “the AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, and you are made of atoms it can use for something else.”

The likely result of humanity facing down an opposed superhuman intelligence is a total loss. Valid metaphors include “a 10-year-old trying to play chess against Stockfish 15”, “the 11th century trying to fight the 21st century,” and “Australopithecus trying to fight Homo sapiens“.

To visualize a hostile superhuman AI, don’t imagine a lifeless book-smart thinker dwelling inside the internet and sending ill-intentioned emails. Visualize an entire alien civilization, thinking at millions of times human speeds, initially confined to computers—in a world of creatures that are, from its perspective, very stupid and very slow. A sufficiently intelligent AI won’t stay confined to computers for long. In today’s world you can email DNA strings to laboratories that will produce proteins on demand, allowing an AI initially confined to the internet to build artificial life forms or bootstrap straight to postbiological molecular manufacturing.

If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter.

There’s no proposed plan for how we could do any such thing and survive. OpenAI’s openly declared intention is to make some future AI do our AI alignment homework. Just hearing that this is the plan ought to be enough to get any sensible person to panic. The other leading AI lab, DeepMind, has no plan at all.

An aside: None of this danger depends on whether or not AIs are or can be conscious; it’s intrinsic to the notion of powerful cognitive systems that optimize hard and calculate outputs that meet sufficiently complicated outcome criteria. With that said, I’d be remiss in my moral duties as a human if I didn’t also mention that we have no idea how to determine whether AI systems are aware of themselves—since we have no idea how to decode anything that goes on in the giant inscrutable arrays—and therefore we may at some point inadvertently create digital minds which are truly conscious and ought to have rights and shouldn’t be owned.

The rule that most people aware of these issues would have endorsed 50 years earlier, was that if an AI system can speak fluently and says it’s self-aware and demands human rights, that ought to be a hard stop on people just casually owning that AI and using it past that point. We already blew past that old line in the sand. And that was probably correct; I agree that current AIs are probably just imitating talk of self-awareness from their training data. But I mark that, with how little insight we have into these systems’ internals, we do not actually know.

If that’s our state of ignorance for GPT-4, and GPT-5 is the same size of giant capability step as from GPT-3 to GPT-4, I think we’ll no longer be able to justifiably say “probably not self-aware” if we let people make GPT-5s. It’ll just be “I don’t know; nobody knows.” If you can’t be sure whether you’re creating a self-aware AI, this is alarming not just because of the moral implications of the “self-aware” part, but because being unsure means you have no idea what you are doing and that is dangerous and you should stop.

On Feb. 7, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, publicly gloated that the new Bing would make Google “come out and show that they can dance.” “I want people to know that we made them dance,” he said.

This is not how the CEO of Microsoft talks in a sane world. It shows an overwhelming gap between how seriously we are taking the problem, and how seriously we needed to take the problem starting 30 years ago.

We are not going to bridge that gap in six months.

It took more than 60 years between when the notion of Artificial Intelligence was first proposed and studied, and for us to reach today’s capabilities. Solving safety of superhuman intelligence—not perfect safety, safety in the sense of “not killing literally everyone”—could very reasonably take at least half that long. And the thing about trying this with superhuman intelligence is that if you get that wrong on the first try, you do not get to learn from your mistakes, because you are dead. Humanity does not learn from the mistake and dust itself off and try again, as in other challenges we’ve overcome in our history, because we are all gone.

Trying to get anything right on the first really critical try is an extraordinary ask, in science and in engineering. We are not coming in with anything like the approach that would be required to do it successfully. If we held anything in the nascent field of Artificial General Intelligence to the lesser standards of engineering rigor that apply to a bridge meant to carry a couple of thousand cars, the entire field would be shut down tomorrow.

We are not prepared. We are not on course to be prepared in any reasonable time window. There is no plan. Progress in AI capabilities is running vastly, vastly ahead of progress in AI alignment or even progress in understanding what the hell is going on inside those systems. If we actually do this, we are all going to die.

Many researchers working on these systems think that we’re plunging toward a catastrophe, with more of them daring to say it in private than in public; but they think that they can’t unilaterally stop the forward plunge, that others will go on even if they personally quit their jobs. And so they all think they might as well keep going. This is a stupid state of affairs, and an undignified way for Earth to die, and the rest of humanity ought to step in at this point and help the industry solve its collective action problem.

Some of my friends have recently reported to me that when people outside the AI industry hear about extinction risk from Artificial General Intelligence for the first time, their reaction is “maybe we should not build AGI, then.”

Hearing this gave me a tiny flash of hope, because it’s a simpler, more sensible, and frankly saner reaction than I’ve been hearing over the last 20 years of trying to get anyone in the industry to take things seriously. Anyone talking that sanely deserves to hear how bad the situation actually is, and not be told that a six-month moratorium is going to fix it.

On March 16, my partner sent me this email. (She later gave me permission to excerpt it here.)

“Nina lost a tooth! In the usual way that children do, not out of carelessness! Seeing GPT4 blow away those standardized tests on the same day that Nina hit a childhood milestone brought an emotional surge that swept me off my feet for a minute. It’s all going too fast. I worry that sharing this will heighten your own grief, but I’d rather be known to you than for each of us to suffer alone.”

When the insider conversation is about the grief of seeing your daughter lose her first tooth, and thinking she’s not going to get a chance to grow up, I believe we are past the point of playing political chess about a six-month moratorium.

If there was a plan for Earth to survive, if only we passed a six-month moratorium, I would back that plan. There isn’t any such plan.

Here’s what would actually need to be done:

The moratorium on new large training runs needs to be indefinite and worldwide. There can be no exceptions, including for governments or militaries. If the policy starts with the U.S., then China needs to see that the U.S. is not seeking an advantage but rather trying to prevent a horrifically dangerous technology which can have no true owner and which will kill everyone in the U.S. and in China and on Earth. If I had infinite freedom to write laws, I might carve out a single exception for AIs being trained solely to solve problems in biology and biotechnology, not trained on text from the internet, and not to the level where they start talking or planning; but if that was remotely complicating the issue I would immediately jettison that proposal and say to just shut it all down.

Shut down all the large GPU clusters (the large computer farms where the most powerful AIs are refined). Shut down all the large training runs. Put a ceiling on how much computing power anyone is allowed to use in training an AI system, and move it downward over the coming years to compensate for more efficient training algorithms. No exceptions for anyone, including governments and militaries. Make immediate multinational agreements to prevent the prohibited activities from moving elsewhere. Track all GPUs sold. If intelligence says that a country outside the agreement is building a GPU cluster, be less scared of a shooting conflict between nations than of the moratorium being violated; be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike.

Frame nothing as a conflict between national interests, have it clear that anyone talking of arms races is a fool. That we all live or die as one, in this, is not a policy but a fact of nature. Make it explicit in international diplomacy that preventing AI extinction scenarios is considered a priority above preventing a full nuclear exchange, and that allied nuclear countries are willing to run some risk of nuclear exchange if that’s what it takes to reduce the risk of large AI training runs.

That’s the kind of policy change that would cause my partner and I to hold each other, and say to each other that a miracle happened, and now there’s a chance that maybe Nina will live. The sane people hearing about this for the first time and sensibly saying “maybe we should not” deserve to hear, honestly, what it would take to have that happen. And when your policy ask is that large, the only way it goes through is if policymakers realize that if they conduct business as usual, and do what’s politically easy, that means their own kids are going to die too.

Shut it all down.

We are not ready. We are not on track to be significantly readier in the foreseeable future. If we go ahead on this everyone will die, including children who did not choose this and did not do anything wrong.

Shut it down.

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TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

TIME · by Eliezer Yudkowsky · March 29, 2023

12. The Enduring Importance of Tactical Counterterrorism for Strategic Competition

Excerpts:

Washington has often faced criticism for its strategic failures in Afghanistan, but the botched withdrawal was more accurately caused by a failure of grand strategy: notably, the idea that the Afghan war had to end in victory or defeat, and that it was unsustainable. The United States was not winning in Afghanistan, but it also was not losing. A more nuanced perspective and dispassionate analysis of the ongoing war would have allowed decision-makers to see that the war was actually filling an important role in both international counterterrorism as well as America’s escalating strategic competition. Iain King said it well: “Great-power competition is certainly back, but it would be a mistake to regard NATO’s enduring operation in Afghanistan as a distraction or a detour […] Rather, the long war in that country has prepared the West for today’s challenges.”

To be sure, conventional capabilities are important, and the United States will need to find ways to deter rival aggression. But counterterrorism and great power conflict are far from zero-sum. Great power conflict will not just be fought in Ukraine and Taiwan, but in Syria, Mali, and other proxy states where terrorism remains a major concern. Irregular warfare must therefore remain a critical component in US defense strategy. The Afghanistan withdrawal was further evidence of US bias towards fighting the war it wants, not the war it actually faces. There is little doubt that America’s rivals in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran would have celebrated watching the calamitous withdrawal play out over their TV screens. But they should also celebrate Washington turning its back on counterterrorism.

Blindly focusing on hot, large-scale conventional conflict with China will rob the US military and intelligence community of several important weapons—weapons that might otherwise be effectively deployed in the escalating strategic competition environment.

The Enduring Importance of Tactical Counterterrorism for Strategic Competition - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Jacob Ware · March 31, 2023

This piece was selected as a finalist in an essay contest co-sponsored by IWI and the Joint Staff J7 Office of Irregular Warfare and Competition (OIWC). The views expressed do not represent the position of IWI or the US Government, including the Joint Staff J7 OIWC.

In directing a redistribution of US military and intelligence resources from counterterrorism missions to escalating strategic competition with China, US defense planners have made a risky assumption: that China intends to confront its adversaries through conventional military engagements. History, in fact, suggests a more complex reality—that America’s adversaries have identified US weaknesses in the irregular realm, and therefore intend to fight asymmetrically, in the so-called “grey zone” between outright war and peace. As the latest book by leading national security scholar Seth G. Jones theorizes, “While conventional warfare—clashes between large military forces—defined twentieth-century power, irregular warfare will increasingly define international politics in the coming decades.” In its eagerness to “pivot” from counterterrorism to great power competition, then, the US military establishment has overlooked many of the key advantages the former might bring to the latter.

Perhaps the most frequent criticism levied at America’s international counterterrorism missions concerns cost. For much of the so-called “forever war,” those concerns were valid and important, particularly considering that inevitably doomed regime change and democratization remained key aspects of the strategy. But they have grown outdated—by 2021, for example, the United States’ presence in Afghanistan was limited to just 3,000 troops who had assumed a far more limited counterterrorism mission and were suffering substantially fewer casualties. As terrorism expert Matthew Levitt has argued, and as eventually rang true in Afghanistan, “The few military deployments necessary to maintain an effective counterterrorism posture are the polar opposite of ‘endless wars’ in terms of size, cost, and risk, and should be pursued in support of international coalitions and local allies.” In fact, the badly botched Afghanistan withdrawal—and the violence and repression that has followed—provided perhaps the ultimate illustrative example of how and why counterterrorism remains so central to US national security and foreign policy.

There are multifaceted concerns over China’s rise—that Beijing threatens America’s allies politically and militarily, that it therefore will undermine US global hegemony, and that a direct military confrontation between the two states is therefore increasingly inevitable. Each can at least incrementally be addressed through an American willingness to engage in irregular warfare like counterterrorism. Kinetic, tactical counterterrorism does not just play a critical role in managing and degrading terrorist groups and their safe havens—itself still a worthy endeavor—but also helps shore up America’s political and military alliances and promotes readiness and versatile forward-basing.

