Quotes of the Day:

"The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it." 

- George Santayana

"Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions, and gradually over time, their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow." 

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind." 

- Robert Bolton

1. China's Military Decision-making in Times of Crisis and Conflict

2. Time for an Asian NATO: Meet the Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization

3. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 27, 2023

4. Drones Everywhere: How the Technological Revolution on Ukraine Battlefields Is Reshaping Modern Warfare

5. Ukraine Getting ATACMS Cluster Variant Would Be A Big Problem For Russia

6. Influenced by Disinformation: What the U.S. Can Do to Counter Disinformation Operations

7. DOL Foundation - Helping Those Who Have Served | SOF News

8. AI and the Nature of Literary Creativity

9. Milley leaves Joint Chiefs with a legacy of controversy, consequence

10. What will it take to fix so many lousy barracks? lawmakers ask

11. Experts and Military Leaders Fear Ukraine Could Become the Next 'Afghanistan'

12. Who’s Gaining Ground in Ukraine? This Year, No One.

13. Five Lessons on Advising from the First Five Years of NATO Mission Iraq

14. 5th Special Forces Group wins 2023 Best Combat Diver Competition

15. Rep. Ken Calvert: A hedge strategy for US military superiority

16. The Future of Cyberwar is being Shaped in Ukraine

17. Washington’s Bet on AI Warfare

18. Philippines hosts 'warfighting' drills with US as China maritime dispute flares

19. America Needs a Strategy in Somalia

20. America Finally Finds Some Success in the War on Terror

21. Nuclear Brinkmanship in AI-Enabled Warfare: A Dangerous Algorithmic Game of Chicken

1. China's Military Decision-making in Times of Crisis and Conflict

I expect this will be an important reference.

The 190 page report can be downloaded here: https://www.nbr.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/publications/chinas-military-decision-making_sep2023.pdf

Book from the People's Liberation Army Conference

China's Military Decision-making in Times of Crisis and Conflict

https://www.nbr.org/publication/chinas-military-decision-making-in-times-of-crisis-and-conflict/?utm_source=pocket_saves

Edited by Roy D. Kamphausen

September 26, 2023 The National Bureau of Asian Research

China’s Military Decision-making in Times of Crisis and Conflict features papers from the 2022 People’s Liberation Army Conference convened by the National Bureau of Asian Research, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s China Strategic Focus Group, and the Department of Foreign Languages at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. As competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China intensifies and unplanned encounters between their militaries become more frequent, what impact has Xi Jinping had on China’s crisis decision-making and behavior? In what domains and against which actors may China be inclined to escalate or de-escalate a crisis? Leading experts address these questions and more in this volume and find that fundamentally different understandings and approaches to crisis management and response could make it more difficult to swiftly resolve crises.

2. Time for an Asian NATO: Meet the Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization

Interestingly, Kim Jong Un "responded" to the Camp David/JAROKUS Summit with this comment in his recent speech.

Worse still, the accelerated establishment of the triangular military alliance with Japan and the "Republic of Korea" finally resulted in the emergence of the "Asian-version NATO", the root cause of war and aggression. This is just the worst actual threat, not threatening rhetoric or an imaginary entity.

https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1695885059-478115290/respected-comrade-kim-jong-un-makes-speech-at-ninth-session-of-14th-spa/

Time for an Asian NATO: Meet the Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization

19fortyfive.com · by Kaush Arha · September 27, 2023

The United States is bolstering defense and security alliances across the Indo-Pacific at a determined pace. Chinese provocations appear to be a major catalyst for this effort. Indeed, those provocations are reflected in China’s new national map, which includes territories within the national borders of India, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and others. China is following the autocratic Soviet/Russian playbook, laying claim to its neighbors’ territories.

A collective defense arrangement for the Indo-Pacific is the most effective deterrent to Beijing’s hegemonic designs. It is time to give serious thought to an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization. This IPTO would draw on lessons from NATO, whose relevance has been renewed and whose strength is now bolstered by Finland and soon Sweden.

Making It Formal in the Indo-Pacific

Several Indo-Pacific nations explicitly or tacitly rely on the United States as the guarantor of their security and territorial integrity. Many nations are acutely aware that U.S. security assurances and U.S.-enforced freedom of navigation shields them from greater Chinese economic coercion. Meanwhile, U.S. domestic politics over the last half-decade appear more amenable to expanding defense and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, rather than focusing on trade alliances. Consequently, the same idea is trending upward across the Indo-Pacific itself.

U.S. President Joe Biden has on more than one occasion unequivocally stated that the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s aide if it were invaded by China. His administration established a signature nuclear submarine and defense pact with Australia and the United Kingdom: AUKUS. It bolstered the U.S.-Japan security alliance and welcomed Japan’s new security and defense strategy to increase its defense budget to 2% of its GDP and develop counterstrike capabilities.

The U.S.-India defense partnership is steadily progressing. The goal is to make India a major Indo-Pacific hub for defense logistics, repair, and maintenance, and for the two nations to develop and produce defense systems together.

The U.S. has reaffirmed and expanded the scope of its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines and gained access to four additional bases in the proximity of Taiwan and the Spratly Islands. The U.S. also entered into a defense cooperation agreement with Papua New Guinea to help develop and modernize its security forces.

At a Camp David summit in August, South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. pledged to institutionalize collective defense and economic security arrangements, including intelligence sharing and coordination concerning ballistic missiles.

During Biden’s September visit to Vietnam, the two nations are expected to enter into a “comprehensive strategic partnership” including improved defense and security cooperation.

Proper Deterrence

Meanwhile, China and Russia are also busy cementing bonds. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, entered into what they called a “no-limits” partnership in 2022, before Russia invaded Ukraine. The two nations have increased their military cooperation, including military exercises that on occasion include North Korea and Iran. China has been the indispensable source of materiel and financing for Russia since the start of the Ukraine war. In Ukraine, the U.S.-supported NATO and China-backed Russia are engaged in a contest with wide geopolitical ramifications. A successful defense of Ukraine would bode well for an independent Taiwan.

In this developing global context, a collective security arrangement in the Indo-Pacific would do more than a patchwork of bilateral defense agreements to deter territorial invasions. It offers greater efficacy in deploying U.S. military assets to ensure regional security. It encourages greater interoperability across the defense systems of the member states. It also calls for greater commitment by regional actors to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific.

The U.S. remains the indispensable guardian of a free and open Indo-Pacific, but it need not be the only one shouldering the burden. More than 11 European nations in NATO have allocated a greater portion of their GDP in support of Ukraine than the U.S. Similar commitments from local actors are needed for a free and open Indo-Pacific.

A vocal minority in the U.S. calls for greater military focus on the Indo-Pacific at the cost of NATO and European interests. Instead of hollowing one to buttress the other, it is in the U.S. interest to reinforce both. NATO is the most consequential defensive alliance in the world, responsible in large measure for the regional and global peace and prosperity that have prevailed since World War II. Pragmatism and prudence argue for adapting NATO’s relevant features to another region of prime American interest — the Indo-Pacific. South Korean armaments are critical to Ukraine’s defense. European armaments may reciprocate in a future dispute in the Indo-Pacific.

Time to Talk About It

Most Indo-Pacific nations want U.S. security guarantees but have not yet made the leap to a regional collective security arrangement. The process of getting there should be an organic one, but the U.S. should start engaging nations about the pragmatic operational benefits.

The main determinant in the eventual formation of an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization will be Chinese behavior. If Beijing continues in its bellicosity, as seems likely from Xi’s pronouncements, then the attraction of an IPTO’s collective assurances will steadily grow. An IPTO would offer much-needed clarity of purpose, strategy, and coordination. It would institutionalize a free and open Indo-Pacific resilient enough to deter the hegemonic designs of Chinese dictators. It would help the U.S. be more efficient when it deploys its military across the North Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific. Importantly, it would strengthen regional security through greater engagement.

It is time to talk about creating an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization.

About the Author

Kaush Arha is president of the Free & Open Indo-Pacific Forum and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue.

19fortyfive.com · by Kaush Arha · September 27, 2023

3. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 27, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-27-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces marginally advanced near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 27.
• The situation near Verbove remains unclear as prominent Russian milbloggers have become noticeably less inclined to report in detail on Russian activity on this frontline or present bad news about Russian failures, while a discussion about reported Russian problems in this area has emerged on the fringes of the Russian information space.
• Russian media continues to publish inconclusive “proof” that Black Sea Fleet Commander Admiral Viktor Solokov is alive.
• Ukrainian and Russian confirmations of some former Wagner Group personnel deploying to the Bakhmut area indicate that the Wagner Group is struggling to cohesively reform around new leadership.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, in Bakhmut, and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 27 but did not make any confirmed gains.
• The Guardian reported on September 27 that Iranian drones that Russian forces operate in Ukraine contain European components despite international sanctions.
• Ukrainian partisans continue to disrupt Russian logistics in occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Sep 27, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 27, 2023

Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 27, 2023, 7:45pm ET 

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

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain 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 2pm ET on September 27. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 28 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces marginally advanced near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 27. Geolocated footage published on September 26 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced near Orikhovo-Vasylivka (10km northwest of Bakhmut).[1] Additional geolocated footage published on September 26 indicates that Russian forces likely no longer control a roughly one-kilometer-long trench line west of Verbove (16km southeast of Orikhiv).[2] The absence of Russian forces in this trench line could facilitate further Ukrainian advances in this area, as this trench line is no longer a significant obstacle for Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated that “there will be good news” in the Zaporizhia operational direction and noted that Ukrainian forces are steadily advancing but did not provide additional information.[3]

The situation near Verbove remains unclear as prominent Russian milbloggers have become noticeably less inclined to report in detail on Russian activity on this frontline or present bad news about Russian failures, while a discussion about reported Russian problems in this area has emerged on the fringes of the Russian information space. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov claimed on September 26 that at least four Ukrainian companies with a significant number of armored vehicles stormed Russian positions along the Robotyne-Verbove line after conducting a massive artillery barrage.[4] A Russian milblogger who avidly supports Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) Commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky by criticizing the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) responded to Rogov, stating that Ukrainian forces have already passed the minefields and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank fortifications on the Robotyne-Verbove line and that Ukrainian forces would have conducted such attacks sooner or later.[5] Another Russian milblogger claimed on September 26 that there is intense mutual shelling that is making it dangerous to operate above ground near Verbove and Robotyne.[6] Still another milblogger reportedly affiliated with the VDV Forces responded to this claim, stating that a personal source from the Russian 108th VDV Regiment (7th VDV Division) reported that there is intense Ukrainian shelling in the area.[7] The milblogger added that their source provided unclear information about whether the 108th VDV Regiment was moving to Verbove or leaving from Verbove. The milblogger also claimed that the Russian military command in Moscow canceled plans for the redeployment of the Russian 106th VDV Division to the Robotyne area to aid the 7th and 76th VDV Divisions currently operating there and offered an unreasonable explanation for the motivation behind this decision.[8] ISW has observed that this channel has demonstrated a tendency to make exaggerated statements and implausible claims that favor Teplinsky against Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov. ISW has also previously observed elements of the 106th VDV Division in the Bakhmut area.[9] The Russian information space has largely been hesitant recently to discuss Russian forces’ operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast, as the Russian milblogger community has reduced its criticisms of the Russian conduct of the war on this sector of the front since Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion on June 24. ISW will continue to adapt to this new information space.

Russian media continues to publish inconclusive “proof” that Black Sea Fleet Commander Admiral Viktor Solokov is alive. Zvezda News published an interview with Solokov on September 27, but ISW is unprepared at this time to make an assessment about the authenticity of the footage or the date of its filming.[10] The Kremlin and Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) have been notably silent on the matter and have not directly confirmed that Sokolov is alive.

Ukrainian and Russian confirmations of some former Wagner Group personnel deploying to the Bakhmut area indicate that the Wagner Group is struggling to cohesively reform around new leadership. A Russian milblogger claimed on September 26 that the appointment of a new overall Wagner commander triggered an exodus of Wagner personnel to Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD)-related structures.[11] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash confirmed on September 27 the presence of 500 former Wagner personnel operating in MoD-related formations in the Bakhmut area and that these personnel are insufficient to change the situation on the battlefield.[12] A Ukrainian drone operator reportedly operating in the Bakhmut area reported that Wagner personnel changed commanders and returned to the Bakhmut area to compensate for ongoing personnel shortages in the area.[13] The piecemeal deployment of former Wagner personnel to any area of the frontline is unlikely to generate any significant strategic or even localized effects on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces marginally advanced near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 27.
• The situation near Verbove remains unclear as prominent Russian milbloggers have become noticeably less inclined to report in detail on Russian activity on this frontline or present bad news about Russian failures, while a discussion about reported Russian problems in this area has emerged on the fringes of the Russian information space.
• Russian media continues to publish inconclusive “proof” that Black Sea Fleet Commander Admiral Viktor Solokov is alive.
• Ukrainian and Russian confirmations of some former Wagner Group personnel deploying to the Bakhmut area indicate that the Wagner Group is struggling to cohesively reform around new leadership.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, in Bakhmut, and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 27 but did not make any confirmed gains.
• The Guardian reported on September 27 that Iranian drones that Russian forces operate in Ukraine contain European components despite international sanctions.
• Ukrainian partisans continue to disrupt Russian logistics in occupied Ukraine.

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 these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line but did not advance on September 27. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked in the Serebryanske forest area (11km south of Kreminna) but did not specify an outcome.[14] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian and Ukrainian forces participated in combat engagements near the Serebryanske forest area on September 26.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff and Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash reported on September 27 that Russian forces did not conduct offensive actions in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions.[16] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces destroyed two unspecified bridge crossings over the Oskil River.[17]

The Russian military is reportedly deploying elements of the recently created 25th Combined Arms Army (CAA) to the Kreminna area instead of the Kupyansk area, likely disrupting Russian attempts to pin Ukrainian forces in the Kupyansk direction away from southern Ukraine. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on September 27 that elements of the Russian 67th Motorized Rifle Division and 164th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (25th CAA, Eastern Military District) are operating west of Severodonetsk and Kreminna.[18] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov previously stated on September 22 that the Russian military had deployed elements of the 25th CAA “roughly north of Bakhmut.”[19] Elements of the 25th CAA may be operating both west of Kreminna and Severodonetsk as well as north of Bakhmut, though the situation is currently unclear. Budanov also stated on August 31 that elements of the 41st CAA (Central Military District) have begun to slowly redeploy from the Kupyansk direction to southern Ukraine.[20] The deployment of elements of the 25th CAA to the Severodonetsk-Kreminna area and possibly to the north of Bakhmut — and not to the Kupyansk direction to replace elements of the 41st CAA — will likely disrupt Russian efforts to fix Ukrainian forces in the Kupyansk direction, as ISW has previously assessed.[21]

The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations south of Kreminna on September 27. The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna), the Serebryanske forest area, Hryhorivka (11km south of Kreminna), and Spirne (25km south of Kreminna).[22]

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

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on September 27 and advanced. Geolocated footage published on September 26 indicates that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced east of Orikhovo-Vasylivka (10km northwest of Bakhmut).[23] Ukrainian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated on September 27 that Ukrainian forces were successful in the direction of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), Odradivka (7km south of Bakhmut), and Shumy (22km southwest of Bakhmut).[24] The Ukrainian Border Guards Service stated on September 26 that Ukrainian forces continued to advance in the Bakhmut direction and are defending recently recaptured positions.[25] Russian sources claimed on September 27 that Ukrainian forces continue attempts to break through Russian defenses near Klishchiivka, Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut), and Kurdyumivka (12km southwest of Bakhmut).[26] Another Russian milblogger that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian armored assault between Zaliznyanske (13km north of Bakhmut) and Orikhovo-Vasylivka.[27] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack near Berkhivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut) on September 26.[28] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are concentrating manpower near Bakhmut potentially for an attempted breakthrough in the area.[29]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on September 27 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian attack near Hryhorivka (10km northwest of Bakhmut).[30] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Klishchiivka and Andriivka but did not specify an outcome.[31] Russian sources continued to claim that Russian forces advanced near Orikhovo-Vasylivka, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[32] Yevlash stated that Russian forces are attempting to restore lost positions near Bakhmut and have concentrated 50,000 personnel in the Bakhmut direction, and this number likely includes Russian rear-area personnel.[33] Russian sources amplified footage claiming to show elements of the Russian 58th Separate Special Purpose Battalion (Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] 1st Army Corps) operating near Bakhmut.[34]

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 27 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka) and Marinka (directly west of Donetsk City).[35] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also attacked near Novomykhailivka (36km southwest of Avdiivka).[36]

