Quotes of the Day:

"Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause." 

–​ Victor Hugo

"We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft." 

–​ Adlai Ewing Stevenson

"Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things." 

​ – T.S. Eliot

​1. Send in the A-Team: A Graduated Response for Ukraine

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 6, 2024

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 6, 2024

4. Fort Liberty congressman speaks out against plans to cut Army special operations forces

5. Starting from Beginning: Strengthening of Strategic Foreign Partnerships from Initial Acquisition Training, Education (US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School)

6. Are drones the future? Not for everything, says Polish general

7. The Cat-and-Mouse Game of Preventing Drone Nightmares

8. Hostage crisis poses dilemma for Israel and offers a path to victory for Hamas

9. NGA looking for commercial data to update intel on North Korea

10. Opinion | Let AI remake the whole U.S. government (oh, and save the country)

11.. A nearly $1 trillion defense budget faces headwinds at home and abroad

12. Crowdfunding, Auctions and Raffles: How Ukrainians Are Aiding the Army

13. How the U.S. Arms Pipeline to Israel Avoids Public Disclosure

14. Scoop: White House asks State Dept., Pentagon for Israel-bound weapons list

15. U.S. Charges Chinese National With Stealing AI Secrets From Google

16. Drones, the Air Littoral, and the Looming Irrelevance of the U.S. Air Force

17. $10m Abrams tanks no match for $500 Russian drones

18. Russia Is Burning Up Its Future

19. The Osprey, Indispensable for Future War Plans

20. The classroom is a battle lab: Using professional military education to usher in a new era of algorithmic warfare

​21. Inside America’s Shadow War With Iran

22. Creating Sun Tsu: Instituting a​ Master’s Degree in Irregular Warfare

​1. Send in the A-Team: A Graduated Response for Ukraine

I hope this is through provoking for those outside of the SF community.

Excerpt:

Conclusion

The dialogue characterizing this war is progressively dominated by the shop talk of the industrialist: munitions provided, weapons procured, drones built, conscripts mobilized, mines laid. Yielding to this reductive framing favors Russia. To displace terms of industry with terms of art, there is a harmonic convergence of capability, opportunity, and risk that is present now. One capability is the A-team, designed precisely for this environment. The opportunity is the stalemated ground war, which also provides a stabilized, regularized Ukrainian rear area. The risk calculation is to horizontally escalate not as a provocation but as a normalization and a reframing of U.S. support thresholds. Taken together, this is a measured military path ripe for political action. The next graduated response option is ready: Send in the A-teams.

Send in the A-Team: A Graduated Response for Ukraine - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Brian Petit · March 7, 2024

Of all the symbols of American power abroad, the U.S. special operations soldier occupies a unique place in the public’s imagination. The public appetite for tales of derring-do and gutsy ventures is limitless, and U.S. special operations provide enough of these, routinely and visibly, to propel that mystique. Such publicity obscures a less splashy type of special operations that work in a different meter. These are the special operations advisors who work quietly, persistently, and ethnographically with U.S. partners fighting their own wars. This is the overlooked, grinding handiwork that either wins wars, protracts them, or delivers a more favorable negotiating position to end them. Ukraine and its Western supporters need scale-tipping options, and they need them soon, before the metastasizing effects of sagging morale infect the Ukrainian ability to see and believe in victory. There is an option, realized and ready. The time has come to send in the “A-team(s).”

The A-teams, also known as Green Berets, are more formally called the U.S. Army Special Forces Operational Detachment–Alpha teams. These are compact units whose strategic and tactical design is exactly suited for this type of war (complex), these types of policy spaces (tight), and with calibrated footprints (small). The form, function, and operational employment of the A-team are perfectly matched for this political-military environment. The employment of A-teams into Ukrainian territory to train, advise, and assist Ukrainian forces — positioned well behind the active combat zones — requires little imagination, no adaptation, and few modifications. It does require political will and a fresh calculation of risk.

Become a Member

This incremental step is consistent with the two-year expanding arc of U.S. and allied support to Ukraine. Detractors will be quick to cite the risks of escalation and deepened U.S. military involvement. Indeed, all paths ahead for the United States — inaction included — contain rising risks and interminable friction. On the current trajectory, Russia will prevail, the United States and NATO will crisis-manage unattractive and costly containment options, and the Russian leadership will validate that NATO has neither the stomach nor the stamina to stave off the illegal Russian occupation of a democratic country. Instead of offering the battered Russian military a path to victory, this is exactly the time to raise costs and complicate ambitions. This is tactics advancing strategy. The A-team option, limited in scope and measurable in risk, redefines the strategically allowable activities to defend Ukraine, cuts a wider path for allied support, and signals that U.S. resolve goes beyond the one-time-use act of emptying out arms rooms and munitions bunkers. Rarely does a capability so succinctly match a requirement, and seldom is there a strategic moment where modest options could so appreciably alter outcomes.

The Operational Detachment – Alpha

The 12-person special forces A-team consists of one commanding officer (captain), an assistant commander (warrant officer), a senior operations leader (master sergeant), an operations and intelligence sergeant, and eight specialists. These specialists are noncommissioned officers that provide the core operating capability, two-deep, in communications, medical skills, weapons, and engineering. It is a task force in miniature. There are generally 54 A-teams in one special forces group. There are five active and two National Guard groups. This is a deep, seasoned, and uncommonly constructed formation.

The A-team structure has remained unchanged since its inception in 1952. The teams were a World War IIconstruct resurrected in the Cold War to fight as a stay-behind force, conjoined with Eastern and Central European partisans that would operate in the rear area of an advancing Red Army. While tank and artillery battles were to be the front-stage activity, these A-teams were missioned to operate the back-stage activity of mobilizing resistance within the occupied populations of Warsaw Pact countries. In this way, A-teams have returned to their founding: a force designed to asymmetrically contest Soviet, now Russian, aggression.

A-teams are not lone rangers. They are remotely distributed platforms that are force integrators. Inside the A-team is a staff structure that synchronizes the six warfighting functions: command, intelligence, maneuver, fires, sustainment, and protection. When the task is too big, they leverage reach-back capabilities, or they receive augmentation. A-teams integrate civil affairs and psychological operations and facilitate joint force capabilities from the air, land, sea, space, and cyber. A-teams are one tentacle of the United States Special Operations Command, which, despite its notoriety for counterterrorism, heavily invests in forces that provide indirect approaches.

The Employment Design

An A-team is a detachable unit that is survivable, multi-functional, and, when required, lethal. A-teams embed within populations, in villages, astride communities, and beside partners. As modern warfare serves up ever more video-game modes and antiseptic options, the Green Beret approach offers the opposite. It is terrestrial, relational, and patient. While the A-team can fight alone as a maneuver unit, it is not designed for that purpose. It is the sole U.S. special operations formation singularly selected, trained, educated, equipped, and rehearsed to operate with foreign partners, from regulars to irregulars, across the peace-war spectrum. All members are language-trained and regionally oriented. In truth, few Green Berets could passably communicate in Ukrainian, which is a less practical matter in this moment than bringing in skilled and partner-savvy forces to support Ukrainian combat training.

A-teams are a force multiplier, which means their combat power is measured in their ability to employ and elevate partner forces. Tricky variables might include doing so in a foreign language, with Soviet-era weapons, through a high mountain pass, while mounted on Toyota trucks. In such a scenario, expect an A-team to increase size and scale but yield precision and control. Otherwise, that is a normal day at the office for a force routinely operating in some 70 countries.

Politically, special forces teams provide the backbone for multinational operations. A-teams and their joint higher commands integrate and control the special operations forces of friendly nations. This adds political weight, encourages burden-sharing, and capitalizes on exceptional partner nation special operations forces. U.S. special operations have decades of continuous interoperability work, in peace and war, with the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Georgia, and dozens of other countries in and outside of NATO. In this way, the A-team is a mothership operation. It orbits in an area, attenuates to its environment, actuates native networks, combines capabilities, and persists in unhospitable places. When done right, this alchemy provides greater effects than the small force structure would indicate.

Political Risk

Two factors suggest that the return of A-teams into Ukraine is feasible, reasonable, and ripe.

The first is that the Ukraine theater of operations has settled into a relatively predictable enemy-friendly battlespace geometry. The lines are fixed, for now. Ukrainian society has normalized in that macabre, unsettled manner of a state engaged in a perpetual war. Businesses are operating, schools are educating, farmers are harvesting. External supporters are back inside Ukraine as well. Embassy functionaries are returning, politicians are visiting, journalists and academics are free ranging. Ukraine’s wartime political economy, with its new, normative behaviors, is established. Returning to activities such as steady-state, safe-zone training of Ukrainian forces is a logical and natural evolution.

This new normal includes Russian munitions crashing into Ukrainian cities. This is deadly and psychologically unsettling for Ukrainian inhabitants, but militarily, this is also a deception. Lobbing cruise missiles into Ukrainian rear areas is how Russia erects a cheap and false demarcation of what constitutes an impassablewar zone. To allow this screening action to prohibit the forward-basing of U.S. forces is to give Russia an easy win at a cost it can sustain indefinitely. Here, military logic can light a path for political action: This is manageable and medium-risk operating space for U.S. military forces. The first declared footprint of a U.S. advisor in this space shatters this illusion and resets the war zone cartographically and psychologically in favor of Ukraine.

The second factor is that A-teams are a limited escalation measure that signals an elevated commitment but falls short of the confrontational arrival of a guidon-bearing U.S. armored brigade. To be clear, the A-teams will not deter the Russian military from continuing combat operations. But they will reassure the Ukrainian leadership and cut a wider path for allies to follow and support. The A-team presence suggested here is not a low-visibility, secretive operation. It is a declared presence. Such a policy adjustment, corporeally exhibited by A-teams inside Ukraine, provides ground actions that match the strident Washington words about its commitment to a Ukrainian victory. This will factor into Russian calculations in military planning and — where most wars end — at the negotiating table.

Risk calculations balance what can be lost against what might be gained. The introduction of A-teams exhibits political moxie at a moment where neither the West nor Ukraine nor Russia appear to have novel ideas or hidden aces. Ennui presents opportunity. In this moment of static battlefields, operational pauses, and electoral politics, there is a clear opening to seize the strategic initiative. The return of A-teams to Ukraine, for all its practical benefit, is a geopolitical chess move that shakes up the board precisely when Russia is sensing that its brutalist operational art has a path to victory.

Military Risk

The Pentagon task would be to forward-deploy, protect, and support U.S. soldiers within the range of Russian long-range fires. These forces would operate well behind the actual zones of direct contact. This is not new; it is a return to the U.S. advisory posture from 2015 to 2022 inside Ukraine, albeit under unsafe skies. To take this step, the U.S. military should override its convention of providing “golden hour” medevac, responsive air support, and the protective wrappings of U.S. conventional force power. A-teams are designed to operate outside of those support mechanisms and have been since their antecedents, the Jedburghs, parachuted into occupied France in 1944. For example, a special forces medic is trained in trauma management, field surgical procedures, and extended life-support care. Communicators operate a multitude of long-range communication systems that can withstand electronic warfare–heavy environments. Weapons sergeants will be comfortable in the arms bazaar of mix-and-match weapons platforms inside Ukrainian ranks. Engineers are explosives experts. By design, A-teams are “normalized for deviance” to operate in this very setting.

The A-team task would be to amplify Ukrainian capabilities by combining efforts. From the U.S. standpoint, this is still an indirect approach. U.S. soldiers would not directly confront Russians but instead would provide expertise to Ukrainians who have been, are, and will be fighting Russians. The teams would also be able to better observe, understand, and relay the hard-won wisdom from Ukrainians who have been doggedly fighting Russians. This would enable A-teams to provide informed inputs to calibrate the machinery of technical, logistical, and lethal support that pours into Ukraine daily. By moving this work into Ukraine proper, U.S. forces would be leaving the safety of living in protected NATO countries. U.S. forces would surely be at risk but would do so with the 31 million Ukrainian citizens living daily with an enemy at the gates.

Counterarguments

There are three obvious counterarguments that deserve consideration. The first is that U.S. military assistance is under way and is working. It is true that U.S. and NATO forces, A-teams included, have been training and equipping Ukrainian forces that rotate to European countries. The remote advise-and-assist model via video-teleconferences, digital transference, and third-country training programs is severely constraining. With Russia spending one-third of its budget on defense and with Western ammunition stockpiles exhausted, the continuation of this method is insufficient to tip the scales in Ukraine’s favor.

Indeed, Russian leaders assess that they can defeat this allied support arrangement through mass and with time. The moment is ripe to discomfit Russian confidence with a fuzzy math problem. Comparatively, the United States deployed more than 40 A-teams or sister service equivalents (Navy SEAL platoons, Marine Special Operations Teams) to Afghanistan and Iraq, simultaneously, for decades. If the Afghanistan and Iraq wars — wars of far less strategic consequence and low public interest — merited such a commitment, then surely this war merits some consideration. With even a fraction of that force, the United States could alter the strategic landscape in Ukraine. This move presents horizontal escalation and positional warfare combined with psychological bravura. Actual numbers notwithstanding, this gives Russia a dilemma to manage. This cannot be done from bases in Poland and Germany.

The second counterargument points to the inability of A-teams (and advisors more broadly) to tip the scales in places like Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, A-team partnership with Afghan forces occurred inside a disintegrating political and social order. The U.S.-trained Afghan commandos fought well, but the population had no commitment to the ruling government and exhibited low interest in fighting for a political order that they often could not see, understand, or feel. The political backdrop in Ukraine is the opposite. Ukrainian democracy has demonstrated its legitimacy, the government survived a decapitation strike, and its people withstood and repelled an annihilationist invasion. Ukraine has employed Western material assistance to great effect and at the estimated cost of 500,000 casualties. Matching capabilities to needs is essential, but doing so inside a favorable political context is rare and distinguishes this option from similar-looking advisory missions.

The third concern is the fear of a “forever war” and the specter of American casualties. There is a distinction between a forever war and a steadfast partner. Helping the Ukrainian military to train their forces is less of the former and more of the latter. It is hard to envision a world with Russia in it where the United States would not seek Ukraine as an enduring partner. This requires investment and assurance. Few words can match the power of a small and steady U.S. presence of highly qualified “quiet professionals.” U.S. advisors in Ukraine would demonstrate resolve, and with that resolve comes the requisite political and personal risks of U.S. casualties. This risk can be reduced but not eliminated. This is why the A-team, both as a practical instrument and as a well-understood tool of hazardous statecraft, presents a better political option, for now, than the introduction of advisors from units such as the U.S. Army Security Force Assistance Brigades.

Assumptions and Provocations

The assumptions that underpinned the counter-Kremlin playbook have been shattered, repeatedly and frequently. Leading up to and after the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion, the United States incrementally provided support that was once unthinkable: intelligence disclosures, high-mobility artillery rocket systems, Army tactical missile systems, M1 Abrams tanks, Patriot air defense systems, F-16s. Russian threats are to be taken seriously but should not dictate Western options. In that vein, the consideration of “boots on the ground” deserves a fresh look. The anxiety over U.S. soldiers stepping into Ukraine is a pathology of U.S. origin, not a Russian red line. The debate over U.S. soldiers operating on Ukrainian territory, a necessary and justifiable conversation, requires an animating idea and a sensible starting point. Statecraft includes updating assumptions and hazarding perceived provocations against strategic openings. If U.S. politics can find the unity to act, the mechanics of reintroducing A-teams in a training and advising role is, surprisingly, a routine military task.

Conclusion

The dialogue characterizing this war is progressively dominated by the shop talk of the industrialist: munitions provided, weapons procured, drones built, conscripts mobilized, mines laid. Yielding to this reductive framing favors Russia. To displace terms of industry with terms of art, there is a harmonic convergence of capability, opportunity, and risk that is present now. One capability is the A-team, designed precisely for this environment. The opportunity is the stalemated ground war, which also provides a stabilized, regularized Ukrainian rear area. The risk calculation is to horizontally escalate not as a provocation but as a normalization and a reframing of U.S. support thresholds. Taken together, this is a measured military path ripe for political action. The next graduated response option is ready: Send in the A-teams.

Become a Member

Brian Petit, a retired U.S. Army colonel, teaches and consults on strategy, planning, special operations, and resistance. He is an adjunct for the Joint Special Operations University.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Brian Petit · March 7, 2024

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 6, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-6-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk stated on March 6 that Ukraine will try to seize the initiative and conduct unspecified counteroffensive actions in 2024.
• Russian forces conducted a relatively larger series of drone and missile strikes targeting Ukraine on the night of March 5 to 6 and on March 6, including strikes on Odesa City during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
• Kremlin officials continue to invoke nuclear threats as part of ongoing Russian information operations aimed at weakening Western support for Ukraine and deterring Western aid to Ukraine.
• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Rafael Grossi and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the security of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and nuclear non-proliferation issues on March 6 in Sochi, Russia.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the governor of pro-Russian Moldovan autonomous region Gagauzia, Yevgenia Gutsul, on March 6 and emphasized Russia’s support for Gagauzia.
• Moldova suspended the Cold War-era Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty on March 6.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a drone strike on a mining and processing plant in Kursk Oblast on March 6.
• Armenia appears to be taking limited measures to reduce its bilateral security cooperation with Russia outside of its reduced participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kupyansk and Donetsk City and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• The Russian legal system continues efforts to use the Russian criminal justice system to augment Russia’s recruitment base.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 6, 2024

Mar 6, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 6, 2024

Angelica Evans, Riley Bailey, Nicole Wolkov, Karolina Hird, and George Barros

March 6, 2024, 5:20pm 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 see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

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 map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.|

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:00 pm ET on March 6. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the March 7 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk stated on March 6 that Ukraine will try to seize the initiative and conduct unspecified counteroffensive actions in 2024.[1] Pavlyuk stated that Ukrainian forces will aim to stabilize the frontline while degrading Russian forces in order to rotate frontline Ukrainian units to training grounds in the rear for replenishment and restoration.[2] Pavlyuk stated that this will allow Ukraine to create a grouping of forces that will conduct unspecified counteroffensive actions (possibly but not necessarily counteroffensive operations) in 2024.[3] Pavlyuk stated that Russian forces are concentrating offensive efforts near Avdiivka, in the direction of Chasiv Yar (west of Bakhmut), and in the Lyman direction and that Russian forces are trying to maintain a relatively high tempo of offensive operations along the frontline in order to retain the theater-wide initiative.[4] Pavlyuk stated that Russian forces are currently suffering significant losses and assessed that Ukrainian forces will stabilize the frontline in the near future.[5] A Ukrainian effort to contest the initiative in 2024 is operationally sound. Russia will be able to determine the location, time, scale, and requirements of fighting in Ukraine as long as it retains the theater-wide initiative, which may allow Russia to force Ukraine to expend materiel and manpower in reactive defensive operations, denying Ukraine the ability to amass the materiel necessary for future counteroffensive operations.[6] ISW continues to assess that it would be unwise for Ukraine to cede the advantage of the theater-wide initiative to Russia for longer than is necessary.[7]

Continued delays in Western security assistance will likely postpone Ukrainian efforts to regain the theater-wide initiative, however. Materiel shortages are forcing Ukrainian forces to husband materiel and uncertainty about future assistance is likely constraining Ukrainian operational planning.[8] Delays in crucial assistance will force Ukraine to make difficult decisions about how to allocate resources between future operationally significant counteroffensive operations and ongoing Ukrainian defensive operations against Russian attackers who currently hold the initiative.[9] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently stated that Ukrainian forces are planning to conduct counteroffensive operations in 2024 but stressed that Ukraine’s primary objective remains the defense of Ukrainian territory.[10] Zelensky has also stated that Russia is preparing a new offensive effort that will start in late May or summer 2024, which would likely further postpone opportunities for Ukraine to prepare and launch counteroffensive operations.[11] Well-provisioned Ukrainian forces have proven capable of preventing even marginal Russian gains during large-scale Russian offensive efforts and are capable of heavily degrading attacking Russian forces.[12] Western security assistance is crucial for both Ukraine’ ability to concentrate material and manpower for future counteroffensive operations as well as its ability to degrade Russian offensive efforts sufficiently enough so that Ukraine can seize the theater wide initiative.

Russian forces conducted a relatively larger series of drone and missile strikes targeting Ukraine on the night of March 5 to 6 and on March 6, including strikes on Odesa City during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that on the night of March 5 to 6 Russian forces launched five S-300 missiles from occupied Donetsk Oblast and 42 Shahed-136/131 drones from occupied Crimea, Kursk Oblast, and Krasnodar Krai.[13] The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Ukrainian forces downed 38 Shahed drones over Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, and Sumy oblasts.[14] Russian forces later targeted port infrastructure in Odesa City on March 6 with an unspecified number of missiles during Zelensky‘s and Mitsotakis’ visit to the Odesa Port.[15] Western media reported that a Russian missile struck within several hundred meters of a convoy transporting Zelensky and Mitsotakis.[16] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces launched a high-precision missile strike on a hanger in the Odesa Port where Ukrainian forces were preparing naval drones for operations.[17]

Kremlin officials continue to invoke nuclear threats as part of ongoing Russian information operations aimed at weakening Western support for Ukraine and deterring Western aid to Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov reiterated on March 6 that Russia will only use nuclear weapons if “something” threatens Russia’s existence — a longstanding Russian nuclear weapon usage talking point.[18] Peskov also accused the West of “routinizing” the topic of nuclear war, which Peskov called ”extremely dangerous” and “irresponsible,” despite the fact that it is, in fact, Russian officials, who most frequently openly threaten employing nuclear weapons. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded to Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s recent statement about NATO membership providing Finland a nuclear deterrent by claiming that American nuclear facilities in northern Europe would be “legitimate targets” for Russia in a hypothetical direct conflict between Russia and NATO.[19] Zakharova threatened that the security of countries who received nuclear weapons from the US will “clearly suffer.” Russian Federation Council Chairperson Valentina Matviyenko stated that Russian needs to reassess and denounce international agreements that do not serve Russia’s national interests, specifically unspecified international agreements signed by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet and Russian leaders.[20] Matviyenko’s statement suggests a Russian interest in denouncing a wide variety of international agreements, potentially including nuclear proliferation and security agreements. ISW has recently observed several Kremlin officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, engaged in nuclear saber rattling but continues to assess that Russian nuclear use in Ukraine and beyond remains highly unlikely.[21]

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Rafael Grossi and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the security of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and nuclear non-proliferation issues on March 6 in Sochi, Russia.[22] Grossi stated that he had an “important exchange” with Putin about the “nuclear safety and security” of the ZNPP, which Russian forces have controlled for over two years.[23] The Kremlin and Russian state-run news outlets highlighted Grossi’s visit to Russia, likely as part of an ongoing effort to portray Russia as a responsible operator of the ZNPP and to prompt international recognition for the Russian occupation of the ZNPP and occupied Ukraine.[24]

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the governor of pro-Russian Moldovan autonomous region Gagauzia, Yevgenia Gutsul, on March 6 and emphasized Russia’s support for Gagauzia. Putin and Gutsul met on the sidelines of the World Youth Festival in Sochi and discussed “complex regional and geopolitical issues,” which Gutsul claimed Gagauzia is at the “epicenter of.”[25] Gutsul informed Putin about the “lawless actions” of Moldovan authorities and claimed that Moldova is systematically ”taking away [Gagauzia’s] powers, limiting the budget, violating legal rights, [and] provoking instability and destabilization in Gagauzia and throughout [Moldova].”[26] Gutsul claimed that Putin “promised to support Gagauzia and the Gagauz people in defending [their] legitimate rights, powers, and positions in the international arena.” Gutsul also met with various Russian officials and agreed to intensify economic and cultural ties with Krasnodar Krai and Penza and Pskov oblasts on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum.[27] Gutsul recently met with Russian Federation Council Chairperson Valentina Matviyenko, who emphasized Russia’s support for Gagauzia against perceived Moldovan “oppression.”[28] Gutsul’s trip to Russia follows the February 28 Congress of Deputies in pro-Russian Moldova breakaway region Transnistria, which requested “zashchita” (defense/protection) from Russia in response to alleged increasing pressure from Moldova.[29] Putin did not respond to the February 28 Transnistrian request, but the Transnistrian requests still afford the Kremlin a wide range of possible courses of action (COAs) at a later time.[30] It is unclear why Putin would choose to meet with Gutsul and engage with Gagauzian authorities after declining to respond to Transnistria’s request for defense/protection. The Kremlin’s recent high-level interactions with Gagauzian authorities after a previous rhetorical focus on Transnistria supports ISW assessment that the Kremlin desires to use both of Moldova’s pro-Russian regions to justify hybrid operations aimed a destabilizing and further polarizing Moldova ahead of Moldova’s EU accession negotiations and the Moldovan presidential election later in 2024.[31]

Moldova suspended the Cold War-era Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty on March 6.[32] Twenty-two NATO members and Warsaw Pact states signed the CFE Treaty in 1990, and it was ratified in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union.[33] The CFE was meant to set equal limits on the number of tanks, armored combat vehicles, heavy artillery, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters between NATO and Warsaw Pact states in order to counterbalance the Soviet Union’s advantage in conventional weapons systems in the final years of the Cold War.[34] Moldovan officials stated that Moldova is suspending the CFE Treaty because there has been a “fundamental change in circumstances” in the international security environment since the original signing of the treaty.[35] Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairperson Andrei Kartapolov responded to the Moldovan decision and claimed that it is against Russian interests, despite the fact that Russia itself withdrew from the treaty in 2023.[36] Russian officials’ negative response to Moldova’s decision further suggests that the Kremlin desires to maintain influence over Moldova using a variety of avenues.