Firstly, and most importantly, terrorism has simply not receded as a national security threat, and only tactical counterterrorism can ensure terrorist organizations and safe havens are managed effectively, that the threat to the US homeland and its allies is therefore degraded, and that the United States can therefore safely focus on other national security and foreign policy initiatives, to include great power relations. Since 9/11, the US government has led a global counterterrorism assassination campaign that has eliminated the leadership of several major international groups, in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and beyond, which has successfully kept the homeland safe from all but one coordinated plot orchestrated by such groups. America’s campaign, spearheaded largely by the US drone program but also through special operations forces raids, have kept terrorist organizations on the defensive, thereby crippling international operations and disrupting safe havens. Pretending that such groups and the threat they pose have disappeared will only encourage complacency, in which terrorist groups thrive—and, in a worst-case scenario, might allow a major attack that would draw the United States back into a more significant engagement. Counterterrorism also plays an important role in combatting state-sponsored terrorism and can therefore dismantle an important tool great power rivals use to sow discord and undermine US interests.

Secondly, counterterrorism plays an important role in developing America’s relationships with allies and shoring up its international political and military alliances. After 9/11, NATO triggered its hallowed Article 5 collective defense principle for the first and only time. For the next 20 years, an international coalition fought at the United States’ side against the terrorist organizations that conducted and facilitated the attack. Such a coalition was also stood up to combat the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate in the Levant. International military alliances not only strengthen the political and cultural ties between the United States and its allies but encourage higher standards and institutionalize the combined operations that the United States would undoubtedly rely upon in any actual kinetic confrontation with China. Turning its back on those relationships hurts the United States’ strategic position and undermines its dependability among its allies. In perhaps the most venomous criticism of the Afghan withdrawal, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who staked his political future on defending the United States, described the withdrawal as “tragic, dangerous, [and] unnecessary,” and driven “in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan”—a seething statement from a jilted ally.

Beyond alliances, tactical counterterrorism also strengthens US bilateral relations with weaker partners plagued by insurgent threats. In the Belt-and-Road era, the United States must emphasize and offer its own comparative advantages, such as counterterrorism, to smaller states, to ward off Chinese influence. While higher-order goals of regime change or even democratization have consistently failed, more narrowly defined (though often maligned) missions to build capacity or to support allied-led counterterrorism and counterinsurgency capabilities have succeeded in strengthening partner forces and degrading terrorist adversaries. For evidence, look no further than the successful Kurdish ground campaign against the Islamic State’s territory in Syria. Supported by US intelligence and air assets, the Syrian Democratic Forces not only militarily defeated the terrorist organization, but also deepened their partnership with the United States. Capacity-building and support, when done right, allows US counterterrorism to lead not from the front but from the rear—ensuring both enduring counterterrorism success and stronger US partnerships. In the words of retired Air Force major general Marcus Hicks, “By proving that it can master complex political situations and achieve desired goals, the United States will improve its credibility and influence abroad, which is fundamental to competing with rival powers.”

Thirdly, America’s global counterterrorism endeavor allows the Pentagon to dispatch its elite troops for real-world training, another factor carrying important implications for escalating strategic competition. Preparation for conflict with China is not an all-or-nothing proposition; as Michael C. Horowitz and Dan A. Shalmon write, “The United States should recognize that not all parts of the military have to be optimized for the same task.” In its eagerness to move forward from Afghanistan, Washington gave up important strategic basing—in a country that shares land borders with China, Iran, and former Soviet republics—as well as a venue where the country’s elite troops could train, conduct joint operations, and collaborate with allies. Moreover, if ever the escalating tensions with China turn hot, irregular warfare will play a central role; prosecuting a fight relying heavily on intelligence, special operations, and partner forces was, therefore, valuable preparation for whatever comes next in the great power confrontation. Additionally, the worst-case scenario of rising tensions with Beijing—that it will result in an invasion of Taiwan that will ultimately pull the United States into direct confrontation with China—is made far less likely by China’s self-described “peace disease,” the fear that China’s lack of war experience will cripple its performance in its next kinetic confrontation. America’s irregular counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan, then, was itself a form of deterrence.

Washington has often faced criticism for its strategic failures in Afghanistan, but the botched withdrawal was more accurately caused by a failure of grand strategy: notably, the idea that the Afghan war had to end in victory or defeat, and that it was unsustainable. The United States was not winning in Afghanistan, but it also was not losing. A more nuanced perspective and dispassionate analysis of the ongoing war would have allowed decision-makers to see that the war was actually filling an important role in both international counterterrorism as well as America’s escalating strategic competition. Iain King said it well: “Great-power competition is certainly back, but it would be a mistake to regard NATO’s enduring operation in Afghanistan as a distraction or a detour […] Rather, the long war in that country has prepared the West for today’s challenges.”

To be sure, conventional capabilities are important, and the United States will need to find ways to deter rival aggression. But counterterrorism and great power conflict are far from zero-sum. Great power conflict will not just be fought in Ukraine and Taiwan, but in Syria, Mali, and other proxy states where terrorism remains a major concern. Irregular warfare must therefore remain a critical component in US defense strategy. The Afghanistan withdrawal was further evidence of US bias towards fighting the war it wants, not the war it actually faces. There is little doubt that America’s rivals in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran would have celebrated watching the calamitous withdrawal play out over their TV screens. But they should also celebrate Washington turning its back on counterterrorism.

Blindly focusing on hot, large-scale conventional conflict with China will rob the US military and intelligence community of several important weapons—weapons that might otherwise be effectively deployed in the escalating strategic competition environment.

Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he studies domestic and international terrorism and counterterrorism. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he teaches a class on violent far-right extremism. Jacob’s analysis has appeared in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Military Times, Foreign Policy, National Interest, Lawfare, War on the Rocks, and the CTC Sentinel. He holds a master’s degree in security studies from Georgetown, and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of St Andrews.

Photo: US Army Special Forces soldiers in Raqqa, Syria. Credit: Delil Souleiman.

13. Americans Are Losing Faith in College Education, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

Graphics/charts at the link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-are-losing-faith-in-college-education-wsj-norc-poll-finds-3a836ce1?mod=hp_lead_pos6

Americans Are Losing Faith in College Education, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

Confidence in value of a degree plummeted among women and senior citizens during pandemic

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-are-losing-faith-in-college-education-wsj-norc-poll-finds-3a836ce1?mod=hp_lead_pos6

By Douglas BelkinFollow

March 31, 2023 5:30 am ET

A majority of Americans don’t think a college degree is worth the cost, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll, a new low in confidence in what has long been a hallmark of the American dream.

The survey, conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, found that 56% of Americans think earning a four-year degree is a bad bet compared with 42% who retain faith in the credential.

Skepticism is strongest among people ages 18-34, and people with college degrees are among those whose opinions have soured the most, portending a profound shift for higher education in the years ahead.

In 2013, 53% of Americans were bullish on college, and 40% weren’t. In 2017, 49% of Americans thought a four-year degree would lead to good jobs and higher earnings, compared with 47% who didn’t.

When it comes to getting a four-year college degree, which of the following statements comes closer to your point of view? A four-year college education is…

Worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more income over their lifetime

Not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off

2023

42%

56%

2017

2013

Note: ‘Don't know’/skipped/refused responses not shown. Numbers that don’t add up to 100 are due to rounding.

Source: WSJ/NORC poll of 1,019 adults, conducted March 1-13, 2023; margin of error +/- 4.1 pct. pts. 2017 data from WSJ/NBC survey of telephone poll of 1,200 adults conducted Aug. 5-7; margin of error +/- 2.8 pct pts. 2013 data from CNBC AAES survey of June 2013.

“These findings are indeed sobering for all of us in higher education, and in some ways, a wake-up call,” said Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, which counts more than 1,700 institutions of higher education as members. “We need to do a better job at storytelling, but we need to improve our practice, that seems to me to be the only recipe I know of regaining public confidence.”

Dr. Mitchell cited student debt, which has reached $1.7 trillion, and the 60% graduation rate at four-year colleges as two of the biggest problems undermining confidence in the sector.

Public skepticism toward higher education began to rise after the 2008 recession and compounded during the pandemic. Enrollment in U.S. colleges declined by about 15% over the last decade while the growth in alternative credentials, including apprenticeships, increased sharply.

In 2017, doubt over the value of a college degree was greatest among men, Republicans and people living in rural areas. That disaffection preceded a widening gender gap in higher education as hundreds of thousands of men left college during the pandemic.

Is a four-year college education worth the cost?

Worth it

Not worth it

2017 poll

2023

Men

GENDER

Women

18-34

35-49

AGE

50-64

65+

Sources: WSJ/NORC poll of 1,019 adults, conducted March 1-13, 2023; margin of error +/- 4.1 pct. pts. 2017 data from WSJ/NBC survey of telephone poll of 1,200 adults conducted Aug. 5-7; margin of error +/- 2.8 pct. pts.

This month’s Journal poll found disaffection has spread to all age groups as well as residents of cities and suburbs. The last categories in which a slim majority held fast to their faith in the value of a college degree were Democrats, those with a college degree and those earning more than $100,000 a year.

But 42% of people with college degrees said in the most recent survey that it wasn’t worth it, up more than 10 percentage points from the two polls last decade.

Women and older Americans are driving the decline in confidence. People over the age of 65 with faith in college declined to 44% from 56% in 2017. Confidence among women fell to 44% from 54%, according to the poll.

One of the women who has lost faith in the power of college despite herself obtaining an undergraduate degree, is Danielle Tobias, a 50-year-old dialysis technician in Lorain, Ohio.

Danielle Tobias, a college graduate, advises her stepson to be cautious about education beyond high school.

PHOTO: DANIELLE TOBIAS

Ms. Tobias said neither of her parents graduated from college. Her father worked in a steel mill in Cleveland. Her mother worked in a bakery. Both strongly encouraged her to enroll in college. She graduated in 2003 from Lake Erie College, a private liberal arts school, with a degree in equine studies and $85,000 in student loan debt.

She worked at a horse stable giving riding lessons for several years before realizing she wasn’t earning enough money to live on or make her student debt payments. She now works as a dialysis technician and earns $36,000 a year at a medical facility, which provided training at no cost to her.

Ms. Tobias pays $125 a month on her student loans—the minimum due. Her balance has ballooned to $145,000. She has made peace with the reality that she will likely die without having paid off her debt, she said.

“Our goal is that students graduate with as little debt as possible and also gain employment,” said Jen Schuller, a spokeswoman for Lake Erie College.

Ms. Tobias’s 20-year-old stepson graduated from high school and now works in a grocery store. She has advised him to be cautious about where and how to continue his education.

“I think college is good for certain things but I have told him he would definitely benefit from some sort of tech or skilled job,” she said. “I have suggested he join a vocation, a school where they teach a skilled trade.”

People ages 18-34 are among those who have the strongest doubts about the value of a college degree, a new poll finds.

PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS

Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University who has written extensively about higher education, said he thought college was still worth pursuing for “A” students in high school. He suggested “B” students enroll only if they are willing to pursue fields such as economics or engineering because those majors have, on average, strong return on investment.

That many colleges charged full tuition during the pandemic when classes were delivered online was a mistake that hurt the sector’s reputation, he said. Personal connections with professors tended to smooth over any problems that might arise from the left-wing bias among faculty, he said.

“Colleges have squandered a lot of good will by pushing a dogmatic left-wing religion,” said Dr. Caplan. “Normal people don’t have sympathy for that sort of thing, they find it very off- putting.”

Patsy Williams, 70, who works as a maid in Anderson, S.C., said she was less concerned with the politics taught in college than the opportunity for her seven grandchildren to learn enough to enter a profession.