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

Ukrainian forces continued limited offensive operations on the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast frontline on September 27 but did not make any territorial gains. Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces Spokesperson Oleg Chekhov claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks north of Pryyutne (14km southwest of Velyka Novosilka), near Staromayorske (8km southwest of Velyka Novosilka), near Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), and near Marfopil (5km southeast of Hulyaipole).[37] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that heavy fighting is ongoing near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City) in western Donetsk Oblast despite reports that Ukrainian activity slightly decreased near Urozhaine (7km south of Velyka Novosilka) and Staromayorske.[38] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 5th Combined Arms Army (Eastern Military District) repelled Ukrainian attacks in an unspecified area in the Vremivka salient on September 27, and a Russian news aggregator added that Russian forces repelled an assault on Pryyutne on September 26.[39]

Russian forces counterattacked against Ukrainian positions in western Donetsk and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts on September 27 but did not advance. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Rivnopil (10km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and south of Novodarivka (15km west of Velyka Novosilka).[40] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces counterattacked in an unspecified area on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border and pushed Ukrainian forces from unspecified positions.[41]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 27 and have entered a trench line west of Verbove (16km southeast of Orikhiv). Geolocated footage published on September 26 shows a Russian drone striking Ukrainian infantry inside a trench west of Verbove, and the Russian use of drones to engage these Ukrainian forces indicates that Russian forces likely are no longer present at the roughly one-kilometer-long trench line west of Verbove.[42] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov claimed on September 26 that at least four Ukrainian companies with a significant number of vehicles stormed Russian positions along the Robotyne-Verbove lines after first conducting a massive artillery barrage.[43] A Russian milblogger who avidly supports the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) Commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky by criticizing the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) responded to Rogov stating that Ukrainian forces have already passed the minefields and dragon’s teeth anti-tank fortifications on the Robotyne-Verbove line and that Ukrainian forces would have conducted such attacks sooner or later.[44] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated that “there will be good news” in the Zaporizhia operational direction and noted that Ukrainian forces are steadily advancing but did not provide additional information.[45]

Other sources, including the Russian MoD, claimed that Russian forces continued to repel Ukrainian attacks near Verbove on September 27 and that Ukrainian forces have not achieved any breakthroughs in western Zaporizhia Oblast.[46] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully tried to advance toward Novoprokopivka (15km south of Orikhiv) and Verbove.[47] Russian sources also claimed that elements of the “Timer” volunteer battalion from the Republic of Tatarstan is shelling advancing Ukrainian forces on the Robotyne-Verbove line.[48] The North Ossetian “Alania” and “Storm Ossetia” volunteer battalions that operate in the area claimed that the intensity of fighting is decreasing in some areas of the Robotyne-Verbove line.[49]

Russian forces conducted an airstrike against Kherson Oblast on September 26. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on September 27 that Russian forces launched 26 Kab-500 aerial bombs at Kherson Oblast.[50]

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

The Guardian reported on September 27 that Iranian drones that Russian forces operate in Ukraine contain European components despite international sanctions targeting these parts.[51] The Guardian cited a document that Ukrainian officials originally presented to international leaders at a G7 meeting in August 2023 and reported that Iranian drone manufacturers used drone components from companies based in the United States, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Poland, including one Polish subsidiary of a United Kingdom company. The Guardian reported that the Shahed-131 drone uses 52 parts from Western companies while the Shahed-136 drone uses 57 parts. The Guardian reported that Iranian-assembled drones travel to Russia through the Caspian Sea while drones assembled at Iranian factories in Syria travel to Russia through Novorossiysk.

Senior Russian officials continue to posture as effectively mobilizing the Russian defense industrial base (DIB). Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Moscow Oblast Head Andrey Vorobov visited the Tactical Missiles Corporation in Moscow Oblast on September 27.[52] Tactical Missiles Corporation Head Boris Obnosov stated claimed that the Tactical Missiles Corporation has doubled its production of high-precision weapons and increased production of other products by three-and-a-half to five times due to production modernization, more personnel, and shifting to a 24/7 work schedule. Obnosov claimed that the corporation recently hired 40 specialists from technical schools in Orenburg Oblast and Perm Krai and is working with technical schools for further recruitment efforts.

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)

Ukrainian partisans continue to disrupt Russian logistics in occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian Crimean-based partisan group “Atesh” stated on September 26 that Atesh agents disabled five Russian military ZIL-131 fuel and lubricant transportation vehicles over the past ten days in occupied Luhansk Oblast.[53] Atesh also insinuated that its agents were involved in the disappearances of an unspecified number of Russian servicemen in occupied Luhansk.[54] Geolocated footage published by Atesh confirms that its agents are operating in occupied Luhansk City and likely have access to Russian military transportation vehicles.[55] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on September 27 that unspecified Ukrainian partisans have recently helped Ukrainian forces strike Russian military equipment and warehouses in occupied Ukraine.[56]

The Russian government will now require State Duma and Federation Council members to receive permission from the Russian military to travel to occupied Ukraine. Russian State Duma Deputy Mikhail Matveyev announced on September 26 that Duma deputies were banned from travelling to occupied Ukraine without approval from Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov.[57] Matveyev stated that these travel restrictions also apply to employees of other Russian government structures, including the Presidential Administration.[58] The order reportedly does not apply to occupied Crimea.[59] Russian news outlet RBC reported on July 27 that Russian State Duma deputies would have to receive permission from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu or Gerasimov to visit Russian military units fighting in Ukraine.[60] Russian servicemen reportedly complained that Russian State Duma deputies were disruptive and “constantly taking pictures, putting on a show.”[61]

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)

Nothing significant to report.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

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.

4. Drones Everywhere: How the Technological Revolution on Ukraine Battlefields Is Reshaping Modern Warfare

Drones Everywhere: How the Technological Revolution on Ukraine Battlefields Is Reshaping Modern Warfare

New systems eliminate surprises, make it harder to gain ground in armored assaults

https://www.wsj.com/world/drones-everywhere-how-the-technological-revolution-on-ukraine-battlefields-is-reshaping-modern-warfare-bf5d531b?mod=hp_lead_pos7

By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow

 | Photographs by Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal

Updated Sept. 28, 2023 12:09 am ET

CASIV YAR, Ukraine—Wearing video goggles, a Ukrainian trooper crouched on the top floor of a gutted high-rise and piloted a small drone into the nearby Russian-occupied city of Bakhmut.

With a swoosh, the first-person-view drone—which cost roughly $300 to assemble—sped after a target of opportunity, blowing up a pickup truck full of Russian troops.

“Before we started flying here, the Russians had so much movement that there were traffic jams in Bakhmut,” said the pilot, a member of the Special Operations Center “A” of the Security Service of Ukraine. “Now, all the roads in Bakhmut are empty.”

With thousands of Ukrainian and Russian drones in the air along the front line at a given time, from cheap quadrocopters to long-range winged aircraft that can fly hundreds of miles and stay on target for hours, the very nature of war has transformed.

The drones are just one element of change. New integrated battle-management systems that provide imaging and locations in real time all the way down to the platoon and squad levels—in Ukraine’s case, via the Starlink satellite network—have made targeting near instantaneous.

A drone pilot steers a first-person-view drone laden with explosives into Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine. 

“Today, a column of tanks or a column of advancing troops can be discovered in three to five minutes and hit in another three minutes. The survivability on the move is no more than 10 minutes,” said Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence service. “Surprises have become very difficult to achieve.”

The technological revolution triggered by the Ukraine war, Europe’s biggest conflict in nearly eight decades, is calling into question the feasibility of some of the basic concepts of American military doctrine.

Combined-arms maneuvers using large groups of armored vehicles and tanks to make rapid breakthroughs—something that Washington and its allies had expected the Ukrainian offensive this summer to achieve—may no longer be possible in principle, some soldiers here say. The inevitable implication, according to Ukrainian commanders, is that the conflict won’t end soon.

“The days of massed armored assaults, taking many kilometers of ground at a time, like we did in 2003 in Iraq—that stuff is gone because the drones have become so effective now,” said retired U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Bradley Crawford, an Iraq war veteran who is now training Ukrainian forces near Bakhmut in a private capacity.

And, in a potential conflict with a lesser power, America’s overall military edge may also not be as decisive as previously thought. “It’s a question of cost,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “If you can destroy an expensive, heavy system for something that costs much much less, then actually the power differential between the two countries doesn’t matter as much.”

A Center ‘A’ team hunts for a Russian howitzer on the Zaporizhzhia front line.

For instance, each FPV drone, a type of weapon that entered widespread use this summer, costs a fraction of a regular 155mm artillery shell, which is worth some $3,000, let alone main battle tanks priced at millions of dollars.

Yet the drones now have the precision and speed to catch up with any moving armored vehicle and, if piloted expertly, can disable even the most modern tanks and howitzers. Their cheapness also means that they can be used against any target of opportunity, including cars and small groups of soldiers, emptying out the roads within several miles of the front line.

Center “A” is one of many Ukrainian forces operating FPV drones. Since June 1, the center’s FPV crews in eastern and southern Ukraine have hit 113 Russian tanks, 111 fighting vehicles and 68 artillery systems, causing nearly 700 Russian casualties, according to the unit.

During a few hours one recent morning in Chasiv Yar, Center “A” operators used FPV drones armed with World War II-vintage antitank bombs to destroy, in addition to the pickup truck, two parked Russian military vehicles. They also flew a drone into the window of a Bakhmut high-rise after spotting Russian soldiers—likely also drone operators—moving the curtains. A separate observation drone recorded the resulting explosions.

The Russians, too, have formidable—and fast-improving—drone capabilities of their own. Minutes after the Center “A” team tried to establish a position in the Chasiv Yar high-rise, it was spotted by a Russian drone and the building was targeted by mortar fire. The Ukrainian troopers quickly ran from the building and then filtered back in groups of two, at long intervals.

While drones have played an outsize role in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, both the sheer number of unmanned aircraft and their effectiveness have increased significantly, with Moscow quickly catching up and sometimes surpassing Ukraine’s capabilities. New types of drones, developed domestically and imported, are reaching the battlefield all the time—including naval drones that Ukraine has successfully used to damage Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Many drones that were effective just months earlier have become outdated fast and need to be re-engineered to defeat enemy jamming, commanders say.

“Nothing stands firm,” said the commander of the Ukrainian Navy, Vice Adm. Oleksiy Neizhpapa, in an interview. “War is the time when technology develops. Every operation is different, and if you repeat it the same way, it would make no sense because the enemy already has an antidote.”

The last time any side made a rapid breakthrough on the ground was the Ukrainian offensive in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions in September and October last year. At the time, the Ukrainians achieved surprise by taking advantage of undermanned and under-fortified Russian positions.

June 1 front line

Current Russian-controlled area

Kharkiv

RUSSIA

20 miles

Vuhledar

20 km

Orikhiv

Detail

Luhansk

Detail

Robotyne

Donetsk

Zaporizhzhia

UKRAINE

Tokmak

Mariupol

Mykolaiv

Kherson

Odesa

Sea of Azov

Bakhmut

Chasiv Yar

CRIMEA

10 miles

10 km

50 miles

Black Sea

50 km

Note: Current Russian-controlled area as of Sept. 24

Sources: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project; Deep State (Orikhiv-Vuhledar section)

Emma Brown/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The subsequent Ukrainian advance in Kherson last November was the result of Himars missile strikes disrupting Russian logistics to such a point that the Russians chose to withdraw.

Since last fall, however, Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops, plugging gaps in defense and laying out extensive minefields and fortifications. Crucially, it has also saturated the front line with drones.

In June, as Ukraine kicked off its counteroffensive, every time its forces gathered more than a few tanks and infantry fighting vehicles together, their columns were quickly spotted by ubiquitous Russian drones and then targeted by a combination of artillery, missiles fired from choppers and swarms of drones. Minefields channeled these columns into kill zones.

The Russian military faced the same fate when it gathered a large tank force of its own in an attempt to push into the city of Vuhledar in January, and in subsequent smaller attempts at armored offensives. Noticed by Ukrainians from the air, these columns were also swiftly destroyed.

After initial heavy losses of Western-supplied tanks and fighting vehicles, Ukrainian troops have now switched to operating in small groups that are ferried toward the front line using armored personnel carriers, and then attempt to advance one tree line after another.

Drones of all kinds have become increasingly important in the Ukrainian war. A Center ‘A’ operator sits next to a Ukrainian-made RAM strike drone.

A Ukrainian trooper prepares a spy drone near Bakhmut.

Continuing to move forward, the Ukrainians seized several villages on the southern front in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, and, in recent days, broke through Russian lines south of Bakhmut to take the villages of Andriivka and Klishchiivka. During the Russian offensive between November and May, Moscow scored no notable gains except for Bakhmut.

“Unfortunately, most of our offensive is now on foot,” said Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the commander of HUR. “You could see a mirror picture last fall, when the Russians were carrying out their own offensive, above all in Bakhmut. The same way, the use of heavy armor was minimal, everyone was waging war on foot. I don’t think anything will be different now.”

The bloody war fought by Ukraine is the kind of conflict that the U.S. military hasn’t experienced since Korea in the 1950s. Modern Western military training and defense procurement have been shaped by decades of counterinsurgency operations against much weaker opponents in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. That has led to a focus on costly and sophisticated weapons systems that don’t survive long in a full-scale conflict with a comparable adversary.

“A lot of Western armor doesn’t work here because it had been created not for an all-out war but for conflicts of low or medium intensity. If you throw it into a mass offensive, it just doesn’t perform,” said Taras Chmut, director of Come Back Alive, a foundation that raises money to provide Ukrainian units with drones, vehicles and weapons. Even the most expensive tanks have proved vulnerable to ancient land mines, after all.

The corollary, he added, is that the focus should be on providing front-line troops with a larger quantity of cheaper, simpler systems. That is a historical lesson that harks back to World War II, when the Soviet T-34 and American-built Sherman tanks were significantly inferior to German Tigers and Panthers but could be mass-produced, fielded in much greater numbers and more easily repaired in the field.

The use of technology is transforming how Ukraine is fighting the war. Center ‘A’ troopers prepare an FPV drone for a launch near Chasiv Yar, Ukraine.

Ukrainian FPV drone operators at the front line near Bakhmut.

Western military planners are taking notice. “We have a lot of lessons to learn. One is that quantity is a quality of its own,” said Maj. Gen. Christian Freuding, the head of Ukraine operations at the German Ministry of Defense. “You need numbers, you need force numbers. In the West we have reduced our military, we have reduced our stocks. But quantity matters, mass matters.”

When it comes to tanks, in particular, the lesson of the Ukrainian war is that tank-on-tank battles have become a rarity—which means that the relative sophistication of a tank is no longer as important. Fewer than 5% of tanks destroyed since the war began had been hit by other tanks, according to Ukrainian officials, with the rest succumbing to mines, artillery, antitank missiles and drones.

While Ukraine relies on Western-made tanks, artillery and missile launchers, it increasingly operates a fleet of Ukrainian drones made by some 200 domestic manufacturers. They range from cheap FPVs to long-range winged drones that carry out almost daily strikes deep inside Russia, which Kyiv isn’t allowed to target with Western munitions.

On a recent day in the Zaporizhzhia front line near the town of Orikhiv, a crew of three Center “A” service members set up a position in a tree line and launched a winged observation drone from a sunflower field. Another Ukrainian drone team had established an outpost a few hundred yards away.

One crew member piloted the drone itself, another rotated and focused the camera, looking for targets, and the third was using his laptop to receive intelligence feeds from other sources.

Russian jamming of the GPS signal—increasingly a problem for Western-made weapons such as Himars missiles, precision shells and guided bombs—meant the pilot had to fly the drone visually, using a satellite map on his screen and comparing it with the camera feed. The target was a Russian 152mm self-propelled artillery piece southwest of Robotyne that was spotted earlier in the day and hit by artillery using cluster munitions that disabled its treads.

As the target was found, the crew alerted colleagues operating a Ukrainian-made winged explosive drone nearby, which, at a cost of some $40,000, was deemed worth expending to blow up a much more valuable artillery piece. “If we let the howitzer sit there, the Russians will just tow it away under the cover of darkness, and repair it easily,” said the pilot, who goes by the call sign Banderas. “Here, we can find the target, and then we can destroy it ourselves without asking anything from our artillery.”

Costing as little as $300 and capable of destroying a tank or a howitzer, FPV drones have turned into an important weapon of the war in recent months.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

5. Ukraine Getting ATACMS Cluster Variant Would Be A Big Problem For Russia

Ukraine Getting ATACMS Cluster Variant Would Be A Big Problem For Russia

Cluster munition-laden ATACMSs would be able to take out aprons full of aircraft and key air defense batteries from nearly 200 miles away.

BY

JOSEPH TREVITHICK, TYLER ROGOWAY

|

PUBLISHED SEP 27, 2023 7:58 PM EDT

thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick, Tyler Rogoway · September 27, 2023

In the course of the discussions about what Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles could offer Ukraine, much of the focus has been on variants of these weapons equipped with unitary (single high-explosive) warheads. However, versions loaded with cluster munitions could introduce a whole other set of dire complications to Russian forces.