The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a drone strike on a mining and processing plant in Kursk Oblast on March 6. Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported on March 6 that unspecified GUR sources stated that GUR conducted a drone strike on the Mikhailovsky Mining and Processing Plant in Zheleznogorsk, Kursk Oblast.[37] Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoit claimed that a Ukrainian drone struck a fuel depot in Zheleznogorsk causing a fire and that another Ukrainian drone struck the Mikhailovsky Mining and Processing Plant.[38] Ukrainska Pravda reported that the Mikhailovsky Mining and Processing plants is one of the largest iron ore mining enterprises in Russia. The US has sanctioned the Mikhailovsky Mining and Processing Plant’s holding company, Metalloinvest.[39]

Armenia appears to be taking limited measures to reduce its bilateral security cooperation with Russia outside of its reduced participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan stated on March 6 that Armenia officially informed Russia that “only Armenian border guards” should perform duties at Zvarnots International Airport in Yerevan.[40] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Armenian service Radio Azatutyun reported that Russian border guards have been serving at the Zvarnots Airport since the signing of a 1992 Armenian-Russian agreement which regulates Russian forces in Armenia but does not specifically mention a Russian presence at Zvarnots Airport.[41]

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk stated on March 6 that Ukraine will try to seize the initiative and conduct unspecified counteroffensive actions in 2024.
• Russian forces conducted a relatively larger series of drone and missile strikes targeting Ukraine on the night of March 5 to 6 and on March 6, including strikes on Odesa City during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
• Kremlin officials continue to invoke nuclear threats as part of ongoing Russian information operations aimed at weakening Western support for Ukraine and deterring Western aid to Ukraine.
• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Rafael Grossi and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the security of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and nuclear non-proliferation issues on March 6 in Sochi, Russia.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the governor of pro-Russian Moldovan autonomous region Gagauzia, Yevgenia Gutsul, on March 6 and emphasized Russia’s support for Gagauzia.
• Moldova suspended the Cold War-era Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty on March 6.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a drone strike on a mining and processing plant in Kursk Oblast on March 6.
• Armenia appears to be taking limited measures to reduce its bilateral security cooperation with Russia outside of its reduced participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
• Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kupyansk and Donetsk City and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• The Russian legal system continues efforts to use the Russian criminal justice system to augment Russia’s recruitment base.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these 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 the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against 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 Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces recently advanced northeast of Kupyansk amid continued positional fighting along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on March 6. Geolocated footage published on March 5 indicates that Russian infantry recently advanced on the northern outskirts of Synkivka.[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced several hundred meters in depth near Terny (west of Kreminna) and seized several unspecified Ukrainian strongpoints, although ISW has not observed confirmation of this claim.[43] Positional fighting continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; northwest of Svatove near Tabaivka; west of Kreminna near Yampolivka and Terny; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna) and Verkhnokamianske.[44] Ukrainian Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration Head Oleh Synehubov stated that Russian forces have concentrated roughly 100,000 personnel in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions and that roughly 40,000 of those Russian personnel are combat personnel.[45] Synehubov added that Russian forces are currently conducting mechanized assaults in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions with MT-LB armored fighting vehicles instead of with tanks.[46]

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 reportedly advanced near Bakhmut amid continued positional fighting in the area on March 6. Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated that Russian forces advanced in the direction of Bohdanivka-Kalynivka (northwest of Bakhmut) and Ivanivske-Stupochky (west of Bakhmut).[47] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces seized an unspecified forest area north of Bohdanivka (west of Bakhmut) and marginally advanced near Ivanivske (west of Bakhmut), although ISW has not observed visual evidence of Russian advances in either of these areas.[48] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continues near Spirne (northeast of Bakhmut); near Ivanivske; and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka, Andriivka, and Bila Hora.[49] Elements of the Russian 331st and newly-formed 299th airborne (VDV) regiments (both of the 98th VDV Division) are operating north and south of Bohdanivka and elements of the 11th VDV Brigade are operating near Ivanivske.[50]

Positional engagements continued near Avdiivka on March 6, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in the area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued northwest of Avdiivka near Berdychi, Orlivka, and Semenivka; west of Avdiivka near Tonenke; and southwest of Avdiivka near Vodyane, Pervomaiske, and Nevelske.[51] One Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces control around half of Tonenke and Pervomaiske and most of Orlivka, while another milblogger claimed that Russian forces control two thirds of Tonenke and half of Orlivka.[52] Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian forces control the eastern half of Berdychi.[53] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems are interfering with Russian drone operations near Lastochkyne (northwest of Bakhmut) and claimed that Russian forces need to create drone and EW coordination centers.[54] The milblogger also claimed that Russian assaults have “slowed down” west of Avdiivka as retreating Ukrainian forces consolidate on new defensive lines. The milblogger claimed that the increasing degradation of Russian forces in the area is exposing issues with planning and coordination between Russian military command and frontline units.[55] The Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Press Service reported that Ukrainian forces have established a second line of defensive fortifications in the Avdiivka direction, equipped with asphalt support points for higher and more secure trench walls, anti-tank trenches, concrete bunkers, dragon’s teeth, and other fortifications.[56] Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces have also equipped fortifications with unspecified protection against Russian shelling and drone strikes.[57]

Russian forces recently marginally advanced west of Donetsk City amid continued positional fighting west and southwest of Donetsk City on March 6. Geolocated footage published on March 6 indicates that Russian forces recently marginally advanced in Heorhiivka (west of Donetsk City).[58] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced along Heolohichna, Lermontova, and Zhalyznichna streets in the southern outskirts of Krasnohorivka (west of Donetsk City) and achieved unspecified success north of Pobieda (southwest of Donetsk City).[59] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced in Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City).[60] ISW has not observed visual evidence of these claims. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued near Krasnohorivka, Heorhiivka, Pobieda, Novomykhailivka.[61] Elements of the Russian 238th Artillery Brigade (8th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) are reportedly operating near Heorhiivka.[62]

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Prechystivka (southeast of Velyka Novosilka) in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on March 6.[63]

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

Russian forces recently made confirmed advances in western Zaporizhia Oblast amid continued positional engagements on March 6. Geolocated footage published on March 5 and 6 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced east of Robotyne and northwest of Verbove (east of Robotyne).[64] Positional engagements continued near Robotyne and Verbove.[65] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces operating in the Zaporizhia direction do not have a sufficient number of drones and that Russian forces operating near Robotyne lack adequate counter-battery and electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.[66] Elements of the Russian 71st Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade and 39th Separate Covering Brigade (both of the 35th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Eastern Military District [EMD]) are reportedly operating in the Zaporizhia direction.[67]

Limited positional engagements continued near Krynky in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on March 6.[68] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces intensified shelling and loitering munition strikes on Ukrainian positions in the Kherson direction.[69]

Ukrainian Navy Spokesperson Captain Third Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk reported on March 6 that Ukrainian forces have destroyed or damaged roughly one third of Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) vessels since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[70] Pletenchuk stated that Ukrainian forces have struck 27 vessels, and that 15 of these struck Russian vessels are under repair. Pletenchuk stated that the BSF maintains a “fairly serious” presence in the Black Sea including 10 missile carriers, three submarines, two missile boats, and several patrol and guard ships. Pletenchuk reported that the BSF has five large amphibious landing ships in service, four of which are undergoing repair.

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

See topline text.

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

The Russian legal system continues efforts to use the Russian criminal justice system to augment Russia’s recruitment base. Russian outlet Kommersant reported on March 6 that the Russian State Duma will consider a new bill that proposes a mechanism that will exempt individuals from criminal punishment if they sign a military contract during “a military operation.”[71] The legal mechanism reportedly applies to suspects under investigation for lower-level crimes and current convicts and will allow cases against the individuals to be suspended if they complete the term of their military contract. An investigation by Russian opposition outlet Verstka similarly details the role that some Russian courts play in sending convicts to the frontline and found that some Russian courts have been offering convicts deferments on their sentences and an expungement of their criminal records if they sign contracts with the Russian military and go to the front.[72] Verstka noted that courts can grant such sentencing deferments through Article 398 of the Russian Criminal Code, a previously scarcely-used provision that allows deferment of sentences in ”exceptional cases” that Russian courts have been using much more frequently since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.[73] Courts are reportedly granting sentencing deferments to those convicted of lower-level crimes such as drunk driving or failure to pay child support, but Verstka noted that not all courts apply this practice evenly, as some judges believe that mobilization should not be a way out of serving time for committing a crime. Verstka stated that courts that do grant sentencing deferments either grant them for six months or until the end of a service contract. Russian human rights organization “Rus Sidyashchaya” (Russia Behind Bars) reported that the Russian Penal Executive Inspectorate actively advertises this as an option for convicts.[74]

A group of Indian nationals alleged that Russian authorities coerced them to join the Russian military and sent them to fight in Ukraine with two weeks of training.[75] Social media footage posted on March 6 shows a group of seven individuals in military uniform claiming that they visited Russia from India for New Years on tourist visas and then went to visit Belarus, where Belarusian officials detained them for not having visas and then transferred them to Russian authorities. The Indian nationals stated that Russian authorities told them that if they did not sign service contracts, they would face 10 years imprisonment. A prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian authorities likely did not forcibly mobilize the men, and rather that they joined the Russian military voluntarily and changed their minds upon experiencing combat.[76] The Indian Ministry of External Affairs recently stated that India is aware of several Indian nationals serving in the Russian army and trying to secure the “early discharge” of 20 Indian nationals who were reportedly working as support staff for Russian forces.[77]

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the Almaz-Antey defense industrial base (DIB) enterprise on March 6. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) posted footage showing Shoigu inspecting Almaz-Antey, where Almaz-Antey Director General Gennady Mendersky spoke about the enterprise’s efforts to create and test various anti-drone platforms. [78] Shoigu also visited the Avangard Moscow Machine-Building Plant and inspected anti-aircraft missile production.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Kremlin newswire TASS reported on March 6 that Russia is developing a new and advanced version of the “Bulat” drone detector.[79] TASS reported that St. Petersburg-based drone suppression company 3mx has developed a fourth version of the “Bulat” drone detector that has an expanded frequency range and can link 30 individual sensors.[80] 3mx reported that they will begin delivering the “Bulat” detectors to the combat zone in Ukraine in May 2024.

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Note: ISW will be publishing its coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts on a weekly basis in the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. ISW will continue to track developments in Ukrainian defense industrial efforts daily and will refer to these efforts in assessments within the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and other ISW products when necessary.

ISW is not publishing coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts today.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Note: ISW will be publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas twice a week in the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. ISW will continue to track activities in Russian-occupied areas daily and will refer to these activities in assessments within the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and other ISW products when necessary.

ISW is not publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas today.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

See topline text.

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Belarus continues to develop bilateral security ties with Middle Eastern partner states. Belarusian Minister of Internal Affairs Ivan Kubrakov and representatives of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs and Belarusian police force visited the World Police Summit in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on March 6.[81] Kubrakov and the Belarusian delegation learned about the practices of UAE law enforcement in the field of domestic security and presented Belarus’ own experience in this sphere. Belarusian Deputy Head of the Department of International Cooperation Colonel Dmitry Ryabikhin also met with Qatari Department for Work with Military Attachés Head Colonel Nasser Ali al-Thani at the Doha International Maritime Defense Exhibition and Conference (DIMDEX-24) on March 6 to discuss issues of bilateral Qatari-Belarusian military cooperation.[82]

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.

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 6, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-march-6-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Iran and the Israel-Hamas War: IRGC Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani said on March 6 that Iran’s proxies and partners have taken a more “offensive stance” in the Israel-Hamas war, which frames the war in terms consistent with Iran’s regional military doctrine.
• Iran and the Axis aim to seize the operational initiative to dictate the tempo and terms of action in conflict and force Iran’s adversaries to react constantly.
• IRGC Commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami said in 2022 that Palestinian militias needed to focus on successive offensive ground operations into Israel instead of defensive, static wars using their rocket systems.
• Yemen: The Houthis launched anti-ship missiles on March 6 that targeted a Greek-operated Barbados-flagged bulk-carrier in the Gulf of Aden and damaged the ship, killing two crewmembers and injuring at least six more.
• Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian militias claimed most of their attacks targeting Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip in southern Gaza City on March 6.
• Negotiations: Hamas said on March 6 that it will continue ceasefire negotiations and claimed that it has “shown flexibility” in the talks. Egyptian officials with knowledge of the talks told the Wall Street Journal on March 6 that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamal prevented Hamas from walking away from negotiations.

IRAN UPDATE, MARCH 6, 2024

Mar 6, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, March 6, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Amin Soltani, Johanna Moore, Alexandra Braverman, Peter Mills, Marcus Mildenberger, Christian Engfer, and Brian Carter

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report. Click here to subscribe to the Iran Update.

IRGC Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani said on March 6 that Iran’s proxies and partners have taken a more “offensive stance” in the Israel-Hamas war, which frames the war in terms consistent with Iran’s regional military doctrine.[1] Ghaani issued this statement during a speech to the Assembly of Experts. Iran and the Axis aim to seize the operational initiative to dictate the tempo and terms of action in conflict and force Iran’s adversaries to react constantly.[2] IRGC Commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami said in 2022 that Palestinian militias needed to focus on successive offensive ground operations into Israel instead of defensive, static wars using their rocket systems.[3] CTP-ISW previously assessed that Hamas’ decision to conduct a ground attack into Israel on October 7 may have been based on what Salami outlined in August 2022.[4]

The Houthis launched anti-ship missiles on March 6 that targeted a Greek-operated Barbados-flagged bulk-carrier in the Gulf of Aden and damaged the ship, killing two crewmembers and injuring at least six more.[5] The Houthi attack on March 6 forced the crew to abandon ship.[6] The crew was made up of south and southeast Asian nationals. The bulk-carrier, True Confidence, was carrying steel products and trucks from China to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.[7]

The March 6 attack is the first that has caused fatalities since the Houthis began attacking civilian ships in the Red Sea in November 2023. The Houthi attacks prior to March 6 were not calibrated to avoid casualties, however. These attacks—using drones, ballistic, and cruise missiles—risk the death of civilian crewmembers in every instance. A Houthi attack on February 18 that targeted the MV Rubymar caused the crew to abandon ship on February 18 and resulted in the sinking of the vessel on March 3.[8]

Houthi-affiliated media claimed that the United States and the United Kingdom conducted two airstrikes targeting Hudaydah International Airport on March 6.[9]

Palestinian militias claimed most of their attacks targeting Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip in southern Gaza City on March 6. Palestinian fighters used RPGs, sniper rifles, and mortars to target Israeli forces in Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City.[10] PIJ fighters mortared an IDF combat outpost south of Gaza City.[11] The IDF concluded a two-week long operation in Zaytoun on March 2 to re-clear Hamas fighters there.[12] Ongoing Palestinian attacks in the area suggest that Israeli forces did not fully clear Zaytoun and that Palestinian militias in southern Gaza City likely retain some capacity to fight.

Key Takeaways:

• Iran and the Israel-Hamas War: IRGC Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani said on March 6 that Iran’s proxies and partners have taken a more “offensive stance” in the Israel-Hamas war, which frames the war in terms consistent with Iran’s regional military doctrine.
• Iran and the Axis aim to seize the operational initiative to dictate the tempo and terms of action in conflict and force Iran’s adversaries to react constantly.
• IRGC Commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami said in 2022 that Palestinian militias needed to focus on successive offensive ground operations into Israel instead of defensive, static wars using their rocket systems.
• Yemen: The Houthis launched anti-ship missiles on March 6 that targeted a Greek-operated Barbados-flagged bulk-carrier in the Gulf of Aden and damaged the ship, killing two crewmembers and injuring at least six more.
• Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian militias claimed most of their attacks targeting Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip in southern Gaza City on March 6.
• Negotiations: Hamas said on March 6 that it will continue ceasefire negotiations and claimed that it has “shown flexibility” in the talks. Egyptian officials with knowledge of the talks told the Wall Street Journal on March 6 that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamal prevented Hamas from walking away from negotiations.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

The IDF conducted several airstrikes targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) infrastructure and personnel in the northern Gaza Strip. The IDF Air Force killed two Palestinian fighters in Beit Hanoun who had fled to an unspecified “military location.”[13] The IDF also killed two Palestinian fighters involved in the October 7, 2023, attack and three commanders in Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces.[14] The IDF also struck Hamas and PIJ infrastructure in Jabalia, where Palestinian fighters had launched rockets into Israel within the last week.[15] The IDF struck apartments where Palestinian fighters stored weapons, as well as other weapons depots, rocket launchers, and tunnels.[16] Palestinian Mujahideen Movement fighters also targeted an Israeli tank with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) east of Jabalia on March 6.[17]

The IDF reported on March 6 that it killed the Hamas’ commander who oversaw rocket fire from the central Gaza Strip into Israel.[18] The IDF reported that the leader, Amar Atiya Darwish Aladani, was a military commander in Hamas for the past several decades and directed attacks targeting Israeli forces in the Strip and into Israel during the current war. Aladani also played a significant role in planning the October 7, 2023, attack, according to the IDF.

Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in northern Khan Younis on March 6. The IDF 89th Commando Brigade (98th Division) raided buildings in the Hamad neighborhood that Hamas fighters had used previously. The 89th Commando Brigade captured several Palestinian fighters, including a commander from a Hamas sniper cell.[19] Israeli forces detained approximately 250 PIJ and Hamas fighters in the neighborhood.[20] The Bislamach Brigade demolished buildings and clashed with Palestinian fighters in Qarara.[21] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the self-proclaimed military wing of Fatah and aligned with Hamas in the war, fired at two Israeli soldiers in Qarara.[22] A Palestinian activist reported clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in Hamad and Qarara.[23]

Hamas said on March 6 that it will continue ceasefire negotiations and claimed that it has “shown flexibility” in the talks.[24] Hamas reiterated its demands for a permanent ceasefire, the return of displaced people, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces, and sufficient humanitarian aid.[25] Hamas has consistently held its position on a permanent ceasefire.[26] Some of these elements, particularly the permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces, are an obstacle in the ongoing negotiations.

Egyptian officials with knowledge of the talks told the Wall Street Journal on March 6 that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamal prevented Hamas from walking away from negotiations.[27]

Hamas’ proposal for a ceasefire includes the release of high-level Palestinian prisoners, according to Jordanian media.[28] The prisoners include a ”top“ Hamas “bombmaker” and the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is a secular leftist Palestinian faction fighting with Hamas in the war. Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip are operating in a loose coalition and have aligned their stances in ceasefire negotiations.[29] Hamas has previously demanded the release of other high-level prisoners, including members of its elite Nukhba force.[30]

Parts of the Gaza Strip are experiencing a near-total telecommunications disruption. NetBlocks reported on March 5 that the disruption is particularly serious in the southern Gaza Strip.[31]

Palestinian militias did not claim any indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel on March 6.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces have clashed with Palestinian fighters at least three times in the West Bank since CTP-ISW's last data cut off on March 5.[32] The IDF detained 17 Palestinians in the West Bank overnight.[33]

Palestinian youth demonstrated in Qalandiya refugee camp north of Jerusalem against several countries for the temporary suspension of funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East’s operations.[34]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah has conducted at least four attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 5.[35]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq —a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias— claimed it launched drones targeting Kiryat Shmona airport on March 6.[36] The group separately claimed it launched drones targeting the Haifa power station near the airport on March 5.[37] The IDF has not acknowledged either attack. CTP-ISW cannot confirm that these attacks took place. 

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Iraqi President Abdel Latif al Rashid met with Russian Ambassador to Iraq Elbrus Kutrashev on March 6 to discuss Russian investment in Iraq and strengthening bilateral relations.[38] Russian and Iraqi officials have discussed Russian investment in Iraq in a series of meetings since January 2024, including several meetings focused on security cooperation.[39] CTP-ISW assessed on February 20 that Russia may be setting conditions to supplant the United States as a security partner in Iraq in anticipation of the United States possibly reducing its military presence there.[40]

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki met with US Ambassador to Iraq Alina Romanowski and US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran and Iraq Affairs Victoria Taylor on March 6.[41] Maliki said that the Iraqi government is eager to implement the US-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement after the International Coalition’s mission in Iraq ends.[42] The United States and Iraq have held a series of ”working group” meetings since January 2024 to discuss the International Coalition’s mission in Iraq and present an assessment of the capabilities of Iraqi Security Forces and of the threat posed by ISIS.[43] These meetings are a precursor to negotiations that Iraq seeks to use to transition from a multilateral security relationship between Iraq and the International Coalition to unspecified bilateral relationships between Iraq and individual coalition member countries.[44]

A Houthi official confirmed the group’s close ties with Iran.[45] He said that Iran provided technology and military expertise that enhanced the Houthis’ military and intelligence operations.[46] He reiterated prior Houthi claims that the group will stop attacking ships transiting through the Red Sea when there is a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. .[47] The Houthis conducted attacks targeting international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden prior to the Israel-Hamas War. The group could conduct attacks targeting international shipping in the future at minimal cost for reasons of its own choosing, even if a ceasefire is secured.

Jordanian border guards shelled unspecified targets inside Syria near the border with Jordan on March 6.[48] A local Syrian outlet reported that the Jordanian border guards targeted several farms outside Nassib, Daraa Governorate, on the Syria-Jordan border, without providing additional details.