Ms. Williams attended school through the 11^th grade, then went to work in a factory folding pillow cases. One of her three children graduated college.

“I want every child to learn all they can because if they don’t we’re all in trouble,” she said. “We don’t have mills down here any more, we have restaurants and a restaurant job won’t buy you a house and a car. I tell [my grandchildren] all the time, ‘I’m looking for doctors and lawyers.’”

Paulo Eskitch, a college-educated violinist, says he could have made more money working as a welder.

PHOTO: PAULO ESKITCH

Paulo Eskitch, a 47-year-old violinist who lives in Tulsa, Okla., is less emphatic about whether his daughter, now 7 years old, should enroll in college when the time comes.

Mr. Eskitch has a master’s degree in music and earns about $30,000 a year playing in several different orchestras. He said a degree has become necessary in his field but he sometimes wishes he had pursued welding as a career because he thinks he could have made more money.

That said, he anticipates supporting his daughter if she decides to pursue higher education because there aren’t enough good alternatives.

“There are some fields you just can’t enter unless you have a college degree,” he said. “I’m not saying that’s right but it’s the way it is.”

The Journal-NORC survey polled 1,019 people from March 1-13, mostly online. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Write to Douglas Belkin at Doug.Belkin@wsj.com

14. Opinion | How Putin could finally face justice for his illegal war in Ukraine

Excerpts;

There’s no dispute that the question of sovereign immunity for Mr. Putin and other legal issues, including whether he could be tried in absentia by any court, pose potential future complications. Nonetheless, the fact is that in a prosecution for the crime of aggression, tantamount to waging an illegal war, a claim of immunity by Mr. Putin might succeed or fail in any court, depending on its judges’ ruling. And if Mr. Putin were ever apprehended to stand trial, an admittedly improbable scenario, it would likely only happen if and when he leaves office, in which case, as a private citizen, he would no longer have a claim to immunity.

Like Mr. Putin, the Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic seemed untouchable as he pursued his nationalist project over more than a decade in power, until 2000. Yet he became the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes, and died in 2006 in his prison cell in The Hague, where he was standing trial in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The form, nomenclature and rule book of any tribunal that undertakes a prosecution for launching a war of aggression in Ukraine is less important than the message it transmits, not only to Mr. Putin but to the coterie of yes men and oligarchs that does his bidding. They have all become too comfortable in power, confident in their own impunity. In one way or another, they should be made to answer for the unwarranted bloodbath they have inflicted on a sovereign nation.

Opinion | How Putin could finally face justice for his illegal war in Ukraine

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · March 30, 2023

Chances are slim that Vladimir Putin will soon stand in the dock facing criminal charges for his illegal war in Ukraine, but the legal vise is tightening nonetheless on the Russian dictator. On Monday, the Biden administration formally endorsed the establishment of a special tribunal to try Mr. Putin and his henchmen for the “crime of aggression” — the charge faced by Nazi and Japanese defendants in the post-World War II trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo.

That momentous step put Washington in step with key allies, and set the West on a course toward holding Moscow’s imperialist plotters accountable for Europe’s most ruinous war in more than seven decades. The decision should be applauded even as a thicket of legal questions it raises remains to be untangled in the years ahead.

It is critical that the Russian troops and commanders who have marauded through Ukraine are investigated and tried for war crimes, including crimes against humanity. Progress toward that goal is already underway, under the auspices of investigations involving the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the United Nations’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. Mountains of evidence and documentation have been collected in support of future prosecutions for murders and executions of Ukrainian civilians, torture, sexual violence, the forcible separations of children from their families, and the shelling of civilian infrastructure.

But it would be an incomplete and unjust project to amass evidence and pursue trials against Russian soldiers, without also holding their masters in the Kremlin responsible for the decision to unleash an illegal war in the first place.

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The ICC took an important step this month by issuing arrest warrants for Mr. Putin and the Russian commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for their alleged roles in the mass abduction and transfer to Russia of Ukrainian children. That marked the first time the court has issued an indictment targeting officials of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

Also on the Editorial Board’s agenda

The misery of Belarus’s political prisoners should not be ignored.
Biden has a new border plan.
The United States should keep the pressure on Nicaragua.
America’s fight against inflation isn’t over.
The Taliban has doubled down on the repression of women.
The world’s ice is melting quickly.

Ihar Losik, one of hundreds of young people unjustly jailed in Belarus for opposing Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship, attempted suicide but was saved and sent to a prison medical unit, according to the human rights group Viasna. Losik, 30, a blogger who led a popular Telegram channel, was arrested in 2020 and is serving a 15-year prison term on charges of “organizing riots” and “incitement to hatred.” His wife is also a political prisoner. Read more about their struggle — and those of other political prisoners — in a recent editorial.

The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.

Some 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners left that Central American country for the United States in February. President Daniel Ortega released and sent them into exile in a single motion. Nevertheless, it appears that Mr. Ortega let them go under pressure from economic sanctions the United States imposed on his regime when he launched a wave of repression in 2018. The Biden administration should keep the pressure on. Read recent editorials about the situation in Nicaragua.

Inflation remains stubbornly high at 6.4 percent in January. The Federal Reserve’s job is not done in this fight. More interest rate hikes are needed. Read a recent editorial about inflation and the Fed.

Afghanistan’s rulers had promised that barring women from universities was only temporary. But private universities got a letter on Jan. 28 warning them that women are prohibited from taking university entrance examinations. Afghanistan has 140 private universities across 24 provinces, with around 200,000 students. Out of those, some 60,000 to 70,000 are women, the AP reports. Read a recent editorial on women’s rights in Afghanistan.

A new study finds that half the world’s mountain glaciers and ice caps will melt even if global warming is restrained to 1.5 degrees Celsius — which it won’t be. This would feed sea-level rise and imperil water sources for hundreds of millions. Read a recent editorial on how to cope with rising seas, and another on the policies needed to fight climate change.

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But the court lacks jurisdiction to charge Mr. Putin and other top Russians for undertaking what was known at Nuremberg as “crimes against peace.” Hence the momentum that has built over the past year to establish a new judicial mechanism that could transform a moral imperative into formal legal proceedings.

On Monday, a senior State Department official for the first time gave Washington’s approval for a special tribunal based in Ukraine’s own judicial system that would also include international features, which might involve judges or prosecutors from other countries, including the United States and its European allies, and a physical presence in The Hague or elsewhere. That model, said Beth Van Schaack, the U.S. ambassador at large for global criminal justice, in a speech at the Catholic University of America, “will facilitate broader cross-regional international support and demonstrate Ukraine’s leadership in ensuring accountability for the crime of aggression.”

That hybrid model, which she called “an internationalized national court,” triggered criticism from some human rights lawyers. Some of them favor the creation of a new international court rather than one rooted in Ukraine’s own legal system, under which sitting heads of state can claim immunity from prosecution. There are further concerns that the Biden administration, especially the Pentagon, is reluctant to help establish a new international court that could, conceivably, target U.S. officials for past or future alleged transgressions in war. The United States is not a member of the ICC, a decision taken more than 20 years ago out of concern that it could be targeted in politically motivated prosecutions.

There’s no dispute that the question of sovereign immunity for Mr. Putin and other legal issues, including whether he could be tried in absentia by any court, pose potential future complications. Nonetheless, the fact is that in a prosecution for the crime of aggression, tantamount to waging an illegal war, a claim of immunity by Mr. Putin might succeed or fail in any court, depending on its judges’ ruling. And if Mr. Putin were ever apprehended to stand trial, an admittedly improbable scenario, it would likely only happen if and when he leaves office, in which case, as a private citizen, he would no longer have a claim to immunity.

Like Mr. Putin, the Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic seemed untouchable as he pursued his nationalist project over more than a decade in power, until 2000. Yet he became the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes, and died in 2006 in his prison cell in The Hague, where he was standing trial in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The form, nomenclature and rule book of any tribunal that undertakes a prosecution for launching a war of aggression in Ukraine is less important than the message it transmits, not only to Mr. Putin but to the coterie of yes men and oligarchs that does his bidding. They have all become too comfortable in power, confident in their own impunity. In one way or another, they should be made to answer for the unwarranted bloodbath they have inflicted on a sovereign nation.

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · March 30, 2023

15. China and Taiwan Relations Explained: What’s Behind the Divide

Excerpts:

Defense and political analysts generally agree that China’s military, which dwarfs Taiwan’s, could invade and eventually take control, especially if the U.S. and other powers don’t intervene. Last year, Taiwan’s defense minister warned lawmakers that by 2025 the PLA would be capable of launching a full-scale attack on Taiwan “with minimal losses.”

A successful invasion would be a challenge, however. The PLA would have to cross choppy seas and land significant forces on Taiwan’s heavily fortified western shore. China’s military is well-equipped but untested, having not fought a war since a land-based border skirmish with Vietnam in 1979. And even if the other countries don’t get involved, the war in Ukraine provides a template for advanced democracies to cooperate on crippling sanctions against a major power that launches an unpopular war.

Simulations of a conflict conducted in Washington have found that the U.S. and Taiwan could successfully fend off an attack by China—albeit at a great human and economic toll. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns has said that China itself harbors doubts about whether an attack would succeed.

Mr. Biden has played down the likelihood that China would attempt an invasion of Taiwan.

“My expectation is that it will not happen, it will not be attempted,” Mr. Biden said in May. He added that it’s important for world leaders to send a strong message that there will be consequences if Beijing does try something.

China and Taiwan Relations Explained: What’s Behind the Divide

Beijing is flexing its military power in response to growing U.S. support for the island; here’s a primer on the frictions

By Josh ChinFollow

Updated March 30, 2023 2:04 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-taiwan-relations-tensions-explained-11653322751

Days before being named president for an unprecedented third term, Chinese leader Xi Jinping let loose with an unusually blunt attack on what he said was a U.S.-led effort to contain China. At the top of Mr. Xi’s list of concerns is Washington’s relationship with Taiwan.

Taiwan is a self-ruled island of 24 million people that China claims as its own. Separated from China’s southeastern coast by 100 treacherous miles of sea, it is a vibrant democracy that produces the vast majority of the world’s advanced computer chips. It is also a critical piece of Mr. Xi’s goal of restoring China’s standing as a great power. The Chinese leader has said taking control of the island is a task that “should not be passed down from generation to generation.”

Taiwan’s predicament is similar in many ways to Ukraine’s, though a conflict over Taiwan is more likely to include direct U.S. involvement. There is no indication war over Taiwan is imminent, but if one broke out, it could pit the world’s two largest militaries against each other, with the world’s two largest economies hanging in the balance.

Here’s a look at the past and present of tensions between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, and what it could mean for the future of the balance of power, in Asia and beyond.hat China’s Military Exercises Reveal About Its Taiwan Strategy

What’s the latest on the China-Taiwan tension?

Tensions around Taiwan have always been high, but the possibility of open conflict has increased with Taipei continuing to cultivate closer ties with Washington as Mr. Xi signals a hardened resolve to seize the island.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen planned two stops in the U.S. in late March and early April as part of her first international trip since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic—a pointed decision that drew protests and warnings of retaliation from Beijing.

Under President Biden, the U.S. has sent weapons, special military training units and delegations of former officials in a show of support for Ms. Tsai, whom Beijing sees as dangerously pro-independence. During his first visit to Asia as commander-in-chief in May 2022, Mr. Biden was surprisingly blunt when asked whether the U.S. would get involved militarily in a Chinese attack on Taiwan after declining to send American troops to Ukraine to fight Russia’s invasion, saying, “Yes. That’s the commitment we made.” He has made similar statements on four separate occasions—provoking complaints from Beijing each time, even as White House officials have denied any change in U.S. policy.