ATACMS, a late Cold War-era American short-range ballistic missile, comes in two primary flavors. The first two variants of this missile were cluster munition dispensing models loaded with 950 and 275-300 submunitions and with maximum ranges of 165 kilometers (102 miles) and 300 kilometers (186 miles), respectively. The two missiles are known variously as the MGM-140A and B, the Block I and IA, and the M39 and M39A1.

A composite image of ATACMS releasing its deadly payload of bomblets. (US Army)

Later ATACMS versions that entered operational service are fitted with unitary warheads. These missiles are referred to as MGM-140Es and MGM-168As, Block IVAs, and M48s and M57s, depending on differences in fuzing and other internal components. However, they all have the same 500-pound-class blast fragmentation warhead, the same one used in the Harpoon anti-ship missile. However, one big difference is that the Harpoon slams into its target at subsonic speeds. ATACMS does the same at speeds that approach hypersonic, which converts massive kinetic energy onto the target and allows it to successfully destroy fortified targets. These ATACMS all feature a maximum range of 300 kilometers (186 miles).

All types of ATACMS can be fired from tracked M270 Multiple-Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers. Both of these are in service with the Ukrainian Army.

While sending Ukraine cluster munitions may have seemed like an unlikely possibility at the start of Russia's all-out invasion well over a year and a half ago, the precedent has already been set by the delivery of many thousands of cluster artillery shells from U.S. stocks. The first of these munitions arrived in July after a prolonged period of internal debate within the Biden Administration. The shells were seen as a way to drastically increase Ukraine's access to 155mm artillery ammunition of any kind in order to support its counteroffensive and to bring new effects to the battlefield in an attempt to break Russia's fortified lines. So the debate over giving Ukraine cluster munitions has already been settled.

Some of the U.S. inventory of M39/A1 cluster munition variants of ATACMS has been converted to versions with unitary warheads. Changes in precision-guided weapons capabilities and capacity, the controversy over cluster munitions, along with changes in combined arms tactics, spurred the focus on unitary warhead models. But for Ukraine, being able to deliver area effects out to ranges of nearly 200 miles, and do so with a very hard to defend against delivery system, represents a major lift in the pain they can inflict on Russia's warfighting capabilities.

Work is conducted on a US Army ATACMS missile. DOD

For Ukraine, which has intensely sought ATACMS over many months, the ability to deliver a 500-pound warhead with incredible force over long distances would spell big trouble for critical Ruissan logistics nodes and related infrastructure like bridges, as well as fortified command and control centers, all far behind the front lines. Yet the cluster variant puts vehicle pools, ammo dumps, and especially air defense systems and parked aircraft, under great threat.

A single M39A1 ATACMS, which features GPS and inertial navigation, carries some 300 M74 submunitions. The missile executes a stabilized spin during its terminal attack, with the payload dispenser covers blowing off and centrifugal force sending the bomblets flying in a large rounded pattern. The size of the area ATACMS effects and the density of the bomblet distribution can be altered via setting the release height.

The baseball-like M74 is a nasty weapon. It features a spherical high-explosive blast fragmentation charge. Their asymmetrical design also imparts spin during release. Once it hits 2,400 revolutions per minute, its fuze is armed. The hundreds of M74s impacting near-simultaneously create a cloud of shrapnel and explosive blasts that blanket the ground. The weapon is considered highly effective against personnel and soft targets.

A diagram showing various components of the original M39 ATACMS, including features of the M74 submunitions inside. The M39A1 is also loaded with M74s. US Army

An example of an M74 submunition. CAT-UXO

Basically, a couple of ATACMS could be fired at a Russian airbase in Crimea and other occupied areas of Ukraine and destroy all the aircraft sitting on their main aprons. None of these aircraft are parked in fortified hangars or under any covering at all. Anything that is explosive or highly flammable would detonate creating major secondary effects. This is a far cry from relying on long-range drones or remote-controlled types operated from teams close by to strike individual planes, let alone sabotage teams that have to physically place explosives on their targets. The loss in airpower from a single barrage could be unprecedented.

Air defenses, especially Russia's long-range S-300 and S-400 types that are a finite resource in great demand, would be at incredible risk of being totally destroyed by cluster munition-packing ATACMS. Instead of attacking the radar or command vehicle with a missile or drone equipped with a unitary warhead, a single ATACMS would blanket the area where the SAM system is emplaced with bomblets. The soft skin of the system's vehicles and delicate sensor components would be showered with shrapnel. Missiles would be cooked off. It would not just be a 'mission kill' or the partial loss of the battery, it would be a total or near-total loss. And while these SAM systems have some anti-ballistic missile capabilities, ATACMS is a hard target to take down operationally. If used as part of a layered attack, it would be even harder.

This is especially relevant to current Ukrainian operations against Crimea, in which Kyiv is focusing on poking holes in Russia's air defense umbrella over and emanating out from the peninsula in order to facilitate cruise missile and drone attacks on other targets. At least two S-400 SAM systems have been destroyed so far as part of these operations, allowing for successful attacks deeper into the heart of Russian interests in Crimea, such as the successful Storm Shadow strike on the Black Sea Fleet's headquarters and on a submarine and amphibious assault ship in drydock.

Troop encampments and ammunition dumps would also be at extreme risk of cluster munition-equipped ATACMS strikes. Even the Black Sea Fleet itself could suffer dearly at the hands of a cluster munition-equipped ATACMS.

Russia parks its ships close together, oftentimes using the 'Mediterranean' style of mooring. While the missile could not sink multiple ships directly, its cluster munitions would cause damage to the vessels' sensors and other components, causing numerous 'mission kills' that could take months to fix. The possibility of fire and secondaries is also a consideration that could indeed result in a total hull loss.

Ukraine's spymaster, General Kyrylo Budanov, told The War Zone how important ATACMS could be for exactly these reasons last week in an exclusive interview in Washington, DC, stating:

"The Russians just place command posts and other things beyond those distances so we don't have anything to reach them there. And the situation is the same with Russian aviation at the airfields. Fighting Russian aviation using air defense systems is very costly and ineffective. Aviation should be taken out at the air bases."

General Kyrylo Budanov in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., where he gave an extensive interview to The War Zone's Howard Altman. Howard Altman Howard Altman

All this being said, significant questions do still remain about when Ukraine might receive any ATACMS and what variants it might get.

At the most basic level, U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration do appear to be steadily warming to the idea of transferring some number of ATACMS to the Ukrainian armed forces. This comes after months of pushback, with U.S. officials regularly citing the relatively limited number of these strategically important weapons in American stocks, as well as fears about provoking a new level of escalation from the Russian government.

Last week, Douglas Bush, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, said the inventory issue was set to be eased significantly by the acquisition of new Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM), which are set to replace ATACMS. PrSM's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, has told The War Zone it expects to begin deliveries of production examples before the end of this year.

A test of a Precision Strike Missile. DOD

Speaking at a media roundtable that The War Zone and other outlets attended on September 19, Bush also took the opportunity to push back on previous reports that the U.S. military had somehow undercounted its ATACMS inventory. "Of course, we know exactly how many we have [and] exactly where they are."

Just yesterday, William LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, said PrSM deliveries had begun. The War Zone has reached out to LaPlante's office and Lockheed Martin to confirm this and for more information.

Whether it is less problematic from a strategic readiness perspective or not to send ATACMS to Ukraine, there is still the question of how many and what variants might be available for transfer, as well as how fast that might occur. ATACMS is still in production, but the U.S. military stopped buying new examples years ago.

Lockheed Martin, which makes the missiles and launchers, is understood to have produced about 4,000 ATACMS of all variants over the past two decades or so. This includes about 600 examples that U.S. forces fired in combat during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War and others that were sold to foreign countries, according to previous reports.

ATACMS production, of course, goes back to the 1980s. As already noted, the U.S. Army has been in the process of converting older M39/A1 missiles loaded with submunitions into newer variants with unitary warheads. This process began, in part, because many of these early block missiles were reaching the end of their shelf lives and needed to be refurbished in order to be safe and effective to use at all.

An M39 or M39A1 ATACMS missile in the process of being converted. US Army

How many cluster munition-loaded M39/A1s might remain in U.S. inventory now is unknown and The War Zone has reached out to the Army for more information. Examples of the cluster munition variants of ATACMS have also been exported in the past to Bahrain, Greece, South Korea, and Turkey, where their status is equally unclear.

The Washington Post did report last week that current discussions about sending ATACMS to Ukraine were centered on the possibility of sending versions loaded with cluster munitions specifically. That story cited “several people familiar with the ongoing deliberations.”

In addition, earlier this year, multiple Republican members of Congress wrote an open letter to the Biden administration imploring it to approve sending cluster munition artillery shells to Ukraine and noted explicitly that this could help "unlock multiple new systems that have a [cluster munitions] variant, including ... ATACMS." Biden ultimately did decide to allow the transfer of 155mm artillery shells filled with submunitions to Ukraine, as already mentioned.

All of this points to the continued availability of at least some M39/A1 ATACMS missiles that could be sent to Ukraine, although we are still working to confirm they still exist in the inventory. Even if only in limited numbers, with their focus being to take out very high value target sets, the missiles could have an impact on the course of the conflict. And, of course, there is a whole separate argument for why the unitary warhead models are in great demand, as well. Dropping the Kerch Bridge if often cited as a primary example, but that is just one of many potential applications. Yet the cluster munition variants would have a very special role to play, one that would result in very unique effects on some of Russia's highest-value military targets in occupied areas of Ukraine.

Howard Altman contributed to this story.

Contact the editor: Tyler@thedrive.com

thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick, Tyler Rogoway · September 27, 2023

6. Influenced by Disinformation: What the U.S. Can Do to Counter Disinformation Operations

Are we really effectively employing PSYOP in Irregular Warfare.? Not if we are still deluding ourselves by calling it MISO.

Excerpts:

In irregular warfare the U.S. focus is currently, at best, limited to military information support operations (MISO) regarding the information domain. The U.S. government spends too much energy into the oft-overused tactic of utilizing MISO in a specific locality to maintain or increase positive U.S. sentiment. A way forward in the irregular warfare space is to counter disinformation instead. We can expand beyond the MISO focus and pivot to a full spectrum look in the information domain. The aftermath of the withdrawal from Afghanistan severely diminished the U.S.’s relationship with its partners, which provided an exploitation opportunity for adversaries like Russia. Russia also attacked the U.S. government’s internal credibility by promoting various existing conspiracy theories, like QAnon and its international offshoots, within the U.S. A counter-disinformation strategy for the United States must take into account Russia’s exploitation of both domestic and international distrust. The U.S. can do so by expanding upon the tools that it has in its arsenal, using a culturally informed and nuanced approach to messaging, and accounting for the cultural divisions in the U.S. within our international narrative.

Influenced by Disinformation: What the U.S. Can Do to Counter Disinformation Operations

irregularwarfarecenter.org

September 25, 2023

Del Sanders

Peter Roberto

Download a PDF of this publication by clicking the icon.

In February and March of 2022, as Russian troops crossed into Ukraine, Russian misinformation concurrently crossed over social media platforms to support them. Russia attempted to promote the idea that Ukraine housed bioweapons plants for the U.S. While the idea was swiftly debunked, it gained traction amongst conspiracy theorists in the U.S. The prevalence of these conspiracy theories in public debate eroded the public’s faith in U.S. institutions, capitalizing on disunity amongst Americans, lack of government efficiency, and lack of institutional transparency. The ability to influence a myriad of population sectors worldwide is the “go-to” tool of 21st century warfare for U.S. competitors. The U.S. must recognize that refilling stockpiles, maintaining nearly 800 bases in 70 countries, and reorganizing the Navy’s carrier posture is not enough to compete in 21st century warfare. Irregular warfare strategies replaced the overt wars of the 20th century. Although the U.S. outspends any country in defense expenditure, increased global connections evened the playing field, enabling irregular warfare operations, especially disinformation campaigns, that cause as much or more damage than a HIMARS barrage. The U.S. must engage Russia, and eventually China, in the information realm, which it all too often confronts from a cyber defense context and not offensive cyber or influencing sentiment. With new tools like “deep fakes” becoming increasingly common on social media, the U.S. must reorganize its efforts to protect and actively cultivate its reputation and control its influence against its competitors. This article outlines three ways to enable the U.S. to effectively compete against adversaries in the information wars.

Russia is a prominent player in the information domain and China is an active learner, both taking advantage of the U.S.’s lack of preparation in the field. Russia has implemented disinformation campaigns since the Cold War, and these activities were revived amidst the various Russian incursions into Ukraine. Russia uses different online groups to implement its recent campaign of lies, including hacktivist groups and the aptly named “Internet Research Agency” formerly owned by notorious Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. In addition, China launched numerous disinformation campaigns against the U.S. and its allies via the People’s Liberation Army. These groups take advantage of the U.S.’s hesitancy to engage strongly in the information operations realm and its common doctrine of viewing cyberwarfare in defensive terms, focusing on denial-of-service attacks. U.S. adversaries also exploit its declining international reputation to expand their influence abroad. To account for the evolving media and technological landscape, the U.S. needs a counter-disinformation strategy that reflects its contemporary position on the world stage, while also reminding the world of our positive values and past achievements.

In irregular warfare the U.S. focus is currently, at best, limited to military information support operations (MISO) regarding the information domain. The U.S. government spends too much energy into the oft-overused tactic of utilizing MISO in a specific locality to maintain or increase positive U.S. sentiment. A way forward in the irregular warfare space is to counter disinformation instead. We can expand beyond the MISO focus and pivot to a full spectrum look in the information domain. The aftermath of the withdrawal from Afghanistan severely diminished the U.S.’s relationship with its partners, which provided an exploitation opportunity for adversaries like Russia. Russia also attacked the U.S. government’s internal credibility by promoting various existing conspiracy theories, like QAnon and its international offshoots, within the U.S. A counter-disinformation strategy for the United States must take into account Russia’s exploitation of both domestic and international distrust. The U.S. can do so by expanding upon the tools that it has in its arsenal, using a culturally informed and nuanced approach to messaging, and accounting for the cultural divisions in the U.S. within our international narrative.

First, the U.S. and its allies must learn how to weaponize transparency. In the days leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials, armed with intelligence on Russian troop movements, began to warn Ukraine and its allies in NATO, the EU, and across the world about the impending attack. As a result, Ukraine saw an outpouring of support from the international community, one that saw even a rising adversary like China abstaining on UN votes. In addition, the warnings also likely bolstered U.S. support for Ukraine. The United States must learn from this declassification campaign and create a concise and factually accurate strategic messaging campaign against Russian disinformation, including Russia’s promotion of conspiracy theories and divides within the United States. This approach allows the U.S. to counter Russian disinformation operations in a way that preserves the democratic spirit of the U.S.

Second, the United States must look at the information, social media, AI, and machine learning space as an opportunity, not an uncharted domain to abstain from out of fear or skepticism. Other states, such as Russia, exploit these tools offensively. Many in the U.S. security sphere are not technologically proficient regarding social media or AI and view these mediums with disdain or skepticism. Instead, we should increase our training and focus on these tools just as much as our adversaries. Additionally, the whole of the U.S. government must become serious about exploiting the information domain and stop viewing every non-military threat through the myopic lens of a cyber attack. The information domain is wildly complex and rapidly evolving, and the United States must facilitate interoperability and communication between the various entities involved in information operations, both offensively and defensively.

Third, the U.S. can further bolster these efforts by having its various special operations forces, who already specialize in information operations, build upon their capabilities. One way is by partnering with private sector partners to identify cultural trends and potential local partners to spread counter disinformation operations. By using tech that utilizes statistical and algorithmic models concerning regression, causality, and natural language processing, Washington can be better empowered to identify influential topics and actors in networks to deal with disinformation accurately. This would amplify U.S. counter disinformation efforts, but when accompanied with special operations deployments, proven statistical solutions can be a force multiplier and allow for greater mission success when they conduct strategic messaging. Furthermore, the U.S. can use the junction of sentiment analysis programs and special operations-enacted strategic messaging campaigns offensively to counter Russian and Chinese influence amongst partner or emerging states. Partners like Ukraine see vast success with this strategy and could offer a path for U.S. policymakers to learn how to navigate the modern media landscape.

The U.S. can forge a new path in combating the waves of online disinformation coming from Russia and other near-peer competitors. Washington must learn to develop new strategies to change the narrative and promote its interests in an evolving media landscape filled with emerging technologies and irregular warfare doctrines that enable resurgent powers. The days when the might of militaries alone made right are long gone. The ability to influence mass amounts of people is now proving just as influential as a NATO defense commitment, and the United States must treat the information space with the same respect.

Del Sanders is a M.S. candidate at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Del is a former U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst with 16 years’ experience working in Special Operations, a member of the National Security Fellowship graduate program at Seton Hall University, providing research and policy recommendations to the Department of Defense this past academic year, an Associate Editor with the Journal of Diplomacy & International Relations, and currently is a manager at FNA, a learning software company within the national security sector.