The shelling is likely part of increasing Jordanian operations against smuggling networks in southwestern Syria. Jordanian forces have clashed with Iranian-backed smugglers along the Jordan-Syria border four other times since December 2023, including once on February 7.[49] The Jordanian Royal Air Force has also struck Iranian-backed drug smugglers three times since December 2023.[50] Western media reported in January that Western and Jordanian officials said that Lebanese Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed groups are driving the increase in drug smuggling into Jordan.[51] The Syrian regime, Lebanese Hezbollah, and other Iranian-backed militias mass produce Captagon in Syria and smuggle it through Jordan to the Gulf Arab states. This smuggling and distribution cartel generates billions of dollars in revenue for Iran and its Axis of Resistance.[52]

Israel likely conducted a drone strike targeting Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) assets in eastern Syria on March 6. Syrian opposition media reported that a drone strike targeted an IRGC military vehicle in Mayadin, Deir ez Zor Governorate.[53] One Syrian outlet reported that the strike injured two IRGC personnel.[54] The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the strike killed three Iranian-backed militia members.[55] This outlet sometimes incorrectly reports casualty counts and other events and information.[56] The IDF Air Force has increased its strikes into Syria since December 2023 to disrupt the IRGC Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah’s efforts to bring personnel and weapons into Lebanon from Syria.[57] Previous strikes killed several IRGC officers in Syria since December 2023, including an IRGC Navy officer on March 1.[58]

Iranian state media claimed that Iran offloaded crude oil from the Marshall Islands-flagged Advantage Sweet on March 6.[59] Iranian media claimed on March 6 that Iran offloaded the oil in response to longstanding American and European oil sanctions.[60] The Artesh Navy seized the Advantage Sweet in the Gulf of Oman in April 2023 as the vessel was transporting oil from the UAE to the United States.[61] American oil company Chevron chartered the Advantage Sweet at the time of the seizure.[62] Iran initially seized the Advantage Sweet in retaliation for US sanctions enforcements efforts, which included confiscating and unloading Iranian oil from the Suez Rajan.[63]

The Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Ashtiani met with the Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan in Tehran on March 6.[64] Ashtiani said that countries in the region should be responsible for the security of the Caucasus region.Ashtiani was likely alluding to Iran’s belief that its adversaries outside the Caucasus, specifically the United States and Israel, are seeking to exploit conflict in the Caucasus to “undermine the security of the entire region.“[65] The Iranian regime has also historically accused Baku of allowing Israel to use Azerbaijani territory to launch operations against Iran, as CTP-ISW has reported on numerous occasions.[66]

4. Fort Liberty congressman speaks out against plans to cut Army special operations forces

I am afraid if Congress tries to intervene on these Army decisions it will harm the Army and that there will be blowback for SOF. SOF has long been protected by Congress (and would not even exist if it were not for Congress). But there are times that it should intervene and times that it should not. The Army and SOCOM have to work together for the good of both.

Today we are going to see a very interesting report from the Atlantic Council that is going to address many SOF issues to include the need for quantifying effects. I will send it out after the embargo is lifted.

Special operations forces in an era of strategic competition

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/event/special-operations-forces-in-an-era-of-strategic-competition/

Fort Liberty congressman speaks out against plans to cut Army special operations forces

Rachael Riley

Fayetteville Observer

fayobserver.com

Fort Liberty’s congressman released a statement Tuesday in response to the Army announcing last week that it plans to eliminate 32,000 jobs, which includes 3,000 special operations forces.

Rep. Richard Hudson said the cuts include intelligence analysts, psychological operations troops and logistics personnel — many based at Fort Liberty, home to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which counts about 53,700 soldiers among its troops.

In his statement, Hudson took aim at President Joe Biden and his administration.

“No matter how the Administration tries to spin it, these support troops play a critical role in the success of our special operators in remote locations around the world. Special operators are indispensable for training our allies and undertaking dangerous missions during times of conflict, serving as a crucial deterrent against enemies," he said. “At a time when the threat of China, Russia, and Iran is growing by the day, depleting our manpower only hurts our ability to combat our adversaries’ aggression and puts our national security at risk.

"If the Biden Administration understands the importance and value of special operations, they won’t move forward with these cuts."

An Army report on special operations stated that an analysis of large-scale combat in multiple theaters “indicated that existing Army SOF force structure meets or exceeds demand in large-scale conflict relative to other capabilities."

Officials identified positions that could be reduced and will prioritize the reduction of positions "that are historically vacant or hard to fill.”

Other cuts

The Army report stated that unfilled positions or jobs tied to previous counterinsurgency missions will be phased out.

The cuts are for jobs, and not individual soldiers, the report stated.

"The Army is not asking current soldiers to leave,” the report stated. “As the Army builds back-end strength over the next few years, most installations will likely see an increase in the number of soldiers actually stationed there.”

The reported stated that the reductions bring force structure and end strength into closer alignment.

Previous plans allowed for up to 494,000 troops, while the current force is about 445,000.

The report calls for 470,000 soldiers in the regular Army by fiscal year 2029.

Hudson expressed concerns about both the cuts and Army recruiting, along with other focuses.

“Rather than prioritizing radical DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and Green New Deal initiatives, the Army should be focused on ensuring our soldiers are the most prepared, equipped, lethal fighting force in the world,” he said.

The Army report stated that legacy formations previously sized for soldier-intensive counterinsurgency operations “will now be optimized for large-scale or multidomain combat operations.”

The report stated that the majority of adjudgments will be about 10,000 spots within close combat forces.

Those reductions include:

• Inactivating cavalry squadrons in continental U.S.-based Stryker brigade combat teams and infantry brigade combat teams.
• Eliminating some positions across regular Army security force assistance brigades representing a reduction to capacity at minimal risk.

The 82nd Airborne Division has several squadrons under its 73rd Cavalry Regiment at Fort Liberty, while Fort Liberty is also home to the Security Force Assistance Command and 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade.

What jobs the Army plans to add

While making cuts, the Army report stated that 7,500 positions will be added, which includes “significant investments in the force structure supporting integrated air and missile defense at the corps and division levels.”

Under the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty is the 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade.

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.

fayobserver.com

5. Starting from Beginning: Strengthening of Strategic Foreign Partnerships from Initial Acquisition Training, Education (US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School)

Important work by SWCS.

Strategic competition begins at home.

Excepts:

“Perhaps the greatest benefit of training here is the enduring interpersonal and professional relationships,” said Brig. Gen. Guillaume "Will" Beaurpere, commanding general of the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School during ceremony with the International Military Student Office.

The Special Warfare Center and School continually supports foreign partner immersion and embedding as part of initial acquisition training and education by providing language skills and cultural education for Army Special Operations Forces.

Beaurpere added that SWCS has approximately 40 international military students and international exchange officers representing 23 countries such as Germany, Canada, and Switzerland, among others enrolled at any given time in various courses throughout the SWCS campuses.

Allied partners send top officers and service members to receive professional training and education through SWCS, such as attending the Joint Special Operations Master of Arts Program, Army Special Operations Forces qualification courses, and liaison officers. Advanced skills training provides quality training to hone skills, including Military Freefall Jumpmaster Course in Yuma, Arizona.

Starting from Beginning: Strengthening of Strategic Foreign Partnerships from Initial Acquisition Training, Education

By Steve Morningstar, U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School Public Affairs OfficeMarch 6, 2024

https://www.army.mil/article/274310?fbclid

4 / 4

SHOW CAPTION +

This is a three-part series elaborating on U.S. Special Operations Command’s line of effort to expand and reinforce generational relationships with allies and partners at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.

"Your responsibilities may involve the command of more traditional forces, but in less traditional roles,” said President John F. Kennedy during a speech to West Point Class of 1962. “Men risking their lives, not as combatants, but as instructors or advisors, or as symbols of our nation's commitments."

Kennedy’s speech implies soft skills necessary for his view of a new way of engaging with foreign partners. It requires an in-depth understanding of culture, language, customs, and a willingness to apply the knowledge while immersed in the environment.

“Perhaps the greatest benefit of training here is the enduring interpersonal and professional relationships,” said Brig. Gen. Guillaume "Will" Beaurpere, commanding general of the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School during ceremony with the International Military Student Office.

The Special Warfare Center and School continually supports foreign partner immersion and embedding as part of initial acquisition training and education by providing language skills and cultural education for Army Special Operations Forces.

Beaurpere added that SWCS has approximately 40 international military students and international exchange officers representing 23 countries such as Germany, Canada, and Switzerland, among others enrolled at any given time in various courses throughout the SWCS campuses.

Allied partners send top officers and service members to receive professional training and education through SWCS, such as attending the Joint Special Operations Master of Arts Program, Army Special Operations Forces qualification courses, and liaison officers. Advanced skills training provides quality training to hone skills, including Military Freefall Jumpmaster Course in Yuma, Arizona.

Through this series, SWCS highlights intercultural exchanges in the training and education space through a variety of programs, events, and exercises. This includes the International Military Student Office and the Language, Regional Education, and Culture program under the 2nd Special Warfare Training Group. These lay the foundation of international partnerships by providing a world-class education in special operations and a first-rate intercultural experience.

For more information about the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, visit www.swcs.mil.

​6.​ Are drones the future? Not for everything, says Polish general

Excerpts:

Some observers present at the exercise shared concerns that not everyone in the West adapts tactics fast enough to match the requirements of modern warfare, ushered in by the Russia-Ukraine war.

While countries must keep a close eye on happenings there, Blazeusz cautioned that militaries should not try to simply duplicate strategies.

“Never in history was the next war an exact copy of the previous one, so we have to be really careful about identifying lessons learnt in Ukraine and then applying them, because yes, there’s clear indications of what we need to be doing, but we shouldn’t be looking to just replicate what they’re doing over there,” he said. “We have our own set of considerations [as a country] to think about.”

Are drones the future? Not for everything, says Polish general

Defense News · by Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo · March 6, 2024

KORZENIEWO, Poland — Militaries should be wary of applying lessons from the war in Ukraine and instead adapt for the battle yet to come, according to a top general in the Polish military.

While the war between Ukraine and Russia has emphasized the crucial role drones can play — and the threat they can pose to troops — Gen. Piotr Blazeusz remains unconvinced of their value during waterway crossings.

“Traditionally, you would not use drones just for a water crossing. You might use them for reconnaissance purposes to collect intelligence ahead of time, but while you are doing the actual crossing you would not really need them in the air,” the deputy chief of the General Staff told Defense News in an interview on the sidelines of the Polish-led Dragon drill held here. “You’d want them ahead, at the front, making sure there are no roadblocks, or identifying enemy positions or threats for the vehicles disembarking.”

During the March 4-5 drill, organized as part of NATO’s larger-scale Steadfast Defender exercise, drones were nowhere to be seen. A single unmanned aerial system — AeroVironment’s Puma drone — was visible during the static display portion but was reportedly not involved in the training. It had previously flown during the recently concluded NATO Brilliant Jump exercise.

In the last two years, the 2,200-kilometer-long (1,367-mile-long) Dnipro River — which flows through Russia, Belarus and Ukraine — has served as a critical part of the front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces as well as a major target for both sides.

In November, both Ukrainian and Russian officials confirmed that Ukrainian units were able to cross it and had established footholds on the east bank of the river.

Drone and aerial reconnaissance units were reportedly involved in the crossing operation, in part having provided cover for soldiers traversing and detecting Russian movements.

“Combat drones are probably of little use in a river crossing,” said Samuel Bendett, an adviser on Russian military capabilities at the Center for Naval Analyses. “What’s more important is to have ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] ones flying for constant overwatch, as well as a menagerie of counter-drone and electronic warfare systems to protect personnel and equipment.”

Blazeusz said one reason drones were not used as part of the Dragon demonstration at the Vistula River had to do with the smaller distance forces needed to cross.

“The Vistula crossing is only 320 meters, so it’s not that big. But if it was a longer distance, potentially you may want them, but we do have other means of communicating beyond just drones,” he explained.

In contrast, some parts of the Dnipro River in Ukraine can be nearly 1.6 kilometers long.

Some observers present at the exercise shared concerns that not everyone in the West adapts tactics fast enough to match the requirements of modern warfare, ushered in by the Russia-Ukraine war.

While countries must keep a close eye on happenings there, Blazeusz cautioned that militaries should not try to simply duplicate strategies.

“Never in history was the next war an exact copy of the previous one, so we have to be really careful about identifying lessons learnt in Ukraine and then applying them, because yes, there’s clear indications of what we need to be doing, but we shouldn’t be looking to just replicate what they’re doing over there,” he said. “We have our own set of considerations [as a country] to think about.”

Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.

7. The Cat-and-Mouse Game of Preventing Drone Nightmares

Excerpts:

But the experts assume it’s only a matter of time, and as NBC News reported last month, such fears have sent U.S. tech companies, working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), scrambling for ways to head off the all-too-real peril. Jacob told The Cipher Brief that roughly 100 firms are working on drone countermeasures, ranging from established defense contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to startups exploring a variety of spoofing and hacking devices to defeat drone systems.   

One effort specifically aimed at what DHS calls the “nefarious” use of drones involves a partnership between the department and the tech sector and academia, including Oklahoma State University and the University of North Dakota. The initiative is looking at both kinetic and non-kinetic domains to develop prototypes and help evaluate different drone countermeasures.  

Last week, DHS offered a preliminary assessment of two rounds of counter-drone field tests held last summer. The first involved kinetic means, or as DHS described it, “accelerating masses to physically alter, bring down, or destroy drones — forces such as projectiles, nets, photon plasma from lasers, and electromagnetic or radio waves.”  

The second round of DHS tests covered non-kinetic defenses designed to detect, track, and foil small drone swarms operating under remote control. One facet of the field test involved detecting and countering “dark drones,” those that emit little or no radio frequency signals. The scenarios included an enemy using drone swarms to interfere with first responders responding to a serious emergency, and a swarm assault on critical infrastructure. 

DHS noted that the results of the field tests are under review and will feed into additional assessments of counter-drone defenses to be done this summer. Still to be evaluated: the risks associated with the various counter-drone options, including the collateral damage that could result from putting them into operation. 

Given the constant give-and-take between drone threat and counter-threat, the cat-and-mouse analogy persists – and for now, solutions appear elusive.  

“You need a combination of different types of capabilities that are…specific to the context in which the defender is operating,” Kallenborn told The Cipher Brief. “There’s no silver bullet and I’m skeptical that there will ever be a silver bullet.” 

The Cat-and-Mouse Game of Preventing Drone Nightmares

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/the-cat-and-mouse-game-of-preventing-drone-nightmares

Posted: March 6th, 2024

By Ken Hughes

Senior Cyber and Technology Editor, The Cipher Brief

SUBSCRIBER+ EXCLUSIVE REPORTING – As drones of all types – aerial, land, and maritime – grow in number and sophistication, so do nightmarish scenarios about their use. Drone weapons have already been used to deadly effect by both sides in Ukraine and by Iran’s various proxies in the Middle East, but what worries military and technological experts are the drone weapons of the future – a future that they believe is right around the corner. 

Coming soon: AI-enabled drones that can pick out targets with no human direction; drones that might target U.S. infrastructure; and mass, synchronized movements of drones – so-called “drone swarms” –that might come after a military target. And experts say there is no reason to think that the U.S. and its allies will have anything close to a monopoly on these technologies. 

The autonomous weapons expert Zachary Kallenborn shared a nightmare scenario that he said would be perfectly plausible in the near future.  

“You send a whole bunch of drones equipped with facial recognition and search (Capitol Hill) for different congressmen who voted on a particular bill terrorists didn’t like,” Kallenborn told The Cipher Brief. “They could narrow the search to target only those people and no one else – no staffers, civilians, anything like that. Only those particular congressmen. It could be quite scary, but also ideal from the terrorists’ perspective.” 

Closer at hand, Kallenborn said, is the possible use of drones to disperse chemical or biological agents.

“Think about agricultural drones that are designed to release pesticides, which are more or less ready-made chemical biological weapons delivery systems,” he said. “They’ve got sprayers, valves, and vats that can hold hazardous chemicals and are designed to spray this type of material … I think that’s a very real concern, especially as agricultural drones are commercially available, and there’s currently no international regulations or restrictions on their transfer.” 

These scenarios add to the existing deadly menace that drone weapons already represent in one conflict zone after another – Ukraine, Israel, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, and elsewhere. 

Inevitably, the question becomes – how to defend against the threat? The Cipher Brief asked Kallenborn and other experts to explain how the U.S. and other countries are – or should be – preparing for the nightmares.  

A matter of volume 

The answer is immediately complicated by the vast array of drone weaponry already in use. 

There’s the improvised commercial quadcopter used for close-in combat in Ukraine. There are the medium-range “suicide” drones – Iran’s Shahed, for example – that have pulverized military and civilian targets in Ukraine and throughout the Middle East. Then there are the high-end Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the arsenals of the major powers – large, long-endurance platforms bristling with sensors and heavy munitions. 

The current focus on a few global hot zones shouldn’t obscure the fact that weaponized drones are everywhere. Today, 113 nations have access to military drones; a decade ago, the figure was only 58. Beyond nation-states, it’s estimated that 65 distinct non-state actors – insurgents, militias, drug cartels and other groups – have sophisticated drone weapons at their disposal.   

Nearly every new offensive drone weapon requires a countermeasure. And in the brave new world of drones, countermeasures don’t involve troops or conventional weapons.  

Several nations engaged in current conflicts – Ukraine, Russia, Israel, the U.S. and others – are already using counter-drone technologies, and rushing to develop enhancements. The challenge is keeping pace with the relentless innovations of drone makers. The Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office at the Pentagon, along with a corresponding program in NATO, are currently tasked with nothing but the work of countering drones.

The countermeasures break into two broad categories – kinetic and non-kinetic. 

Shaan Shaikh, deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), described the options when it comes to mounting effective solutions. “The interceptor of choice might depend on target type, range, quantity, location, and the potential for collateral damage, among other factors,” Shaikh told The Cipher Brief. “If you want to shoot down a large drone with a high probability of kill, then a kinetic interceptor may be best. But if you’re shooting down small drones in large numbers, then you may prefer using lasers or high-powered microwaves to intercept them at lower cost per shot.” 

In December, the U.S. State Department listed several kinetic counter-drone systems among the military gear it was sending to Ukraine – “Vampire” counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (c-UAS), c-UAS gun trucks, and mobile c-UAS laser-guided rockets. The Vampire is a portable system that can be mounted on trucks. It fires advanced precision rockets equipped with fuses designed to detonate in the proximity of a drone. 

Other NATO allies have provided non-kinetic counter-drone systems to Ukraine. Lithuania recently delivered “Skywiper” electronic drone mitigation systems, designed to interrupt radio frequency control and navigation operations, and thus send drones off their marks. Mobile signal jamming devices are widely used by both sides to counter drones, but these have inherent limitations; some systems require direct line-of-sight to the target, and unpredictable drone flight patterns can confuse tracking devices.   

Further clouding the picture, drone designers are rapidly developing workarounds to simple jamming methods – equipping their platforms to operate autonomously, meaning no signal connection to a ground operator is necessary. Russia’s Orlan-10 drones are an example; they possess advanced autonomous features that have allowed Russian forces to evade Ukrainian countermeasures and get through to their targets. The Orlan drones were reportedly a key factor in frustrating last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive.  

As Shaikh put it, “this is a cat-and-mouse game. UAS technologies improve, c-UAS defenses catch up, and the cycle repeats. Technology developments are unlikely to give either side a long-term advantage.” 

Waiting for a catastrophe 

Worried as they are, some experts say they are baffled by the fact that terrorists have yet to employ armed drones in an attack against civilian targets outside a war zone.   

Jamey Jacob, director of Oklahoma State University’s Aerospace Institute for Research and Education, noted that “the fact that we haven’t had any serious domestic incidents is a blessing, and really comes as a surprise due to the potential impact.” 

But the experts assume it’s only a matter of time, and as NBC News reported last month, such fears have sent U.S. tech companies, working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), scrambling for ways to head off the all-too-real peril. Jacob told The Cipher Brief that roughly 100 firms are working on drone countermeasures, ranging from established defense contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to startups exploring a variety of spoofing and hacking devices to defeat drone systems.   

One effort specifically aimed at what DHS calls the “nefarious” use of drones involves a partnership between the department and the tech sector and academia, including Oklahoma State University and the University of North Dakota. The initiative is looking at both kinetic and non-kinetic domains to develop prototypes and help evaluate different drone countermeasures.  

Last week, DHS offered a preliminary assessment of two rounds of counter-drone field tests held last summer. The first involved kinetic means, or as DHS described it, “accelerating masses to physically alter, bring down, or destroy drones — forces such as projectiles, nets, photon plasma from lasers, and electromagnetic or radio waves.”  

The second round of DHS tests covered non-kinetic defenses designed to detect, track, and foil small drone swarms operating under remote control. One facet of the field test involved detecting and countering “dark drones,” those that emit little or no radio frequency signals. The scenarios included an enemy using drone swarms to interfere with first responders responding to a serious emergency, and a swarm assault on critical infrastructure. 

DHS noted that the results of the field tests are under review and will feed into additional assessments of counter-drone defenses to be done this summer. Still to be evaluated: the risks associated with the various counter-drone options, including the collateral damage that could result from putting them into operation. 

Given the constant give-and-take between drone threat and counter-threat, the cat-and-mouse analogy persists – and for now, solutions appear elusive.  

“You need a combination of different types of capabilities that are…specific to the context in which the defender is operating,” Kallenborn told The Cipher Brief. “There’s no silver bullet and I’m skeptical that there will ever be a silver bullet.” 

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

8. Hostage crisis poses dilemma for Israel and offers a path to victory for Hamas

Hostage crisis poses dilemma for Israel and offers a path to victory for Hamas

AP · March 6, 2024

Over the last five months, Israel has killed thousands of Hamas fighters, destroyed dozens of their tunnels and wreaked unprecedented destruction on the Gaza Strip.

But it still faces a dilemma that was clear from the start of the war and will ultimately determine its outcome: It can either try to annihilate Hamas, which would mean almost certain death for the estimated 100 hostages still held in Gaza, or it can cut a deal that would allow the militants to claim a historic victory.

Either outcome would be excruciating for Israelis. Either would likely seal an ignominious end for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long political career. And either might be seen as acceptable by Hamas, which valorizes martyrdom.

Netanyahu, at least in public, denies there is any such dilemma. He has vowed to destroy Hamas and recover all the hostages, either through rescue missions or cease-fire agreements, saying victory could come “in a matter of weeks.”

As long as the war rages, he can avoid early elections that polls strongly suggest would remove him from power. But it seems inevitable that at some point a choice will have to be made between the hostages and military victory.

Hamas, meanwhile, appears to be in no hurry to reach a temporary cease-fire ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week, or to delay an expected Israeli operation in Rafah, the southern city where half of Gaza’s population has sought refuge.

Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar, the alleged mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack against Israel, has reason to believe that as long as he holds the hostages, he can eventually end the war on his terms.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

Yehya Sinwar chairs a meeting with leaders of Palestinian factions at his office in Gaza City, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)

SINWAR’S BLOODY GAMBLE

In over two decades spent inside Israeli prisons, Sinwar reportedly learned fluent Hebrew and studied Israeli society, and he identified a chink in the armor of his militarily superior adversary.

He learned that Israel cannot tolerate its people, especially soldiers, being held captive, and will go to extraordinary lengths to bring them home. Sinwar himself was among over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for a single captive soldier in 2011.

For Sinwar, the mass killings on Oct. 7 might have been a horrific sideshow to the main operation, which was to drag large numbers of hostages into a vast labyrinth of tunnels beneath Gaza, where Israel would be unable to rescue them, and where they could serve as human shields for Hamas leaders.

Once that was accomplished, he had a powerful bargaining chip that could be traded for large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, including top leaders serving life sentences, and an end to the Israeli onslaught that Hamas had anticipated.

No amount of 2,000-pound bombs could overcome the strategy’s brutal logic.

Israeli officials say the tunnels stretch for hundreds of kilometers (miles) and some are several stories underground, guarded by blast doors and booby traps. Even if Israel locates Hamas leaders, any operation would mean almost certain death for the hostages that likely surround them.

“The objectives are quite contradictory,” said Amos Harel, a longtime military correspondent for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “Of course, you can say it will take a year to defeat Hamas, and we’re moving ahead on that, but the problem is that nobody can ensure that the hostages will remain alive.”

Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in the rubble of a residential building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Monday, March 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

He added that even if Israel somehow kills Sinwar and other top leaders, others would move up the ranks and replace them, as has happened in the past.

“Israel will have a really hard time winning this,” Harel said.

Israel has successfully rescued three hostages since the start of the war, all of whom were aboveground. Israeli troops killed three hostages by mistake, and Hamas says several others were killed in airstrikes or failed rescue operations. More than 100 hostages were released in a cease-fire deal in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Netanyahu says military pressure will eventually bring about the release of the roughly 100 hostages, and the remains of 30 others, still held by Hamas.

But in candid remarks in January, Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s former top general and a member of Netanyahu’s War Cabinet, said anyone suggesting the remaining hostages could be freed without a cease-fire deal was spreading “illusions.”

Demonstrators protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and call for new elections in the latest weekly protest against his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)

It’s hard to imagine Hamas releasing its most valuable human shields for a temporary cease-fire, only to see Israel resume its attempt to annihilate the group, and Hamas has rejected the idea of its leaders surrendering and going into exile.

For Sinwar, it’s better to stay underground with the hostages and see if his bet pays off.