Mr. Biden’s repeated remarks apparently committing to defending Taiwan clash with Washington’s longtime practice of saying little about how the U.S. would respond to an invasion of Taiwan—a stance known as “strategic ambiguity.”

What is Taiwan’s relationship with mainland China?

Taiwan was controlled by Japan for half a century until the end of World War II, when it became a part of the Republic of China, ruled by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang.

Though the mainland was taken over by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces in China’s civil war, the island remained under Kuomintang control after the war ended in 1949. Tensions often spiked in the following decades. China shelled offshore islands held by Taiwan in the 1950s, and the Kuomintang for many years harbored ambitions of recovering the mainland from the Communists.

As those hopes faded, Taiwanese have increasingly viewed mainland China as a foreign place. In the early 1990s, fewer than 20% of people on the island identified themselves as exclusively Taiwanese, with most seeing themselves as at least partly Chinese. By 2021, only a third identified themselves as both Chinese and Taiwanese, with most of the rest describing themselves as exclusively Taiwanese.

Although Mandarin is the dominant language in both places, Chinese pressure has helped fuel Taiwanese interest in the island’s local languages.

Special-operation soldiers of a Chinese naval fleet.

PHOTO: JIANG SHAN/ZUMA PRESS

How has China responded to the increasing tensions?

China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, has sent jet fighters, bombers and spy planes on hundreds of sorties near Taiwan in recent years. Taiwan describes the sorties and other military moves by China in the region as a form of “gray zone” warfare, designed to probe and exhaust the island’s defenses while discouraging Taipei from tightening ties with Washington and other democratic capitals.

China conducts the military exercises around Taiwan often in response to the presence nearby of U.S. aircraft-carrier strike groups.

China has also begun a major expansion of its nuclear arsenal, partly to deter the U.S. from using its own nuclear weapons in a conflict over Taiwan.

What about Taiwan’s response?

Defense analysts have long questioned Taiwan’s ability to resist a Chinese attack. Taiwanese soldiers and reservists have themselves expressed concerns about training and readiness.

In response, Taiwan’s government established an agency to revamp reserve forces. It has also staged exercises it hopes will deter Beijing from contemplating an invasion. Taiwan made the politically difficult decision of extending mandatory military service for male citizens, to a full year from the previous four months—a reflection of concerns about the island’s military preparedness.

The war in Ukraine has led Taiwan to rethink its preparations for an attack, with some lawmakers pushing for more purchases of the portable antitank and antiaircraft missiles that Ukrainian soldiers have used to great effect. The island’s military is also considering extending conscription to 12 months from the current four—a proposition that was widely considered a political impossibility prior to the war.

What is strategic ambiguity?

Officially, the U.S. government abides by a “One China” policy that recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the country’s only legitimate government and acknowledges—but doesn’t endorse—Beijing’s claims over Taiwan.

Since 1979, U.S. policy toward the defense of Taiwan has been governed by a law known as the Taiwan Relations Act, which holds that any attempt to determine Taiwan’s political future through anything other than peaceful means constitutes a threat to American interests. The act commits the U.S. to sell weapons to Taiwan for its self-defense, but is conspicuously silent on whether the U.S. is obligated to defend Taiwan in the event of an attack.

For decades, Washington has strategically avoided making a commitment either way, in the hope that uncertainty about its posture will prevent both Beijing and Taipei from making moves to upset the status quo.

Has the U.S. changed its stance on Taiwan?

It depends on whom you ask. Several lawmakers and analysts in Taiwan have described U.S. policy toward the island as moving from strategic ambiguity to “strategic clarity” under Mr. Biden.

J. Michael Cole, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Global Taiwan Institute, said after one of Mr. Biden’s recent comments on Taiwan that it was difficult to know what his actual stance is. “I honestly have no idea, and anyone who’s not in the White House, or Biden’s head, who claims otherwise is being disingenuous,” he said.

Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022 prompted Beijing to encircle the island in an apparent demonstration of its ability to blockade Taiwan. The White House has disavowed any involvement with that trip, emphasizing Congress’ independence from the executive branch and noting that Mrs. Pelosi was following a precedent set a quarter-century earlier by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Kevin McCarthy, the current House Speaker, has said he would meet Taiwan’s Ms. Tsai when she visits the U.S., while leaving the door open to a trip to Taipei. “China can’t tell me where or when to go,” he said.

In recent months, the U.S. has boosted the number of troops it has deployed to Taiwan, part of a training program for the island’s military, the Journal has reported. The Pentagon has also planned visits to Taiwan by its senior officials.

Can China invade Taiwan?

Defense and political analysts generally agree that China’s military, which dwarfs Taiwan’s, could invade and eventually take control, especially if the U.S. and other powers don’t intervene. Last year, Taiwan’s defense minister warned lawmakers that by 2025 the PLA would be capable of launching a full-scale attack on Taiwan “with minimal losses.”

A successful invasion would be a challenge, however. The PLA would have to cross choppy seas and land significant forces on Taiwan’s heavily fortified western shore. China’s military is well-equipped but untested, having not fought a war since a land-based border skirmish with Vietnam in 1979. And even if the other countries don’t get involved, the war in Ukraine provides a template for advanced democracies to cooperate on crippling sanctions against a major power that launches an unpopular war.

Simulations of a conflict conducted in Washington have found that the U.S. and Taiwan could successfully fend off an attack by China—albeit at a great human and economic toll. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns has said that China itself harbors doubts about whether an attack would succeed.

Mr. Biden has played down the likelihood that China would attempt an invasion of Taiwan.

“My expectation is that it will not happen, it will not be attempted,” Mr. Biden said in May. He added that it’s important for world leaders to send a strong message that there will be consequences if Beijing does try something.

Taipei’s skyline. Taiwanese increasingly view mainland China as a foreign place.

PHOTO: CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES

This article may be periodically updated.

Write to Josh Chin at Josh.Chin@wsj.com

16.

Excerpts:

Ms. von der Leyen spelled out that message on Thursday. She said that China’s relations with Russia have grown tighter despite what she called Russia’s “atrocious and illegal invasion of Ukraine,” even while Beijing is emerging as the dominant partner.

Referring to China’s talk of a peace plan, she said that any proposal “which would in effect consolidate Russian annexations” of Ukrainian territory “is simply not a viable plan.”

“How China continues to interact with Putin’s war will be a determining factor for EU-China relations,” she added.

China continues to be a vital trading partner, Ms. von der Leyen said. But she warned the economic relationship between China and Europe is becoming increasingly unbalanced and that China’s “explicit fusion of its military and commercial sectors” poses risks to European security.

She said the bloc could also better enforce the tools it already has to safeguard its economic interests.

China Wants to Be at Center of New World Order, Top EU Official Says

Trade bloc needs to defend its security and economic interests, she says ahead of trip to China

By Laurence NormanFollow

and Kim MackraelFollow

Updated March 30, 2023 10:34 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-wants-to-be-at-center-of-new-world-order-top-eu-official-says-22987030

BRUSSELS—China is seeking a new international order with Beijing as the dominant player, and the European Union must be more assertive in defending its security and economic interests, including possible EU-wide controls on outbound investment, the bloc’s top official said Thursday.

In a speech Thursday ahead of her trip to China alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, set to take place next week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU must continue engaging with Beijing but needs a strategy for “de-risking” its relationship and dependencies on China.

She also tied the future of Europe’s links with China to Beijing’s actions over the war in Ukraine and effectively called a halt to remaining hopes of enacting a 2020 EU-China investment agreement.

Citing China’s backing for Russia in the Ukraine war, its Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative and its assertiveness in multilateral bodies, Ms. von der Leyen said the Chinese Communist Party’s “clear goal is a systemic change of the international order with China at its center.”

“One, where individual rights are subordinated to national sovereignty. Where security and economy take prominence over political and civil rights,” she said in a speech hosted by two European think tanks, one of which, the Mercator Institute for China Studies, has been sanctioned by Beijing.

Ms. von der Leyen’s comments come at a pivotal moment in Europe’s relations with China, which have been frayed by years of economic spats and, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Facing crosscutting pressures from Washington to harden its line toward Beijing and from China not to put its large economic interests at risk, most EU countries are keen to continue to engage with Beijing and not to be drawn directly into a confrontation between the U.S. and China.

The EU and China do close to 1 billion euros, equivalent to roughly $1.1 billion, in trade a day, and China is the EU’s biggest import market.

The coming trip by Mr. Macron and Ms. von der Leyen is one of a number by leading European officials to China in coming weeks.

Officials say among the key goals is to prod Chinese leaders to take a more balanced approach to the war in Ukraine and warn that any decision by Beijing to support Russia militarily in Ukraine would have serious consequences for ties.

China’s Global Peacemaker Ambitions Put It in Competition With U.S.

Surrogate warfare is the future of US operations in Ukraine and beyond

BY CHRISTOPHER P. COSTA, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 03/30/23 12:00 PM ET

The Hill · by Rebecca Beitsch · March 30, 2023

A debate is brewing that centers on the U.S. implementing irregular warfare programs in Ukraine. Broadly speaking, there is a historic arc of irregular warfare experiences from ancient times through the Cold War, to the post-9/11 era that employs proxies and surrogates in struggles between great powers.

If true, it makes sense that U.S. special operations are employing surrogates in Ukraine for non-kinetic operations, by executing reconnaissance missions and countering Russian disinformation, as has been reported by The Washington Post. Moreover, there is a strong case to be made that irregular warfare should be institutionalized and brought into the appropriate military education center for establishing professional irregular warfare education. As has been suggested by stakeholders, this formalization is necessary to succeed against Russia and may require that Congress oversee Pentagon policymakers and U.S. special operations command to ensure greater integration for irregular warfare education, which is necessary for winning in this competition.

Alongside these discussions, a quiet renaissance is ongoing — which proponents characterize figuratively as an “insurgency” — to intensify advocacy for irregular warfare as a winning strategy. These irregular warfare strategies are the right operational design in terms of addressing the twin challenges of providing additional operational capacity without U.S. “boots on the ground,” and “other war” irregular capabilities for the U.S. to indirectly contest Russia in Ukraine.

Increasingly, surrogates are globalized and privatized for great power competition, particularly between the West and Russia. Consider how the globalized and weaponized Russian surrogate Wagner group, for example, is reportedly conducting combat operations in Ukraine, while simultaneously filling power vacuums in swaths of Africa where the United States’ influence is waning. Think also about how deadly attacks between U.S. forces and suspected Iranian proxies in Syria have reignited frictions between Washington and Tehran. War by proxies makes good sense to Iran.

The following four points aim to strengthen the case for supporting U.S. surrogates and proxies in Ukraine.

First of all, Russia is waging a disastrous war of choice in Ukraine. Putin’s misguided invasion of Ukraine opened the operational door for an appropriately scoped, U.S.-directed unconventional warfare capability; this means that the U.S. can employ indigenous surrogates, who can be overseen in close cooperation with Ukrainian special operations forces or their intelligence services. The goal is to identify exactly what Ukraine’s military needs are — crucially, its information gaps. Besides the obvious need for heavy tanks and aircraft, surrogates could be activated to address gaps by identifying the resistance potential of the indigenous population in Ukraine.