Peter Roberto, M.A. is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Diplomacy & International Relations at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations. He was a member of the National Security Fellowship graduate program at Seton Hall University, and provided research and policy recommendations to the State Department and Department of Defense. He held internships with The Counterterrorism Group and the U.S. House of Representatives. Peter has been published by the Journal of Diplomacy & International Relations, Foreign Policy Association, HSToday, and Small Wars Journal.

irregularwarfarecenter.org

7. DOL Foundation - Helping Those Who Have Served | SOF News

DOL Foundation - Helping Those Who Have Served | SOF News

sof.news · by Guest · September 27, 2023

The DOL Foundation is a national non-profit dedicated to professionally developing military service members, veterans, first responders, and spouses, no matter if they are currently serving or prior service. The Foundation is wholly donor-driven, with as close to 100% of donations received going directly to those we serve.

The DOL Foundation was founded in September 2023 by a cross-functional Board of military servicemembers. Each Board Member has served our country and shown dedication through their continued service.

Scott Kinder (former Army Special Forces), Otis McGregor (LTC Ret. Army Special Forces), Junior Ortiz (LtCol Ret. USMC), and Ramiro Villalobos (E7 Ret. US Air Force) are each established professionals intent on building a strong Foundation honoring the service and commitment of those who’ve served. No board member receives a salary, we have no corporate offices, we hire no consultants, and we don’t discriminate as to who we serve.

The DOL Foundation is focused solely on the professional development of those we serve. We provide donor-funded coaching, funding pathways for industry-accredited certifications, and educational scholarships.

We believe our coaching services to be a key differentiator in our approach. The overarching goal of our 5 hours of coaching is to help focus on life post-service. We want to give them tools to live life with intention while pursuing their purpose to desired success.

Some of the topics we cover over the five hours of our three-phased coaching are:

Phase 1:

1. Self-awareness and Mindfulness
2. Creating the Vision and Developing a Plan: Ideal Day
3. Owning and Controlling Your Calendar
4. Defining your Post-Service Values

Phase 2:

1. Targeting What You Want
2. Build your Network
3. Translating Professional Value

Phase 3:

1. Establishing Milestones and Execution
2. Opportunity Analysis
3. Personal Gap Analysis

All coaching and approved certification costs are covered 100% by the DOL Foundation, and each coaching session is tailored to the service member’s or spouse’s unique needs by matching them to one of our three coaching levels.

The DOL Foundation believes at its core that little is currently being done through existing transition offerings to provide individually tailored professional development services. This failure adds undue stress and anxiety to a complicated post-service career.

De Oppresso Liber, “DOL,” is Latin for “to free the oppressed” and is the motto of the US Army Special Forces. Our coaches and the Foundation take this calling to heart: we will help those we serve to identify and eliminate what is “oppressing” them and barring them from a happy and successful post-military career.

You can find out more about the DOL Foundation at https://dolfoundation.com, and you can support our mission by donating at https://dolfoundation.com/donate. You can also email any questions you have to Scott Kinder, our Chairman of the Board, scott@dolcoach.com

sof.news · by Guest · September 27, 2023

8. AI and the Nature of Literary Creativity

Excerpts:

How much help from AI renders a story “non-human”? That will be a topic of debate—for a time. In 1719, Daniel Defoe published The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe . . . Written by Himself. As Franzen points out, “many of its first readers took the story as nonfiction.” The eighteenth century was the moment, Franzen continues, when authors not only “abandoned the pretense that their narratives weren’t fictional,” but also “began taking pains to make their narratives seem not fictional—when verisimilitude became paramount.” From the start, the novel has been marked by evolution. Did the author make up her story? Did she write it with the help of generative AI? One day, these two questions may come to look equally quaint.

AI will unsettle received ideas. That is what wondrous and terrible technologies do. Yet when it comes to literature—to what fiction can teach us—much will stay the same. Or, if not, we’ll find fresh ways to understand ourselves. A new technology comes along, and we suffer an identity crisis. We worry about losing our humanity. But what’s new and alarming to one generation is old and ordinary to the next. We sort it out, we adapt. That, indeed, might be the most human trait of all.

The human being who wrote this article would appreciate if you would pass it along to as many friends as possible.

AI and the Nature of Literary Creativity

Are ChatGPT and its competitors pushing literature toward its destruction—or just another in a long line of technological transformations?

CORBIN K. BARTHOLD

SEP 27, 2023

plus.thebulwark.com · by Corbin K. Barthold

(The Bulwark / Midjourney)

IN 1968, ROLAND BARTHES pronounced “the death of the author.” David Foster Wallace distilled the French literary theorist’s rather screwy point a quarter-century later: “It is really critical readers who decide and thus determine what a piece of writing means.” Perhaps the “author” (the “entity whose intentions are taken to be responsible for a text’s meaning”) was “dead” in some postmodern sense; but the “writer” (the “person whose choices and actions account for a text’s features”) remained very much alive. Whatever “the death of the author” might mean, “one thing which it cannot mean,” Wallace assured us, quoting the novelist William Gass, “is that no one did it.”

Then, however, along came a wondrous and terrible technology—artificial intelligence. Barthes’s glib theatricality now looks surprisingly prophetic. The author is at risk, suddenly, of becoming dead dead. Or, to put it in Wallace’s terms, we are faced with the death of the writer. There really will be a text of which it can be said: no one did it.

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Naturally, there are skeptics. (Wired headline: “Why Generative AI Won’t Disrupt Books.”) But for the moment, let’s focus on the believers. (Wired headline: “One Day, AI Will Seem as Human as Anyone. What Then?”) They are not few in number. “Eventually, no particular human skill”—not even creativity—“is going to differentiate us from AI.” (So opines a computer scientist.) Large language models like ChatGPT already have “a surprisingly nimble grasp of prose style.” (A novelist). Before long, they might “allow readers to endlessly generate their own books.” (Another writer.) The “reading public” will soon “miss the days when a bit of detective work could identify completely fictitious authors.” (An internet researcher.) And at that point, we’re told (by a technologist), as AI “blur[s] the line between human and machine,” we will have to grapple with “some difficult questions” about who we are.

Will we, though? The camera has, in many ways, displaced the painter. Does that keep you up at night? Generative AI might, in many ways, displace the author, a transition that would indeed have profound aesthetic, economic, and even political consequences. But why should it make you feel any less human?

TO BEGIN WITH, THIS BUSINESS of “authorship” is contingent—historically, culturally, and otherwise. In his treatise on law and literature, Richard Posner considers the matter in the context of the birth of copyright. “Authorship,” he explains, “is an ascribed status rather than a natural kind”:

The notion that one is an author only if one wrote the work rather than having discovered, copied, improved, praised, financed, commanded, or sponsored it is a convention of particular cultures, a convention the causes of which may be as much material as ideological. A medieval writer of books was a member of a team of equally skilled craftsmen (others being the binder, the scribe or later the printer, the illustrator, the seller, perhaps the censor) engaged in the production of a book.

In the tradition-bound societies of the ancient and medieval worlds, Posner claims, a writer’s lodestar was “not original creation but creative imitation.” Then, however, came a wondrous and terrible technology—the printing press. Now a writer could make a living by selling a lot of books, rather than by relying on a patron. It became profitable for an author to speak in an original voice and attract a public following. (At the same time, it became costly to lose sales to cheap knockoffs—hence the copyrights.)

This simplified account can, of course, be elaborated, refined, complicated. Take, for instance, the wealth of factors that contributed to the rise of the novel as we know it. Jonathan Franzen mentions “the expansion of a literate bourgeoisie eager to read about itself, the rise in social mobility (inviting writers to exploit its anxieties), the specialization of labor (creating a society of interesting differences), . . . and, of course, among the newly comfortable middle class, the dramatic increase in leisure for reading.” Rounding out his list are the fall of “the old social order,” the rise of “the enterprising individual,” and rapid secularization.

We lived without novels before, and we could do it again. One of the great living authors, Zadie Smith, has this to say: “Most mornings I think: death of the novel? Yeah, sure, why not? The novel is not an immutable fact of human artistic life, after all, just a historically specific phenomenon.”

NOR IS THE CONCEPT OF AUTHORSHIP theoretically indispensable. Ideas can outlast castles and empires; isn’t it obvious, on some level, that they live their own lives? That they are distinct from, and independent of, their frail mortal hosts? For that matter, how does a single sentence form? True enough, most writers plan and prepare; but composition—putting the words on the page—is a mysterious process. There is an element of inspiration—of the author as medium for, rather than master of, what is set down. To return to Posner, a work’s meaning tends to “emerge” from “the act of creation or completion.”

A text and its author are not neat representations of each other. Smith once called Philip Larkin’s writing style “ethical.” Presented with the problem of Larkin’s chauvinism, she responded that she was praising “the things his poems believe in.” Her own best essays, she added, are “smarter than me in every way.” The intuition is a common one—that a writer can write better than he lives, or better than she knows. This is one reason, Posner observes, why trying to understand a work by reference to an author’s life, beliefs, or intent can diminish the work, making it less interesting, less insightful, less universal.

Keep up with all our coverage of politics, ideas, and culture—sign up today for a free or paid subscription.

Some of the most distinguished novels are the most indeterminate. Because they see all time at once, like a mountain range, the Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse-Five reject free will. Does this mean Kurt Vonnegut did so as well? Not necessarily. He “leaves that question open,” Salman Rushdie concludes, “as a good writer should. That openness is the space in which the reader is allowed to make up his or her own mind.” Posner agrees: “Much great literature . . . achieves an equipoise, rather than a resolution, of opposing forces.” But then why should we get worked up about what the author “really thinks”?

Those poststructuralists—Barthes, Derrida, and the rest—were on to something. They were not wrong to ask whether literary interpretation is boundless, elusive, inexhaustible. One generation “depicted Shakespeare as a subversive writer,” notes Posner, another “as an orthodox spokesman of medieval Christian values.” The truth, in Smith’s view, is that Shakespeare is “a writer sullied by our attempts to define him.” Like all literary genius, he “is a gift we give ourselves, a space so wide we can play in it forever.”

In Crime and Punishment, the murderer Raskolnikov juggles motivations, endlessly disputing himself. Was Dostoevsky boldly crafting the first polyphonic novel? Or was he vacillating in his own mind, on the nature of his character, as he rushed to meet deadlines for a story published in installments? Does it really matter? Crime and Punishment escapes not only its time and place but even its author’s designs. And even if you insist on treating Dostoevsky’s biography—the mock execution; the mystical pre-seizure visions—as a compass for his fiction, you’re out of luck with Shakespeare. We know remarkably little about the Bard’s life, and he is famously removed from his own oeuvre; he lacks authorial presence. Yet we don’t need a map of the walking, talking Shakespeare to navigate his plays. They’d be just as enriching if they were written by someone else—or if they’d fallen from the sky.

Doubts are traitors. Wounds heal by degrees. Beware the daggers in men’s smiles. Do not try to read the book of fate. A man told us these things. A man who, as best we can tell, lived a mundane life. From where did these sublime remarks originate? Thoughts arise from the void; their source is unknown. There’s magic at play here. What is the fount of transcendence? Does it really matter?

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THESE QUESTIONS PRECEDED artificial intelligence and they will persist alongside it. Decades ago, the deconstructionists tried to kill the author. Decades from now, many will still deny that she is dead. If you believe in authorship today, you can expect to go on believing in it tomorrow. In this instance, technology is unlikely to succeed where philosophy has failed.

Just ask authors themselves. In recent days, upon learning that their books appear in the massive datasets used to train large language models, many authors have expressed outrage and unleashed their lawyers. Understandably, they feel linked to their work, to their art, and no abstract argument is going to budge them.

Humans are not logic machines. A basketball is worth something. A basketball that a star player used for a game-winning shot is worth more. We have deep intuitions about human connection, and many of us will continue to apply those instincts to the act of storytelling. “For those of us civilians who know in our gut that writing is an act of communication between one human being and another,” Wallace said, “the whole question” of authorship seems “sort of arcane.” It was a given, for him, that “serious fiction’s purpose” is to provide human beings “imaginative access” to each other. Here’s Smith: “The true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.”

People will continue to write, just as people continue to play chess. And people will remain interested in other people’s writing, just as people remain interested in other people’s chess-playing. AlphaZero can run circles around the world’s grandmasters—yet humans keep watching humans. If anything, AI has made the best players more interesting to watch. Literature will likely head down a similar path. Even if a pile of code is someday hailed as the next Shakespeare, we’ll still be reading stories crafted by the Smiths, the Franzens, and the Wallaces. AI might simply make the best authors even more interesting to read. (Meanwhile, a few of us will continue to write with a pad and a pen—for pleasure, if not for profit.)

How much help from AI renders a story “non-human”? That will be a topic of debate—for a time. In 1719, Daniel Defoe published The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe . . . Written by Himself. As Franzen points out, “many of its first readers took the story as nonfiction.” The eighteenth century was the moment, Franzen continues, when authors not only “abandoned the pretense that their narratives weren’t fictional,” but also “began taking pains to make their narratives seem not fictional—when verisimilitude became paramount.” From the start, the novel has been marked by evolution. Did the author make up her story? Did she write it with the help of generative AI? One day, these two questions may come to look equally quaint.

AI will unsettle received ideas. That is what wondrous and terrible technologies do. Yet when it comes to literature—to what fiction can teach us—much will stay the same. Or, if not, we’ll find fresh ways to understand ourselves. A new technology comes along, and we suffer an identity crisis. We worry about losing our humanity. But what’s new and alarming to one generation is old and ordinary to the next. We sort it out, we adapt. That, indeed, might be the most human trait of all.

The human being who wrote this article would appreciate if you would pass it along to as many friends as possible.

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plus.thebulwark.com · by Corbin K. Barthold

9. Milley leaves Joint Chiefs with a legacy of controversy, consequence

Milley leaves Joint Chiefs with a legacy of controversy, consequence

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · September 27, 2023

In the last four years, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley has seen his public persona shift from President Donald Trump’s hand-picked vision of what a military leader should be into public enemy #1 for conservative lawmakers who blame him for eroding military culture and readiness.

Democratic lawmakers have praised his actions during and after the Capitol attack in January 2021 as pivotal to upholding democracy. Trump earlier this month blasted him as a “woke train wreck” and suggested Milley should be prosecuted for treason because of decisions made during his tenure.

The 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs leaves behind a complicated legacy that includes the end of the war in Afghanistan, public sparring with the commander-in-chief over the use of troops on U.S. soil, ongoing fights over “woke” policies in the military and unanswered questions on whether the armed forces have become forever politicized by the events of recent years.

This week, as Milley ends his four years as the nation’s top uniformed military leader, critics and supporters are offering their arguments for how his tenure should be remembered by history, and whether he should be lionized or vilified for the work. As it has been throughout his time in the post, those opinions vary wildly.

“I think he’ll be remembered as someone who rose to the challenge in difficult circumstances, and not just be remembered for those circumstances,” said retired Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, deputy director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law at Syracuse University. “I think in 50 years, people will view him as another one of the good leaders we’ve had there.”

Meanwhile, Trump supporter Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., called Milley a “traitor” who should be executed for refusing to back the former president in fights with Democrats. “Our nation deserves much better than this,” he wrote.

From model officer to Trump nemesis

Milley, who will officially step down as chairman and retire from the Army by Oct. 1, declined to be interviewed for this story. The 65-year-old Boston area native graduated from Princeton University in 1980, where he received his commission from Army ROTC. He went on to serve as the Army’s Chief of Staff after commanding troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Among other operational deployments, in early April 2005, then-Col. Milley led the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team in Baghdad, Iraq.

Retired Col. Ross Davidson, who served as Milley’s operation’s officer at the time, said in one instance, Milley ran across a bridge riddled with mines, stopping an oncoming group of tanks from rolling into a disaster. Davidson recommended Milley be awarded for the act, but Milley, though appreciative of the sentiment, said he didn’t want the recognition for simply doing his job.

Milley’s name gained national prominence in late 2018, when Trump went against the wishes of senior advisors to elevate Milley to the Joint Chiefs Chairman role. Despite concerns from lawmakers, he was easily confirmed by the Senate.

Milley was a key voice in Trump’s decision to launch a raid that ended in the death of Islamic State group founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in late 2019, and was praised by the president for his guidance. The two still enjoyed a strong public relationship until the summer of 2020, when a photo-op caused an irrevocable split between the pair.

On June 1, 2020, amid racial justice protests across the country following the police killing of George Floyd, local authorities cleared demonstrators from the Lafayette Square area outside the White House for Trump and other officials to walk to a nearby church. Milley accompanied them in full uniform, a move that drew widespread criticism.

Milley later publicly apologized for the move, saying it gave the perception that military leaders were taking sides in debates over protests and racial justice. That angered Trump and his supporters, as did leaked reports that Milley was working behind the scenes to convince the president not to use military troops for domestic protest response efforts.