HOW DOES THIS END?

Netanyahu’s government is under mounting pressure from families of the hostages, who fear time is running out, and the wider public, which views the return of captives as a sacred obligation.

President Joe Biden, Israel’s most important ally, is at risk of losing re-election in November, in part because of Democratic divisions over the war. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has sparked worldwide outrage. The war threatens to ignite other fronts across the Middle East.

There’s a Hamas proposal on the table in which the hostages come back alive.

It calls for the phased release of all of the captives in return for Israel’s gradual withdrawal from Gaza, a long-term cease-fire and reconstruction. Israel would also release hundreds of prisoners, including top Palestinian political leaders and militants convicted of killing civilians.

Hamas would almost certainly remain in control of Gaza and might even hold victory parades. With time, it could recruit new fighters, rebuild tunnels and replenish its arsenals.

It would be an extremely costly victory, with over 30,000 Palestinians killed and the total destruction of much of Gaza. Palestinians would have different opinions on whether it was all worth it.

Israeli troops move near the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel, Monday, March 4, 2024. The army is battling Palestinian militants across Gaza in the war ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

A rare wartime poll last year found rising support for Hamas, with over 40% of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza backing the group.

That support would only grow if Hamas succeeds in lifting the longstanding blockade on Gaza, said Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank.

“If this is able to bring some serious concessions that can make life just marginally better, then I think not only will this bolster support for Hamas, but it could also bolster support for armed resistance more broadly.”

Netanyahu has rejected Hamas’ proposal as “delusional,” but there is no sign the militant group is backing away from its core demands.

Israel can keep fighting – for weeks, months or years. The army can kill more fighters and demolish more tunnels, while carefully avoiding areas where it thinks the hostages are held.

But at some point, Netanyahu or his successor will likely have to make one of the most agonizing decisions in the country’s history, or it will be made for them.

___

Associated Press writer Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

AP · March 6, 2024

9. NGA looking for commercial data to update intel on North Korea

Good. We need as many eyes peering into the black hole of north Korea as possible.

NGA looking for commercial data to update intel on North Korea - Breaking Defense

"Approximately 90 [percent] of our foundational data is unclassified, which helps us share products more broadly with partners and allies across the globe," a spokesperson for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency told Breaking Defense.

breakingdefense.com · by Theresa Hitchens · March 7, 2024

A satellite image taken Feb. 16, 2024 of what Maxar identified as North Korea’s Yongyonb nuclear power plant. (Satellite image credit Maxar Technologies)

WASHINGTON — As the Biden administration grows increasingly worried by Pyongyang’s “burgeoning” arms trade relationship with Russia, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is looking to commercial providers to update baseline information about North Korea that it can use to create maps and other intelligence products.

“In particular for this solicitation, NGA is looking for updates to a database of political, economic, cultural and other government-related facilities, which will be a follow-on to a contract awarded in 2020,” a spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

Industry has until March 29 to respond to the Feb. 27 call for bids, which is seeking “foundational data” on “North Korean economic, industrial, and infrastructure facilities identified using native North Korean nomenclature.”

The NGA spokesperson explained that foundational data “describes physical and cultural characteristics, including elevation, coordinates, topography, geographic names, and human geography, as well as our earth sciences data (gravity, magnetics, geodetic surveys, etc.).”

The spy agency, which gathers information from intelligence sources — primarily imagery from aircraft, drones and satellites, but also from human sources and computer systems — to make sophisticated maps, 3D models and the like of areas of US interest around the globe. NGA also recently took over the Pentagon’s flagship artificial intelligence project, Project Maven.

Such geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, is used for example by military commanders in planning operations, and even for targeting weapons. In recent years, NGA has been increasingly turning to the private sector, such as commercial remote sensing satellite operators, to augment its analysis with unclassified data.

“For foundational data in particular, we rely on commercial data providers. Approximately 90 [percent] of our foundational data is unclassified, which helps us share products more broadly with partners and allies across the globe,” the NGA spokesperson said.

Under the North Korea solicitation, the chosen contractor needs to be able to provide a first set of data “within 20 days of contract signature,” according to the agency’s statement of work. That would be followed by monthly updates, to include “new construction, error corrections, feature updates, and facilities that are newly mentioned in North Korea press.”

The anticipated contract is for two years, but the NGA documentation does not provide a funding level as the spy agency’s budget is classified. Neither would the agency reveal what firm held the previous contract.

10. Opinion | Let AI remake the whole U.S. government (oh, and save the country)

This may sound like satire but it is an interesting article. It is a fascinating critique of the government.  Palantir is featured in this piece as well.

Conclusion:

There are more questions — part of getting AI into government is realizing there will be no getting it out. It turns out that good software and good government are more similar than we knew: Neither is ever done. The past few decades the federal government stopped changing. One side tried to cripple it while the other responded with smothering levels of affection and excuses. These equal and irrational forces created stasis and decay, but American lives kept moving forward with new needs and expectations.

This new era of AI has presented a once-in-a-century chance to wipe away a lot of the damage and renew the mission. Not to the moon, but to a more perfect union.

Opinion | Let AI remake the whole U.S. government (oh, and save the country)

The Washington Post · by Josh Tyrangiel · March 6, 2024

My awakening began in the modern fashion — late at night, on YouTube. Months later the video still has just 3,900 views, so I’d better describe it.

A few dozen people have gathered to watch a presentation. It’s capably produced — like a midsize college professor’s audition for a TED Talk. The presenter, in a patterned blazer and blue oxford, is retired four-star general Gustave Perna. “I spent 40 years in the Army,” Perna begins, the hard edges of his New Jersey accent clanging a little in the room. “I was an average infantry officer. I was a great logistician.”

It’s a leisurely start. And yet the closest comparison I have for what comes next is Star Wars. Because once he gets through his slow-crawl prologue, Perna tells a story so tense and futuristic that, by the end, it’s possible to glimpse a completely different way in which we might live as citizens. Also, there’s warp speed.

Perhaps Perna’s name sounds familiar. It should. He oversaw the effort to produce and distribute the first coronavirus vaccines — a recent triumph of U.S. policy that’s been erased by the stupidity of U.S. politics. Perna was a month from retirement in May 2020 when he got a Saturday morning call from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Arriving in Washington two days later to begin Operation Warp Speed, his arsenal consisted of three colonels, no money and no plan.

The audience is focusing now. Perna tells them that what he needed more than anything was “to see myself.” On the battlefield this means knowing your troops, positions and supplies. It means roughly the same thing here, except the battlefield is boundaryless. Perna needed up-to-the-minute data from all the relevant state and federal agencies, drug companies, hospitals, pharmacies, manufacturers, truckers, dry ice makers, etc. Oh, and that data needed to be standardized and operationalized for swift decision-making.

It’s hard to comprehend, so let’s reduce the complexity to just a single physical material: plastic. Perna had to have eyes on the national capacity to produce and supply plastic — for syringes, needles, bags, vials. Otherwise, with thousands of people dying each day, he could find himself with hundreds of millions of vaccine doses and nothing to put them in.

To see himself, Perna needed a real-time digital dashboard of an entire civilization.

This being Washington, consultants lined up at his door. Perna gave each an hour, but none could define the problem let alone offer a credible solution. “Excruciating,” Perna tells the room, and here the Jersey accent helps drive home his disgust. Then he met Julie and Aaron. They told him, “Sir, we’re going to give you all the data you need so that you can assess, determine risk, and make decisions rapidly.” Perna shut down the process immediately. “I said great, you’re hired.”

Julie and Aaron work for Palantir, a company whose name curdles the blood of progressives and some of the military establishment. We’ll get to why. But Perna says Palantir did exactly what it promised. Using artificial intelligence, the company optimized thousands of data streams and piped them into an elegant interface. In a few short weeks, Perna had his God view of the problem. A few months after that, Operation Warp Speed delivered vaccines simultaneously to all 50 states. When governors called panicking that they’d somehow been shorted, Perna could share a screen with the precise number of vials in their possession. “‘Oh, no, general, that’s not true.’ Oh, yes. It is.”

The video cuts off with polite applause. The audience doesn’t seem to understand they’ve just been transported to a galaxy far, far away.

When Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union on March 7, he’ll likely become the first president to use the phrase artificial intelligence in the address. The president has been good on AI. His executive order on the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence” threw a switch activating the federal bureaucracy’s engagement. He’s delegating to smart people and banging the drum about generative AI’s ability to create misinformation and harm national security. That’s plenty for a speech.

But the vision remains so small compared with the possibilities. This is technology that could transform almost everything about our society, yet neither the president nor his political rivals have imagined how it might do the same for the government itself. So allow me.

According to a 2023 year end Gallup poll, Americans’ confidence in 15 institutions — covering things such as health care, education and regulation — is at historic lows. The poll’s conclusion is that government is suffering an acute crisis of legitimacy. We no longer trust it to fix important things in our lives. If confidence in the effectiveness of government keeps eroding at this pace, how much longer do you think we can remain united? How easy do we want to make our dismantling for the nihilists already cheering it on?

Properly deployed, AI can help blaze a new path to the shining city on a hill. In 2023, the national taxpayer advocate reported that the IRS answered only 29 percent of its phone calls during tax season. Human-based eligibility decisions for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, have a 44 percent error rate. Large-language-model-powered chatbots could already be providing better service — at all hours, in all languages, at less cost — for people who rely on the federal government for veterans benefits, student loans, unemployment, social security and Medicare. That’s table stakes.

Now think about Warp Speeding entire agencies and functions: the IRS, which, in 2024, still makes you guess how much you owe it, public health surveillance and response, traffic management, maintenance of interstates and bridges, disaster preparedness and relief. AI can revolutionize the relationship between citizens and the government. We have the technology. We’ve already used it.

Mention Operation Warp Speed to skeptics and they’ll wave you off. It doesn’t count. In a crisis the great sloth of government can sprint, but in regular times procurement rules, agency regulators and the endless nitpicking of politics make big things impossible. All true.

There’s another strain of skepticism that goes like this: Are you insane? AI might create all kinds of efficiency, but it’s also been known to have systemic biases that could get encoded into official government systems, lack transparency that could undermine public trust, make loads of federal jobs obsolete, and be vulnerable to data breaches that compromise privacy and sensitive information. If AI were a Big Pharma product the ads would be 10 minutes long.

We can put guardrails around how the government uses AI — anonymizing personal data as they do in the European Union, creating oversight bodies for continuous monitoring — but I’m not naive. Some things will still go wrong. Which leaves us to weigh the risks of the cure against the deadliness of the disease.

To check my premise, I set up a Zoom call with Perna. He was in sweats at his home in Alabama, and if he missed carrying the weight of the world he did a great job hiding it. He consults a little for Palantir now, but mostly he was excited to talk about grandkids, the Yankees and the best New York City slice joints. His mood shifted when I asked what government could improve if it embraced AI. “Everything,” he snapped, before the question was fully out. “I don’t understand how we’re not using it for organ donation right now. We should be ashamed. Why do we need 80,000 new people at the IRS? We could revolutionize the budget process. I tell Palantir, why are you playing around with the Department of Defense? Think bigger.”

What Palantir does has long been draped in mystery. It’s a software company that works with artificial intelligence and is named for the indestructible crystal balls in The Lord of the Rings, so they’re not exactly discouraging it. But the foundation of its products is almost comically dull.

Imagine all of an organization’s data sources as a series of garden hoses in your backyard. Let’s say the organization is a hospital. There are hoses for personnel, equipment, drugs, insurance companies, medical supplies, scheduling, bed availability and probably dozens of other things. Many of the hoses connect up to vendors and many connect to patients. No one can remember what some of them are supposed to connect to. All were bought at different times from different manufacturers and are different sizes and lengths. And it’s a hospital, so hose maintenance has never been anyone’s top priority. Now look out the window. There’s a pile of knotted rubber so dense you can’t see grass.

Palantir untangles hoses.

“We’ve always been the mole people of Silicon Valley,” says Akshay Krishnaswamy, Palantir’s chief architect. “It’s like we go into the plumbing of all this stuff and come out and say, ‘Let’s help you build a beautiful ontology.’”

In metaphysics, ontology is the study of being. In software and AI, it’s come to mean the untangling of messes and the creation of a functional information ecosystem. Once Palantir standardizes an organization’s data and defines the relationships between the streams, it can build an application or interface on top of it. This combination — integrated data and a useful app — is what allows everyone from middle managers to four-star generals to have an AI co-pilot, to see themselves with the God view. “It’s the Iron Man suit for the person who’s using it,” says Krishnaswamy. “It’s like, they’re still going to have to make decisions but they feel like they’re now flying around at Mach 5.”

The most dramatic expression of Palantir’s capabilities is in Ukraine, where the company merges real-time views from hundreds of commercial satellites with communications technology and weapons data. All of that information is then seamlessly displayed on laptops and handheld dashboards for commanders on the battlefield. A senior U.S. military official told me, “The Ukrainian force is incredibly tough, but it’s not much of a fight without iPads and Palantir.”

I mentioned that progressives and some of the military establishment dislike Palantir. Each has a reason. The company was co-founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, which explains much of the hatred from the far left. Thiel spoke at the 2016 Republican convention, endorsed Donald Trump in 2016, dislikes multiculturalism, financed a lawsuit to kill Gawker and then tried to buy its corpse. The enmity here is mutual, but also kind of trivial.

Palantir has another co-founder. His name is Alex Karp, and many people in the Pentagon find him very annoying. The quick explanation is that Karp is loud and impatient, and he’s not one of them. But it’s more troubling than that.

Karp was born in New York City to a Black mother and a Jewish father. He’s severely dyslexic, a socialist, a 2016 Hillary Clinton supporter. When we spoke in Palantir’s New York offices, it was clear that he’s both whip-smart and keeps a careful accounting of the slights he’s accumulated. “Quite frankly,” Karp told me, “just because of biographical issues, I assume I am going to be screwed, right?” It was like meeting the protagonist from a book co-authored by Ralph Ellison and Philip Roth.

Thiel and Karp were law school classmates at Stanford in the early ’90s. They argued plenty, but agreed about enough to create Palantir with partial funding (less than $2 million) from In-Q-Tel, an investment arm of the CIA, and a few core beliefs. The first is that the United States is exceptional, and working to strengthen its position in the world benefits all humanity. “I’ve lived abroad,” Karp says. “I know [America] is the only country that’s remotely as fair and meritocratic as America is. And I tend to be more focused on that than the obvious shortcomings.” In a speech last year, Karp, who is CEO, explained what this means for the company: “If you don’t think the U.S. government should have the best software in the world … We respectfully ask you not to join Palantir. Not in like you’re an idiot, just we have this belief structure.”

The company’s second core belief springs from the chip on Karp’s shoulder. Like generations of Black and Jewish entrepreneurs before him, Karp presumes his company isn’t going to win any deals on the golf course. So to get contracts from Fortune 500 companies and governments Palantir must do things other software companies won’t, and do them so fast and cheap that the results are irrefutable.

This approach has worked exceedingly well in the corporate world. Palantir’s market capitalization is $52 billion and its stock has climbed more than 150 percent in the past year, largely because of demand for its AI products. But for much of its existence, an openly patriotic company with software better, faster and cheaper than its competitors was shut out of U.S. defense contracts. In the mid-2010s this put Palantir’s survival at risk and sharpened Karp’s indignation to a fine point. Either his biography had made him paranoid or something was amiss.

In 2016, Palantir took the unprecedented step of suing the Pentagon to find out. The case alleged the Defense Department was in violation of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, a 1994 law that prohibits the government from starting new bloat-filled projects if an off-the-shelf solution is available. The House Committee on Government Operations made its intent unusually clear: “The Federal Government must stop ‘reinventing the wheel’ and learn to depend on the wide array of products and services sold to the general public.”

The record of Palantir v. United States is about as one-sided as these things can be. In the Court of Federal Claims, Palantir was able to document soldiers, officers and procurement people acknowledging the supremacy and lower cost of its in-market products — and show the Pentagon was still buying a more expensive proposal, years from effective deployment, offered by a consortium of Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. The Army’s defense can be summarized as, “Yeah, well that’s kinda how we do stuff.” Palantir’s lawyers responded with insults about structural inertia, backed with receipts. Boies, Schiller & Flexner had themselves a time.

Palantir’s victory was resounding, and opened the door to what is now a more functional relationship. Wednesday, the Army announced that Palantir won a $178 million contract to make 10 prototypes for the next phase of its tactical intelligence targeting node (Titan) program. Titan is a ground station that uses sensor data from space, sky and land to improve long-range weapons precision.

Still, Karp insists rivals regularly win contracts with video presentations of unbuilt solutions over existing software from Palantir. Several people I spoke with in the Defense Department volunteered that Palantir’s software is excellent — and a few said they’d be happy if the company would go away. It challenges too many things about the procurement culture and process. One noted that Palantir’s D.C. office is in Georgetown near (gasp) a Lululemon as opposed to in the traditional valley of contractors adjacent to the Pentagon.

When I shared this little Jane Austen comedy of manners with Karp he shook his head. “You talk to the right people. Like, maybe we’re not that likable and maybe some of it is our fault. But Jesus, our stuff works.”

Palantir’s saga doesn’t prove that government employees are bad, merely that humans can tolerate limitless amounts of dysfunction, especially when everyone around them is doing the same. They’re trapped in a system where all incentives point toward the status quo. Perna wants Palantir to think bigger, but remember: The Defense Department can embrace and expedite things in the name of national security that others cannot. It’s one of the most AI-friendly parts of the government.

The challenge then is fixing a massive system that has become constitutionally resistant to solutions, particularly ones fueled by technology such as artificial intelligence. It’s a Mobius strip that no one can seem to straighten out. But Karp sees a direct line between Palantir’s experience and the peril of the current moment. “Every time I see ordinary interactions between ordinary citizens and the government, it’s very high friction for no reason,” he says. “And then there’s almost no output. Forget the dollars spent. Whether it’s immigration, health records, taxation, getting your car to work, you’re going to have a bad experience, right? And that bad experience, makes you think, ‘Hmm, nothing works here. And because nothing works here I’m going to tear down the whole system.’”

A few months before Palantir sued the United States in 2016, Eric Schmidt got a call from Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter. Carter was launching something called the Defense Innovation Board to try to get more tech thinking into the Pentagon. He wanted Schmidt, then the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, to join. “I declined,” says Schmidt. “And Carter said, ‘Well, you know, do it anyway,’”

I’ve spoken with Schmidt several times over the years and he’s been about as predictable as a Holiday Inn. But as he recalled his time on the Defense Innovation Board there was a different tone, like the guy in a horror movie who’s been chilled by his encounter with a vaguely threatening supernatural force. The quiet one who says, “You don’t know what’s out there, man.”

Carter let the Defense Innovation Board examine everything it needed to assess how the Pentagon develops, acquires and uses technology — the 99.9 percent of the iceberg that remained out of sight in the Palantir court case. Pretty quickly Schmidt concluded the entire federal apparatus has accidentally mutated into software’s perfect enemy. “AI is fundamentally software,” says Schmidt. “You can’t have AI in the government or the military until you solve the problem of software in the government and military.”

Most government projects work backward from an outcome — a bridge will be built from point X to point Y and cost Z. Software is an abstraction moving toward a destination that’s always changing. Google didn’t create a search box and then close up shop; it kept spending and staffing because that’s how technology gets better and more usable. Unlike a bridge, software is never done. Try selling that to bureaucrats who are told they must pay for only what they can document.

Schmidt described for me the normal course of software development — prototyping with a small group of engineers, getting lots of user feedback, endless refinement and iteration. “Every single thing I just told you is illegal,” Schmidt says.

If only this were true. We could then just make things legal and move on. In fact, Congress — though hardly blameless — has given the Defense Department countless workarounds and special authorities over the years. Most have been forgotten or ignored by public servants who are too scared to embrace them. Take one of Schmidt’s examples; you really are allowed to conduct software user surveys, but most staffers at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs interpret the legal guidance to mean a six-month review process is required before granting permission. A six-month wait for a product that never stops moving. That means normal software practices are worse than illegal. They’re a form of bureaucratic torture.

The Defense Innovation Board channeled its bewilderment into a masterpiece: “Software is Never Done: Refactoring the Acquisition Code for Competitive Advantage.” I’m not being ironic. It’s the most reasonable, stylish and solutions-based critique of modern government I’ve ever read. The authors did the unglamorous work of going through the infested garden of processes and rules and called out many of the nastiest weeds. Then they made common-sense recommendations — treat software as a living thing that crosses budget lines; do cost assessments that prioritize speed, security, functionality and code quality; collect data from the department’s weapons systems and create a secure repository to evaluate their effectiveness — and urged Congress to pass them.

They also referenced the dozen previous software reports commissioned by the military dating back to 1982, all of which came to similar conclusions. The problem isn’t a lack of solutions, it’s getting Congress to approve the politically risky ones and “the frozen middle” to implement them: “We question neither the integrity nor the patriotism of this group. They are simply not incentivized to the way we believe modern software should be acquired and implemented, and the enormous inertia they represent is a profound barrier to change.”

When software becomes a crisis, politicians call Jennifer Pahlka. Pahlka was deputy chief technology officer in the Obama administration and was crucial to the rescue of healthcare.gov — the most flawed, fraught and ultimately successful software project in government history. In 2020, Gavin Newsom bat-signaled her to untangle California’s unemployment insurance program as it buckled under the weight of the covid-19 response. “I come to this work,” says Pahlka, “with the assumption that people are having a f------ nervous breakdown.”

Pahlka served with Schmidt on the Defense Innovation Board, which affirmed decades of her experience at the convergence of software and government. The dysfunction loop begins when absurd processes are given to public servants who will be judged on their compliance with absurdity. If they do their jobs right, the nation purchases obsolete overpriced software. If they make a mistake or take a risk that defies the absurdity, politicians hold hearings and jump all over them — which is far simpler than fixing the process. Each recrimination drives more good people out of public service. Rinse, repeat.

What Pahlka has noticed recently is that the wave is cresting. More things are breaking, and the remaining competent public servants who understand technology are just barely hanging on. “Most of what I do on a daily basis is like therapy,” Pahlka says. “I tell people, ‘Those feelings you’re having are normal. The only way to get through them is to share them.’” The dedication in her excellent book, “Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better,” said, “To public servants everywhere. Don’t give up.” Pahlka told me, “I’ve had people come up to me and ask me to sign and they just start crying.”

It’s not just the rank and file. Schmidt ended up serving four years on the Defense Innovation Board. When we were wrapping up our conversation, he took a breath and paused for a moment. “I’m not going to make a more emotional argument, I’m just going to tell you the following: Government will perform sub optimally until it adopts the software practices of the industry.” He sounded pretty emotional.

It did not take someone with John F. Kennedy’s charisma to inspire Americans to go to the moon. The moon is big and pretty. Humanity has been dreaming about it for eons. Calvin Coolidge levels of charm would have sufficed.

The challenge of using AI for better government is very different. The excitement about a new thing is tempered by fear and confusion. To get the maximum reward from AI, the country must first go through an unprecedented vegetable-eating exercise to clean up its bureaucracy. Turning that into poetry is hard. There’s no ideal messenger, but an octogenarian whose best speeches are about grief and a septuagenarian whose speeches are barely speeches is perhaps not the optimal set of choices.

Nevertheless, the moment will not wait. So what can the president say in an AI State of the Union?

The truth. The relationship between citizens and government is fractured. It’s crucial to the republic’s survival that we stop defending the status quo. New technology can help us repair the damage and open the door to a level of service and efficiency that will make Scandinavians seethe with envy. Almost all of this AI tech has been created by American ingenuity inside American companies, and the American people deserve its benefits.

Next, say the thing Democrats don’t want to say: Not every government job should be a job for life. LLMs can provide better service and responsiveness for many day-to-day interactions between citizens and various agencies. They’re not just cheaper, they’re also faster, and, when trained right, less prone to error or misinterpretation. That means it’s possible the federal government will soon have fewer employees. But AI will never replace human judgment — about benefits, penalties or anything in between. It’s a tool to be used by Americans to make better decisions for our national well-being.