Second, there are inherent risks of employing irregular forces against Russia, specifically, the unintended consequences of escalation. For instance, as a result of Ukrainian partisan external operations, the U.S. is vulnerable to Russian-spun disinformation. This is evident after what recently took place in the Russian border city of Bryansk, where Ukraine was accused of a “cross-border attack.” Or worse, Russia might score a propaganda victory by misattributing the U.S. as being responsible for an act of sabotage or terrorism. However, those risks can be offset by U.S. forces exercising tight control of surrogates, coupled with the U.S. continuing to declassify and publicly release intelligence that helps shape the information battlefield to counter Russian disinformation.

Third, it is critical to recall that the stakes of proxies and surrogates were high during the Cold War, just as they are now. Both sides of the Iron Curtain, in a global contest for power, maintained well-armed conventional militaries and nuclear weapons for deterrence; however, the fighting was mostly done by proxies, in the shadows. In the post-9/11 era, it goes without saying that surrogates were indispensable in the counterterrorism fight. In either case, with implicit risks to surrogate operations, it is important to remember that the control and handling of surrogates is something that U.S. special operations forces do very well. So, if the media reporting on the intentions of U.S. surrogate operations is accurate, its design for Ukraine is not a fraught proposition.

To face its enemies effectively, for 1,000 years the Byzantine Empire employed a clever strategy of diplomacy — comparable to U.S. unconventional statecraft — while also leveraging its sophisticated intelligence capabilities and a small but competent military, generally used as a final option to contest its enemies. The U.S. could do much worse than adopting elements of Byzantium’s Grand Strategy in Ukraine and beyond.

How to give our kids and cops a better chance of surviving a massacre Xi Jinping’s ‘March Madness’: His determination compels an intrepid response

Fourth, and last, Ukraine is a shooting war of Russian aggression within a broader great-power competition that’s playing out globally. In this conflict, U.S. lawmakers and Pentagon planners should strongly consider the lessons that can be derived from ancient Byzantium, the Cold War and counterterrorism operations that leveraged surrogates — and should consider funding future Pentagon surrogate initiatives.

To put it succinctly, surrogates and unconventional warfare are “classically indirect” and frequently localized approaches to fighting enemies. Enabling surrogates to respond to intelligence necessities is relatively straightforward and should be part of the overall strategic design for U.S. assistance to Ukraine. Surrogate work should be done in lockstep with Ukrainian special operations forces by exploiting Russian vulnerabilities, while tacitly acknowledging that Ukraine can oversee its own indigenous — and kinetic — resistance to Russia.

Christopher P. Costa is the executive director of the International Spy Museum and an adjunct associate professor with Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is a former career intelligence officer and was special assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 2017 to 2018.

The Hill · by Rebecca Beitsch · March 30, 2023

18. Russia to Assume Rotating U.N. Security Council Presidency Despite Its War in Ukraine

The Latest: War in Ukraine: Russia to Assume Rotating U.N. Security Council Presidency Despite Its War in Ukraine

The New York Times · by Farnaz Fassihi · March 31, 2023

The United Nations headquarters in September.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Russia will assume the presidency of the United Nations Security Council in April for the first time since February 2022, when it invaded Ukraine and unleashed a war with far-reaching global consequences.

The presidency is largely a ceremonial role that rotates monthly among its 15 members based on alphabetical order. The president plans and chairs meetings and manages administrative work, and the presiding country has no influence on decisions or votes by the Council. But Russia is assuming the role amid outrage over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

A photograph released by Russian state media of President Vladimir V. Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, in February. Both are subjects of international arrest warrants over the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children. Credit...Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik, via Reuters

Forty-five members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, including the United States, moved on Thursday to establish “an expert mission” on Russia’s abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children, adding to a number of efforts from Ukraine and its allies to hold Russia accountable for its actions.

The mission, under the aegis of the organization’s human rights office, will investigate whether Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian children “and any abuses associated with or resulting from them” constitute war crimes — or the even graver category of crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court determined that the abductions and deportations constituted a war crime when it issued arrest warrants this month for President Vladimir V. Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.

A photograph released by Russian state media of President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday. The Kremlin left little doubt that Mr. Putin had personally approved the arrest of a Wall Street Journal journalist.Credit...Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik

With the arrest of a Wall Street Journal correspondent on Thursday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signaled to the world that he was doubling down on the country’s wartime isolation.

Russia has expelled foreign journalists in recent years, but in jailing an American reporter, Evan Gershkovich, and formally accusing him of being a spy, the Kremlin took a step with no precedent since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a stunningly provocative move, aimed at one of the best-known Western journalists still working inside Russia and his employer, a pillar of the American news media.

19. The Future of Army Reconnaissance: Lessons from a Marine Corps Exercise in the Mojave Desert

Excerpts:

Even with the advance of unmanned technologies, ground reconnaissance formations still have much to offer—indeed, they have the most to offer when complemented by these unmanned tools. As tempting as it is to declare the end of the scout, we should instead seek to reframe the role. Reconnaissance troops work best as the hub of a multidomain intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance complex, able to serve as the all-weather core around which to aggregate capabilities. The scout can persist on the battlefield while employing signals intelligence, unmanned platforms, precision munitions, and other cross-domain assets. When weather grounded our unmanned aircraft systems, we still destroyed armored reconnaissance with Javelin missiles, directed indirect fire missions, and reported on enemy movements. The troop’s ability to operate as an independent entity in the enemy’s rear area denied enemy forces interior lines and resupply routes, effectively halting their forward progress and pulling assets away from the main effort. A combination of antiarmor weapon systems, small unmanned aircraft systems, and loitering munitions contributed to an effective reconnaissance complex that could sense, identify, and strike in accordance with engagement criteria, all while producing negligible emissions. As the Army continues its force restructuring, an effort should be made to centralize as many cross-domain sensing capabilities as possible and push them down to the lowest practical level. We must encourage continued experimentation and innovation. The operational environment of the future is more networked and dangerous than ever, and demands a reconnaissance force that can survive, sense, and engage at speeds adversaries cannot hope to match.

The Future of Army Reconnaissance: Lessons from a Marine Corps Exercise in the Mojave Desert - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Sean Parrott, Anthony Perez · March 31, 2023

In a battlefield that is becoming increasingly saturated with multi-domain sensors, the US military is seeking to reconceptualize the part played by ground reconnaissance formations in the joint force kill chain. The US Marine Corps is experimenting with mobile reconnaissance formations and changing the role of the venerable scout sniper, while the Army considers what reconnaissance forces provide to a division-centric force construct. Over the course of a week in February, our reconnaissance troop from 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division embedded with Marine units at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms for a large-scale force-on-force exercise testing the stand-In force concept. Built around the Marine Littoral Regiment, the concept envisions an agile, pervasive force deployed in the first island chain capable of sea denial and littoral reconnaissance to deter Chinese aggression. The regiment serves as an essential piece of the “contact layer,” while the Army would provide the “blunt layer”—two of four layers envisioned as part of the “Global Operating Model” first introduced by the 2018 National Defense Strategy—during the shift from competition to conflict. This relationship between the two services requires coordination and familiarity, and therefore the opportunity for our reconnaissance troop to partner with Marine Littoral Regiment during this exercise was invaluable.

The scenario pitted 3rd Marine Division against 7th Marine Regiment in a peer force-on-force conflict fought over five days in the California desert. Our reconnaissance troop was attached to the 3rd Marine Division, which fought to retain key littoral terrain—in the exercise, specified areas represented islands—against an aggressor assault force. The battle was contested in all domains, with similar force ratios, though the enemy assault force had the preponderance of air assets in order to replicate the asymmetric threat a stand-in-force would meet in the South China Sea. The division was built around 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment and 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, with attached air and fires assets. As a division asset our reconnaissance troop operated in division battlespace at the start of the exercise, before being retasked to work for 3/5 and the Marine Littoral Regiment, respectively, during various periods of the operation. The flexibility and maneuverability inherent to our formation afforded us the opportunity to conduct reconnaissance and security operations across the wide swath of training area in support of multiple commanders. Our participation offered an eye-opening look at the complexities of reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance in an all-domain contested environment and made clear the need for future Army integration into joint exercises. Building on previous experimentation, exercises like these offer insights that should inform the decisions being made about the future of the Army’s conventional ground reconnaissance capabilities and their value to the joint force.

In the course of our participation in the exercise we identified four significant challenges: the prevalence of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance on the battlefield; impediments to responsive fires; command-and-control node survivability; and intelligence dissemination. These problem sets are not new but they require bespoke solutions when applied to reconnaissance formations. In previous periods when the Army has emphasized modernization and innovation, reconnaissance organization have undergone dramatic restructuring and change: armored cavalry, long-range reconnaissance units, and battlefield surveillance brigades were all intended to tackle the various challenges the service expected to encounter in the next war. Our experimentation strongly indicates that the best reconnaissance solution for the Army’s divisional restructure is the multidomain reconnaissance troop, a formation that is agile, adaptive, and capable of operating as a hub for multidomain reconnaissance capabilities in support of division-level objectives. Sensors and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets must be pushed down to the lowest level to facilitate sensing, targeting, and destruction of enemy systems at a rapid pace and in a decentralized fashion. These units would employ self-contained kill webs to support division or corps maneuver. Equipping reconnaissance formations with technology like loitering munitions, electronic warfare, and extended-duration small unmanned aircraft systems augment the capability of higher echelon assets that are normally distributed to several commanders. When consolidated under a common commander, they present the enemy with a problem not easily overcome. Future warfare is likely to be fought at a rapid tempo, with the outcome resting upon a formation’s ability to out-cycle an opponent’s decision-making process. While reconnaissance assets have been traditionally used for target acquisition, we argue that the modern battlefield requires sensors that can also act as shooters in order to increase survivability, lethality, and most importantly relevance. Self-contained tactical formations capable of sensing and shooting in concert with the higher commander’s scheme of maneuver will allow friendly elements to maintain a tempo the enemy cannot hope to match. Our participation in the stand-in forces exercise allowed us to identify the effect the multidomain reconnaissance troop can have on a peer opponent on a modern battlefield, its capability to dis-integrate enemy systems, and the value in fielding these formations at the tactical level.

The largest challenge ground reconnaissance assets face in large-scale combat operations is the saturation of the operating environment with competing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets. From space to the air, satellites and unmanned aircraft systems serve as cross-domain sensors able to identify and detect forces on the ground whenever they move, shoot, or communicate. This effectively renders us unable to hide reconnaissance assets from the enemy in the traditional sense. The development of increasingly sophisticated kill chains means that simply existing on the battlefield can result in destruction, a phenomenon well documented by retired Colonel John Antal in his book 7 Seconds to Die, an analysis of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Two options we found to mitigate this effect were dispersion and deception, which worked to varying degrees against the multitude of sensors we faced over the course of the exercise. Dispersion seeks to manage the disposition of your forces to tip the enemy’s risk calculus in your favor. In a modern conflict dominated by fires there is a targeting threshold that must be met before opposing forces will unmask their guns or fire a precision munition, and building elements that can operate below this threshold is essential. Reconnaissance teams rarely meet the criteria for an enemy to engage them with weapon systems larger than organic mortars, and the more disaggregated the troop became, the more difficult it was for our opponent to leverage its higher echelon’s indirect fires against us, being subject to the same inefficient targeting process as the Army. Deception operations at the lowest tactical level revolved around dummy positions, false inserts, and awareness of enemy satellite passes to maximize confusion during collection windows and minimize actionable intelligence. We encourage further experimentation and thought in this area, as we only scratched the surface of possibilities in the deception realm.