The divide between the men only grew after Trump lost the November 2020 election. In an interview with the Atlantic, former Defense Secretary Bob Gates said that “Milley expected to be fired every single day between Election Day and Jan. 6.” Milley has said when rioters overtook the Capitol on the day Congress certified the election results, he spoke to numerous senior White House officials about providing a security response, but never heard from Trump.

President Donald Trump departs the White House to visit outside St. John's Church in Washington, D.C. on June 1, 2020. Walking with him Trump from left are, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

He and other members of the Joint Chiefs penned a letter a few days later lamenting the attack by Trump supporters on “Congress, the Capitol building and our Constitutional process,” further enraging the president’s backers.

Since then, the men have engaged in a public back-and-forth over each other’s perceived wrongdoings. Milley has spoken to reporters about Trump’s unstable nature and unrealistic plans to use military force to solve a variety of problems. Trump has accused Milley of undermining his authority to burnish his own reputation.

That animosity has spread into Congress, where Republican House members have frequently berated Milley for a host of military problems, including pandemic response efforts, recruiting and retention challenges and interactions with foreign allies.

He has also been sharply criticized for the withdrawal of all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, a decision made by President Joe Biden that he advised against. In testimony before the Senate a month after the pullout, Milley called the evacuation “a logistical success but a strategic failure” for the country.

But he also defended following Biden’s orders — and all of his other actions in office up to that point — as the right move for the military and America.

“My loyalty to this nation, its people, and the Constitution hasn’t changed and will never change as long as I have a breath to give,” he told members of the Senate during a September 2021 hearing. “I firmly believe in civilian control of the military as a bedrock principle essential to this republic, and I am committed to ensuring the military stays clear of domestic politics.”

Defining his legacy

Murrett, who served on the Joint Staff during former President George W. Bush’s time in office, said he believes Milley has stuck to that commitment. He said every Joint Chiefs chairman in recent memory has received pushback from Congress for hewing too closely or not following close enough to their current administration, but that they have largely toed an apolitical line.

“Whoever is the chairman, they do their best to stay as politically neutral as they can,” he said. “And I think that’s reflected in what Milley has done.”

He thinks historians will focus in years to come on the idea of Milley rising above political fights when they look back at his tenure. Others see individual issues dominating the conversation.

“Right, wrong or indifferent, I think his legacy is going to be more about what happened in Afghanistan than anything else,” said Robert Greenway, Heritage Foundation’s director of the Center for National Defense.

He argued that what happened during the chaotic withdrawal in August 2021 seared a negative image in the public’s mind, and because of how Americans regarded what unfolded, they lost a level of trust in the armed forces.

Greenway also said senior military leadership, including Milley, are in large part responsible for the poor state of recruitment among the services, which have struggled lately to attract new talent. He posited that a prioritization on diversification efforts within the armed forces — policies publicly defended by Milley — have impacted the trust of potential new personnel.

Retired Col. Gian Gentile, a senior Army historian with the RAND Corporation think tank, focused on the U.S. response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a defining issue of Milley’s legacy. While the major decisions on U.S. support to Ukraine come from policymakers, the Joint Chiefs chairman has played a significant part in American allyship.

Gentile described it as “a very positive and very strong level of support and cooperation with the Ukrainian military.”

For others, it’s clear Milley has been tested by an evolving civilian-military relationship, pushing the boundaries of the nonpartisan nature of his role.

Katherine Kuzminski, the director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security, said that part of the challenge of Milley wading into a number of debates has been that both sides are pointing at him as a politicized figure.

“On the left, there’s critiques that the military is just full of domestic violent extremists, and on the right, now there’s this narrative that the military has gone ‘woke’ and ‘soft,’” she said.

Next man up

Milley’s replacement, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, already faced some of the same political attacks during his confirmation process. He was approved by a vote of 83 to 11 earlier this month, after facing an extended wait due to objections from Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tubervile over opposition to the Defense Department’s abortion access policy.

During his confirmation hearing in July, Brown pledged to “stay nonpartisan, nonpolitical in how I approach the position of chairman” and “set that same expectation throughout the force that we need to stay out of politics.”

Murrett acknowledged that is easier said than done, given the political tensions surrounding the military right now. Even with Brown’s confirmation, more than 300 other senior military nominees are caught in Tuberville’s procedural objections, starting his tenure with immediate leadership headaches.

“But I think Milley has lived up to that very high standard of what is expected amid those difficult circumstances, and I’m very confident that CQ Brown is going to do the same thing,” Murrett said. “It’s their responsibility to serve the country well.”

About Leo Shane III and Jonathan Lehrfeld

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

Jonathan is a staff writer and editor of the Early Bird Brief newsletter for Military Times. Follow him on Twitter @lehrfeld_media

10. What will it take to fix so many lousy barracks? lawmakers ask

What will it take to fix so many lousy barracks? lawmakers ask

militarytimes.com · by Karen Jowers · September 27, 2023

Service members have told government auditors about rampant problems in their barracks — to include mold, broken heating and air conditioning systems, cramped rooms, overflowing sewage and much more — but not all service branches are asking troops about those living conditions.

“Service members have a lot to say and are eager for someone to listen,” said Elizabeth Field, director of the Government Accountability Office’s defense capabilities and management team.

“It will take years to address the chronic neglect and underfunding we uncovered,” she told members of the House Armed Services Committee’s quality of life panel Wednesday,

After listening to Field’s testimony, lawmakers said they want to know why some troops are living in such poor conditions, how much funding is needed to fix the problem, and how to ensure better oversight and accountability.

The recent GAO audit of 10 military barracks revealed that DoD has neither adequate information about the condition of barracks nor a complete understanding of how the poor conditions affect morale.

Military members could have let them know.

Mold was a common complaint, Fields said. She quoted one service member who said, “Mold in the barracks makes you feel expendable, like we don’t matter.”

Malfunctioning heating and air conditioning systems are another problem.

“One Marine said, ‘I often wake up at night sweating from the heat, itching from bedbugs and feeling like I am suffocating,’ " Field said.

Safety is also an issue. Some troops reported that their barracks room doors don’t lock, with one member alleging that sexual assaults happen more often than people think, Field said.

RELATED

Poor oversight leaves military barracks in dire condition, report says

The watchdog report documented widespread housing issues with the barracks already familiar to many lower-ranking service members across the armed forces.

Ask the troops

Among the GAO’s 31 recommendations for improving barracks: DoD should require the services to survey troops in their unaccompanied housing in a consistent and comparable way.

The Navy and the Marine Corps are the only two services that survey service members about the quality of their barracks, and none of the services ask whether the condition of their barracks affects their decision about whether to reenlist, Field said.

Their reasons? Some service officials told GAO that troops living in barracks aren’t reliable when it comes to completing surveys or replying to email and telephone inquiries, so it isn’t worth trying to solicit their opinions. “Other officials told us that the condition of the barracks is not a key factor in military retention and therefore doesn’t merit inclusion as a topic in already lengthy surveys,” she said.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired Air Force brigadier general who heads up the military quality of life panel, noted that he served as base commander at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, and Offutt Air Force Base in his home state. If these conditions had been present in his barracks, he would have been fired, he said.

“Where has the accountability been?” he asked. “We need to put our finger on it and get it fixed. We can’t allow the situation to persist. It’s an issue not only of justice and dignity, but also of military readiness. When service members are preoccupied with their health and safety, they cannot focus on their mission.”

When the new panel began its work, Bacon assumed that they were going to hear primarily about service members and food insecurity. But as they visit bases, “we’ve actually heard more from our military members and family members about the quality of housing and the housing allowance,” he said.

“There’s an urgent need for DoD to implement oversight of our unaccompanied housing and to continue steadfastly in their mission to ensure military families in privatized housing are taken care of,” he said.

Barracks at Fort Moore, Ga., have been selected for the Army's Smart Barracks program, with plans to implement changes across many installations. The initiative aims to increase efficiency and raise morale.

No quick fix

Barracks problems are the direct result of “many years of not looking closely at deferred maintenance, the investment,” said Carla Coulson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, housing and partnerships. “So, now we are, in effect, playing catch up.”

Service officials testified that they recognize there are significant problems and are taking steps to address the GAO’s recommendations. A year ago, the Army inspected every room of every barracks building, Coulson said.

The Army has committed to spending at least $1 billion a year on barracks, she said. From fiscal 2024 through FY 2028, the service can address 113 of the 300 barracks buildings in poor or failing condition, Coulson said. But it will take $6.5 billion — in addition to what they’re already spending— to address all the problems.

If barracks renovations and repairs aren’t fully funded, however, the Army will see 110 barracks in “good or adequate” condition slide down into the “poor or failing” category.

“We don’t make much progress unless we ensure we’re doing preventive maintenance,” she said.

Auditors found there was more sense of ownership of the barracks issue at the installation level.

“We spoke to a number of installation commanders who told us they felt sick about the conditions their junior enlisted service members were living in,” Field said. “They often recounted facing impossible choices between where to put limited funding.”

At one installation, she said, officials requested funds for a new barracks for 10 years in a row and never got the money. “That’s, in part, why installation commanders are throwing up their hands,” she said.

One aspect that troubled the auditors was that defense officials “very much had a hands-off approach to this topic,” Field said. At that level, officials couldn’t answer basic questions: How many barracks are there? Do they comply with standards? How many service members live in unaccompanied housing?

DoD needs to gather the information it needs — such as the condition of barracks — to make more strategic decisions about where to put limited resources, Field said. The department also needs to put uniform barracks standards in place. At th same time, the services need to reevaluate policies on who is required to live in barracks.

“Facility criticality” needs a whole new approach, said Robert Thompson, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment. “The fact that these are their homes makes it mission critical.”

The services have been talking with defense officials about the need to identify “livability standards” for barracks, he said.

Airman Brody Yates, 628th Civil Engineer Squadron structural apprentice, left, sands drywall as Tech. Sgt. Jason Goss, 28th CES structural craftsman,applies joint compound at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, in March 2021. CES’s maintain and repair all base facilities. (Staff Sgt. David Owsianka/Air Force)

“It’s clear we have significant work ahead in our unaccompanied housing to provide safe, clean, reliable, comfortable and dignified places for our sailors and Marines to call home,” he said.

If DoD fails to implement all of GAO’s recommendations in a “meaningful and timely manner,” Field said the adency would encourage Congress to put them into law.

Bacon pointed to the roll Congress has played over the past few years to improve privatized family housing, passing legislation to address persistent problems.

“I think we have to do the same thing for our barracks,” he said. “We’re going to put a focus on it, a spotlight on it. But the services also have to tell us what they need.”

About Karen Jowers

Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book "A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families." She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.

11. Experts and Military Leaders Fear Ukraine Could Become the Next 'Afghanistan'

Excerpts:

“Corruption undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan by fueling grievances and channeling support to the insurgency,” the report said. “The U.S. government did not place a high priority on the threat of corruption in the first years of the reconstruction effort.”

Sullivan sees the same scenario unfolding once more in Ukraine.

“We are at the end of the beginning in Ukraine. The time is now to address the corruption problem through the proven special inspector general model. It is unlikely that there will be another opportunity,” Sullivan writes.

In the meantime, Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch will oversee all Ukraine assistance in response to calls from members of Congress.

Experts and Military Leaders Fear Ukraine Could Become the Next 'Afghanistan'

19fortyfive.com · by John Rossomando · September 27, 2023

Calls are mounting for a special inspector general to monitor aid to Ukraine. Congress created a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Relief (SIGAR) in 2009 to examine how recovery funds given to the Afghan government were being spent. Many are calling for a similar office to be created for Ukraine, in order to monitor corruption.

A piece written by Col. Patrick Sullivan, director of the Modern War Institute at West Point, says the answer to those calls should be yes.

“The recent removal of Ukraine’s defense minister reminds us of an important, if uncomfortable, reality—Ukraine has a corruption problem,” Sullivan writes. “It would also be a mistake to conflate the Ukrainians’ well-earned status as noble warriors for a righteous cause with nobility in the whole; righteousness and corruption can coexist. These are mistakes that the United States made in Afghanistan, an experience which shows the existential danger of repeating them in Ukraine.”

Sullivan contends that American leaders knew about the problem of corruption in Afghanistan from the beginning, just as they do in Ukraine. However, there does not seem to be any more urgency in the U.S. government to get a grasp on possible mishandling of relief funds or weapons than there was in Afghanistan.

“Direct assistance is basically what is occurring in Ukraine, with similar pathologies to Afghanistan that may allow corruption to grow unchecked. Much like the reckless spending of the Obama administration’s surge, the United States and NATO are rushing arms and material assistance into Ukraine with less-than-ideal oversight and end-use monitoring,” Sullivan writes. “While speed and volume of these deliveries are probably acceptable measures of effectiveness for what the Ukrainians need on the battlefield, they aggravate what the coalition will need to stay intact and what domestic audiences in the United States and other NATO countries will need to continue to support the assistance effort.”

Top Afghan General Sees Echoes of Afghanistan in Ukraine

Afghanistan’s exiled top general told 19FortyFive that he sees U.S. efforts to aid Ukraine from a lens of first-hand experience.

“I believe the USA is repeating the same pattern as they did in Afghanistan,” said Gen. Haibatullah Alizai, who was chief of staff of the Afghan National Army when Kabul fell to the Taliban. “In Ukraine, they should replace the leadership with [those] from intelligence or military who [are] not corrupt.”

Alizai says the U.S. failed Afghanistan by providing inadequate logistical support, and that it provided uneven training to Afghan soldiers that did not reflect needs on the ground.

Alizai studied in some of the most advanced war colleges in the West, including the UK’s Joint Services Command and Staff College. He commanded Afghan Special Forces soldiers in fierce combat with al Qaeda and the Taliban. This gives him a unique perspective on the war in Ukraine.

“The American bureaucracy led Afghanistan to failure. I still remember that Americans were looking to Afghanistan as a normal situation country regardless of the critical situation on the ground with logistical support strategy, including advanced training,” Alizai said. “Now in Ukraine, the same thing is happening. The Ukrainians need the logistics and support today, but the [U.S.] would plan the supply for next year, which will be too late.”

He notes that the Afghan army needed airpower and support for troops that operated in areas of Afghanistan where not even the most hardened American or NATO soldier would go without air support.

The Afghan army repeatedly asked for night-operations training. The requests started in 2014, but nothing was approved until it was too late.

“Then we fought for it in 2017-2018, and 2019, then [we] got the night airborne operation training in 2019. [That] was almost too late,” he said. “By then, the Taliban got … stronger and the airpower and training was not [adequate for the] situation.”

He sees a similar dynamic in play in Ukraine.

Lessons From Afghanistan Forgotten

Incompetence was not just an Afghan thing. It was also a very American matter.

A 2016 SIGAR report noted that endemic corruption undermined the American effort to rebuild Afghanistan following the U.S. and NATO intervention that began in 2001.

“Corruption undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan by fueling grievances and channeling support to the insurgency,” the report said. “The U.S. government did not place a high priority on the threat of corruption in the first years of the reconstruction effort.”

Sullivan sees the same scenario unfolding once more in Ukraine.

“We are at the end of the beginning in Ukraine. The time is now to address the corruption problem through the proven special inspector general model. It is unlikely that there will be another opportunity,” Sullivan writes.

In the meantime, Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch will oversee all Ukraine assistance in response to calls from members of Congress.

John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.

From the Vault

‘Vacuum Bombs Destroyed’: Ukraine Footage Shows Putin’s Thermobaric Rockets Destroyed

BOOM! Ukraine Video Shows Precision Strike on Russian Air-Defense System

19fortyfive.com · by John Rossomando · September 27, 2023

12. Who’s Gaining Ground in Ukraine? This Year, No One.

Graphics at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/28/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-map-front-line.html?utm

Who’s Gaining Ground in Ukraine? This Year, No One.

The New York Times · by Josh Holder · September 28, 2023

Although both sides have launched ambitious offensives, the front line has barely shifted. After 18 months of war, a breakthrough looks more difficult than ever.

By Sept. 28, 2023

The front line in Ukraine changed little last winter. Russia aimed to capture the entirety of the Donbas, but it only inched forward. Territory Russia gained since Jan. 1

Ukraine has made minimal gains in its counteroffensive. Dense Russian minefields and fortifications have made every attack extremely costly. Territory Ukraine gained since Jan. 1

Despite nine months of bloody fighting, less than 500 square miles of territory have changed hands since the start of the year. A prolonged stalemate could weaken Western support for Ukraine. Territory changed hands since Jan. 1

Both sides started the year with lofty ambitions: Russia wanted to capture the eastern Donbas region, while Ukraine aimed to split Russian forces with an attack in the south.

Neither offensive has gone to plan. The front line, after months of grueling combat and heavy casualties, remains largely unchanged.

Change in territory each month

Source: New York Times analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project

Data as of Sept. 25.

The New York Times

Less territory changed hands in August than in any other month of the war, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War. While Ukraine made small gains in the south, Russia took slightly more land overall, mostly in the northeast.

Across the front line, every mile of territory has been a grinding fight, with no repeat of the rapid breakthrough that Kyiv managed in Kharkiv in September last year, when Russia’s defenses collapsed after a surprise Ukrainian counterattack.