That earns you the right to say the thing reasonable Republicans don’t want to hear: their bluff is going to be called. If they continue to indulge the party’s idiotic fantasies of burning the entire federal apparatus to the ground, they’ll be left holding the ashes. They need to admit that a properly run government has an important role in people’s lives, and they need to co-sign fixing it. Without crossing their fingers behind their backs.

All this is preamble to the work — methodical demolition and joyful construction. Pahlka says the policy guidelines that govern the Defense Department equal 100 stacked copies of “War and Peace.” There are more than 7,000 pages of unemployment regulations. Luckily, untangling the United States’ hairball of fine print is the perfect job for AI. Banks already use it to deduplicate obsolete compliance rules. Pahlka is working to demonstrate its feasibility inside agencies. The Pentagon is experimenting with an AI program called Gamechanger that helps bureaucrats navigate its own bureaucracy. It’s easy to mock, and we’ll still need countless human hours of oversight — many of them from Congress — to ensure the job’s done right. But it’s exactly the kind of humble first step that deserves praise. Turbocharge these efforts, then start building. But not everywhere, at least not at first.

One of the secrets of great software is that it’s not built all at once. Projects get broken down into manageable units called sprints; teams get feedback, make adjustments in real-time, then use that knowledge to tackle the next sprint. It’s a form of common sense that the industry calls agile development.

The United States should do its first agile AI sprint in its most broken place, where the breach of trust and services is the most shameful. You likely know the statistics about Veterans Affairs but there’s one worth repeating: 6,392 veterans died by suicide in 2021, the most recent year numbers are available. A ProPublica review of inspector general reports found VA employees regularly “botched screenings meant to assess veterans’ risk of suicide or violence; sometimes they didn’t perform the screenings at all.”

What if we treat VA like the crisis it is? It’s not as simple as untangling hoses between veterans and the department. A lot of care is managed manually. But when we create digital infrastructure, appointment scheduling can run on AI. A cascade of benefits would follow, such as reduced wait times, analytics that predict demand for services, and automated reminders and follow-ups so VA staff can focus on patients over paperwork. Next make a first alert chatbot for veterans that, only with their consent, can be used to look for signs of crisis or suicidal thoughts, offers coping mechanisms and resources, and escalates cases to mental health providers.

The big one is personalized care. Veterans deserve to be empowered with a God view of their own treatment, and that data can be anonymized and analyzed for insights into veteran-specific conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries. Is there risk? There is. Is the risk worse than an average of 18 veterans killing themselves each day? I don’t think so.

Let’s give ourselves a countdown clock: One year to make it happen. It’s a problem similar in scale, complexity and importance to Operation Warp Speed. There’s a grandpa in Alabama who might be convinced to help.

There are more questions — part of getting AI into government is realizing there will be no getting it out. It turns out that good software and good government are more similar than we knew: Neither is ever done. The past few decades the federal government stopped changing. One side tried to cripple it while the other responded with smothering levels of affection and excuses. These equal and irrational forces created stasis and decay, but American lives kept moving forward with new needs and expectations.

This new era of AI has presented a once-in-a-century chance to wipe away a lot of the damage and renew the mission. Not to the moon, but to a more perfect union.

The Washington Post · by Josh Tyrangiel · March 6, 2024

11. A nearly $1 trillion defense budget faces headwinds at home and abroad

A nearly $1 trillion defense budget faces headwinds at home and abroad

Defense News · by Bryant Harris · March 7, 2024

Sen. Roger Wicker came to a Heritage Foundation event in January with a big request.

He wanted the conservative think tank’s help mustering public and congressional support for a $1.4 trillion defense budget, nearly 50% higher than fiscal 2023 spending levels.

The Mississippi Republican said this figure, equal to 5% of U.S. gross domestic product, is necessary given multiplying threats across the world.

“The U.S. should lead in the Indo-Pacific,” he said. “The U.S. should lead in Europe. The U.S. should lead in the Middle East. This is our official strategy. The U.S. should seek to win, not just manage, against China and Russia. The U.S. should deter Iran and North Korea and terrorist groups.”

The senator’s appeal was quickly followed by a panel with three speakers, all with ties to former President Donald Trump, who questioned the size of the current defense budget, much less a 50% increase, and argued the U.S. can’t do it all.

“Our military is not what it should be, despite spending almost $1 trillion,” said Elbridge Colby, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who helped develop Trump’s National Defense Strategy.

The contrast between Wicker’s push and the skepticism of many Republicans promises to create new complications as the U.S. defense budget surges toward $1 trillion.

Last year’s debt ceiling agreement caps the FY24 defense top line at $886 billion, though the Pentagon and all other agencies face a 1% cut if Congress does not pass a full FY24 budget by April 30. Even so, FY24 defense spending could balloon as high as $953 billion if Congress also approves President Joe Biden’s foreign aid request for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

As the Pentagon seeks to address these new wars along with consistently rising costs like salaries and health care for troops and civilians, the $1 trillion figure may draw new scrutiny to the defense budget, including questions about where to cut and where it’s falling short.

It’s a figure that seems far too large to some Republicans aligned with Trump’s America First policy and progressive Democrats. It’s also an amount that falls more than $400 billion short of what some defense hawks say the Defense Department needs to meet its many commitments.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Defense News the $1 trillion figure, while symbolic, will pose “a major decision for the next administration.”

“If it’s a Trump administration, everything’s up in the air. But even if it’s a Biden administration, I would argue — many people would argue — that their strategy is underfunded,” Cancian said. “They have this very robust strategy, and they just aren’t putting the money against that.”

Even if Congress chose to keep the defense budget flat, it would soon approach $1 trillion in the next few years to keep up with inflation.

And cuts would be challenging; the Republicans and progressive Democrats advocating to cut $100 billion or more from the defense budget would confront a host of thorny complications that range from personnel to readiness to acquisition policy.

“A $1 trillion figure is attention-grabbing, and it will cause people to start asking some hard questions about what the nation’s return on investment is for its $1 trillion in spending,” said Travis Sharp, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “The way the $1 trillion budget gets presented, and the types of things it’s measured against, will become pretty important in terms of the political and popular support for that level of spending.”

‘We already spend $1 trillion’

The U.S. today spends more on its military and weapon systems than the next 10 countries combined, including China and Russia.

Cancian — who worked in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration — estimates defense spending would have to increase by roughly $25 billion annually to keep pace with inflation. This means the U.S. is on track to reach a $1 trillion defense budget within the next few years, regardless of supplemental spending.

And that’s just discretionary defense spending, which excludes mandatory bills such as veterans’ benefits.

“By almost any other metric, we already spend $1 trillion a year on defense,” said Geoff Wilson, who leads the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog. “We’re one of the only countries that views this as a separate line item.”

At the same time, the Defense Department has trouble tracking its $3.8 trillion in assets, failing its sixth consecutive audit last year. The Marine Corps became the first, and so far only, armed service to pass an audit in February.

“Given all these costly failures and this abhorrent track record of fiscal accountability in the military-industrial complex, how much more defense are taxpayers actually going to get?” Wilson asked. “I don’t think just throwing another $200 billion at the problem is going to fix everything else. The industrial base has been unable to absorb the defense budget it already has.”

Staff Sgt. Cote Welliver answers questions about Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile motors. A Defense Department audit found 71 ballistic missile motors at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, were erroneously listed as not working. (Alex Lloyd/U.S. Air Force)

Over the last decade, defense priorities have largely received bipartisan support. During the Trump administration, the defense budget continued to grow.

But former Trump administration officials and many Republicans have started to chafe.

For the first two years of the Biden administration, Republicans worked with centrist Democrats to significantly boost the White House’s defense budget requests. The defense budget stood at $740 billion when Biden took office in FY21 and rose to $858 billion in FY23, excluding an extra $35 billion in Ukraine military assistance that year.

“That’s a lot of money that we spend — over 3% of GDP — on defense,” Colby, the former Pentagon official, said at the Heritage event. “A lot of it is for reasons that are understandable … personnel costs, the higher cost of our defense-industrial base, the industrialization in general. At the same time, you’ve got to look at the fact that there are very real political constraints.”

Colby has called for a focus on the Indo-Pacific region to deter China from attacking Taiwan, and pushed for NATO allies to spend 2% of their respective GDP on defense. For his part, Trump has threatened to withdraw from NATO over numerous members’ failures to meet the 2% benchmark set by the alliance.

Republican hawks derided Biden’s $886 billion defense budget request last year as failing to keep pace with inflation, only to lock it in as part of the debt ceiling agreement. Five months into the fiscal year, Congress has yet to pass a full FY24 budget.

The debt ceiling blueprint provides the Defense Department with more discretionary funding than all other federal agencies combined. When Republicans last leveraged a debt ceiling raise in exchange for discretionary spending caps under the Obama administration, Democrats insisted on equal amounts of both defense and nondefense spending.

Sharp, the budget analyst, said because the 2023 debt ceiling agreement “starts out with uneven caps, the parity principle doesn’t really apply as much, which suggests that defense is coming under less fiscal pressure than it could.”

Under the Obama administration, the Pentagon and Congress routinely circumvented defense budget caps through a fund known as overseas contingency operations, billed as a spending account focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Biden eliminated this account in his FY22 budget. But following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he has used Ukraine aid packages to similarly increase defense spending beyond the base budget, with much of the money going to Pentagon contractors backfilling U.S. equipment sent to Kyiv.

Now, a group of Republicans wants to put the brakes on the foreign aid packages that have constituted significant defense spending increases outside the base budget.

“We just want the country to have a conversation about the strategy of spending,” Robert Greenway, the new head of Heritage’s Center for National Defense, said in September on a podcast. “We’re probably knocking on the door of a couple hundred billion dollars on Ukraine.”

‘A budget that is too low’

Amid bloody wars in Europe and the Middle East as well as the specter of a potential Indo-Pacific conflict, the Biden administration has rushed arms to Ukraine and Israel, and it seeks to do the same for Taiwan.

Biden’s latest Ukraine military aid request is his largest yet and includes security assistance for Israel and Taiwan. The foreign aid bill the Senate passed 70-29 in February for all three security partners and other Defense Department priorities would total $67 billion in extra Pentagon spending for FY24. If the House passes that bill as well as a full defense budget, it would put FY24 defense spending at $953 billion.

However, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has refused to put the bill on the floor for a vote amid opposition from Trump.

Growing congressional concerns, fueled in part by Trump’s presidential campaign, mean the Pentagon may be unable to rely on additional funds to boost its base budget the same way it did during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

But even after the large defense spending increases in recent years, some analysts argue the Pentagon’s strategy remains underfunded.

“The current strategy, which is pretty consistent with what the Trump administration had and with what the Obama administration had, calls for engagement in Europe; a response to Ukraine; a continued presence in the Middle East, although reduced at least; and China as the pacing threat — but also nuclear modernization; a strong, all-volunteer force; a vibrant defense-industrial base,” Cancian said.

“You stick all that together — that’s very expensive.”

Ukrainian air defense measures intercept a Russian-launched Shahed drone midair over the capital of Kyiv on May 30, 2023. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

An extra $26 billion in Ukraine military aid for FY22 brought total defense spending that year to $804 billion. Then in FY23, an extra $35 billion in Ukraine military aid brought total defense spending to $893 billion.

“The future of America’s national security faces two huge challenges: an outdated defense strategy and a budget that is too low to support it,” Elaine McCusker, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, wrote in February. “These factors include an industrial base that is inadequate to meet our needs and stalled emergency spending that includes a long overdue revitalization of our defense production capacity for crucial platforms such as submarines and ships.”

But with Trump increasingly likely to win the GOP presidential nomination, some Republican defense hawks have become wary of lining up behind Ukraine aid ever since Congress passed its last package for Kyiv in December 2022.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., voted against the Senate bill in February, endorsing Trump’s proposal to issue the foreign assistance as loans. Graham’s position marks an about-face from nine months ago, when he made his vote on the debt ceiling deal contingent on passage of a defense spending package for Ukraine to circumvent Biden’s $886 billion military budget top line.

The Heritage Foundation, which has spearheaded the Project 2025 policy document for a future Republican president, has also lobbied against additional Ukraine aid.

Trump’s former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller authored the document’s section on the Defense Department, which lambasted the Pentagon for “wasteful spending, wildly shifting security policies [and] exceedingly poor discipline in program execution.”

The Project 2025 transition document doesn’t recommend a specific defense budget top line, but Miller wrote in his memoir last year the U.S. should cut military spending by 40% to 50% to “end American adventurism and retool our military to face the challenges of the next century.”

Meanwhile, several progressive Democrats in the House have come out against the bill’s extra $14 billion for the Israeli military amid the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.

“If the proposed increase were coming as part of the base budget, it wouldn’t attract potentially some of the controversy that supplementals have because base budget spending isn’t always so tightly connected to a security situation occurring in a specific part of the world that people can have strong opinions about,” Sharp said.

‘The status quo is very rigid’

During his first three years in office, Trump proposed large defense increases, in line with his National Defense Strategy, which called for 3% to 5% real budget growth above inflation. But in 2020, his final year in office, Trump proposed a flat defense budget.

For the past several years, progressive Democrats, led by Reps. Barbara Lee of California and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, have introduced a bill to cut $100 billion in defense spending, though it has failed on the floor.

“The reason that’s delusional is not that you can’t save money with efficiencies or changes in overhead,” Cancian said. “The problem is that all of them are politically difficult, and you have to expend political capital to get those efficiencies. And that’s where the White House typically stops.”

Sharp said it would be possible to eliminate budget inefficiencies and find savings in a theoretical exercise that rebuilds the Defense Department from scratch, but cutting $100 billion in a single year would be a tall order.

“It’s a purely academic exercise mostly because transforming situations in those ways is — I don’t want to say impossible, but it’s extraordinarily difficult,” he added. “The status quo is very rigid.”

Firefighters lower the American flag during a 2011 ceremony marking the official closing of Naval Air Station Brunswick in Maine. A panel in charge of base closure and realignment activities voted to close the base in 2005. (Joel Page/AP)

The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute convened a conference last year to identify savings and efficiencies in the defense budget. The conference’s report proposed potential savings over the long term, but cautioned there’s “no easy button” to press.

“Defense inefficiency is often marbled within the budget across programs, accounts, services and agencies,” it stated.

The report recommended some actions that have previously run afoul of parochial headwinds in Congress, such as base realignment and closure. It noted five previous rounds of base closures saved the Defense Department $12 billion annually. Congress rejected the base closure attempt the Trump administration proposed in 2017.

The largest portion of the Pentagon budget goes toward operations and maintenance, which covers equipment repair and training costs, among other items like some health care costs.

McCusker, who served as acting Pentagon comptroller in the Trump administration, estimated roughly $109 billion within Biden’s FY23 defense budget proposal did not go directly toward core military functions.

“Along with increasing costs of health care, benefits and compensation, the true cost of military capability is disguised and squeezed out by these and other priorities,” she told Defense News. “For example, the [operations and maintenance] appropriation is loaded with spending on health, community, family, climate, education and security assistance programs.”

The next largest category is personnel, including troop payment and retirement benefits for the all-volunteer force. Congress authorized a 5.2% troop pay raise in December when it passed the annual defense policy bill, the largest salary boost in 22 years.

The third is procurement, and defense contractors frequently come under fire for systems hit by delays and cost overruns.

“All you have to do is look at the last 20 years of major weapons developments: the F-35 [fighter jet]; the LCS, or littoral combat ship; the Zumwalt-class destroyer; the Ford [aircraft carrier],” said Wilson, the Project on Government Oversight analyst. “They’ve all been over budget and behind schedule. And this is not only a real cost; it’s a cost on readiness.”

For instance, the submarine-industrial base has been unable to keep up with the Navy’s goal of producing two Virginia-class submarines and one Columbia-class submarine per year. The delays stem in large part from labor shortages and pandemic-related supplier issues.

Wicker inserted another $3.3 billion in the Senate’s foreign aid supplemental to address these challenges.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced a bill with eight other Democrats and Republicans last year that would require any part of the Defense Department to return 1% of its budget to the Treasury for deficit reduction if it failed to pass an audit.

Grassley previously chided the Pentagon for spending $10,000 per toilet seat for a fleet of aircraft, saying that “the Department of Defense has been plagued by wasteful spending for decades.”

The Defense Department’s troubled bookkeeping practices can make tracking and eliminating waste a difficult endeavor.

Service contracts for things like administrative and technical support account for roughly half of all Pentagon contracting. But a 2023 Government Accountability Office report found the Defense Department did not fully collect and review data for service contracts that ranged from $184 billion to $226 billion annually from FY17 through FY22. Although the Navy collects and reviews this data, the report said the Army and Air Force do not consistently do the same.

While it’s unclear how much money the Pentagon could find by eliminating waste, pressure to get its fiscal house in order will likely increase as the defense budget nears $1 trillion. In the meantime, any significant defense budget cut may require the U.S. to reexamine its role in the world.

“There are a lot of things that you could do to save money, but you have to have a different strategy,” Cancian said. “You can save $100 billion, but you cannot have the current strategy. And for the Europeans, for Israel, for our allies in the Middle East, this would be a radical change.”

About Bryant Harris

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

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Defense News · by Bryant Harris · March 7, 2024

12. Crowdfunding, Auctions and Raffles: How Ukrainians Are Aiding the Army

​Part of resilience is creativity. The Ukrainians are demonstrating a high level of creativity in many areas.

Crowdfunding, Auctions and Raffles: How Ukrainians Are Aiding the Army

Fund-raisers are borrowing heavily from business techniques to keep donations flowing to the military. The latest trend? Broad approaches that rely on networks of friends and acquaintances.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/world/europe/ukraine-war-donations-crowdfunding.html?utm

Daria Chervona, left, and Maria Romanova, coordinate their final push of a fund-raising effort for the Ukrainian military in January in KyivCredit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

By Constant Méheut and Daria Mitiuk

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

March 7, 2024, 12:01 a.m. ET

Earlier this year, Daria Chervona, a photo retoucher from Kyiv, was busy trying to raise 78 million Ukrainian hryvnia, about $2 million, for Ukraine’s army, posting daily on social media to urge friends and acquaintances to chip in. That was a high bar, but after a few weeks she announced she had cleared it, reaching her target.

“You did it,” she told her followers on Instagram in late January, in a post displaying the eight-figure sum raised in large black characters.

Ms. Chervona attributes her success to a system she adopted last summer: dividing the work among dozens of people, each tasked with collecting money from friends, in a process that she said can yield large sums. Each fund-raiser is then highlighted in a social media post with their picture, tapping into civilians’ desire to be recognized as active participants in the war effort.

“They need to be able to tell themselves, ‘I’m doing something, I’m helping,’” Ms. Chervona, 28, said in a recent interview. “I simply understood that any reasonably active person on Instagram could pull in 50K,” she added, referring to 50,000 Ukrainian hryvnias, about $1,300.

Since the early days of the war, thousands of volunteers have led crowdfunding efforts that have been crucial in supplying the Ukrainian military with critical equipment. They have become part of Ukraine’s social fabric, with nearly 80 percent of the population now donating, according to a recent survey.

But as the conflict drags on, and with momentum on the battlefield shifting to Russia, fund-raisers say it has become harder to raise money. That has prompted people like Ms. Chervona to borrow heavily from sales and marketing techniques to keep donations flowing. They have held auctions, organized raffles and invited influencers to participate in promotional clips.

Though sophisticated weaponry donated by the West gets much of the attention, the items raised through Ukrainian crowdfunding — like warm clothing, bulletproof vests and drones — are things soldiers need and help lift morale.

The most ambitious crowdfunding campaigns have raised enough money to buy not just small items like gloves but heavy battlefield equipment as well. Ms. Chervona’s latest operation, for instance, was devoted to securing money to give to the military brigade to buy five armored personnel carriers. The Ukrainian government said in September that crowdfunding had accounted for 3 percent of Ukraine’s total military spending since the war began.

Image

Stickers highlight Maria Romanova, Alisa Mezhenska, and Daria Chervona, from left, the three founders of a viral campaign that aims to raise money for the purchase of five armored personnel carriers for the Ukrainian military.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

The key, said Oleg Gorokhovskyi, the co-founder of Monobank, Ukraine’s largest online bank, is to adopt techniques that have worked in other fields. “You should do it like a business,” he said, adding that his bank has processed nearly $1 billion in donations since the start of the war.

He and Ms. Chervona provided copies of financial documents to The New York Times that they said showed their fund-raising totals.

People have embraced the broader approaches they use, which Ukrainians call “team fund-raising,” for its potential to scale up operations and reach untapped donors. In December alone, nearly $115 million was donated through campaigns using that system, according to data from Monobank — about as much as Germany’s latest short-term military aid package to Ukraine.

Ukrainian crowdfunding for the army dates to 2014, when civilians began raising money to help an outgunned military fight off Russian proxies who had instigated a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine.

But it dramatically took off after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, and has since become “by far the most popular way of participating in civic resistance,” among Ukrainian civilians, said Kateryna Zarembo, an associate fellow at the Kyiv-based New Europe Center.

Today, any Ukrainian with a social media account comes across daily calls to help buy a pickup, walkie-talkies of some other necessity for a brigade fighting on the frontline. Unit commanders sometimes reach out directly to their followers, urging them to help them buy new attack drones.

“You scroll your news feed and you see your friends collecting money and you think, ‘OK, I’ll donate. OK, I’ll donate a second time. Well, I can donate a third time as well,” said Illia Pavlovych, a 28-year-old designer.

Simply tapping into Ukrainian spirit and patriotism — and anger at President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — worked at the beginning of the war because of the wave of solidarity that swept over the country. But as the fighting continued, fatigue set in and people’s ability to donate has decreased.

“I was trying to raise money using the classical methods,” said Valeriy Tkalich, a product manager who recently organized a crowdfunding effort to buy a jeep for the army. “And it was giving me smaller and smaller results.”

Image

Valeriy Tkalich, 34, a volunteer fund-raiser, makes a phone call in a garage where one of the cars he recently bought is being repaired before it is sent to Ukrainian special forces.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Trying to circumvent the issue, fund-raisers got creative: a famous Ukrainian performer adapted the song “Just the Two of Us,” changing the chorus to “Just Drop the Donation.” A former Kyiv City Council member opened a raffle, with his Porsche as the top prize.

But perhaps no initiative has been as successful as the one that creates a ladder of giving by friends and acquaintances.

Ms. Chervona, who leads fund-raising efforts while pursuing jobs as a retoucher, said she and some friends decided to try the system while looking for a way to expand the donor base, so that they could continue to raise large sums through smaller donations.

Last July, she published a post on Instagram saying she was looking to assemble a team of 100 people, each tasked with raising about $1,300 among their friends to buy drones for the 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov, a unit that is part of the Ukrainian National Guard and has a nationalist heritage — aiming for a total of $130,000.

Team members were called “Azov’s rear people,” their photos were published on social media, and they were promised a token resembling a military plate upon completion of the crowdfunding.

Within a month, the operation far exceeded its target, raising a total of $860,000, Ms. Chervona said.

“So effective,” Mr. Tkalich, who participated in Ms. Chervona’s crowdfunding, said of the method. “I wondered why we hadn’t done it sooner.”

Mr. Tkalich said the process mimicked the marketing techniques he uses in his job in the gaming industry: the “virality” that pushes participants to enroll others; the “social approval” that people seek when buying popular products; the desire to emulate your friends.

Image

Ms. Chervona and Ms. Romanova review an extensive spreadsheet tracking their fund-raising effort.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Soon, multiple crowdfunding campaigns applying the same techniques appeared in Ukraine. Data from Monobank shows that individual donations more than doubled between July and December 2023.

By highlighting participants on social media, the crowdfunding operations have played on a growing sentiment in Ukraine: the desire to be recognized as active actors in the war effort, amid calls for civil society to become more involved.

“Donating is a social etiquette now,” Ms. Zarembo said. “It’s about highlighting one’s reputation.”

Ms. Chervona has created stickers with pictures of the participants, highlighting them as contributors, along with a QR code that can be scanned to make a donation. On a recent afternoon, several stickers could be found in a trendy neighborhood of central Kyiv, plastered in cafes. Participants sometimes post photos of their stickers on social media.

She said that many Ukrainians now wonder, “After two years of war, am I still a volunteer?”