On both sides of the exercise it was common to see almost all fires assets reserved for deep shaping of division-level, high-payoff targets, leaving ground combat units to fend for themselves with organic weapon systems. This resulted in an environment where formations that were equipped to execute local cross-domain kill chains had a massive advantage in the close fight, able to rapidly out-cycle their opponents and favorably dictate the terms of engagement. For example, the troop was able to capitalize on a combination of unmanned aircraft systems, communications intelligence, and loitering munitions to sense, cue, and strike enemy assets in the division battlespace with minimal adjacent unit coordination early in the fight. Empowering company-level commanders to cue unmanned aircraft systems off of local signals intelligence collection, acquire target locations with small unmanned aircraft systems, and then strike immediately with a loitering munition presents a complex dilemma to the enemy without the byzantine approval processes that plague fires approval at higher echelons. We found that the use of loitering munitions was more responsive and lethal than traditional artillery systems, and minimized the counterfire risk to the artillery battery. While certainly not a tool for immediate suppression, loitering munitions are the cornerstone of an organic fires complex best suited for the reconnaissance element. Army reconnaissance units are traditionally quite good at finding the enemy, but lack the organic firepower to finish key threat weapon systems. Loitering munitions provide an indirect strike capability that is timely, is efficient, and minimizes coordination and signature. It affords the on-scene commander the ability to close the kill web before the opponent has time to react, and dramatically increases the survivability of the collection asset. The exercise confirmed the inverse correlation between needless communication and survivability.

The modern sensor-laden battlefield is a dangerous place for command-and-control nodes, and these nerve centers tend to occupy lofty positions on high-payoff target lists. We learned firsthand the importance of developing simple and effective plans that can survive communication degradation or the loss of a command-and-control element. Within twelve hours of the exercise beginning we lost both the battalion and troop command posts. This would have severely hindered the organization’s ability to continue to operate effectively under normal circumstances, but we had taken steps in the planning process to mitigate some of the effects such a loss of command and control might have. Most important was the design of a simple plan that could survive initial enemy contact without communication between adjacent units. All company commanders understood their higher headquarters’ mission and intent and each had a distinct battlespace to operate in. Through a series of deliberate rehearsals and well-crafted engagement criteria every member of the unit knew both the unit’s plan and those of adjacent units. This created a handful of what were, in essence, guerrilla chiefs with their own battlespaces and missions, able to attrit the enemy while understanding the needs of adjacent commanders. Decentralizing fires authorities in a similar fashion also allowed for rapid employment of organic fires, out-cycling the enemy’s ability to effectively respond. This type of command and control has significant advantages in the defense, namely contributing to survivability by drastically minimizing electromagnetic emissions. We operated on communications windows with the reconnaissance elements turning on their radios to report on enemy activity and facilitate target destruction once every four hours, allowing them to conserve battery life and limit signature. We cannot overemphasize the trust and training this requires. Commanders must learn to exercise tactical patience with their subordinate formations, and craft clear and useful intent prior to mission start.

One of the biggest failures the stand-in forces encountered in the rotation was synthesizing intelligence into actionable effects. Often, intelligence capabilities are held, products analyzed, and outputs acted upon at the highest level, driving the employment of attack aviation and rocket artillery. Unfortunately, this process often moves at the speed of the air tasking order and target decision boards. Even conventional artillery is subject to competing requirements, survivability moves, and clearance authority issues. Using the ground reconnaissance element as a hub for a survivable and self-sufficient kill web provides the commander with a distinct advantage over the opponent, albeit one requiring trust, training, and comfort in enabling lower echelon commanders with important equipment and capability. Properly employing this concept, however, requires intelligence analysis capability that normally resides at battalion and brigade levels. The speed of modern combat will likely require informed decisions to be made quickly in order to out-cycle an adversary’s reaction process, and while it is tempting for higher headquarters to retain capability at their level, it significantly limits the survivability and lethality at the point of relevance. In previous experimental iterations of the multidomain reconnaissance troop, we trained using organic all-source analysts that could synthesize the output of cross-domain sensors into actionable intelligence, which was then used to inform targeting at the troop level. Passing collected information, in multiple data forms, to different echelons for analysis, only to then wait on a decision to be made and transmitted to the strike asset, generates unnecessary emissions and wastes valuable time. Our ability at scale to sense, make sense, and deliver an effect during the exercise could not keep up with enemy survivability moves, fire, and maneuver. The most responsive weapon-to-target match is often the observer, and a dedicated intelligence cell helps the troop commander make an informed decision without the need to emit or wait for analysis.

Even with the advance of unmanned technologies, ground reconnaissance formations still have much to offer—indeed, they have the most to offer when complemented by these unmanned tools. As tempting as it is to declare the end of the scout, we should instead seek to reframe the role. Reconnaissance troops work best as the hub of a multidomain intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance complex, able to serve as the all-weather core around which to aggregate capabilities. The scout can persist on the battlefield while employing signals intelligence, unmanned platforms, precision munitions, and other cross-domain assets. When weather grounded our unmanned aircraft systems, we still destroyed armored reconnaissance with Javelin missiles, directed indirect fire missions, and reported on enemy movements. The troop’s ability to operate as an independent entity in the enemy’s rear area denied enemy forces interior lines and resupply routes, effectively halting their forward progress and pulling assets away from the main effort. A combination of antiarmor weapon systems, small unmanned aircraft systems, and loitering munitions contributed to an effective reconnaissance complex that could sense, identify, and strike in accordance with engagement criteria, all while producing negligible emissions. As the Army continues its force restructuring, an effort should be made to centralize as many cross-domain sensing capabilities as possible and push them down to the lowest practical level. We must encourage continued experimentation and innovation. The operational environment of the future is more networked and dangerous than ever, and demands a reconnaissance force that can survive, sense, and engage at speeds adversaries cannot hope to match.

Captain Sean Parrott is a reconnaissance troop commander in the 25th Infantry Division. He is a graduate of the US Marine Corps’s Expeditionary Warfare School.

Sergeant First Class Anthony Perez is a reconnaissance platoon sergeant in the 25th Infantry Division with experience in airborne, Stryker, and armored reconnaissance formations.

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

Image credit: Lance Cpl. Pedro Arroyo, US Marine Corps

mwi.usma.edu · by Sean Parrott, Anthony Perez · March 31, 2023

20. How China’s Spies Fooled an America That Wanted to be Fooled

Excerpts:

Joske does a great service by revealing and recounting the history of MSS operations against U.S. elites by mining open-source materials ignored by most analysts and journalists. He rightly directs readers’ attention to the MSS as a serious player and its success in penetrating the highest circles of U.S. elite decision-making on China. The lesson of his book is that claims about Chinese intentions need to be sophisticated, nuanced, and evidence based. Conversations by China experts (I’m looking at you, Henry Kissinger!) with their “friends” in China can no longer (if they ever did) serve as a reliable indicator of Chinese government intentions. U.S. China analysis needs to get better, and it already has.

At the same time, U.S. policies cannot shut off all connections with Chinese civil society in an effort to cut out MSS front groups. The U.S. needs as much information and exchange with China as possible. As long as U.S. decision-makers go into these meetings and conferences with their eyes wide open, the U.S. policy process will still ultimately benefit. The U.S. discourse around China will also ultimately be better, even if Joske’s book reminds us that we all need to add a substantial “MSS discount” to the reliability of most Chinese interlocutors.

How China’s Spies Fooled an America That Wanted to be Fooled

Julian Ku is the Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at Hofstra University School of Law. He is a co-founder of Opinio Juris, the leading blog on international law.

@julianku

lawfareblog.com · March 30, 2023

In American popular culture, foreign spying remains deeply associated with the Cold War and America’s principal antagonist, the Soviet Union. Countless novels, television shows, and films cast Russian spies as dangerous (yet often romantic) threats to America. But as the U.S. and China edge closer to a new Cold War, it seems clear that China has replaced the Soviet Union (and its successor, Russia) as America’s primary intelligence threat, even if one is hard-pressed to identify even one decent novel involving Chinese spies. While reports of Chinese spy-related arrests in the U.S. have grown dramatically during the past decade, the academic and policy literature lack a serious book-length study of China’s intelligence operations in the United States.

Alex Joske’s “Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World” promises to fill this gap. Indeed, Joske’s work offers a rare, nonacademic study of China’s little-known intelligence agency, the Ministry for State Security (MSS). But while Joske does report on China’s spies, his thesis is quite different than one might expect. Rather than untangle the ways in which the MSS seeks to gather U.S. government or corporate secrets, Joske argues that the MSS’s greatest intelligence strength is its massively successful influence operation against U.S. political and business elites. In Joske’s telling, any U.S. military secrets gleaned by the MSS in recent decades pale in comparison to its amazingly successful efforts to deceive the highest levels of the U.S. policymaking world about China’s foreign policy goals and priorities. These deceptions, in Joske’s telling, kept the U.S. government from responding earlier to China’s threat to U.S. interests.

Joske, an enormously talented analyst with the influential Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, backs up his argument by drawing on largely ignored open-source intelligence on the MSS. While there is good reason to admire his impressive research and analysis of obscure Chinese sources, Joske overstates the force and impact of the operations he uncovers. While China’s spies may have been trying to lull U.S. academics, business elites, and policymakers into quiescence, Joske fails to give those U.S. decision-makers sufficient agency. U.S. players sought engagement with China for their own interests and purposes and would have likely done so whether or not the MSS was lying to them.

Joske begins his tale with a fascinating and emblematic account of George Soros’s efforts to engage China in the 1980s through the establishment of a China Fund to support and foster an emerging Chinese civil society. Soros has become well known for his similar efforts in his native Hungary and later all over then-communist Eastern Europe. But unlike the “Open Society” initiatives that played a meaningful role in pre- and post-communist Eastern Europe, Soros’s China Fund was undermined, and later completely co-opted, by a sophisticated intelligence operation led by China’s MSS.

It is not surprising that the Chinese government would have sought to shut down Soros’s efforts, especially in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. But the China Fund was not shut down. It was co-opted by being forced to “partner” with a local Chinese entity that was, as Joske reveals, actually a front group led by a senior MSS agent. That Chinese entity was able to use its association with Soros to gain international and domestic legitimacy.

What is interesting about the Soros saga, which is repeated in Joske’s retelling of other episodes involving foreign politicians, academics, and businessmen, is that the MSS plan is not to just surveil. The MSS playbook involves creating supposedly independent Chinese civil society groups, scholars, or government officials that foreign elites think they can use to learn about China and influence its policies.

Joske notes how MSS operations include traditional spying, such as convincing the FBI to treat one of its operatives as a trusted FBI counterintelligence asset for decades, and influence peddling of the Clinton White House through campaign donations laundered by Chinese Americans. But the more interesting MSS operations are the influence operations against U.S. intellectual and business elites.

For example, Joske offers evidence that the MSS has spent decades penetrating the U.S.-China Policy Foundation (USCPF) to build relationships with America’s leading China experts. Top U.S. academics of China, who bounced back and forth between academia, think tanks, and the National Security Council, were affiliated with or board members of the USCPF. Thus, Joske details how key undercover MSS agents were unknowingly introduced into U.S. policymaking and academic elites by USCPF. Similar stories about MSS agents secretly being mixed into academic exchanges with top U.S. universities and U.S. business organizations are fascinating contributions by Joske to understanding the tactics of the MSS.

Joske is on solid ground in revealing the MSS’s deep penetration of almost every form of high-level interaction between U.S. elites and China during the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. The question, however, is whether those influence operations really had a measurable impact on U.S. policy. I agree with Joske that the U.S. government, supported by the network of MSS-influenced academic and business elites, maintained a policy of engagement longer than it should have. But I simply don’t have his confidence that the policy would have changed earlier (or never have been adopted) absent the MSS’s efforts.