Russia and Ukraine have faced similar challenges this year. Both sides are fighting for positions that have remained largely entrenched for months, or even years in some parts of eastern Ukraine. Seasoned troops and commanders who were killed earlier in the war have been replaced with new recruits who often lack sufficient training.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive has struggled to push forward across the wide-open fields in the south. It is facing extensive minefields and hundreds of miles of fortifications — trenches, anti-tank ditches and concrete obstacles — that Russia built last winter to slow Ukrainian vehicles and force them into positions where they could be more easily targeted.

When both sides’ gains are added up, Russia now controls nearly 200 square miles more territory in Ukraine compared with the start of the year.

Source: New York Times analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project

Data as of Sep. 25.

The New York Times

Rather than seeking rapid gains, the Russian military appears to be comfortable holding the territory it already controls, according to Marina Miron, a postdoctoral researcher in war studies at King’s College London. “It’s not losing anything by not moving forward,” she said.

Russia’s forces outnumber Ukraine’s nearly three to one on the battlefield, and with a larger population to replenish its ranks, Russia could see a prolonged defense as in its interests.

“The whole strategy in Ukraine is for the Russians to let the Ukrainians run against those defenses, kill as many as possible, and destroy as much Western equipment as possible,” she added.

Russia controls about 18 percent of Ukraine — a swath of land larger than Switzerland. This includes Crimea and part of eastern Ukraine, which it has occupied since 2014.

The slowdown comes with huge risks for Ukraine. If it looks unlikely to recapture large areas of the country, Western support could wane, either through lack of political will or unwillingness to donate more weapons, especially given the yearslong wait for deliveries of replacement equipment.

“Russia is trying to wait out until the West turns its back,” said Dr. Miron.

Ukraine continues to battle through Russia’s defenses in the south. Last month it successfully recaptured the village of Robotyne, and in recent days moved armored vehicles past Russia’s main anti-tank defenses near Verbove, about eight miles to the west of Robotyne.

But the clock is ticking for Ukraine’s counteroffensive to make significant territorial gains. Heavy rains are expected next month, and muddy terrain could prevent the use of heavy vehicles, such as the newly arrived U.S. Abrams tanks and the Challenger tanks supplied by Britain. “When there is mud and you have a 75-ton Challenger, it will just sink,” said Dr. Miron.

Methodology

We used data from the Institute for the Study of War to calculate monthly changes in territorial control, combining datasets on Russian forces’ control and advances in Ukraine. For monthly changes, we compared the area of Russian-held territory on the first day of the month with the first day of the preceding month.

Adjustments were made to account for data refinements by the institute that didn’t reflect military-induced territorial changes, such as the inclusion of several sand spits in southern Ukraine. After the Kakhovka Dam explosion in June and the resulting flooding, the institute reduced the area it assessed as under Russia’s control in Kherson. We adjusted July’s data to ensure that change wasn’t misconstrued as a Ukrainian territorial gain, given that the flooded area is not held by Ukrainian troops.

When comparing geospatial datasets, discrepancies can lead to minor overlaps or gaps. We excluded areas smaller than 0.01 square miles from our analysis.

The New York Times · by Josh Holder · September 28, 2023

13. Five Lessons on Advising from the First Five Years of NATO Mission Iraq

Some common sense.

The five:

1. Size matters, but not in the traditional way.

2. An alliance advising mission’s strength is its diversity.

3. Training alone is not enough.

4. Shared objectives are essential.

5. Corporate memory must be protected.

Five Lessons on Advising from the First Five Years of NATO Mission Iraq - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Iain King · September 27, 2023

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There’s no shortage of lessons from Iraq. The last twenty years have seen documentaries, books, and podcasts on almost every aspect of coalition operations in the country. World wars aside, the allied effort in Iraq may have prompted more commentary than any other military endeavor in the last hundred years.

Most of this output has focused on a succession of stages of Iraq’s recent history—the 2003 US-led invasion, the country’s subsequent descent into sectarian violence, the years of coalition efforts to stem that violence and introduce political stability, the uncertain period after the 2011 withdrawal of the last coalition troops, the rapid expansion of ISIS and establishment of an international coalition to counter it, and the incremental recapture of Iraqi territory from the extremist group. But as we approach the fifth anniversary of a much lesser-known international engagement in Baghdad, there is new material to be understood. It is the story that offers useful pointers for future military engagements in other countries.

NATO Mission Iraq (NMI) began in October 2018—the Euro-Atlantic alliance’s response to a request from the government of the country. It is a noncombat operation, with a mandate only to advise and build the capacity of Iraq’s armed forces and security institutions. The alliance is also trying to guide the country toward a full-fledged NATO partnership, as conditions allow.

The mission has inevitably had its difficulties. The troubled security situation in its first two years hampered operations, and COVID also had an impact. Problems are compounded by the relatively short tours of most staff in the mission—just six months, which is not enough time to get to know Iraqis and understand the problems they face.

But the mission is novel in several ways and has been able to test new concepts. Here are five lessons from the first five years of NMI:

1. Size matters, but not in the traditional way. Bigger isn’t always better when it comes to military operations. For an advisory mission, the primary means for achieving the effect—information—is inherently scalable, so the number of people delivering it matters less than how good they are. It’s better to send in a few experts with the right know-how than establish a larger presence of less suitable advisors. Even as NMI has evolved, this focus on high-quality and precisely targeted advising has enabled it to remain nimble and responsive to Iraqi needs.
2. An alliance advising mission’s strength is its diversity. Advisory and capacity-building operations often involve personnel from several different countries, but usually in national teams—one country takes on transport, for instance, while another deals with logistics, and so on. The innovation for NMI has been to mix those individuals together, so that each advisory team offers a blend of diverse expertise from different countries, and from both civilians and military experts. Bringing diversity to the front line in this way adds credibility to the mission: advisors coming from different perspectives means they can correct each other, and the chance of an individual national agenda being pursued is much reduced.
3. Training alone is not enough. Iraq’s security forces have already received extensive training from abroad, and have several impressive military academies of their own, including branch schools and a defense university. Moreover, the experience they gained during the fight against ISIS—tens of thousands participated in the battle for Mosul alone—meant that a much more capable military force emerged from that fight than the one that existed when it began. Sending in more trainers to improve their tactical skills is no longer the priority. The much greater need is for strategic advice, including for foreign military experts who can diagnose Iraq’s institutions to suggest how they might do better. Tailored, strategic recommendations have much more impact than teaching generic skills that have been taught before.
4. Shared objectives are essential. NATO engages in Iraq only because the government of Iraq wants it to. The importance of local consent must guide the whole of any advisory mission, including its activities to improve host nation forces. NMI works to a defined set of long-term objectives, which have been agreed with Iraqi counterparts. Shared objectives allow for a shared program of work and minimize friction between the mission and its hosts. And because the list is public—deliberately shared widely within Iraq’s public buildings, including on large posters within the Ministry of Defense—it helps explain what NMI is here to do.
5. Corporate memory must be protected. The importance of safeguarding institutional knowledge isn’t new, but it is a particular issue for personnel with relatively short tour lengths operating in complicated environments. NMI’s solution has been to develop “plans-on-a-page”—a program of future activities agreed with Iraqi interlocutors and set out on a single side of paper. Rather than reinvent the wheel each time someone new arrives, advisors can start where their predecessors left off. Advisory work has accelerated, and Iraqis have been relieved of the need to explain the same things to new faces every time people change.

The measure of NATO’s mission in Iraq is not whether it appears in future documentaries, books, and podcasts. Primarily, it is whether NMI’s many innovations can achieve a significant improvement in Iraq’s security forces and defense institutions. As we approach the five-year point, the indicators are positive. But alongside any accomplishments the mission achieves in Iraq, there are important lessons to be learned to advance the quality of advising missions elsewhere in the future.

Iain King is a director of NATO Mission Iraq.

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

Image credit: NATO

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Iain King · September 27, 2023

14. 5th Special Forces Group wins 2023 Best Combat Diver Competition

5th Special Forces Group wins 2023 Best Combat Diver Competition

The events included a water airborne drop, a kayak race, academic testing on combat diving operations, and several other challenging events.

BY JOSHUA SKOVLUND | UPDATED SEP 27, 2023 9:58 PM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund · September 27, 2023

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The 2023 U.S. Army Special Operations Command Best Combat Diver Competition has ended, and two Green Berets from 5th Special Forces Group took first place. For the first time, the three-day competition was held at the U.S. Army Special Forces Underwater Operations School in Key West, Florida.

The competitors are still active duty special operators, so their names are not being released to the public. Green Berets secured the top three spots with the 2nd Special Warfare Training Group taking second place; a second team from the 5th Special Forces Group in third place; and the Navy’s SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 taking fourth place.

“It’s a great feeling. It’s nice when all your hard work and dedication into something pays off — it’s the ultimate prize of winning a competition like this,” said a Special Forces soldier from the winning team. “All the competitors from across the branches are working hard. We know that everyone that comes here is fit and some of the best divers, and to come out on top as the winner is a great feeling.”

13 two-man teams, hailing from U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and Naval Special Warfare (NSW) competed in this year’s competition, marking it the first time Army teams competed against representatives from other branches of service. The events included a water airborne drop, a kayak race, academic testing on combat diving operations, and several other challenging events.

This is the third annual Best Combat Diver Competition; the first two were hosted by the 3rd Special Forces Group at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

This story was updated to reflect the correct number of teams who participated, and from what branches of service after clarification from an Army spokesperson.

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Joshua Skovlund

Joshua Skovlund is a staff writer for Task & Purpose and a former U.S. Army forward observer. He has been covering the military, veterans, and first responders for over three years, reporting on assignment from Ukraine during the opening salvo of the Russian invasion, multinational military exercises in Germany, and during the 2020 civil unrest in Minneapolis. His previous bylines include Coffee or Die Magazine and Outdoor Life. Contact the author here.

taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund · September 27, 2023

​15. Rep. Ken Calvert: A hedge strategy for US military superiority

Excerpts:

The culture of risk-avoidance must substantively change across all three facets of the current procurement model of requirements, budgeting, and acquisitions. Properly executed, this hedge strategy has the potential to reduce the taxpayer’s burden by leveraging private capital, to expand America’s economic advantage by accelerating emerging technology and to broaden the pool of talent supporting national defense. If America takes the preferred route and never goes to war, investment in this hedge portfolio will not only preserve peace but will also bolster prosperity by affordably ensuring America’s commercial technological advantage.

A disruptive hedge strategy empowers America’s talented entrepreneurs to move quickly with newfound flexibility in instrumented processes, enabled by rapid reporting of relevant information. Failure is to be expected when moving at a relevant pace, but with the right culture these lessons learned enable rapid iteration to achieve faster successes. It is time to adopt and rapidly scale a hedge strategy that bets on the American entrepreneurial spirit, informed by the ideals of our American democracy that values liberty, human dignity, and opportunity, to outmaneuver a rising and dangerous Chinese Communist Party.

Rep. Ken Calvert: A hedge strategy for US military superiority - Breaking Defense

In an exclusive op-ed, Rep. Ken Calvert, the Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, lays out how he hopes to improve the military's technological capabilities.

breakingdefense.com · by Rep. Ken Calvert · September 27, 2023

Capt. Mike Aiena, left, commanding officer of Naval Surface Warfare Center, Corona Division, and U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, 42nd District of California and chairman of the Defense Subcommittee in the House Appropriations Committee, engage in a tour of the warfare center in Norco, California, Nov. 2, 2022. (U.S. Navy photo by Neil Mabini)

On Tuesday night, the House agreed after two failed attempts to move forward with debate on the defense appropriations bill. The man in charge of crafting that legislation is California Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, the Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. In an op-ed exclusive to Breaking Defense, Calvert lays out how the language can help drive military technological innovation.

Maintaining the status quo in our defense posture will ensure that the Chinese Communist Party’s whole-of-government effort to erode American influence and power will become a reality. It is no coincidence that the first congressional delegation I led as Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee was to the Indo-Pacific, and that the first defense funding bill I am advancing to the House floor this week prioritizes our military superiority through technological innovation. Heightened tensions around the globe, along with the need for greater fiscal responsibility, require meaningful change to our national security enterprise.

Decades ago, US government spending was the leading driver for new technological advancement, but today, private capital for commercial technology eclipses government funding to technology development. Unfortunately, a multi-decade persistence of a culture at the Department of Defense that incentivizes near-term risk avoidance through slow bureaucratic processes has accrued long-term strategic risk to American world leadership.

Military history has taught us that it is the nation which encourages and leverages disruptive innovations first that has the upper hand. We no longer have an inherent advantage and must work twice as hard to re-establish it.

Fortunately, several years ago the DoD began to realize this risk and opportunity and started creating innovation organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), SOFWERX, AFWERX, Task Force 59, and others. These organizations have made significant progress in accelerating and reshaping contracting and other acquisition functions with limited resources. The work of these organizations has been bolstered by initiatives such as the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies or APFIT program, which I fought for the creation of two years ago to bridge the gap between technically mature prototypes and the DoD’s slow budgeting process.

That said, change is hard, and these non-traditional innovation fielding enterprises have not yet achieved their full potential. The Fiscal Year 2024 Defense Appropriations Bill changes that, thanks to a proactive approach by creating a $1 billion hedge portfolio of capabilities, intentionally taking calculated risks to incentivize positive, deliberate and accelerated change.

This portfolio is a hedge against growing and innate tactical and logistical risks to current weapon systems, as well as a hedge against industrial base capacity and diversity risks. As outlined in my bill, this hedge portfolio will focus on smart, affordable, modular and sustainable systems to include low-cost, light-logistics, multi-domain drones, satellites and munitions; agile communications, computers and sensor nodes; and artificial intelligence agents and users. Networked together, these systems will create an asymmetric advantage to support combatant command operational challenges like contested logistics, electronic warfare, resilient communications and weapon and platform capacity.

The hedge portfolio funding will be managed under DIU and dispersed to Service-level Non-Traditional Innovation Fielding Enterprise (NIFE) units, to rapidly field relevant capability to the warfighter by using a new requirements development paradigm. It will drive a series of projects that begin with a clear warfighting problem and iterate to mature requirements while developing software and hardware for fielding at scale within three years by using small teams of warfighters, acquirers and technologists. This agile approach — experiment, exercise and deploy in low-rate production, potentially as a service — allows developers refining the technology to work beside the operators refining the doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities and policies with an unmatched pace of adoption.

The metric for success is the time it takes to field affordable and operationally relevant capability, which in turn requires letting DoD have more control over its dollars and cents. Increased warfighter flexibility can often cause heartburn on the Hill, as it feels like it often comes with a lack of Congressional oversight. But using modern business practices means the risk for taxpayers should be low, and the rewards are potentially great.

For too long, our country has relied on too few in the defense industrial base to provide for our nation’s security. With even more consolidation in the defense industrial base likely, it is essential to build broader partnerships for national security technology, talent, and capital. We must attract non-traditional partners into the defense ecosystem, while working closely with traditional defense contractors to further expand capabilities and integrate non-traditional solutions.

The culture of risk-avoidance must substantively change across all three facets of the current procurement model of requirements, budgeting, and acquisitions. Properly executed, this hedge strategy has the potential to reduce the taxpayer’s burden by leveraging private capital, to expand America’s economic advantage by accelerating emerging technology and to broaden the pool of talent supporting national defense. If America takes the preferred route and never goes to war, investment in this hedge portfolio will not only preserve peace but will also bolster prosperity by affordably ensuring America’s commercial technological advantage.

A disruptive hedge strategy empowers America’s talented entrepreneurs to move quickly with newfound flexibility in instrumented processes, enabled by rapid reporting of relevant information. Failure is to be expected when moving at a relevant pace, but with the right culture these lessons learned enable rapid iteration to achieve faster successes. It is time to adopt and rapidly scale a hedge strategy that bets on the American entrepreneurial spirit, informed by the ideals of our American democracy that values liberty, human dignity, and opportunity, to outmaneuver a rising and dangerous Chinese Communist Party.

Rep. Ken Calvert is the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House of Representatives and represents California’s 41st District.

breakingdefense.com · by Rep. Ken Calvert · September 27, 2023

​16. The Future of Cyberwar is being Shaped in Ukraine

The Future of Cyberwar is being Shaped in Ukraine

thecipherbrief.com

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September 26th, 2023 by Walter Pincus, |

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.

View all articles by Walter Pincus

OPINION — “We are one of the most wired modern militaries in the world. At a minimum, our own need to defend our systems to prevent cyber disruption to our own forces is going to play a large part in our war-fighting abilities.”

That was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy Mieke Eoyang, speaking at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) on Sept. 13, in a discussion focused on the recently released Summary of the 2023 Cyber Strategy of the Department of Defense (DoD).

Asked if the U.S. would ever fight a war again without a significant cyber component, Eoyang replied, “I doubt it.”