Mr. Tkalich, who has launched dozens of crowdfunding campaigns since the war began, said the donations “act as small life buoys” to cope with the guilt of not fighting in the army.

“Although I don’t participate in direct combat, I engage in these other meaningful actions,” he said in a recent interview, wearing around his neck the token he had received from Ms. Chervona. “You’re either fighting in the war, or you’re helping end the war.”

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Ms. Chervona in Kyiv. People need to be able to tell themselves ‘I’m doing something, I’m helping,’” she said.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Constant Méheut has covered France from the Paris bureau of The Times since 2020. More about Constant Méheut

13. How the U.S. Arms Pipeline to Israel Avoids Public Disclosure

How the U.S. Arms Pipeline to Israel Avoids Public Disclosure

Weapons transfers underscore Biden administration’s balancing act amid some lawmakers’ concerns about Gaza war

https://www.wsj.com/world/how-the-u-s-arms-pipeline-to-israel-avoids-public-disclosure-e238de75?mod=hp_lead_pos8

By Jared Malsin

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 and Nancy A. Youssef

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March 6, 2024 5:57 pm ET

An Israeli soldier near Israel’s border with Lebanon this year. PHOTO: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS

The U.S. has sent tens of thousands of weapons including bombs and precision guided munitions to Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks using procedures that have largely masked the scale of the administration’s military support for its closest Middle East ally, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The administration has organized more than 100 individual transfers of arms to Israel, but has only officially notified Congress of two shipments made under the major foreign weapons sales process, which are usually submitted to lawmakers for review and then publicly disclosed, U.S. officials said. In both cases, the administration used an emergency rule that avoids the review process.

The rest of the transfers have been approved using less public mechanisms available to the White House. Those include drawing from U.S. stockpiles, accelerating previously approved deliveries and sending weapons in smaller batches that fall below a dollar threshold that requires the administration to notify Congress, according to current and former U.S. officials.

For over 70 years Israel has enjoyed unparalleled U.S. support in the form of economic and military aid. But the future of this arrangement is now uncertain given the increasingly vocal opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza from progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders. Photo Illustration: Nayon Cho/WSJ

The handling of the weapons transfers underscores the crosscurrents buffeting the White House. It has grown increasingly frustrated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war but continues to fend off calls to use the arms pipeline as leverage to press him to reduce civilian casualties and increase humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

Some of the officials and several lawmakers said the limited disclosure points to a broader pattern in which the Biden administration has sought to avoid scrutiny from Congress. Some fellow Democrats want President Biden to use weapons shipments to pressure Netanyahu’s government.

The deep U.S. military partnership with Israel, which receives more than $3 billion in military aid every year from Washington, enabled an immediate surge in weapons shipments after Oct. 7. There are currently 600 active cases of potential military transfer or sales worth more than $23 billion between the U.S. and Israel, State Department officials said.

A missile is fired from a U.S. Army helicopter at the Yakima Training Center in Washington last year. PHOTO: U.S. ARMY

“We have followed the procedures Congress itself has specified to keep members well-informed and regularly brief members even when formal notification is not a legal requirement,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement, adding that “claims that we have split cases so that they fall below established statutory thresholds or failed to appropriately engage partners in Congress are unequivocally false.”

State Department officials informed lawmakers in recent weeks about the full extent of the transfers to Israel, according to a person familiar with the briefings, but there has been no public disclosure of most of the shipments.

“While the State Department has no legal obligation to notify below-threshold arms transfers, using this process to repeatedly end-run Congress—as sales of this quantity suggest—would violate the spirit of the law and undermine Congress’s important oversight role” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told The Wall Street Journal.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The decision to provide the arms in about 100 tranches reflects the administration’s desire to keep the scope of its military support to Israel out of public view as much as possible, critics of the transfers said.

“This stuff is non-transparent by design,” said Josh Paul, a State Department official handling congressional relations who resigned in October in protest of the Biden administration’s policy on the Gaza war.

The U.S.-supplied arms since the beginning of the Gaza war include at least 23,000 precision guided weapons, including Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, drones, and Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which turn unguided bombs into “smart” bombs, along with other similar weapons, U.S. officials said.

Israel has also received 58,000 155mm artillery shells and munitions for its Iron Dome air defense system, the officials said.

Artillery at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pa., last year. PHOTO: MATT ROURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Most of the weapons and systems came out of U.S. stockpiles in the early days of the war. The flow has dropped off in recent months as the Pentagon has run short of munitions it can provide Israel quickly, while also meeting Ukraine’s needs and maintaining sufficient U.S. stockpiles, the officials said. The U.S. has provided 1,000 precision guided munitions and artillery shells in the past month, U.S. defense officials said.

The handling of weapons shipments to Israel stands in contrast to the administration’s approach to arming Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion, in which the Defense Department has regularly published lists of arms that it sends to Kyiv. While not all transfers to Ukraine are made public, the Pentagon provides updates on the total amount of military assistance.

For Israel, the American weapons transfers have allowed the military to sustain the war in Gaza while also staying ready for the possible outbreak of a full-scale war with Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite militant group with an arsenal of missiles supplied by Iran. The group is considered a more capable adversary than Hamas. Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in a slow-burning cross-border conflict since the war in Gaza began.

The Israeli military has dipped into its own arms stockpiles it maintains on its northern border, but not to an extent that would undermine its ability to fight Hezbollah, said a senior Israeli military official. Israel is concerned that U.S. supplies could taper off if Biden were to apply more pressure to Israel, or threats from China and Russia were to take precedence over the effort to arm Israel, the official said.

“There’s nothing that Israel can say that it has not gotten. Israel got basically what it needed. When you look into the future, I don’t think it’s necessarily going to stay like that,” the Israeli military official said.

Lawmakers and congressional aides say that the administration has broken with decades of government practice by failing to provide, except in a few cases, what is known as an “informal notification” to key congressional leaders of arms deliveries to Israel in which legislators are given weeks to review a potential sale or transfer before the administration sends legally required formal notification.

“There is nothing in the law that prevents the administration from saying ‘this is an emergency and we have to do it. Our national security is at risk,” said Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “Usually the executive branch errs on the side of caution.”

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com and Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com

14. Scoop: White House asks State Dept., Pentagon for Israel-bound weapons list

Scoop: White House asks State Dept., Pentagon for Israel-bound weapons list

https://www.axios.com/2024/03/07/biden-israel-weapons-list-gaza?utm

• Barak Ravid

The tips of 155mm artillery shells are pictured near a self-propelled howitzer deployed at a position near the border with Lebanon in northern Israel on Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images

The White House recently asked the State Department and the Pentagon for a list of all weapons transfers to Israel that are planned or are up for approval in the coming weeks, four U.S. officials told Axios.

The big picture: The White House is seeking a full accounting of the government's weapons assistance to Israel as criticism and pressure grow across the political spectrum of U.S. support for Israel in the war in Gaza, where more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.

• The U.S. officials said the request is not a signal of an imminent move by the White House to slow-walk or suspend any weapons transfers to Israel and stressed the Biden administration has no plans to restrict military assistance to Israel at this time.
• A U.S. official said another reason for the request was to check it with a list Israel gave to the Biden administration that laid out the weapons systems Israel is prioritizing.

What they're saying: A source with direct knowledge of the issue claimed the White House request was routine and has happened in recent years with U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.

• But it was the first time since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that a list was requested regarding weapons transfers to Israel.
• The aim was for the White House to get a status update of defense export licenses that are pending and arms transfers that are in the pipeline, the source said.
• The source added the White House wanted the list in order to help the State Department in prioritizing specific arms transfers and to see if there are any issues that demand White House "deconfliction."
• The White House declined to comment.

Driving the news: In recent days, pressure has grown from Democrats in Congress on the White House to use weapons transfers as leverage in order to push Israel to change the way it is conducting its military operation and take more steps to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

• A group of more than three dozen House Democrats sent a letter to President Biden and made the case that an Israeli invasion of Rafah could violate his requirement that U.S. military aid be used in accordance with international law, Axios reported.
• An invasion of Rafah, they argued, "would likely contravene" with a new national security memorandum Biden signed last month requiring any recipient of U.S. military aid to provide "credible and reliable written assurances" it will comply with international law.

• Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in a briefing with reporters on Wednesday that he has discussed with State Department officials in recent days whether the current restrictions by Israel on the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza trigger the memorandum's provisions or other laws that deal with U.S. military assistance.
• Van Hollen said the administration should already suspend any weapons transfer to Israel until it signs the letter of assurances and added that he told other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that they should block military assistance until Israel abides by U.S. laws and conditions.

State of play: Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios both countries are discussing the written assurances the Biden administration is asking for and Israel has indicated it is willing to provide them in principle.

• The Biden administration asked Israel to provide a signed letter of assurances by mid-March. A senior Israeli official said the issue will be discussed by the Israeli war cabinet in the coming days.

What's next: Secretary of State Antony Blinken has until March 25 to certify that Israel has signed the commitment sought by the memorandum.

• If the certification is not given, U.S. weapons transfers to Israel would be suspended.

​15. U.S. Charges Chinese National With Stealing AI Secrets From Google

U.S. Charges Chinese National With Stealing AI Secrets From Google

Linwei Ding is alleged to have stolen over 500 confidential files related to Google’s artificial-intelligence efforts

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-charges-chinese-national-with-stealing-ai-secrets-from-google-5c66524a?mod=hp_listb_pos2

By Dustin Volz

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 and Robert McMillan

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Updated March 6, 2024 4:57 pm ET

The Justice Department has charged Linwei Ding with four counts of trade-secrets theft, with each count carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if he is convicted. PHOTO: KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGES

A Chinese national who worked at Google was indicted on charges he stole the company’s artificial-intelligence trade secrets as part of a multiyear scheme to compromise sensitive American technology and boost Beijing in the high-stakes global race to dominate the booming industry.

The Justice Department alleged Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, sent sensitive Google trade secrets and other confidential information from the company’s network to his personal Google account, while secretly being affiliated with Chinese AI companies. Prosecutors allege he started a company based in China while continuing to work at Google. 

Ding, 38, was arrested Wednesday morning in Newark, Calif., the Justice Department said. He faces four counts of trade-secrets theft. Prosecutors allege he stole more than 500 files containing AI trade secrets. Each count comes with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if he is convicted.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate the theft of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could put our national security at risk,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “We will fiercely protect sensitive technologies developed in America from falling into the hands of those who should not have them.” 

Some of the secrets Ding allegedly stole had to do with the microchips that form the backbone of artificial-intelligence systems and are considered to be a competitive advantage to the companies that develop them. Google develops chips, known as tensor processing units, or TPUs, for these tasks.

A Google spokesman said the company has “strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that U.S. intelligence officials have grown alarmed about Beijing’s efforts to steal American AI secrets and believe the technology is being used to turbocharge China’s broader spying ambitions.

AI has been on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s list of critical U.S. technologies to protect, just as China placed it on a list of technologies it wanted its scientists to achieve breakthroughs in by 2025. China’s AI capabilities are already believed to be formidable, but U.S. intelligence authorities have lately made new warnings beyond the threat of intellectual-property theft. The FBI and other agencies say China could use AI to gather and stockpile data on Americans at a scale that was never before possible.

Ding had worked at Google as an engineer starting in 2019 and was focused on the software used to manage the servers that powered Google’s AI technologies, which he attempted to steal, according to the indictment. The alleged thefts began in May 2022, prosecutors alleged.

One month later, Ding allegedly received emails from the chief executive of a Chinese startup offering him the role of chief technology officer. Prosecutors said he then traveled to China where he participated in investor meetings in which he was identified by that title.

A year later he had moved on from that startup, prosecutors said, and was seeking funding for a different China-based startup he had founded, called Shanghai Zhisuan Technology. While Ding was in China, he had another Google employee scan his badge at Google’s office to make it appear that he was at work in the U.S., the indictment says. 

Ding tendered his Google resignation on Dec. 26 after booking a one-way ticket to Beijing scheduled to depart about two weeks later, prosecutors said. Ding never made that flight.

Federal agents executed a search warrant at his house in early January, seizing electronic devices and other materials.

The Justice Department formed a disruptive-technology strike force last year that officials said was intended to enforce export-control laws and deter foreign adversaries from pilfering America’s most valuable technology.

“To neutralize these adversaries, we need to zero in on AI to make sure it’s not used to threaten U.S. national security,” Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, said in a speech last month. Artificial intelligence, she said, “is at the very top” of the list of technologies to protect.Write to Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com and Robert McMillan at robert.mcmillan@wsj.com

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

Appeared in the March 7, 2024, print edition as 'Chinese National Indicted In Theft of AI Secrets'.

16. Drones, the Air Littoral, and the Looming Irrelevance of the U.S. Air Force

I have not seen a headline this provocative since 1947 and the National Security Act establishing the US Air Force. I hope LTG Barno and Dr. Bensahel are not on the receiving end of an errant JDAM. (note satire).

Sensational headlines aside, I think it is important to note that drones are changing the definition of air superiority and air supremacy. 

Conclusion:

The breathtaking advance of drone warfare in ongoing conflicts is changing the meaning of air superiority and challenging traditional notions of airpower. In Ukraine, drones have largely displaced manned aircraft in the day-to-day fighting over the front lines, and they are actively contesting the brand-new subdomain of the air littoral. The U.S. Air Force has been slow to digest the epic changes in air warfare that these new rapidly expanding capabilities foretell. Facing similar disruptions to land warfare in the late 1990s, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told his generals: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” Today’s Air Force leadership would be wise to heed those candid words.

Drones, the Air Littoral, and the Looming Irrelevance of the U.S. Air Force - War on the Rocks

DAVID BARNO AND NORA BENSAHEL

warontherocks.com · by David Barno · March 7, 2024

Today, the U.S. Air Force faces an almost-existential crisis. During the past several years, the service has been battered by the loss of its prestigious space mission to the nascent U.S. Space Force. It has also struggled to balance the continued acquisition of stunningly expensive new manned aircraft with the rapid developments in unmanned technologies, which are making pilots increasingly superfluous.

What a difference a few years makes. In 2016, we published a column entitled “The Catastrophic Success of the U.S. Air Force,” which argued that the service had completely dominated the air domain for so long that it was not fully prepared to fight a bloody war for control of the skies. But those days are long gone, thanks to the drone revolution.

The biggest problem facing the Air Force is that masses of uncrewed drones have now wrested command of the air away from manned aircraft in the skies above the modern battlefield. The drone revolution means that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the service to achieve air superiority in future conflicts — which has been the centerpiece of its mission for decades. Drones, not manned airplanes, now dominate the skies above ground forces fighting in Ukraine. The contested air littoral has emerged as a critical new subdomain of warfare. It stretches from the earth’s surface to several thousand feet, below the altitudes where most manned aircraft typically fly, and is now dominated by masses of drones. This is a paradigm shift of epic proportions, which will require the Air Force to fundamentally transform itself in a very short period of time.

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For almost 70 years, the U.S. Air Force maintained unbroken air superiority over every battlefield on which U.S. troops fought. Yet that long streak suddenly ended on Jan. 28, when three U.S. Army soldiers were killed by an air attack — conducted not by an enemy bomber or fighter strike, but by a one-way suicide drone that attacked a U.S. base in Jordan called Tower 22. Although these soldiers undoubtedly thought that U.S. air superiority would protect them from aerial attacks, subsequent reports indicated that the base had only limited defenses against drones.

But why now? Drones have been around for decades, of course. Yet the war in Ukraine has dramatically accelerated the military use of drones in ways few of us could have predicted. Today, they fill the skies above the battlefields in numbers that were simply unimaginable two years ago, conducting vital missions in surveillance, intelligence gathering, early warning, and precision strike. They are so crucial to Ukrainian operations that President Volodymyr Zelensky has called upon his country to produce one million new drones in 2024, and he hopes to receive another million drones from NATO allies and partners this year. Ukraine flies an incredibly wide variety of drones — as many as 10,000 different types, according to one estimate. And they have to be expendable, since Ukraine reportedly loses thousands of drones each month.

The U.S. military is woefully unprepared for warfare in this newly contested subdomain of the air littoral. Needless to say, the U.S. drone inventory looks nothing at all like Ukraine’s. It is a fraction of its size and scale, focusing on small numbers of highly advanced systems. (Even the Pentagon’s highly touted Replicator initiative aims to develop only “thousands” of attritable autonomous systems in the next two years — and right now, it is far from clear that the initiative will ultimately succeed.) But even more importantly, the U.S. military today does not possess reliable counter-drone systems that can effectively protect U.S. forces against small drone attacks, much less the massed level of strikes seen daily in Ukraine. Technologies that protect against drones have failed to keep pace with the proliferation and rapidly evolving capabilities of offensive drones (reflecting a problem that we once called the U.S. military’s protection deficit disorder). As a result, U.S. ground forces have now essentially lost the protective top cover that the Air Force provided through air superiority for decades.

Countering drones in the air littoral is therefore one of the most pressing tasks facing the U.S. military, and all of the services will need to be part of the solution. Yet, as the principal service responsible for the air domain, the Air Force is arguably doing the least to address this burgeoning threat. Why? Countering inexpensive drones that can pummel U.S. forces from the air at will simply does not fit into the service’s future vision. Moreover, defeating this new aerial threat would require the service to transform much of its doctrine and platforms. Yet the Air Force remains firmly wedded to exorbitantly expensive crewed platforms that reflect its 20th-century roots and legacy — especially the F-35A fighter.

The F-35A certainly remains an important platform for high-intensity conventional warfare. But the Air Force is planning to buy 1,763 of the aircraft, which will remain in service through the year 2070. These jets, which are wholly unsuited for countering proliferated low-cost enemy drones in the air littoral, present enormous opportunity costs for the service as a whole. In a set of comments posted on LinkedIn last month, defense analyst T.X. Hammes estimated the following. The delivered cost of a single F-35A is around $130 million, but buying and operating that plane throughout its lifecycle will cost at least $460 million. He estimated that a single Chinese Sunflower suicide drone costs about $30,000 — so you could purchase 16,000 Sunflowers for the cost of one F-35A. And since the full mission capable rate of the F-35A has hovered around 50 percent in recent years, you need two to ensure that all missions can be completed — for an opportunity cost of 32,000 Sunflowers. As Hammes concluded, “Which do you think creates more problems for air defense?”

Ironically, the first service to respond decisively to the new contestation of the air littoral has been the U.S. Army. Its soldiers are directly threatened by lethal drones, as the Tower 22 attack demonstrated all too clearly. Quite unexpectedly, last month the Army cancelled its future reconnaissance helicopter — which has already cost the service $2 billion – because fielding a costly manned reconnaissance aircraft no longer makes sense. Today, the same mission can be performed by far less expensive drones — without putting any pilots at risk. The Army also decided to retire its aging Shadow and Raven legacy drones, whose declining survivability and capabilities have rendered them obsolete, and announced a new rapid buy of 600 Coyote counter-drone drones in order to help protect its troops. As Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George noted, “We are learning from the battlefield — especially Ukraine — that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed. … Sensors and weapons mounted on a variety of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching, and more inexpensive than ever before.”

The Air Force needs to learn that air superiority has fundamentally changed as well. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall recently announced a major reorganization effort to reoptimize the force for great power competition, and has repeatedly warned that the Air Force is “out of time” to prepare for the growing threat from China. But that is simply not enough. It has also run out of time in the air littoral, where it can no longer provide effective air superiority to protect American troops on the ground.

The breathtaking advance of drone warfare in ongoing conflicts is changing the meaning of air superiority and challenging traditional notions of airpower. In Ukraine, drones have largely displaced manned aircraft in the day-to-day fighting over the front lines, and they are actively contesting the brand-new subdomain of the air littoral. The U.S. Air Force has been slow to digest the epic changes in air warfare that these new rapidly expanding capabilities foretell. Facing similar disruptions to land warfare in the late 1990s, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told his generals: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” Today’s Air Force leadership would be wise to heed those candid words.

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Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, U.S. Army (ret.), and Dr. Nora Bensahel are Professors of Practice at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and are also contributing editors at War on the Rocks, where their column appears periodically. Sign up for Barno and Bensahel’s Strategic Outpost newsletter to track their articles as well as their public events.

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warontherocks.com · by David Barno · March 7, 2024

17. $10m Abrams tanks no match for $500 Russian drones

Another sensational headline for food for thought?

$10m Abrams tanks no match for $500 Russian drones - Asia Times

War update: Ukraine’s ground counterattacks failed but it claims Russian ship sunk with unmanned surface vehicle

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen · March 5, 2024

A number of counterattacks by the Ukrainians, in some cases using reserve forces, have taken place along the line of contact. While reports are not yet complete, it appears that all the Ukrainian attempts to roll back Russian gains have failed, with the possible exception of Robotyne.

Meanwhile the Russians have either taken or will soon take a number of villages including Ivaniska, Bilohorivka, Berdichev, Pobjeda and Novomikhailovka.

Since February 28, the Russians have destroyed three Abrams tanks. The most recent was knocked out on March 4 by an anti-tank missile, probably a Russian Kornet. The first two Abramses were hit by low-cost Russian drones carrying RPG-7 warheads.

An Abrams tank on fire in Ukraine

The low-cost drones go under the name Ghoul. They are quadcopters that are battery powered. The Ghoul is a first-person-view (FPV) drone.

The drone can communicate with a sister relay drone, extending its operational range and making it effective in hilly and built-up areas where its near line-of-sight radio transmissions are relayed by the sister drone.

The Russians say that the Ghoul drone uses a special transmission frequency and is difficult, if not impossible, to jam. The drone costs around $500, according to its Russian maker in the Sverdlovsk region. It is made from plastic and some of its parts are 3-D printed. The cost of an Abrams tank is north of $10 million.

A Ghoul drone with an RPG payload

The drones have also been used to knock out Bradley fighting vehicles and mine clearing systems using the Abrams chassis. More than 50 Bradleys have been damaged or destroyed.

A Russian commander, only identified as Rassvet, says that the Abrams has two vulnerabilities. One of them is behind the turret above the engine compartment. The other is between the turret and the tank hull.

The Ukrainians held back using Abrams tanks until February 25 when the first one was spotted on the battlefield. Three days later either that one or another was knocked out by two drone strikes, after the tank’s track had been hit by an RPG, immobilizing the Abrams.

The Abrams tanks sent to Ukraine had been degraded by the Pentagon to protect certain secrets, particularly the armor protection.

The tanks were fitted with explosive reactive armor (ERA), but the EBAD armor is a dated design that the Pentagon started fitting to Abrams tanks deployed in Europe starting in 1999. This reactive armor, called M19 ARAT-1 (and a curved version called M-32 ARAT) is similar conceptually to Russia’s Kontakt-1 ERA. The ERA kits, in Pentagon jargonese, are known as Urban Survival Kits.

In Iraq around 23 Abrams tanks were either damaged or destroyed. Prior to that conflict, the Pentagon believed that its composite armor system was enough to protect the Abrams. But in Iraq Abrams tanks were knocked out by anti-tank Kornets and by RPGs.

DOD is not relying on M-32 ARAT armor for the future. It has contracted with General Dynamics, partnered with Rafael in Israel, for a more advanced ERA based on Rafael’s “Armor Shield R.” It is not in use in Ukraine.

Israel was the first country to actually mount ERA on its Merkava tanks. The designer was a German named Manfred Held. The Russians followed, starting with Kontakt 1, then Kontakt 5, and more recently with a system called Relikt. Relikt can be installed on T-72B and T-90 tanks and was adopted in 2006. The Russian Army T-72B3M main battle tank incorporates Relikt. Most of the ERA seen in the Ukraine war appears to be the older type.

The problem with ERA is that it cannot cover the entire tank and does not guarantee that a weapon can’t penetrate the ERA tiles. Tanks face high kinetic threats, rockets, artillery and older, slower grenades like the RPG-7.

German Leopard tanks do not have reactive armor. However, the Ukrainians scavenged Kontakt-1 blocks from wrecked Russian tanks and bolted them onto some of the Leopards. The Ukrainians also installed “bird cages” above the tank turret to try and trigger the explosive charge of enemy weapons. Some of the Merkava tanks in use in the Gaza strip also have Bird Cages installed.