In his most provocative claim, Joske argues that the early 2000s narrative that China’s leaders sought a “peaceful rise” in a manner that did not challenge the U.S. was an elaborate MSS scheme to lull U.S. decision-makers into treating China with kid gloves. Joske offers impressive details about the origins of the phrase “peaceful rise” in the work of MSS asset Zheng Bijian. Through his work in the China Reform Forum, a Chinese think tank that U.S. elites treated as an influential window into Chinese government thinking, Zheng popularized the concept and convinced U.S. elites that this was the actual policy of the Chinese government. The peaceful rise concept made it easier for the U.S. government to continue to treat China as a partner and focus on other threats in the Middle East and elsewhere.

There is much to Joske’s point that the U.S. government took the peaceful rise narrative too seriously. But the U.S. government’s willingness to swallow the narrative was not contradicted by other metrics of Chinese behavior. In the early 2000s, when the concept was introduced, China was not actively prosecuting its claims to the South China Sea, it eventually reached a rapprochement with the government on Taiwan, and it had not even started regular intrusions into Japanese-controlled waters around islands disputed with Japan. The plausibility of the peaceful rise narrative was complemented by Chinese policies (or nonpolicies). U.S. policymakers, facing a global terrorist threat after September 11 and dealing with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, could be forgiven for accepting the peaceful rise narrative at face value. It fit with their policy preferences and was backed by at least some evidence. U.S. policymakers may have been “influenced” to think China’s intentions were more benign than they actually were. But the preferences of U.S. policymakers would likely have driven the U.S. government to this conclusion even without MSS involvement.

Joske does a great service by revealing and recounting the history of MSS operations against U.S. elites by mining open-source materials ignored by most analysts and journalists. He rightly directs readers’ attention to the MSS as a serious player and its success in penetrating the highest circles of U.S. elite decision-making on China. The lesson of his book is that claims about Chinese intentions need to be sophisticated, nuanced, and evidence based. Conversations by China experts (I’m looking at you, Henry Kissinger!) with their “friends” in China can no longer (if they ever did) serve as a reliable indicator of Chinese government intentions. U.S. China analysis needs to get better, and it already has.

At the same time, U.S. policies cannot shut off all connections with Chinese civil society in an effort to cut out MSS front groups. The U.S. needs as much information and exchange with China as possible. As long as U.S. decision-makers go into these meetings and conferences with their eyes wide open, the U.S. policy process will still ultimately benefit. The U.S. discourse around China will also ultimately be better, even if Joske’s book reminds us that we all need to add a substantial “MSS discount” to the reliability of most Chinese interlocutors.

lawfareblog.com · March 30, 2023

21. Building A New American Arsenal

Conclusion:

Think of it this way: The U.S. arsenal is like an investment portfolio in desperate need of a risk management strategy. By investing in new manufacturers and companies capable of producing these critical low-cost systems, the Department of Defense can diversify and hedge against the risks of the myriad of problems facing the defense industrial base today — ensuring liquidity, longevity, and material returns on the battlefield.

Building A New American Arsenal - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Julia van der Colff · March 31, 2023

Alarm bells are ringing at the Pentagon. The United States is rapidly depleting its munitions stockpiles to support the Ukrainian military. This support comes amid a serious backlog on the delivery of over $14 billion worth of arms shipments to Taiwan. The war in Ukraine has confirmed what was already widely known: America’s industrial base atrophied following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Despite efforts to reshore and bolster the manufacturing base, reaching the production capacity needed to replenish stockpiles and prepare for the possibility of full-scale conflict with China remains improbable. The current replacement times for critical inventories average over a staggering 13 years at current production capacity rates. Many of America’s advanced systems are produced on a very small number of assembly lines by an even smaller number of manufacturers. Production requires input from a shrinking labor force with knowledge of these systems, and supply chains are composed of rare earth metals, chips, and obscure mechanical parts from across the world that are very difficult to secure.

This challenge is not new and many have written about America’s ossified industrial base. Solutions range from updating and streamlining regulatory authorities to selling more expensive weapons systems like F-35s to allied nations. However, to begin solving the challenges facing the industrial base, the U.S. government should consider building a new “value arms” market that bolsters the American arsenal with massive quantities of cheap, easily reproducible, and effective weapons systems to create a hedge against current shortages and weaknesses. To accomplish this, the government should establish a special task force that leverages private industry and create new acquisition-management processes for emerging contractors with business models oriented towards the rapid production of inexpensive systems. This would enable the development of a new value arms market sector alongside the major existing defense contractors, boosting production capacities while fortifying against weaknesses.

Become a Member

A Different Side of the Arms Market

Value arms make up the portion of the global arms market that is defined by the smaller transaction values of new, more affordable defense systems and refurbished equipment, and is often characterized by dynamic purchasing patterns. While some countries only buy value market equipment, others, including South Korea and the United Arab Emirates, buy high-end fighter aircraft from the United States and shop in the value market for other systems. India, for example, has purchased a number of T-72 and T-90 tanks from Russia, while purchasing advanced aircraft such as the proposed purchase of a F-16 variant — the F-21 — from the United States. Though the value arms market encompasses over 100 countries with varying defense budgets, the United States does not participate as a producer or a customer.

Why does the United States not participate in the value arms market, especially as incumbents now struggle to fulfill foreign orders as a result of the war in Ukraine and leave a gap in the market? The answer — and opportunity — lies within an understanding of the business models driving the American defense industrial base.

A Look at the U.S. Defense Primes

America’s major contractors operate with a unique set of cost structures and are plagued with issues stemming from consolidation, labor shortages, and policies that have resulted in the atrophy of surge production capabilities.

Ukraine is firing 6,000 to 7,000 artillery shells per day. U.S. firms produce 15,000 per month. This is a critical shortfall. The same is true for Stinger anti-aircraft shoulder-fired missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System surface-to-surface missiles. American industry cannot keep up with demand. This problem began in the 1990s as decreases in defense spending prompted a series of defense firm mergers, eliminating excess surge production capabilities to cut costs. These firms also began to focus on civilian production, for example General Electric’s pivot to civilian aviation sales. In tandem with changing expectations on Wall Street, this counterintuitively bred a sedentary period where the defense sector’s prime contractors continued to shape a federal contracting system that favored incumbent players building a small number of highly complex systems. These contractors are designed to only operate at peacetime efficiency levels.

The challenge is that American defense companies are all publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange and, to an extent, are beholden to public market investor expectations. The traditional Wall Street view of the defense industry is that it should demand lower multiples than the technology industry as it possesses less revenue risk having the Department of Defense as its primary customer. However, with year-over-year variations in the defense budget and high-value transaction fluctuations in the Foreign Military Sales program, revenue volatility can actually be much higher than expected. Given that contract revenue volatility can result in lower margins, the major defense contractors seek alternative methods of revenue stability. To do so, they spread manufacturing facilities across different congressional districts, lobby, and seek longer-term contracts. As businesses, they generate value through revenue, margins, invested capital, and/or competitive advantages. Stabilized revenue generation and high margins are limited by fluctuating policies and budgets while competitive advantages are disrupted by innovative new companies, so the primes utilize their balance sheets and respond with acquisitions and consolidation, further reducing production capacity to save costs. They also create jobs in different U.S. states, thereby creating political incentives to secure government funding and increasing the cost of labor, which simultaneously increases the cost of advanced systems.

This system has remained in place for three decades. It is also still driven by processes set up during the Cold War. American firms — and the Department of Defense — are focused on purchasing expensive and complex systems, which cannot be produced quickly and in large numbers. This approach overlooks the importance of the mass-produced, smaller capabilities that will be needed in a war of attrition.

The current time needed to replace Major Defense Acquisition Program inventories (such as the Stingers, Javelins, and Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) at surge production rates is an average of 8.4 years, and 13.8 years at peacetime production rates (the current state). Most systems are also produced on a very small number of assembly lines by a very small number of producers, by a similarly small number of workers with the knowledge of how to assemble the systems. For example, 80 percent of Marine Corps and Army vehicle production is done by a single manufacturer on a single assembly line. AMTEC is the only company that makes grenades for the Department of Defense — if they encounter supply chain issues, there are no other suppliers that could fill the shortage.

Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan

This is not the first time that the defense industrial base has faced a capacity crisis. However, through acquisitions workarounds and buy-in from top officials, it has managed to emerge out of production ruts before. While the mobilization for Afghanistan and Iraq only required small surges in production in comparison, facing a lack of adequate equipment and tanks to fight in counter-insurgency conditions, the defense industrial base was actually able to increase production rapidly as it re-oriented to produce systems for the new fighting conditions. The Department of Defense established the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization in 2006, which enabled it to turn to industry for critical systems and equipment better suited for combatting insurgent groups. Concurrently, the establishment of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Approval and Acquisition Management Process enabled the organization to articulate capability gaps through Broad Agency Announcements and fund and deploy new systems in only a matter of months, instead of years.

To spur the production of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, which offered more protection from explosive devices, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates established a task force, calling on 12 different firms to produce the vehicles instead of the usual one contractor. The program cut down operational requirements, relied heavily on commercially available products, awarded indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts to nine commercial sources (committing to buy vehicles from each source), and designated the program as the department’s highest priority acquisition.

Combining existing production lines with new technology from industry, rapid acquisitions processes, and competition, the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program shows that the industrial base, despite its brittleness, can respond quickly to regional threats. The Department of Defense should recognize the success of this non-traditional acquisition strategy and implement it in more programs by reducing requirements, easing regulations, allowing multiple producers, and standardizing production processes.

Herein lies an emerging opportunity for the Department of Defense to take a page from the past, leveraging U.S. industrial mobilization successes during the war in Afghanistan to solve the current shortages and brittleness plaguing the industrial base while projecting influence and bolstering deterrence.

Building a New American Arsenal

There is little disagreement that the directional arrows of technological progress — not to mention billions of dollars of invested capital in the United States and China — point towards a new type of conflict requiring a multitude of complex offensive and defensive weapons systems. An integrated battlefield will be characterized by autonomous systems, drone swarms, advanced sensor capabilities, and the hypersonic weapons that are on the verge of becoming a reality. However, the reality is that this revolution in technological capabilities designed to make kill chains shorter will likely result in a form of warfare that is slower, harder, and more expensive than ever. Surviving in a technologically complex battlefield will become more and more costly as the integrations of autonomous systems and sensors, supported by electromagnetic umbrellas and decoys, will increase transparency, slow down movements, and require significant capital and system expenditures to overcome.

A recent article in the People’s Liberation Army’s Daily publication noted that cheap unmanned aerial system advancements pose a significant threat to traditional air defenses. Small systems are incredibly difficult to detect with radar and attack using expensive guided munitions or anti-air guns. Advanced systems designed to absorb and process more information than ever before are also prone to making more mistakes, exacerbated by deception and diversion. This is because the underpinning technologies have not quite reached full maturity. These systems, too, are dependent on complex supply chains and will require intensive input from an already weakened industrial base.

As the war in Ukraine is already indicating, the decisive edge in a war with China over Taiwan may be the ability to quickly manufacture and finance replacements for rapidly consumed arms and systems for U.S. and allied forces. The Department of Defense is starting to come around to this concept. Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu recently announced a new Defense Science Board Strategic Task Force focused on exploring low-cost weapons systems.

This task force will have to grapple with a serious challenge: American defense prime contractors are built to operate at peacetime production levels to ensure profitability as defense budgets fluctuate year to year. They maintain their margins not necessarily from the production of new systems, but through providing training and maintenance services for the most expensive ones. In the global market, the prime contractors conduct foreign arms sales and justify high price tags with a strategy called the Total Package Approach, providing training, tech support, and maintenance over the lifetime of a system. This approach generates a significant portion of revenue from such services and makes the systems exceedingly expensive to lose in conflict and replace.