The hour-long CNAS session, that also included opening remarks by Eoyang’s boss, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Dr. John Plumb, provided a handful of new insights into cyber’s expanding role in both the daily grey-zone battles against adversary nations and in the open war taking place in Ukraine, after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Plumb gave a brief history of the expanding role of cyber within DoD, along with some new information about recent cooperation between private industry and DoD in relation to the Russian war in Ukraine.

It was 2010, Plumb said, when DoD “was most concerned with the prospect of what senior leaders termed a ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor’ — a massive hack that would dismantle the U.S. power grid, transportation system, financial networks, and government.”

However, there was no such attack. Instead, the first real threat came in 2015, with Beijing stealing secrets in massive cyber breaches that included stealing as many as 22 million records from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; stealing the blueprints for DoD’s cutting-edge F-35 aircraft, and then announcing breakthrough pharmaceuticals, and even innovations in agriculture after cyber breaches.

In 2016, there was what Plumb called “a coordinated cyber operation to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election [and] it was abundantly clear to even the casual observer, that we needed to do more to protect our nation.”

In 2018, DoD elevated Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) to a unified combatant command with new authorities and a strategy known as “Defend Forward,” which called for disrupting malicious cyber activity before it could affect the U.S. homeland. Success in protecting the 2018 midterm elections, Plumb said, led to new operations abroad, and helped allies and partners by sharing threat information.

Called “Hunt Forward,” these units worked side-by-side with local nationals to track down the source of malicious cyber activity and at the same time, build “capacity and resilience, not just for our own country but for others,” Plumb said.

Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine proved the concept.

“Ukraine was one of our first partners for Hunt Forward operations,” said Plumb. “Ukraine credited a Hunt Forward on their rail networks on keeping the trains operating during the initial phase of the invasion – allowing nearly one million civilians to escape to safety and critical supplies to be delivered to the war zone.”

The U.S. private sector also stepped up in several ways to support Ukraine. Ways that were not predicted, according to Plumb.

Even before Russia’s 2022 invasion, teams from Amazon Web Services (AWS) worked with the Kyiv government to help transfer Ukrainian state databases to cloud storage outside of the country, enabling continuity of government functions. AWS teams have continued to work with Ukrainian officials to help keep government services operating.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, said that AWS, “literally saved our digital infrastructure, [by enabling] state registries and critical databases to migrate to the AWS cloud,” when he awarded the group the Ukraine Peace Prize in July 2022.

Google also played a role when it restricted access to certain features of its maps and blocked access to several YouTube channels run by Russian state media.

In the early hours of February 24, 2022, user-generated information on Google Maps showed unexpected traffic behavior at the Russian-Ukrainian border, characteristic for a military unit readying for an attack.

After some time, Google temporarily turned off global access to traffic data in Ukraine, a decision taken in consideration of the safety and evacuation of Ukrainian citizens seeking refuge from the invaders.

On the other hand, Ukrainians on February 28, 2022, were encouraged to write fake reviews on Google maps of Russian shops/cafes/restaurants that told the truth about Moscow’s Ukraine invasion to combat Kremlin propaganda at home. In this case, Google quickly acted to cut the false “reviews” saying, “Due to a recent increase in contributed content on Google Maps related to the war in Ukraine, we’ve put additional protections in place to monitor and prevent content that violates our policies for Maps.”

Elon Musk’s Starlink communications satellite company donated thousands of terminals to Ukraine at the beginning of the war, and its service helped enable command and control of Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. Starlink initially funded the service, but were later paid by the DoD. Starlink also controversially cut use of its services when Ukraine was planning offensive action against Russian forces in Crimea.

Microsoft and Mandiant have provided cyber defense support to Ukraine as well.

Microsoft offered a week-by-week account of Russia’s cyberattacks and listed some of the most dangerous pieces of malware being used. The company uncovered and tracked malware and offered a variety of ways to defend against it and eradicate it. Microsoft, for example, alerted the Ukraine government to the existence of malware in many systems that if activated, would render the infected computer system inoperable.

In November 2022, Microsoft said it had spent more than $400 million helping Ukraine since the war began and would spend another $100 million in 2023.

Microsoft’s Tom Burt, corporate vice president for customer security and trust, in an April 2022 blog, described one example that showed Russia’s cyberattacks were correlated with its kinetic military operations. “While Russian forces besieged the city of Mariupol,” Burt wrote, “Ukrainians began receiving an email from a Russian actor masquerading as a Mariupol resident, falsely accusing Ukraine’s government of ‘abandoning’ Ukrainian citizens.”

Mandiant, another cybersecurity and intelligence company, has provided free cyber defense support to Ukraine, sharing information about threats to their networks and setting up special cyber defense teams that provide direct support to Ukrainian network defenders.

As Plumb put it, “The remarkable and innovative measures taken by the private sector have had a direct impact on the course of the war in Ukraine in ways that we are only beginning to fully understand. But what has become abundantly clear to the United States is that cyber resilience is the best cyber defense, and that extends to our allies and partners, including industry. Being resilient in cyber requires all of us.”

Deputy Assistant Secretary Eoyang also made some interesting comments during her question-and-answer session at CNAS.

One concerned the appropriate use of cyber in a potential future war where China or Russia is able to turn out the lights and close off water supplies across the U.S.

Eoyang said the U.S. position was, “The deliberate imposition of harm on civilians, say trying to leave an entire city of civilians in the dark — that is something that does not meet our principles of military necessity or proportionality.” She added, “The idea that it [cyber] is for the purpose of civilian harm or for the idea of sowing chaos, we would consider that an anathema,” adding, “There has been less talk about what are the [cyber] obligations within armed conflict itself.”

When asked why Russia has not used any openly destructive cyber capabilities against the U.S., Eoyang replied, “President Biden was very clear with the Russians about how he would view an attack on U.S. infrastructure via cyber. And he made that message clear to them that it is in Russia’s interest not to have the United States or NATO join the fight – disruption to U.S. critical infrastructure could for them, be a grave miscalculation and really raise escalation costs hardening views here. And depending on what it is, we might have to respond.”

One other of her answers to a question about hiring enough qualified cyber professionals is worth repeating.

“We are very good at the Department of Defense in training people to understand adversary tactics, techniques and procedures,” Eoyang told the CNAS audience. She added, “The other thing we have in the Department of Defense is a mission that nobody else does.”

She then explained that in the private sector world, if your computer is hacked you have to either report it or find a patch, you cannot turn around and hack the person or persons back because hacking is a crime.

However, Eoyang pointed out, “But we as the Department of Defense have authorization to hack back, like we are one of the few in the U.S. Government really that can actually engage in that kind of offensive cyber activity and so for a lot of people who would like to be engaging in that [hacking] we are the place where you can do that.”

She added, “I mean it’s the coolest part of my job,” a remark that should generate at least a handful of new recruits at a time when they are very much needed.

17. Washington’s Bet on AI Warfare

Excerpt:

Ultimately, the future of warfare will be data-driven and AI-enabled, and, in many ways, it already is. However, we must better understand the potential dangers of integrating AI into autonomous military systems. Given the rapid pace of advancements in AI and the importance given to the military applications of AI by major states, the incorporation of AI into the militaries of major states is a matter of when not if. Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech mentioned the impact of the Replicator Initiative on the speed and scale of the U.S. military. That will likely be the character of future warfare: it will be fought rapidly, and human combatants will operate alongside many autonomous systems. Although this might seem to be a more effective method of warfighting for some, the risk of escalation from autonomous systems might be too great.

Washington’s Bet on AI Warfare

The future of warfare will certainly be data-driven and AI-enabled, and, in many ways, it already is.

The National Interest · September 23, 2023

Throughout human history, technological progress has translated into military prowess. In most instances, the states that incorporate new technologies more quickly and effectively into their respective militaries have gained a significant advantage over their adversaries. The same is likely to be true for artificial intelligence (AI), with the United States and China currently locked in a competition for global AI superiority. This competition for AI and technological supremacy could very well dictate the future global landscape.

Although China might disagree with the existence of such a technological competition, the United States firmly believes in it. This was evident in a speech by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks on August 28, 2023. Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech was significant for several reasons, primarily because it gave valuable insight into the U.S. military’s strategic thinking about China, AI and autonomous systems, and technological innovation.

At the core of Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech was that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) aimed to have a “data-driven and AI-empowered military.” Although AI has gained mainstream popularity within the past few years, great powers have been looking into the military applications of AI for decades now. From 2014 onwards, when the United States announced its Third Offset Strategy, it has been building the foundation for incorporating AI into its military. The 2021 report by the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) was perhaps the most telling. The report stated that the DOD was far from “AI-ready” and urged it to heavily increase investment by 2025 and “integrate AI-enabled technologies into every facet of war-fighting.” This same line of thought informed Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech.

Deputy Secretary Hicks announced the “Replicator Initiative,” which she described as a new DOD initiative to develop quickly and field “swarms of low-cost air, land, or sea drones that could swarm an enemy.” She called it a “big bet” that could counter China’s most significant advantage—the ability to bring a mass of platforms and people to the battlefield. The DOD hoped to leverage “attritable, autonomous systems in all domains—which are less expensive, put fewer people in the line of fire, and can be changed, updated, or improved with substantially shorter lead times.”

The initiative would focus on platforms that are “small, smart, cheap, and many.” The immediate objective of the Replicator Initiative is for the U.S. military to “field attritable autonomous systems at scale of multiple thousands, in multiple domains, within the next 18 to 24 months,” Hicks said. This statement deserves thorough analysis.

Firstly, the scale of the autonomous systems is enormous and will apply to various domains. With the United States currently the technological hub of the world, the widespread use of autonomous systems by the U.S. military would likely force other states to adopt such systems to maintain strategic parity. Autonomous systems would likely proliferate to U.S. allies and strategic partners as well.

Secondly, and more importantly, is the stated timeline of the next 18 to 24 months. This is rather alarming, particularly given that issues surrounding AI ethics and regulation have gathered momentum recently. Although the United States claims to follow a “responsible and ethical” approach to AI in its Replicator Initiative, the specified timeline makes these claims hard to believe. However, it’s also important to note that the U.S. military has likely been working on this initiative for quite some time, so it would have specific rules to reduce the risks of incorporating AI in the military. How AI norms and regulations would affect a crisis, however, is a debate for another day.

Even if the United States had been planning such an initiative for years, it now feels confident enough to announce and implement it. Ukraine has acted as a testing ground for using drones and autonomous systems on the battlefield and has clearly demonstrated their power. Russia and Ukraine regularly deploy drones in military operations. The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) estimates that Ukraine has lost a staggering 10,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) monthly. These drones are helpful for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) purposes, as well as for direct targeting of the adversary’s military and civilian infrastructure.

Deputy Secretary Hicks also directly mentioned China as the sole target for the Replicator Initiative. She added: “We must ensure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes, ‘today is not the day’—and not just today, but every day, between now and 2027, now and 2035, now and 2049, and beyond.” She also mentioned that “all-domain, attritable autonomous systems (ADA2) will help overcome the challenge of anti-access, area-denial systems (A2AD). Our ADA2 to thwart their A2AD.” This is a critical point. China’s A2AD strategy focuses on the South China Sea. The United States stating that it would use drones to counter China’s A2AD strategy indicates that it is willing, directly or indirectly, to intervene militarily in the region.

China, on the other hand, holds an entirely different understanding of AI than the United States does. Although China aims to become the global leader in AI by 2030, it has so far remained characteristically secretive about its military incorporation of AI. However, this has not stopped the United States from viewing China’s AI progress as a major challenge to its global leadership.

Ultimately, the future of warfare will be data-driven and AI-enabled, and, in many ways, it already is. However, we must better understand the potential dangers of integrating AI into autonomous military systems. Given the rapid pace of advancements in AI and the importance given to the military applications of AI by major states, the incorporation of AI into the militaries of major states is a matter of when not if. Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech mentioned the impact of the Replicator Initiative on the speed and scale of the U.S. military. That will likely be the character of future warfare: it will be fought rapidly, and human combatants will operate alongside many autonomous systems. Although this might seem to be a more effective method of warfighting for some, the risk of escalation from autonomous systems might be too great.

Shayan Hassan Jamy is a research analyst in emerging technologies and global power competition. He tweets @shayanjamy.

Image: Shutterstock.

The National Interest · September 23, 2023

18. Philippines hosts 'warfighting' drills with US as China maritime dispute flares

Philippines hosts 'warfighting' drills with US as China maritime dispute flares

Washington Examiner · September 27, 2023

Philippine and U.S. forces will practice "warfighting serials” in a multinational naval exercise scheduled to begin next week amid a flaring sovereignty dispute between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea.

“These naval activities are designed to further enhance the PN’s naval warfare capabilities, including the fundamentals of anti-submarine, anti-surface, anti-air and electronic warfare,” the state-owned Philippines News Agency emphasized.

UAW STRIKE: FOUR-DAY WORKWEEK FAVORED BY UNION GAINING IN POPULARITY

Philippine Armed Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Enrico Gil Ileto touted the “SAMASAMA” exercise as an opportunity “to further strengthen international defense cooperation and advance a rules-based international order.” His announcement coincided with the intensification of Philippine efforts to rebuff Chinese Communist claims to sovereignty over vast swathes of the South China Sea that fall within his country’s exclusive economic zone.

“We are not stirring up trouble. We were not the ones who took over the area. That's what they do not understand,” Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto "Gibo" Teodoro Jr. said Wednesday, per the Manila Times. “If it triggers something from China, it is just proving that it really has total disregard for maritime safety.”

A U.S. Navy plane flies over the areas of Second Thomas Shoal at the disputed South China Sea while Chinese coast guard ships try to block Philippine coast guard ships and supply boats during a rotation and resupply mission on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023.

Aaron Favila/AP

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the removal this week of a “floating barrier” that China placed at the Scarborough Shoal, where Chinese Coast Guard vessels have occupied a lagoon prized by regional fishers since 2012.

“This so-called action by the Philippine side is purely a farce for its own amazement,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.

The dispute has ramifications that far exceed the lagoon’s value as a fishery, as Manila is resisting a Chinese claim to sovereignty that would cover most of the South China Sea, a major maritime corridor for international trade and the military balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.

“There have been a number of reports about destabilizing behavior directed towards the Philippines in the South China Sea and we’re very concerned about that,” Australian envoy Moya Collett, currently the senior Australian diplomat in Manila, said Wednesday. “We want all activities in the South China Sea and throughout the world to be consistent with international law and [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea] in particular.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Australia will participate in the SAMASAMA naval drills, in addition to Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

“Further, the French Navy (FN) and RAN will send personnel to join the [subject matter expert exchanges] while the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) and Indonesian Navy (IN) will field observers,” Manila Bulletin added.

Washington Examiner · September 27, 2023

19. America Needs a Strategy in Somalia

Conclusion:

The United States alone cannot bring peace to Somalia. But it remains influential there, and many parties look to it for leadership. If Washington ever wants to wind down its military engagements in the country, it must design a more comprehensive policy that serves as a platform for peace. Otherwise, Somalia risks becoming yet another cautionary tale of the war on terror, like so many ill-fated campaigns of the post-9/11 era.

America Needs a Strategy in Somalia

Counterterrorism Alone Will Never Bring Peace

By Sarah Harrison

September 28, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Sarah Harrison · September 28, 2023

Since he took office in 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden has wound down the United States’ involvement in some post-9/11 conflicts. But Somalia is a glaring exception. For more than 16 years the U.S. military has helped to wage a war against al Shabab, a Somali extremist insurgency that emerged in 2006. Under Biden’s direction, U.S. forces are still carrying out, on average, a dozen airstrikes every year and spending millions of dollars to train and equip the Somali special forces unit known as the Danab.

In one sense, Somalia has long been a footnote in the United States’ war on terror. The administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump were focused on other regions; as a result, the United States failed to develop a long-term strategy focused on resolving the conflict in Somalia. At the same time, these presidents also sought to respond aggressively to the threat from al Shabab, emphasizing the links between the local militants and al Qaeda, backing Ethiopian and African Union (AU) military interventions, and ramping up airstrikes.

By now, the United States has become content to simply manage the problem through a containment strategy—one some U.S. officials have described as “mowing the lawn,” or periodically shearing al Shabab’s capacities without seriously pushing for lasting peace in the suffering country. Now is the time to change tack. Next month, diplomats representing a so-called quintet of Somalia’s most influential security partners—Qatar, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States—will meet with Somali leaders in Ankara. At this meeting, Washington should communicate a plan for peace based on stabilization and reconciliation, not solely on counterterrorism measures.

This might sound like an expansion of the U.S. mission—an approach that is at odds with the goals of a president generally committed to winding down troubled military engagements overseas. But the truth is that al Shabab is unlikely to be defeated purely through military means. If the United States ever wants to withdraw its forces from Somalia for good, it must go beyond military containment and develop a Somalia strategy that prioritizes supporting reconciliation and helping Mogadishu stabilize its territorial gains. Washington cannot “mow” the Somali “lawn” indefinitely. It must, instead, support the growth of a peaceful Somalia that can function on its own.