Israeli tanks with bird cages over the turrets.

Ukraine counterattacked the Russians rather than falling back to new defense lines for the simple reason that there were no pre-prepared fortifications for their army even though they were supposed to have been built. This has created a significant controversy and there are hints that the money for the materials needed for the fortifications was siphoned off (stolen). Corruption in Ukraine is rampant and despite some efforts to curtail it, it is growing.

As Ukraine’s situation deteriorates, get-rich-quick and exit schemes are growing.

Zelensky on Tuesday fired another field general as part of the purge that started with Zaluzhny. The Mayor of Kiev, who has been challenging Zelensky, said today said that firing Zaluzhny had been a mistake. He is calling for a national government to replace Zelensky.

One ship sunk, two damaged

A Russian patrol ship, the Sergey Kotov, apparently was sunk in the Kerch Strait by Ukrainian Magara-V USVs (unmanned surface vehicles). Ukraine has published a video of the attack and claims the vessel was destroyed.

At least two other Russian patrol craft have been either damaged or destroyed by Ukrainian USV attacks. So far, Russia has not confirmed the attack.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius confirmed that the leak of a conversation among four German officers suggesting using Taurus missiles to attack the Kerch Strait bridge and targets inside Russia came about as a result of a Webex conversation in Singapore, where one of the (unnamed) officers was attending the Singapore Air Show.

Pistorius hinted there may be punishments for using an insecure line. The German officer in Singapore used either a non-secure Hotel Wifi connection or his mobile phone to participate in the discussion.

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Singapore has an experienced security service and probably monitors foreign phone conversations. There also are hints that China extensively monitors activities in Singapore.

Also from Singapore is a statement from Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen. In a story reported on Google News on March 3, the minister claimed that US F-35 jets were flying in Ukrainian air space targeting Russian air defense assets.

According to the Minister, the targeting information was passed to US NATO allies and, presumably, to Ukraine. The F-35 has one of the world’s most advanced radars onboard, which includes synthetic aperture capability allowing targets to be seen even in bad weather.

The Pentagon rejected the Minister’s claim saying that no F-35s were operating in Ukrainian airspace.

In political news, Victoria Nuland has resigned from the State Department. She was serving as acting deputy secretary of state but was replaced recently when Kurt Campbell was confirmed by the Senate.

Former Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland. Photo: Asia Times files

Nuland had hoped to be approved for the deputy job but was judged unconfirmable.Called a “neoconservative” and a “hawk” on Russia, Nuland was the architect of the Ukraine conflict, in her role in the Obama administration and under Biden. Her future plans have not yet been announced.

Stephen Bryen served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article was first published on his Weapons and Strategy Substack and is republished with permission.

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asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen · March 5, 2024

18. Russia Is Burning Up Its Future

Excerpts:

A Fight Against the Future

Building the economy around goals other than improving the quality of human life makes the economy unproductive. In 2022, labor productivity decreased by 3.6 percent over the previous year, according to government statistics. (Data for 2023 is not yet available.) Funded largely at taxpayer expense and by commodities revenues, the intensifying output of “metal goods”—the government’s euphemism for weapons—is making the economy more primitive. By now, a large share of Russia’s GDP growth—one-third, by some estimates—can be attributed to the military-industrial complex and related industries. Putin hopes that military industries will stimulate the development of civilian technologies. But this so-called conversion scheme already failed during the Soviet years and the early post-Soviet reform era.

Putin started his war to change the world order and force everyone else to live by his rules. For that, he needed to position his country and its zone of geopolitical influence against the West and the modernizing project it represents. These goals account for Putin’s readiness to embark on territorial expansion: many other countries are moving forward, transitioning to other types of energy precisely so that there will be resources left for the future. But Russia is defending a dying model of development, one that requires a totalitarian and imperial ideology—and that necessitates using up resources now, including the same old oil and gas.

For Putin, it appears to be a wager worth making: his costly project in Ukraine has laid a minefield under the country’s economic and demographic future, but it is entirely possible that these mines will explode only after he has left the scene. Call it the King Louis XV model of governance: Après moi, le déluge. (“After me, the flood.”) Putin’s war is a fight against the future.

Russia Is Burning Up Its Future

How Putin’s Pursuit of Power Has Hollowed Out the Country and Its People

By Andrei Kolesnikov

March 7, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Andrei Kolesnikov · March 7, 2024

From March 15 to 17, Russia will hold a presidential election to refresh Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hold on power. There have never been any real doubts about the outcome, which will herald his fifth term in office. But the Kremlin has taken extraordinary steps to make sure: On February 8, the Central Election Commission announced that the antiwar candidate Boris Nadezhdin was disqualified from running. Eight days later, Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison colony, an event widely blamed on the Russian state, eliminating Russia’s most prominent opposition leader. Navalny was not running in the election, but Russian politics had been until recently reduced to a Navalny-Putin confrontation. Now Putin is alone on the political Olympus. With such figures as Navalny and Nadezhdin out of the way, the vote can provide a resounding affirmation of Putin and his pet project, the war in Ukraine.

Russia is neither stable nor normal. The presidential election brings to maturity the late-stage Putinism that began with the constitutional referendum in the summer of 2020, when Putin’s potential mandate was extended until 2036. There is more to this stage, however, than mere autocracy. Putin has made clear that Russia is fighting a permanent background war with the West, which gives him both an ideological raison d’être and a way for his ruling elite to maintain power. And to keep it all going, he must continually burn up the country’s resources, financial, human, political, and psychological. All of which points to the country’s political and economic fragility.

Consider the financial and economic situation. Although it retains market fundamentals, the Russian economy is increasingly dependent on government investment. The military-industrial complex has become the overwhelming driver of this unhealthy and unproductive economy, as the 2024 budget makes clear: military expenditures will be 1.7 times higher even compared with last year’s inflated figures, to reach 25 percent of all spending. Meanwhile, Russian exports, primarily of oil and gas resources, are providing diminishing returns because of the closure of Western markets and discounted sales. Nonetheless, these nonrenewables are not exhausted yet, and Putin, at least, seems to hope they will be enough to last his lifetime.

A larger problem is demography. Along with the long-term trend of population aging, the demand for soldiers and the collapse of migrant inflows are pitching the country into demographic crisis. Economists note that all these pressures will combine in the medium term to a decline in labor productivity. Although the artificial growth of wages through the military economy has improved the situation for now, it has also distorted it. Putin is preoccupied with raising the birth rate at any cost, but there are few signs this can be changed. A modernized and urban Russian society will not produce as many children as Putin needs to fuel the military-industrial complex. Besides, how can a Russian family plan for the future in a permanent state of war.

One of the scarcest resources, however, is psychological. Unable to satisfy the public’s hunger for peace and normality, the regime has resorted to gigantic social expenditures and preferential treatment for the poor, turning Russia into Putin’s Barbieland. Russian society in turn has been reduced to adapting and surviving, rather than developing. But civil society, which is different from an indifferent society, unable to protest openly, has shown moral resistance: people openly stood in line to give their signatures for Nadezhdin; after Navalny’s death, they carried flowers and candles to memorials for the victims of Stalinist repressions. And the line to say goodbye to Navalny, the man who embodied an alternative to Putin, was enormous.

Russia’s path to abnormality did not begin in 2022. Putin’s system has been moving in an authoritarian direction ever since it began more than two decades ago. Already in December 2000, Putin had brought back the old Stalinist anthem: the words might have been different, but the future autocrat was offering an early indication of where he intended to go. The difference was that back then, the regime’s antimodern authoritarianism was partly hidden; now, it is in full view. Quite simply, Putin and his team appear to assume that Russia will have enough reserves of all types—including the forbearance of its population—to last their own lifetimes. What happens after does not matter.

An Ordinary Kremlin

Twenty years ago in these pages, Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman called Russia a “normal country.” Noting the rise of a market economy and the beginnings of Western-style institutions, they argued that the Russian Federation was becoming a “typical middle-income capitalist democracy”—less than perfect, but far from the “evil empire” that had once threatened people “at home and abroad.” Ten years later, they published another article, “Normal Countries,” referring to the relative success of the larger group of the states of the former Eastern bloc. “Market reforms, attempts to build democracy, and struggles against corruption did not fail, although they remain incomplete,” they wrote.

Given what has happened to Russia in the years since, these views might be considered naive. In any case, Russia certainly no longer qualifies as “normal.” But Shleifer and Treisman were not entirely wrong: they conceded that Russia might still follow an authoritarian path. As for other post-Soviet states in Eastern Europe, despite all the difficulties of their transitions to a market economy and democracy, that transition did happen, even if it wasn’t flawless. Moreover, in those countries, multiparty democracy and peaceful transfers of power have worked: Poland’s October 2023 election, which brought the liberal centrist Donald Tusk to power after years of rule by the right-wing Law and Justice Party, is proof of that.

Russia’s path to abnormality began decades ago.

But history tends to move in unpleasant ways. In Europe at the start of the twentieth century, for example, the first great era of global trade appeared to have taken the threat of war off the table. Then came 1914 and World War I. A similar reversal followed Russia’s early moves toward normalcy: the West cheered on the reforms of the 1990s and later put high hopes on Dmitry Medvedev, who during his single term as Russian president from 2008 to 2012 seemingly initiated a new wave of modernization efforts and even a “reset” of relations with the United States.

Indeed, the mass pro-democracy protests that swept the country in 2011 and 2012 might have led Russia toward full democratization. For a time, that goal appeared to be within reach. But Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 marked the beginning of a swift, brutal, and irrevocable shift toward autocracy. State and society became less, not more, normal.

Authoritarian Reflexes

Back in 2004, Russia’s apparent emergence as a capitalist democracy was not a pure illusion. But it was precisely around the moment—the beginning of Putin’s second presidential term—that Russia began to lose its chances for normal development. In fact, the economic achievements that seemed so noteworthy at the time had nothing to do with Putin: they were the result of Russia’s earlier transition from socialism to capitalism, and of the radical economic reforms of the early 1990s. The real architect of those reforms, Yegor Gaidar—the economist who was, briefly, acting prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin—was cursed by the general public, who blamed him for destroying the Soviet economy and impoverishing the population. This allowed Putin to style himself as the true builder of the post-Soviet economy, though he had played no part in it. During his first two years in office, Putin did take economic reforms more or less seriously, but after that, he lost interest. What was really driving the Russian economy was the deluge of petrodollars that suddenly flooded the country—another factor he had nothing to do with.

There were other early signs that Putin was no reformer. In 2001, the independent NTV television channel—a symbol of 1990s democratization and a frequent critic of Putin—was taken over by Gazprom and transformed into an arm of official state media. In 2003, the tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested and his enormously successful oil company, YUKOS, subsequently dismantled by the government in a series of forced sales. Business could be done and fortunes made but, for the biggest projects, only if you had the right political connections.

Russia effectively became a one-party state following the defeat of the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko democratic parties in the 2003 parliamentary election, a vote that failed to meet democratic standards, according to both the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. With the rise of the ruling United Russia party, the remaining major parties—the Communist Party and Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s populist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia—became appendages of the Kremlin. From this point on, the Duma ceased to function as an independent legislative body.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, January 2024

Maxim Shemetov / Reuters

Authoritarian reflexes returned to the political system, which began to control more and more aspects of social life. For instance, in 2003, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, or VTsIOM, the country’s main center for social research, was seized by the state, and brought under government control. (VTsIOM’s old team formed the independent Levada Center, named after its founder, Yuri Levada.) Already, the state was seeking to control Russians’ knowledge of themselves.

Such a system could hardly be considered normal, but Russian elites and many in the West convinced themselves that it was. Many assumed that the authorities would not risk overt moves toward repression that might backfire and thus jeopardize their privileged lives. These assumptions persisted even after the Kremlin had neutralized all political competition and invaded Georgia in 2008. The West then staked its hopes for renewed liberalization on the new president, Medvedev, whom many assumed would break from Putin and become an independent figure.

Around this time, Russia was also beginning a further stage of so-called authoritarian modernization—an approach that sought to emphasize technocratic economic reforms ahead of political liberalization, which the Kremlin generally regarded as unnecessary. In fact, Medvedev established a new center, the Institute of Modern Development, to oversee the cautious liberalizing not only of the economy, but also of politics, too, in what was supposed to be a road map for Russia’s future. But not much came of it. Simultaneously, more or less the same experts went on to prepare “Strategy 2020,” a plan to vault Russia into one of the world’s top economies by 2020. And even after Putin was preparing for his official fourth term, as late as 2016–2017, there was another modernization program, this one led by the former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Each time, however, these efforts were thwarted by lack of political will, and it became clear that any attempt at authoritarian modernization would end simply in authoritarianism—without the modernization. It is symptomatic that many of the experts who led these efforts in the last two years have been pushed aside or forced to leave the country.

Consumers Into Conformists

In fact, Putin was by this point actively seeking the de-modernization of Russia. After his return to the presidency in 2012, he began dismantling democratic institutions and putting in place repressive laws. In 2014, he seized Crimea, which he justified by ultraconservative imperialist ideology. Economic reforms had stopped. By the 2018 presidential election, many Russians had become passive and were voting mechanically, realizing that they could not influence the situation. Still, Putin’s ratings suffered after the election when the government raised the retirement age, and then, the mere existence of the pandemic further eroded his popularity. It was time to take emergency measures. In the summer of 2020, he held a referendum to change the constitution, reset his presidential terms, and potentially extend his rule until 2036, and the conformist majority approved. Putin’s consolidation of a semi-totalitarian regime was symbolically complemented, just two months later, by the attempted poisoning of Putin’s main opponent, Alexei Navalny.

But it was the next step that destroyed Russia’s modernization all the way down to its foundations: the war in Ukraine. In launching the “special military operation,” Putin was rejecting the democratic heritage of not only Boris Yeltsin, but also Mikhail Gorbachev. Everything that had been achieved in Russia since 1985—from the establishment of democratic institutions to the abolition of censorship and the reunification of Russian and European cultures—Putin swept off the table in one fell swoop. The war took the brakes off the regime, which in a short time crushed the remnants of these institutions and returned to Soviet-scale repression. Indeed, it would also involve breaking with the world order that had first emerged after 1945 and then become dominant after 1989.

Astonishingly, during this 20-year descent into an autocratic abyss, the majority of Russians, not to mention the time-serving elites, were not overly disturbed. To them, each step along the way was just a new normal. Even after 2014, when all socioeconomic indicators—including real household income—began to stagnate, few Russians saw a direct link between the regime’s tightening grip and the country’s failing economy. In any case, many had given up the fight for modernization after Crimea, choosing instead to join in the national-imperialist euphoria that swept over the country. It is hard to swim against the tide.

Few Russians saw a link between the regime’s tightening grip and the failing economy.

There was still a political opposition in those years, with people taking to the streets and civil society groups swinging into action. Many took significant risks, including being labeled a “foreign agent”—a legal designation devised by the Kremlin in 2012 for anyone who receives support from outside Russia or otherwise appears to be influenced by external sources. But the fiercer people resisted, the harsher the government cracked down on them. In 2020, Navalny’s poisoning showed how far the authorities were ready to go; to avoid arrest, many opposition figures began to leave the country. Navalny’s return to Russia in early 2021 and his own arrest sparked a new wave of powerful protests. But the Putin system did not stop and no longer had any restraints. It was moving toward an external expansion and an internal war with what was left of civil society.

The main social problem was that Russia’s market economy had turned Russians into garden-variety capitalist consumers without making them engaged citizens. Having adapted to the new market conditions during the post-Soviet transition, they did not see the inextricable connection between an open market and political democracy. In big cities, no one saw the point of democracy, the rotation of power, or human rights, because even under enlightened authoritarianism, many people felt just fine. Despite the decline in average real incomes and problems among the working classes, the consumerist boom continued. Middle-class Russians had gotten used to vacationing in Europe. Russians became discerning connoisseurs of French, Spanish, and Italian wines, and eagerly adopted the latest technologies—and then they were proclaimed by Putin the heirs of a great empire by taking Crimea without a shot fired. To many of them, it was easy to discount the importance of democracy in all this.

Putin, in any case, never believed in modernization, so when he felt that it was not working, he made a conscious choice in favor of archaism and de-modernization instead. First the regime began to close itself off, and gradually it rejected everything that came from the West, reembracing the medieval concept of the “Russian path” that perceives European influence as heresy.

No More Children’s Books

Putin would be surprised to be called a Marxist. But he is at least partly an economic determinist, since his primary tactic for preserving power is maintaining a sufficient level of socioeconomic well-being—in particular, by buying the loyalty of the lower-middle classes with social support. If economic failures can be overcome through political repression and an archaic national-imperial ideology, it is possible to rule for a long time. Still, as the Russian demographer Anatoly Vishnevsky has argued, in the long term, demographics will always trump economics. It’s unlikely that Putin has read Vishnevsky; his government has certainly ignored Vishnevsky’s warnings about the risks to human capital caused by Russia’s long-term demographic trends.

Putin is already failing in this most important area. The Kremlin now spends human capital profligately, as if it were a mere commodity. And all the while, the regime talks of “saving the people”—a phrase coined by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to mean respect for human life—appropriated by Putin as a hypocritical call for greater fertility. To further this goal, the Kremlin continues the fight against same-sex relationships and abortion, while promoting “traditional” families. It is no coincidence that Putin declared 2024 the Year of the Family and devoted much of the 2024 presidential address to supporting large families.

But “saving the people” is an awkward promise for an architect of a deadly war to make. As the wives of men mobilized to fight in Ukraine have observed in a statement back in November 2023, “wives have been left wailing for their husbands, children are growing up without fathers, and many have been orphaned.” It is hard to escape the impression that Putin has begun a reverse demographic transition, in which a death for the Motherland has greater value than a life for the Motherland; in which death from “external causes”—a bureaucratic euphemism for deaths from road traffic accidents, alcohol, and probably, duty in the trenches—looms disproportionately large. (The actual figures for combat fatalities remain unknown.)

Russians gathering at the funeral for opposition politician Alexei Navalny in Moscow, March 2024

Stringer / Reuters

Both government statistics and indirect indicators show that the birth rate in Russia has been falling since 2016–2017. Book publishers, for example, complain of a vanishing audience for children’s books: by 2027, demographers predict a 23 percent reduction in the key age group of five- to nine-year-olds, based on the same decline in the zero-to-four age group between 2017 and 2022. Birth rates, of course, follow long-term trends, and one explanation is the inexorable demographic consequences of becoming a postindustrial country: Russian society started to become modern—with people moving to cities, becoming more educated, and having fewer children—back in the 1960s. But another reason Russia’s birth rate is so low today is that Putin needs soldiers and workers at military-industrial complex factories, and fewer Russians today want their children to grow up to become soldiers and workers.

Meanwhile, the decline of the working-age population—primarily from population aging and smaller numbers entering the labor market—has already caused an enormous labor shortage. In 2023, there were two million more vacancies than there were workers. According to forecasts by labor market specialists and demographers, by 2035 there will be three million to four million fewer Russians employed, the proportion of young people in the labor market will steadily decline, and the level of education of the labor force will stagnate. Under the most pessimistic scenario modeled by the state statistics service, by 2046, the population of Russia (excluding the four territories whose annexation from Ukraine was announced by the Kremlin in September 2022) will shrink by a total of 15.4 million people, equivalent to an average annual population decline of 700,000.

The government’s efforts to address this demographic time bomb are becoming more and more absurd. No ban on abortions—which are no more common in Russia than in developed European countries—is going to revive the birth rate. Nor will getting people to move to rural areas to live a “traditional life,” given that, far from cities and economic infrastructure it is even harder to support a larger family. Even Russians who can work have been compromised by the war: military demands have diverted money away from critical sectors such as health care and education. Russia faces a shortage of important medications such as insulin, and for the first time in many years, the rate of alcoholism has gone up, a testament to the stress brought on by the country’s abnormality.

A Fight Against the Future

Building the economy around goals other than improving the quality of human life makes the economy unproductive. In 2022, labor productivity decreased by 3.6 percent over the previous year, according to government statistics. (Data for 2023 is not yet available.) Funded largely at taxpayer expense and by commodities revenues, the intensifying output of “metal goods”—the government’s euphemism for weapons—is making the economy more primitive. By now, a large share of Russia’s GDP growth—one-third, by some estimates—can be attributed to the military-industrial complex and related industries. Putin hopes that military industries will stimulate the development of civilian technologies. But this so-called conversion scheme already failed during the Soviet years and the early post-Soviet reform era.

Putin started his war to change the world order and force everyone else to live by his rules. For that, he needed to position his country and its zone of geopolitical influence against the West and the modernizing project it represents. These goals account for Putin’s readiness to embark on territorial expansion: many other countries are moving forward, transitioning to other types of energy precisely so that there will be resources left for the future. But Russia is defending a dying model of development, one that requires a totalitarian and imperial ideology—and that necessitates using up resources now, including the same old oil and gas.

For Putin, it appears to be a wager worth making: his costly project in Ukraine has laid a minefield under the country’s economic and demographic future, but it is entirely possible that these mines will explode only after he has left the scene. Call it the King Louis XV model of governance: Après moi, le déluge. (“After me, the flood.”) Putin’s war is a fight against the future.

• ANDREI KOLESNIKOV is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Foreign Affairs · by Andrei Kolesnikov · March 7, 2024

19. The Osprey, Indispensable for Future War Plans

Excerpts:

Rapid delivery to the carrier at ranges of 1150 nautical miles and more will place heavy demands on the Osprey. For example, the CMV-22B has cargo space to deliver a replacement F135 engine power module for the F-35C Lightning stealth fighter and attack aircraft to a carrier underway in the Pacific. The Navy Ospreys will operate through the 2050s. There’s just one catch. The fleet is sized for routine onboard delivery, and may be inadequate for distributed combat operations. The Navy may well wish they’d bought more.

The fact that the Army down-selected the Bell Textron V-280 Valor for its future long range assault aircraft is perhaps the ultimate compliment to the Osprey. “Advanced rotorcraft configurations give us the speed and the range to cover Indo-Pacom, [multi-domain operations]-relevant distances,” said MG Walter Rugen, director of the Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team, at contract award. The V-280 is a new design that will leverage lessons of the V-22 to bring a highly advanced tiltrotor to the Army with exceptional operational capabilities. The V-280 straight wing design reduces manufacturing costs and lessons learned from the V-22 have been applied to the V-280’s fly-by-wire and hydraulics systems.

It’s also a big investment. The Army will spend as much as $70 billion to procure its V-280 Valor fleet, depending on final procurement numbers and potential foreign military sales. There is no doubt the Army would never have made this commitment without the strong operational record of the V-22 over the last three decades.

Each military aircraft accident is a reminder of the risks service members willingly face every day. With threats from China increasing, the role of the Osprey is more vital than ever. It will be good to see the Osprey back in the sky.

The Osprey, Indispensable for Future War Plans

By Rebecca Grant

March 07, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/03/07/the_osprey_indispensable_for_future_war_plans_1016673.html

Before long, the grounded V-22 Osprey fleet may be back in the air. Air Force Special Operations Command touched off the speculation last week, when they announced that ongoing safety reviews have identified the mechanical part failure that caused the November 29 crash of a CV-22 in route to Okinawa, Japan. Lieutenant General Tony Bauernfeind, Commander, Air Force Special Operations Command also said “there is a strong desire to return to fly because this is a capability we want to have.”

You know the story so far. The Air Force stood down all its CV-22s in December, and the Marine Corps, Navy and Japan Self Defense Force also issued grounding bulletins. In the case of the CV-22, the Air Force determined quickly that the cause was mechanical, and not pilot error. The Air Force and contractor team set to work immediately to evaluate options. In early January, divers recovered the black box of the CV-22 from the seas off Japan.

Those who only follow breaking news about the Osprey may be surprised to learn how indispensable the V-22 advanced tiltrotor variants have become. The Osprey has gradually shouldered more and more new missions. Bauernfeind’s comments were a reminder that the Osprey fleet – across the Marines, Air Force and Navy – has a powerful operational record and a central place in future war plans. Don’t forget that the Army has been impressed enough with the operational benefits of the Osprey to develop an advanced tiltrotor of their own, the V-280 Valor.

While the Marines, Navy and Air Force await the return to fly, here are four factors that have made the Osprey vital across the Services.