While Russia draws attention to Eastern Europe, China is readying itself for a new era of industrial warfare, preparing to raise the cost of U.S. intervention over Taiwan to unacceptable levels. Further escalation will likely not come with a warning — existing mobilization capabilities may be all that is available.

The good news: There are innovative, early-stage defense companies waiting in the wings that can rapidly produce lower-cost weapons. Take emerging defense startup Firestorm, for example — by leveraging 3D printing manufacturing capabilities, they are building unique aerial systems at a fraction of the traditional cost, producing radically affordable and mission-adaptable unmanned systems that can be printed anywhere, assembled, and made ready to fly in a mere matter of days.

The Department of Defense should support emerging contractors that are already built with the right operating models to support rapid production, advanced and efficient manufacturing techniques, and scalable capacity to design and produce these new systems. By developing and enabling the growth of a new value market consisting of smaller and more nimble producers and systems to complement, not replace, the expensive advanced systems already produced by the primes, the United States can effectively lower the cost of conflict, bolster deterrence, and create a hedge against supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and capacity constraints — to outlast even the most attritional of adversaries. Looking beyond American borders, these low-cost systems would also be incredibly attractive to U.S. allies such as Israel — and, as the Russians have found, foreign military sales can be used to gain and project influence in critical countries like India and the wider Indo-Pacific region to counter China’s encroachment.

The establishment of a distinct value arms sector of the U.S. defense industry, positioned as a hedge, could also help to change the “destroy or acquire” culture that persists between the primes and smaller emerging contractors, expanding the market and protecting against points of failure. The emergence of new defense contractor business models that generate value from innovations in manufacturing, efficiency, and scale — rather than sustainment and maintenance — would also make the sector more attractive to venture capital investors who have traditionally avoided the industry, creating a multiplier effect and bolstering the overall industrial base capacity in the United States.

Think of it this way: The U.S. arsenal is like an investment portfolio in desperate need of a risk management strategy. By investing in new manufacturers and companies capable of producing these critical low-cost systems, the Department of Defense can diversify and hedge against the risks of the myriad of problems facing the defense industrial base today — ensuring liquidity, longevity, and material returns on the battlefield.

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Julia van der Colff is an associate at Decisive Point, a venture capital and advisory firm investing in deep tech innovations for security, health, energy, and infrastructure. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where she was a Presidential Scholar.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Julia van der Colff · March 31, 2023

22. Defending the Rules-Based Order: The US at a Crossroads (ICC)

Defending the Rules-Based Order: The US at a Crossroads

If the US is truly committed to the rules-based international order, it should ratify the Rome Statute and join the International Criminal Court.

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‘Ukraine is fighting an existential war for all democracies’. Such were the words of Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly in May 2022 as she visited Ukraine to show her government’s unwavering support for the country’s self-defence against unprovoked aggression. But her words also implied that, should Ukraine fall, it could become the first of many democracies that will have to fight for their own right to exist.

The institutional framework that has enabled communities to coexist in relative peace for the past seven decades is the so-called ‘rules-based international order’, a concept that has been used as a battle cry for over a year by both Ukrainians and Western allies alike.

The protection of the rules-based order (including its provisions on self-defence) is, thus, Ukraine’s and the West’s casus belli – their reason or motivation to fight. But is it a casual casus belli? If used only as a slogan devoid of any true commitment to the standards and principles making up such an order, it certainly sounds casual. Policymakers and the public must understand that they cannot have it both ways – invoking the rules-based order while remaining cynical about it. Rather, earnest commitment needs to be shown to the institutions that keep the system well-oiled and running, such as the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC recently issued arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, for the war crimes of unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. The arrest warrant against Putin may remain purely theoretical for now, yet its ‘symbolic, diplomatic and deterrent effects’ are certainly something to watch for in the near future. For one, as a matter of law, Putin’s status before the ICC has effectively changed to that of a suspect ‘at large’, whom states parties to the Rome Statute are under a legal obligation to arrest and surrender to the Court.

Policymakers and the public must understand that they cannot have it both ways – invoking the rules-based order while remaining cynical about it

The US, however, is not among such parties, despite its vocal support for the rules-based international order. This places the US – awkwardly enough – closer to Russia in the eyes of the ICC, as both states at some point decided to ‘unsign’ the Rome Statute.

Could – and should – the US capitalise on the ICC’s newest move against Putin nonetheless? The fact that the US and its allies selectively choose when to uphold the rules-based system, and when to breach it as fits their own agendas, is of no surprise and has been readily – and rightly – decried by analysts, calling for greater Western consistency.

A fundamental requirement for such consistency to develop is to have a clearer understanding of the notion of the ‘rules-based international order’, as it currently has a plethora of meanings. One way to reduce this uncertainty is to equate it with ‘international law’, thus bolstering the institutions and standards that make up this normative regime.

Is it, then, time for the US to ratify the Rome Statute? Given the fraught history between the US and the ICC, this might sound like a strange proposition. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and the conjuring up of rules is useless without any real consequences or accountability. Non-recognition of challenges to the system is a start, but it can only take us so far. Significant individual accountability for breaches of the rules-based order is also needed, and the ICC represents the most viable, permanent forum to make that happen, aside from more novel proposals for an ad-hoc tribunal to deal with Russia’s war of aggression.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the conjuring up of rules is useless without any real consequences or accountability

By joining the ICC, the US has a unique chance to live up to its own legacy of crucial support for the development of international criminal justice – from the setting up of its brainchild, the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, to its active involvement in the negotiations resulting in the final text of the Rome Statute.

But the US need not take a leap of faith by ratifying the Rome Statute. There are safeguards therein that should be considered by the US if it decides to return to the fold of the international community that it is supposed to be leading, including the principle of complementarity that has recently benefited its allies, Colombia and the UK; the possibility for the UN Security Council to suspend the work of the ICC (Article 16); and an ‘opt-out’ clause for states that might not deem it strategic to recognise the Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression (Article 15bis(4)).

With such safeguards, and with Putin at large, the US is at a crossroads: it must decide if it is ready to fully commit to the rules-based order it so vocally promotes, or if it is merely a casual casus belli.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

Have an idea for a Commentary you’d like to write for us? Send a short pitch to commentaries@rusi.org and we’ll get back to you if it fits into our research interests. Full guidelines for contributors can be found here.

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23. Marine Corps rejects Pentagon’s pitch for new amphibious ship designs

Marine Corps rejects Pentagon’s pitch for new amphibious ship designs

Defense News · by Megan Eckstein · March 30, 2023

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon team leading the charge to reduce the cost of amphibious warships has shown the Marine Corps drawings of scaled-down, less expensive ship designs — but a service general told Defense News he won’t accept them.

During a Tuesday hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee’s sea power panel, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told lawmakers he will not change his current requirements.

“The trade space will be my requirements. And I’m the requirements officer for the Marine Corps: I am not coming off the requirement any further,” Hekcl said, amid an effort by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to reduce the cost of building San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks, or LPD.

In the early 2010s, when the Navy was considering replacements for its aging Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships, it settled on an approach to scale down the San Antonio-class LPD design to leverage a hot production line while saving money. That resulted in creating an LPD Flight II design to replace the Whidbey Islands that are today the topic of a debate over decommissionings.

Heckl told senators he’s not willing to take on further reductions.

The general told Defense News after the hearing he has two major concerns with the Pentagon’s suggested designs.

First is that amphibious ready groups — a collection of one amphibious assault ship and two smaller San Antonio or Whidbey Island amphibious ships — hauling Marine expeditionary units typically disaggregate as soon as they deploy to a theater. The Whidbey Island LSDs cannot operate alone, but the LPD Flight II replacements can, making this design a boon for the Corps and the combatant commanders who want flexibility in how they operate ships in theater.

Heckl said the proposed designs take away the ability of this revised LPD to operate independently.

Additionally, he said the flight deck and vehicle cargo storage spaces would be “reduced dramatically.”

He said the Office of the Secretary of Defense offered up “very rough ideas, and I’ve seen, like, three of them not flushed out at all. And none of them are acceptable. The Marine Corps will not accept them.”

He insisted the Corps isn’t being stubborn, noting that the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit currently in the Pacific region with the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group includes “a lot of [F-35B jets], a lot of V-22 [tiltrotor aircraft], a lot of [CH-]53 [helicopters], a lot of Zulu [helicopters] and a lot of Yankee [helicopters]. And you can’t do it without an LPD with the rightsized flight deck. That’s why we’re able to do this.”

The Pentagon prompted this reconsideration of the LPD design and cost amid what Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday called a rise in ship costs. The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. David Berger, pushed back on that, saying in constant-year dollars — not accounting for inflation — the cost of the ship production line is decreasing.

Twice in recent years Congress asked the Navy to buy its amphibious assault ships and amphibious transport docks, both made exclusively at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi. Lawmakers argued a multi-ship, multiyear contract would allow the company to save on materials and optimize its workforce.

The Navy has declined to exercise this authority, citing ongoing studies into its requirement for an amphibious fleet. Congress formally passed into law in the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act a requirement to maintain a fleet of at least 31 amphibious ships.

“They’re trying to reduce cost by reducing my requirement,” Heckl told Defense News. “The answer to reduced cost would have been to exercise on the two previous NDAAs’ [multi-ship procurement authority], one of which was a five-ship and would have saved the American taxpayers almost $900 million.”

Marines from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit prepare to board an MV-22 Osprey on the amphibious assault ship Makin Island in 2022. (MC3 Kendra Helmbrecht/U.S. Navy)

During the Senate hearing, Jay Stefany, the acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said: “We’re all in agreement [that] 31 is the requirement. The question is: How do we best get to that requirement?”

Noting that LPDs are purchased every other year and that the Navy bought one in FY23, Stefany said that “there is a period where we can look at a more affordable way, potentially, to build those. We don’t need to build one in ’24; we can take some time to see if there’s a more affordable way to build those before we buy the ‘25 ship.”

Several senators took issue with the need for yet another study on amphibious ships, which the Senate Armed Services Committee, among other panels, previously supported.

In one exchange, Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, noted there had been 11 studies on the amphibious fleet. “What is this — yet another study — going to show that the 11 other studies have not?”

Vice Adm. Scott Conn, the deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities, called that a “fair question” and said the Office of the Secretary of Defense “directed it as part of a cost-capability study for the LPDs. … That will inform the [FY25] shipbuilding plan.”

Stefany added that LPDs cost about $1.9 billion and that the team was seeking a way to save money while still meeting the Marine Corps’ needs. He added the study should be complete by this summer.

Heckl said it remains unclear what the future holds since the options thus far are unacceptable to the Corps.

“The Navy won’t toot their own horn; they need a top line increase. We’re dealing with the preeminent threat [in China] directed by two different national defense strategies, and it’s in a maritime domain. And yet we’ve made no adjustments to how we allocate resources to the services,” he said of the Pentagon.

As long as the Navy doesn’t get a greater portion of defense funds — and it has to invest in its top-priority Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine — “I’m going to be a billpayer,” he added.

About Megan Eckstein

Megan Eckstein is the naval warfare reporter at Defense News. She has covered military news since 2009, with a focus on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps operations, acquisition programs and budgets. She has reported from four geographic fleets and is happiest when she’s filing stories from a ship. Megan is a University of Maryland alumna.

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Marine Corps rejects Pentagon’s pitch for new amphibious ship designs