First, on data alone, the Osprey is not an outlier. The Marines operate 375 MV-22s and their fleet has more than 530,000 flying hours. The Marines are satisfied with the MV-22’s operational record. As Steve Busby pointed out in a Feb. 25 article for Defense One, the 10-year average mishap rate for MV-22s is 3.43 per 100,000 flight hours, placing the mishap rate “squarely in the middle” of other current Marine Corps aircraft.

Next is responsiveness in missions such as noncombatant evacuation operations. Probably no unit is more eager to get its Ospreys flying again than the 26th MEU (SOC). The MV-22Bs are flown by the 26th MEU’s “Golden Eagles” of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 162. After the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the 26^th MEU packed up early from an exercise in Kuwait, and the USS Bataan and other amphibious ships headed for the Eastern Mediterranean to be in place in the conflict boiled over. NEOs and similar connector operations are a core mission for the Osprey. MV-22s can extract a partial element from an embassy, or rescue personnel from an isolated location. The Ospreys have greatly expanded their ability to save lives and finesse diplomatic options. The 26^th MEU’s MV-22s have special dispensation to fly if needed even during the stand-down in case tensions with Hezbollah necessitated a non-combatant evacuation of American personnel from Lebanon, for example.

Take a look at what happens without the Osprey. On Apr. 22, 2023, U.S. forces evacuated just under 100 American staff from the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan. No Marine Expeditionary Unit was nearby due to other global commitments and the shortage of amphibious ships. Ospreys were not available, and their absence was felt. As a result, the NEO ran in multiple stages. MH-47 Chinooks from Djibouti, Somalia had to land and refuel in Ethiopia, then flew three more hours to Khartoum. A separate convoy evacuated more U.S. citizens and allies by driving 700 miles to Port Sudan a week later. In contrast, four MV-22s could have completed the initial embassy evacuation in about four hours.

These qualities of speed and range lead to the third factor: dominating the distributed battlespace of the Pacific. For the Marine Corps, the Osprey steps into a central role in scenarios for deterring and countering China in the Pacific. The Marine Corps debuted Force 2030 with an emphasis on breaking up large forces in favor of distributed operations. Dr. Frank Hoffman described it for the BBC as “an adaptation to cover a deeper area with a more accurate mix of firepower.”

Under this concept, amphibious ready groups and carrier strike groups will be dotted across the battle area for both lethality and survivability. Unlike the Cold War, where forces deployed in advance, the current operating concepts call for distributed operations. Forces will insert rapidly into the battle zone in dispersed formations. That’s a job for the MV-22s. In fact, it’s fair to say the Marines shaped their Force 2030 concept partly around the Osprey’s ability to insert teams at multiple locations, then supply and reposition them.

Once inserted, the success of smaller combat units distributed across the battlespace depends directly on logistics to consolidate gains and sustain operations; again, a job for the MV-22s. Self-diagnostic technology on the MV-22s also allows the Osprey to operate remotely and conduct several flight segments ashore without returning to base for maintenance.

Fourth, the Navy is also counting on the Osprey’s agility. The Navy has just taken delivery of the last of their 48 CMV-22s with upgrades such as extra fuel capacity and a high-frequency radio. “We have better range. We have much better avionics. We have better communications which allows us to connect with the strike groups more securely,” Captain Sam Bryant, Commander, Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission Wing, said of the CMV-22s in a 2023 interview. “We are better suited for long-range navigation operations, and the flexibility required to support a high-end fight in the Pacific.”

Rapid delivery to the carrier at ranges of 1150 nautical miles and more will place heavy demands on the Osprey. For example, the CMV-22B has cargo space to deliver a replacement F135 engine power module for the F-35C Lightning stealth fighter and attack aircraft to a carrier underway in the Pacific. The Navy Ospreys will operate through the 2050s. There’s just one catch. The fleet is sized for routine onboard delivery, and may be inadequate for distributed combat operations. The Navy may well wish they’d bought more.

The fact that the Army down-selected the Bell Textron V-280 Valor for its future long range assault aircraft is perhaps the ultimate compliment to the Osprey. “Advanced rotorcraft configurations give us the speed and the range to cover Indo-Pacom, [multi-domain operations]-relevant distances,” said MG Walter Rugen, director of the Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team, at contract award. The V-280 is a new design that will leverage lessons of the V-22 to bring a highly advanced tiltrotor to the Army with exceptional operational capabilities. The V-280 straight wing design reduces manufacturing costs and lessons learned from the V-22 have been applied to the V-280’s fly-by-wire and hydraulics systems.

It’s also a big investment. The Army will spend as much as $70 billion to procure its V-280 Valor fleet, depending on final procurement numbers and potential foreign military sales. There is no doubt the Army would never have made this commitment without the strong operational record of the V-22 over the last three decades.

Each military aircraft accident is a reminder of the risks service members willingly face every day. With threats from China increasing, the role of the Osprey is more vital than ever. It will be good to see the Osprey back in the sky.

Rebecca Grant is President of IRIS Independent Research and a Senior Fellow of the Lexington Institute.

20. The classroom is a battle lab: Using professional military education to usher in a new era of algorithmic warfare

Bravo Zulu to the Marine Corps University.

The classroom is a battle lab: Using professional military education to usher in a new era of algorithmic warfare

The classroom has been disconnected from current battles and emerging technology for too long.

BY BENJAMIN JENSEN | PUBLISHED MAR 6, 2024 5:34 PM EST

taskandpurpose.com · by Benjamin Jensen · March 6, 2024

What is the future of algorithmic warfare? The character of war is changing as artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) applications transform everything from tactical engagements to operational art and military planning. Some thinkers go as far as to claim it is not just the character or war, but its nature and even the balance of power that are changing.

This moment calls on military organizations to accelerate experimentation. These experiments must combine classified excursions across the joint force like the Global Information Dominance Exercises (GIDE) with unclassified classrooms that allow military professionals to explore new ways of visualizing, describing, and directing operations on the future battlefield.

To that end, Marine Corps University (MCU), under the U.S. Marine Corps Education Command, used academic year 2024 to test making the classroom a battle lab. In the lab students and faculty built and tested a series of generative AI models exploring global integration and active campaigning, integrated deterrence, operational art, tactics, and combat development in collaboration with the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO). More important, the effort empowered students to build and evaluate customized AI models linked to contemporary strategic, institutional, operational, and tactical challenges confronting the force.

First, MCU used its Presidential Lecture Series to introduce both resident and non-resident students to algorithmic warfare. This series brought together speakers including U.S. Air Force Col. Matthew “Nomad” Strohmeyer, who currently leads experimentation efforts in CDAO alongside industry experts like Joseph P. Larson III (U.S. Marine Corps Reserve) and Nand Mulchandani, the chief technology officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. The talk explored not just the promise of AI to transform warfare, but why legacy bureaucracy and processes create challenges to implementation.

These panel discussions helped students see beyond the headlines and hype to assess when, where, and how AI is most likely to increase maneuver and lethality across the levels of war. Based on his role in implementing the GIDE, Strohmeyer discussed the importance of adopting an agile mindset that prioritizes multiple, small experiments that embrace failure over large, “too big to fail” exercise constructs.

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Larson compared his experience as a company grade officer working in al-Anbar, Iraq supporting intelligence-led targeting with pen, paper, and PowerPoint to the prospects of using data science, statistics, and AI co-pilots to guide military operations. As he noted, this vision requires large investments in data infrastructure and retraining military professionals to understand when to trust and when to discount AI model-generated insights. Last, Mulchandani discussed strides the intelligence community was making based on prior investments in data infrastructure and how best to conceptualize AI co-pilots. Specifically, he differentiated between expert systems and agents that summarize large bodies of text from “crazy drunk” models that can stimulate human creativity.

The university also empowered faculty with experience working with AI to develop an incubator across the schools to let students explore the potential of AI/ML as it relates to the future of warfighting. This effort ranged from classroom pilots at the Marine Corps War College using commercial, generative AI models to more structured experiments that had students build and deploy their own AI co-pilots.

In the Expeditionary Warfare School, a small group of faculty and students built tailored models on tactics using platforms like Advana, Databricks, and simple Python scripts. Even when these experiments failed, they succeeded as military officers left with an understanding of the bureaucratic, organizational, and cultural challenges that tend to plague integrating new information technologies in any military organization. This approach was also consistent with agile software development that underwrites most commercial AI innovations.

At the School of Advanced Warfighting, faculty developed a multi-tiered approach working with TF LIMA, the lead for generative AI and large-language models in the U.S. Department of Defense, and experts from Scale AI. Using fine-tuning techniques like retrieval-augmented generation, faculty and students built AI co-pilots that combined military history, operational art, theory, and modern doctrine. The resulting models helped TF LIMA analyze how to develop test and evaluation standards for generative AI across the Defense Department. More directly, these models helped students work on classroom assignments like developing future scenarios and guides for writing commander’s intent with the assistance of tailored AI co-pilots.

Building on these efforts, MCU plans to create a new quality enhancement plan (QEP) guiding how it will expose students to emerging and disruptive technologies going forward with a particular focus on decision-support applications and algorithmic warfare. This effort will build on the pilot projects discussed above and expand over the next five years to include partnerships across the Defense Department, think tanks, and civilian universities. The goal is to ensure that students are both exposed to best practices for using AI/ML and gain experience using the technology in the classroom, including planning exercises and wargames.

Turning the classroom into a battle lab is a concept deep-rooted in the U.S. Marine Corps. In 1929, Col. James Carson Breckinridge published “Some Thoughts on Service Schools” in the Marine Corps Gazette. In the article, Breckinridge – who would go on to retire as a lieutenant general – discussed creating schools that embraced experimentation and critique, linking classrooms to ongoing discussions about the changing character of war and even arts and philosophy. In 2013, faculty resurrected this idea to start the Gray Scholars program, which originally aligned graduate research and electives with external partners ranging from the Office of Net Assessment and DARPA to the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab.

This effort set off a wave of innovation including multiple programs run by the Krulak Center and larger fleet efforts like the Training and Education Command Warfighting Club. Many of these efforts built on earlier calls for expanding wargaming as a form of study, including the Fight Club initiative started by U.S. Army Col. Arnell David. Of note, these efforts paid dividends to both the students and the fleet. Efforts that grew out of Gray Scholars supported new naval theory, force design initiatives, concepts on swarming in modern war on display in the Replicator Initiative, and DARPA’s Mosaic Warfare concept.

The only constant in war is change. As a result, military professionals need classrooms that are battle labs. These labs need to combine new approaches to aggregating and analyzing data like AI with military theory, history, and research methods that cultivate what Clausewitz called critical analysis. In the words of Breckinridge, “There is no program without criticism.” For too long, the classroom has been disconnected from current battles and emerging technology and narrowly focused on stale cases and debates about grand strategies that leave students with a thin understanding of modern battle networks and the changing character of operational art. Therefore, adapting the military for a new era of algorithmic warfare starts with turning the classroom into a modern battle lab.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Benjamin Jensen · March 6, 2024

21. Inside America’s Shadow War With Iran

OPINION

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Inside America’s Shadow War With Iran

March 5, 2024

The Tanf military outpost in southern Syria.Credit...Lolita Baldor/Associated Press

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By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist, who reported from the U.S. garrison in Al Tanf in southern Syria

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/opinion/biden-iran-middle-east.html?utm

It’s often been said that the most dangerous hot spot in the world is the waterway between Taiwan and mainland China, where the Chinese Navy and Air Force flex their muscles every day to try to intimidate Taiwan — while the U.S. Navy patrols nearby. I wonder. There is actually a stable balance of deterrence there right now. You could hold a friendly regatta in the Taiwan Straits compared to where I just visited.

I spent two days last week hopscotching in a CH-47 Chinook helicopter among seven U.S. military bases in western Jordan and eastern Syria with America’s senior Middle East Centcom commander, Gen. Michael Kurilla. There is no equilibrium here. What you have, instead, is the other Middle East war that began shortly after the tragic Israel-Hamas war that broke out on Oct. 7.

This other Middle East war pits Iran and its proxies — the Houthis, Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq — against both the small network of U.S. bases in Syria, Jordan and Iraq established after 2014 to destroy the ISIS Islamic state and against the U.S. naval presence in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden that keeps the vital shipping lanes there secure and open.

These Iranian-armed Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthi fighters in Yemen may not look or seem like lethal threats, but do not be fooled. They have learned to arm, build, adapt and deploy some of the most sophisticated precision weaponry in the world. That weaponry, provided by Iran, can hit a three-foot-wide target 500 miles away.

The young U.S. soldiers and sailors arrayed against them cut their teeth on video games, but now find themselves playing the real thing, deploying with software and cursors the world’s most sophisticated countermeasures and interceptors to swat away almost every rocket and drone the Iranian proxies have been throwing at them.

In short, Americans may not know they’re at war with Iran, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guards know for sure they are in a shadow war with America through their proxies.

And if one of these Iranian proxies gets “lucky” and creates a mass casualty event by striking a U.S. warship or the barracks of one of the U.S. bases in Jordan or Syria — something akin to the Marine Corps barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983 — the U.S.-Iran conflict would surely come out of the shadows and become a direct shooting war in the region the world most depends on for its oil.

Just thought I’d let you know.

This other Middle East war kicked into high gear on Oct. 17, 10 days after the attack on Israel by Hamas, Centcom officials explained to me, when Iran clearly took a decision to rev up all its proxies. Under the cover of the Gaza war and tempted by the anti-American sentiment it has generated, Iran tried to see if it could significantly degrade the U.S. network of facilities in Iraq, eastern Syria and northern Jordan, or perhaps dislodge U.S. forces altogether.

I suspect Tehran also had another goal in mind: to intimidate America’s Arab allies by showing them the damage Iran could inflict on their U.S. protector.

What I know for sure, though, is that this is the most dangerous game of chicken going on anywhere on the planet today, for three reasons.

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The first is the sheer volume of rockets, drones and missiles that Iran’s proxies have deployed — particularly the Houthis in Yemen and the Shiite militias in Iraq. According to Centcom, hundreds of warheads carried by Iranian-supplied land-to-sea rockets, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, attack drones, suicide speedboats and unmanned underwater vehicles have been fired since Oct. 17 by Iran’s proxies at U.S. bases, warships and commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

Fortunately, despite the volume of attacks, the U.S. has managed to destroy or deflect most of the incoming with interceptors and a growing electronic forest of radars and countermeasures being deployed at the bases and on U.S. warships. This is no easy task; several rockets and drones have gotten through, injuring over 180 U.S. personnel so far, Centcom said, and I saw the physical damage they did at several bases we visited.

These U.S. bases are not luxury compounds. Many started as ramshackle ISIS-controlled bases or small towns that the U.S. and its Kurdish allies took over beginning in 2014 after intense firefights with ISIS in a war that threatened the governments of Syria, Iraq and Jordan all at the same time.

Today, they consist of prefab living quarters surrounded and separated by hundreds and hundreds of concrete blast walls imported by the U.S. to limit the damage of any incoming warheads. Spotty wireless enables soldiers to FaceTime with families and follow sports. Spartan kitchens serve corn dogs, chicken nuggets and the like, and at some of the “nicer” facilities, maybe even a daily selection of fresh fruit — though when you’re a 70-year-old visitor carrying around 50 pounds of body armor and a helmet, it’s amazing how good a big fat corn dog from an Army mess in the Syrian desert can taste.

But because these bases were designed and situated to block ISIS from reconstituting its supply lines and critical mass, they were never meant to deter or attack the vast modern rocket arsenals of Iran and its proxies.

Which is why on Jan. 28, a one-way Iranian attack drone with a 20-pound warhead, launched by a coalition of Iranian-backed Shiite militias called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, hit a U.S. facility, Tower 22, in northeastern Jordan.

I visited Tower 22 with General Kurilla’s team last week. The blast killed three U.S. soldiers, who were blown right out of their bunks, and injured 47. Fortunately, the modular living quarters there were separated by blast walls. A soldier in the bunkhouse right next to the one hit told us he was talking to his wife on FaceTime when the drone struck; protected by a thick cement barrier, he emerged shaken but unscathed. Watching live, his wife thought he was dead when he disappeared in smoke but he was able to contact her three hours later and assure her otherwise.

I was surprised to learn just how aggressive the Iranians have encouraged their proxies to be, which is what leads to the second, extremely dangerous aspect of this war.

It was what General Kurilla dryly described to me as a deterrence “conversation” Centcom had with Iran after the Tower 22 attack to make clear to Tehran that it was playing with fire.

Image

Credit...Planet Labs Pbc/Planet Labs PBC, via Associated Press

On Feb. 2, the U.S. launched airstrikes against the whole Iranian proxy network in Iraq and Syria, and the next day against Houthi sites in Yemen, hitting more than 100 targets overall, with a combination of long-range B-1 bombers out of Texas, and cruise missiles and fighter bombers launched from the Eisenhower carrier group in the Red Sea. Some 40 people were reported to have been killed in the U.S. retaliatory strikes.

The operation was then capped off on Feb. 7 when the U.S. decided to demonstrate to Iran and its proxies what kind of combined intelligence/precision warfare the U.S. can deploy by killing Abu Baqir al-Saedi, the specific commander from Kataib Hezbollah who the U.S. determined was in charge of drone attacks on its bases in Iraq, Jordan and Syria.

Al-Saedi was hit while driving on a Baghdad street by the same kind of drone-fired Hellfire missile that killed the senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Qassim Suleimani in 2020. It was equipped with six swordlike blades that once it penetrates a vehicle slice and dice anything in their path like a blender, which is why the missile has been nicknamed the “Flying Ginsu.”

This American response clearly got the Iranians’ attention, and Iran’s proxies have been observing an undeclared cease-fire on land ever since, which certainly helped ease my mind as we flew around in helicopters and a C-130 all over the ungoverned spaces of eastern Syria, too close for my comfort one day near the joint Russian-Iranian base on the western side of the Euphrates.

This informal cease-fire, though, has not been embraced by the Houthis, who have declared that they will not stop firing at international ships, the U.S. Navy or Israel, at least until there is a cease-fire in Gaza. Last weekend, the Belize-flagged cargo ship Rubymar, which the Houthis hit with an anti-ship ballistic missile on Feb. 18, became the first vessel to entirely sink in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, as a result of a Houthi missile attack. It created a huge ecological mess of leaked fuel and the fertilizer it was carrying. Thank you, Houthis.

And that leads to the third dangerous aspect of this shadow war. At every base we visited there was a top-secret room journalists could not go into, called the combat integration center. Inside, young American soldiers (and sailors on Navy vessels) stare at screens, try to identify the myriad objects flying toward them and decide by its radar and visual signature whether to engage one, ignore another or let a third go by, figuring it is going to miss and land harmlessly. Discipline is important when you’re firing $200,000 interceptors at $20,000 Iranian drones, a Centcom officer told me.

These operators often have less than 90 seconds to make up their mind whether to engage an incoming drone with a Coyote drone-interceptor that can detect and destroy attack drones at very close range and can be launched from ground vehicles, helicopters or surface vessels.

In other words, every day is pregnant with a low-probability-but-high-consequence event. And the first, and often last, line of defense is usually a 20-something U.S. soldier or sailor squinting at a computer screen, trying to decide with software within seconds what is coming his or her way and engaging the right countermeasures.

Amid all of this, I should add, we also visited Al Hol detention camp in the middle of nowhere in northeastern Syria, where some 43,000 people — mostly ISIS “brides” and their children — are being held in tents and prefabs under Kurdish guards until they can be deprogrammed and returned to their home countries. It is pretty strange to talk to an American or British woman who got drawn into the ISIS cult and hear that she has five or six kids by three or four different ISIS combatants, all of whom were killed by the U.S.-led coalition. Judging from the number of rocks some of the kids threw at our armored convoy, the deprogramming process has a way to go.

Given all the risks and open sores out here, it’s worth asking: Why stay? First let me describe a scene, and then offer an answer.

The scene: General Kurilla’s team was visiting the Tanf garrison, a small logistics support base inside Syria, near where Syria, Iraq and Jordan meet. Kurilla took the opportunity to do a battlefield promotion, from second lieutenant to first lieutenant, for a medical platoon leader stationed there. We were standing in an alley and around us were all just different shades of brown — the desert, the buildings, you name it.

Kurilla first asked for someone to get him an American flag and a couple of minutes later two platoon members showed up with a small one and held it up at shoulder level, framing Kurilla and the young officer being promoted.

“Our army is unique in the world,” Kurilla said to the young man. “We don’t swear an oath to a person or a king, we swear an oath to an idea, embodied in the Constitution and ingrained in our democracy, that all men and women are created equal. We swear an oath to defend that idea.

Kurilla then administered the oath that every U.S. soldier — this one an enlistee who had worked his way up — repeats as he or she rises in rank. His oath complete, the newly minted first lieutenant slapped on a cap displaying his new rank and then gave a shout-out to each member of his platoon.

There was something about that scene that hit me: the two soldiers holding up their little Stars and Stripes that provided the only color in this vast brown tableau, and the oath of allegiance to an idea, not a king, muffled by the protective blast walls of this far-flung base in a region that has mostly known only the opposite.

During the post-Cold War era, from the early 1990s to the 2010s, I thought it might actually be possible to bring more consensual politics and pluralism to this part of the world — thanks to the Oslo Accords, the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, the Arab Spring uprisings and the greater integration that was resulting from globalization.

But it did not happen. Rather than the spread of democracy this region experienced metastasizing disorder and failing states. At the same time, the big divide in the world became no longer between democracy and autocracy, but between order and disorder.

The best case for U.S. forces remaining in eastern Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea is precisely so that the disorder “over there” — from the likes of ISIS, failed states like Syria and the eating away of nation-states by Iranian proxy militias — doesn’t come “over here.”

It is not a pretty or heroic mission — living in body armor all day in a harsh and hostile environment, with all the corn dogs you can eat as one of the few pleasures — but it’s probably worth it. That said, we should have no illusions about the risks because the shadow war playing out there could come screaming out of the shadows at any moment.

More from Thomas L. Friedman on Iran and the Middle East

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Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Opinion columnist. He joined the paper in 1981 and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @tomfriedman • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on March 6, 2024, Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Inside America’s Shadow War With Iran. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

22. Creating Sun Tsu: Instituting a Master’s Degree in Irregular Warfare

Download the 5 page article here: https://www.usf.edu/gnsi/publications/decision-briefs/decision-brief-14-creating-sun-tzu-masters-degree-irregular-warfare.pdf?

Creating Sun Tsu: Instituting a

Master’s Degree in Irregular Warfare

Written by:

Robert Burrell, PhD

John Collision

March 6, 2024

Introduction

In the words of Sun Tsu, arguably the father of irregular warfare, war is like water, and water has no constant form, and there are no constant conditions in war.ⁱ Nowhere in the history of U.S. military doctrine has conflict been described in this theoretical and inclusive way. Therefore, it should come as no surprise

that the U.S.’s preference for technological solutions, increased firepower, and lethality on the battlefield neglects to account for leveraging irregular and asymmetric forms of conflict to advance its interests and counter its adversaries. The Consortium to Study Irregular Warfare Act of 2021 addressed the gap in irregular warfare doctrine with the requirement to professionalize irreg- ular warfare education in the Department of Defense (DoD).ⁱⁱ Currently, such education mostly comprises electives at Service Colleges, which already have far too many Congressional and Service-mandated requirements to implement irregular warfare education to the degree required to create a modern-day Sun Tsu. Instead, the DoD should institute a master’s degree in irregular

warfare to fill critical billets in the Joint Force.

Conclusion

Preparation for large-scale combat operations against a near- peer foe remains essential. However, creating a master’s degree program in irregular warfare and identifying coded personnel po- sitions for that specialty within the DoD can potentially facilitate increased success for the United States during nonstandard and more prevalent periods of conflict. Such education must maintain empathy and understanding for adversaries, as well as embrace diverse ideas and non-doctrinal approaches to conflict. The DoD cannot fix previous missteps (like those experienced during the Second Indochina War or the Long War), but it can better pre- pare for future periods of competition, deterrence, and irregular warfare. Indee , in so doing, future wars might be won without

fighting at all.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com