SCATTERED SHOTS

The U.S. government’s involvement in Somalia had a checkered track record even before the rise of al Shabab. After Siad Barre, the brutal military dictator who ruled Somalia for two decades, was overthrown in the early 1990s, the Somali state collapsed, plunging the country into civil war. In 1993, the United States lent its support to a UN effort to distribute humanitarian aid to starving Somalis, but the mission ended with the notorious downing of two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in Mogadishu and a firefight that killed more U.S. troops than in any battle since the Vietnam War—and well over 100 Somalis.

Throughout the next decade, Islamist militants, some with ties to al Qaeda, took advantage of Somalia’s instability to build strength. That concerned Bush administration officials, but they faced more immediate challenges in Afghanistan and Iraq and were wary of getting involved in Somalia; the memory of the Black Hawk Down debacle still shaped U.S. policy. With the U.S. Departments of State and Defense focused elsewhere, in 2005 CIA officers based in Nairobi began to pay tens of thousands of dollars in cash to predatory Somali warlords to capture al Qaeda members.

This move provoked a prescient dissenting cable from a Kenya-based U.S. foreign service officer predicting that such payoffs would only help fuel the rise of extremism. As the author of the cable foresaw, the strategy backfired, provoking further distrust among Somalis that helped drive them toward Islamist leaders. In response, that foreign service officer was reassigned to Chad.

In 2004, the international community had recognized a transitional government in Somalia, one strongly backed by Ethiopia. But the fledgling government never established its authority, and by 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a coalition of regional sharia courts with an affiliated militia, took control of Mogadishu, leaving the transitional government to flee to Somalia’s northwest. The ICU implemented sharia law and established some sense of stability in parts of Somalia for the first time in more than 15 years.

During Bush’s presidency, the memory of the Black Hawk Down debacle still shaped U.S. policy.

Neighboring Ethiopia, however, considered the ICU an unacceptable regime to have next door. After attempts at negotiations between the transitional government and the ICU failed, Ethiopia sent troops to oust the ICU. Bush, leaning on Ethiopia for direction in Somalia, offered training and intelligence to the Ethiopian military and backed its invasion with U.S. airstrikes. And in early 2007, also with U.S. support, the UN Security Council authorized a multinational AU force to protect the transitional government, facilitate humanitarian operations, and help stabilize Somalia.

Yet Ethiopia’s intervention ended up strengthening Islamist groups. The leadership of the ICU’s moderate civilian wing fled the country. But the ICU’s militia, al Shabab—meaning “the youth” in Arabic, referring to the group’s younger generation—stayed in Somalia, vowing to resist. Forging stronger ties to al Qaeda and appealing to Somalis aggrieved by the Ethiopian military’s abuses, al Shabab managed to take control of much of south-central Somalia.

Bush could have pushed for more dialogue instead of military intervention, emphasizing the need for a Somali-led solution. Instead, his administration remained narrowly focused on al Shabab’s links to al Qaeda and opted to deepen the U.S. military’s involvement in Somalia. In March 2008, the U.S. government designated al Shabab a foreign terrorist organization, which imposed sanctions on al Shabab members and threatened anyone who materially supported the group with criminal prosecution.

That summer, the United States carried out another airstrike on an al Shabab commander who was considered a member of al Qaeda. In the wake of the strike, U.S. officials debated whether such actions would hurt or embolden al Shabab. This debate was never resolved, setting the tone for a similar ambivalence within the Obama administration.

TRIALS AND TERROR

Initially, Obama sought to shift U.S. policy, promoting both military support for a new transitional government—now led by the ICU’s former leader—and development aid. Cautious not to overcommit, administration officials were at pains not to deem this a state-building project. U.S. diplomats had to work remotely from Nairobi, since there was no U.S. embassy in Mogadishu.

Al Shabab’s war continued to expand. In 2010, it carried out its first international attack in Uganda, a member of the AU’s peacekeeping mission, killing 74 people and wounding dozens more. In response to al Shabab’s growing threat, in 2011, the Obama administration increased its use of airstrikes; the AU peacekeepers cleared Mogadishu of insurgents and Kenyan forces ousted them from the southern Somali city of Kismayo. In 2012, these defeats led al Shabab to formally declare its allegiance to al Qaeda in search of support and legitimacy.

This development, however, may not have been as threatening as it seemed. Within both al Shabab and al Qaeda, there was no clear consensus on the nature of the two groups’ relationship. But the declaration by al Shabab’s leader buoyed U.S. officials who wanted the United States to take a more uncompromising line in Somalia, and the Obama administration began to drift toward a more militaristic approach. With U.S. support, the UN Security Council expanded the AU peacekeepers’ mandate. Hoping that a concentrated effort to build a special forces unit within the Somali army would help the fight against al Shabab, the Department of State contractor Bancroft and the U.S. military began training such a unit—the Danab—to clear territory of militants.

During Obama’s second term, U.S. airstrikes in Somalia increased dramatically, rising from 14 in the first term to 34 in the second. Most consequentially, in 2016, the Obama administration determined that al Shabab was an associated force of al Qaeda. This provided domestic legal justification for lethal attacks on any al Shabab member—and teed up yet more substantial U.S. military action in Somalia.

SLEEPWALKING INTO WAR

Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, largely delegated strike approval to the U.S. military. With fewer constraints, the U.S. military’s Africa Command vigorously pursued al Shabab. From 2017 to 2020, more airstrikes—219 total—were carried out in Somalia than during the combined 16 years of Bush’s and Obama’s administrations.

Although these operations dealt a blow to the group, the insurgency learned to adapt. It carried out dozens of attacks, bombing the entrance to Somalia’s biggest military airfield—which housed U.S. forces—in 2019 and launching a deadly assault on U.S. and Kenyan troops in Kenya in January 2020. Meanwhile, the AU began to draw down its peacekeeping forces after facing years of frustration from its biggest donor, the European Union, over its lack of progress against al Shabab.

Thanks to the work of U.S. State Department officials, many of whom served in Nairobi, some progress was made on the diplomatic front. The United States established a permanent diplomatic mission in Mogadishu, drew up a roadmap for relieving Somalia’s debt—in 2019, the country owed over $5 billion globally and $1 billion to the United States—and sent Mogadishu billions of dollars of humanitarian aid.

These actions, however, did not help the Somali government make much progress on security or state-building. The Somali president at the time, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as “Farmajo”, dedicated much of his time to consolidating his own power by expanding the central government at the expense of the member states in Somalia’s federal system. In December 2020—in a tersely worded, one-page document—Trump hastily directed U.S. forces to withdraw from Somalia. But the head of U.S. Africa Command, General Stephen Townsend, continued to send forces in and out of the country on a rotational basis, a practice he referred to in public as “commuting to work.”

WINNING THE BATTLE

And thus Biden inherited a sorry history of U.S. policy reversals and overreliance on bludgeoning counterterrorism when it comes to Somalia. Early in his presidency, his National Security Council, led not by East Africa experts but counterterrorism officials, oversaw a review of what to do about U.S. forces transiting in and out of the country. The reviewers offered Biden three options: maintain the status quo, send forces back to Somalia on a persistent basis, or withdraw completely.

Nobody backed the first option out of concern for the safety of U.S. forces. But Townsend supported the second option of reinforcing the U.S. military presence. He emphasized al Shabab’s threat not just to U.S. interests but even to the U.S. homeland.

Most U.S. officials do not believe al Shabab has the capability to directly threaten the United States. And yet no other officials vigorously challenged Townsend’s argument. They mostly saw a redeployment of forces as low cost and low risk, and Somalia policy was nobody’s hill to die on. And so, in May 2022, Biden decided to send several hundred U.S. troops back to Somalia. Months later, U.S. airstrikes helped push al Shabab out of some territory in central Somalia, where local clan militias had also tired of the high taxes al Shabab were imposing during a devastating drought.

But despite these military gains, Biden has far better options than the narrow approach he has chosen. In late summer of 2023, the Somali government restarted an offensive to capture more territory, backed by U.S. airstrikes. It is possible that this offensive will drive al Shabab out of more pockets of land in Somalia. But if the government cannot consolidate these gains, al Shabab will return. In fact, in recent weeks, al Shabab has retaken control of several towns it had lost over the past year.

DON’T LOSE THE WAR

To give Somalia better odds to break this vicious cycle, Washington should adopt a strategy that goes beyond containment. As a first step, the U.S. government should place a higher priority on supporting the Somali government’s stabilization efforts in the territory it has liberated from jihadis. U.S. officials should stress to their Somali counterparts that stabilization is as important as battling al Shabaab. Working through development partners such as the UN and local nongovernmental organizations, the United States should focus on provision of food and water and expand on quick-impact projects that meet local communities’ needs, such as repairing boreholes and facilitating medical services. The U.S. must ensure, however, that this time, funding intended for stabilization does not create additional opportunities for graft.

The U.S. Congress has a key role to play by appropriating more money for stabilization efforts in Somalia. However, given a Congress is so divided that it struggles to pass any legislation at all, increases in funding for Somalia are not likely to come in the foreseeable future. At a minimum, Congress must agree to ensure adequate oversight of U.S. policy to Somalia. This could include requiring the State Department to report annually on the progress of U.S. initiatives in the country and on Somalia’s progress toward making its government more financially transparent and accountable. In the short term, the Senate must act quickly to confirm the U.S. ambassador to Somalia that Biden nominated in March. The United States badly needs an ambassador to put weight behind its policies.

The United States alone cannot bring peace to Somalia, but many parties look to it for leadership.

The United States must also support reconciliation within Somali society. Deep divisions and distrust between officials in Mogadishu and regional leaders, as well as among clans and subclans, threaten to fragment the country. If these divisions are not addressed, al Shabab will use every opportunity to exploit them. U.S. officials should pressure Somali elites to work through their differences and come to comprehensive agreements on resource sharing, which in turn could help lead to fairer election processes—at both high and local levels—and potentially a permanent constitution.

The most difficult step for Washington will be to acknowledge the reality that, eventually, Mogadishu will have to negotiate with al Shabab to bring the war to an end. These negotiations will need to be a Somali-led effort. But Washington must make clear that it will not undermine them and that it will work to convince its allies not to interfere. If Washington does not lift the foreign terrorist organization designation it applied to al Shabab in 2008, it must at least provide assurances that individuals working on peace negotiations with al Shabab will not be prosecuted.

The first meetings of the quintet of influential Somali security partners began in November 2022 in London. At these meetings, however, officials failed to substantively discuss concrete policies to work toward peace. The United States has leverage in this group thanks to its long history in Somalia and the funding it commits there. It must use that leverage to focus the discussion on specific actions.

The United States alone cannot bring peace to Somalia. But it remains influential there, and many parties look to it for leadership. If Washington ever wants to wind down its military engagements in the country, it must design a more comprehensive policy that serves as a platform for peace. Otherwise, Somalia risks becoming yet another cautionary tale of the war on terror, like so many ill-fated campaigns of the post-9/11 era.

• SARAH HARRISON is a Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group's U.S. Program.

Foreign Affairs · by Sarah Harrison · September 28, 2023

20. America Finally Finds Some Success in the War on Terror

America Finally Finds Some Success in the War on Terror

Somalia has become a surprising bright spot in the global battle pitting the U.S. and its allies against insurgents

https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/somalia-militants-war-on-terror-b633ac07?mod=world_feat5_africa_pos2

By Michael M. PhillipsFollow

 / Photographs by Jonathan Torgovnik for The Wall Street Journal

Sept. 27, 2023 12:01 am ET

MOGADISHU, Somalia—There finally came a point when al-Shabaab militants went too far, and Somali farmers and herders just wouldn’t take it anymore.

It started in Hiiraan, a region of a half-million people in central Somalia. Islamist insurgents from al-Shabaab, the Somali branch of al Qaeda, had controlled much of the area for a decade. In May 2022, they dialed up the repression.

They shot a well-known clan elder. They dragooned local teens into their ranks of suicide bombers and fighters. And during the longest drought in living memory, al-Shabaab taxed herders three or four cows each time they brought their parched livestock to drink at public wells.

That set off a chain of events that has at last given the U.S. and its allies the upper hand in a 16-year campaign against one of the most potent and intractable Islamist insurgencies in the world. 

One of the American military campaigns unleashed by the Sept. 11 attacks, the fight against al-Shabaab has been marked by years of setbacks and stalemates. Now Somalia has become a surprising bright spot in the global battle pitting the West and allied countries against insurgents who use terror tactics in the name of political Islam.

Within weeks, Hiiraan clan militiamen took up arms in a spontaneous uprising that blindsided al-Shabaab. Somali government forces, led by American-trained commandos called Danab, or Lightning, joined the fray. Some other clans followed suit and ousted al-Shabaab from their own turf. 

Over the course of months, clan militiamen and Somali troops, backed by American drones, drove al-Shabaab out of some 20 towns and 80 villages, regaining about a third of the territory militants previously held nationwide, according to the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu, the country’s capital.

Last month, Somali forces, led by Danab commandos, launched the next phase of the offensive to dislodge militants from their last two strongholds in central Somalia. “The government is winning the war. I wouldn’t have said it two years ago, but I’d say it now,” said Maj. Aydarus Mohamed Hussein, commander of the 2,000-strong Danab special-forces brigade.

Danab forces in training.

Initial fighting has been fierce, with government troops sweeping into El Buur, a key al-Shabaab bastion, then ceding the town back to militant counterattacks. Government forces moved so quickly that they outran their supply lines, according to Western diplomats in Mogadishu. Now the army is slowing the offensive to allow troops to recuperate. Government strategists plan to renew attacks in a more methodical way, putting clan militias in charge of defending towns and villages once the army has cleared them, Western diplomats say.

“They have retaken more territory in the last year than they had in the previous five years,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a visit to Kenya Monday. “But we know that progress is not always a straight line.”

Somalia, located on the strategic tip of eastern Africa, offers a whiff of success against a backdrop of failure. On the other side of the continent, in the semidesert strip called the Sahel, unchecked Islamist violence contributed to military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and, in July, Niger. Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates now control some 40% of territory in Mali and Burkina Faso, and insurgent attacks in Niger have displaced some 350,000 people, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

Some West African states along the Gulf of Guinea have experienced probing attacks by al Qaeda-affiliated fighters, and authorities fear Ghana, long a regional bedrock of stability, could be next.

Under Attack

Somalia and countries in the Sahel have seen more than 3,000 incidents of Islamist violence in the first half of this year.

Incidents of militant violence, Jan. 1–June 30

Al Qaeda affiliates

Islamic State affiliates

Unaffiliated

MALI

NIGER

SUDAN

MAURITANIA

CHAD

THE SAHEL

NIGERIA

ETHIOPIA

SOMALIA

Atlantic Ocean

KENYA

1,000 miles

Indian Ocean

1,000 km

Note: Somaliland, in the country's northwest, declared itself independent in 1991 but is internationally recognized as part of Somalia.

Sources: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project data analyzed by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies; European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (Sahel boundary)

Carl Churchill/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Farther afield, the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan two years ago, ceding the country back to the Taliban after a 20-year war. 

Backed by U.S. air power and advisers, the Somali army, by contrast, has been making headway against an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 al-Shabaab fighters, plus a few hundred Islamic State, or ISIS, adherents in the country’s mountainous northeast. 

“If you look at where this country was 10 years ago, and even two years ago, the progress made by the government and by the international community gives everybody hope that we can see a future of Somalia without Shabaab and without ISIS,” said Shane Dixon, the top U.S. diplomat in Mogadishu.

Western diplomats and military commanders say they have seen a fundamental shift in the war since President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud took office last year. Mohamud promised to go after al-Shabaab with an aggression his predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, hadn’t mustered, and the Biden administration has stationed some 450 U.S. troops in Somalia to help. 

Analysts wonder whether the latest advances can be sustained. Somalia has suffered 35 years of natural calamities, clan warfare and Islamist insurgency. Corruption and political infighting have weakened past counterterrorism efforts, while al-Shabaab has proven resilient.

The number of Somalis killed in political violence grew to almost 9,000 over the past year, up from 3,500 deaths the previous year, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or Acled, a U.S.-based nonprofit monitoring service.

Somali officials are optimistic. They initially predicted that clearing operations in central Somalia would take about two months, and in October or November they’ll be able to turn to larger al-Shabaab positions in southern Somalia, along the Kenyan border.

“This is our plan—to finish them off before August next year,” said Somali National Security Adviser Hussein Sheikh-Ali. “It might take longer, but definitely we’re going to defeat them.”

Somalia, a former Italian colony, began its descent into civil war in the late 1980s, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre bombarded the independence-minded Somaliland region, a one-time British protectorate. 

Islamist fighters loyal to al-Shabaab perform military drills in Somalia in 2011. PHOTO: MUSTAFA ABDI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Widespread hunger and a failed United Nations intervention followed in the early 1990s, culminating in the infamous 1993 Black Hawk Down battle that left 18 U.S. Army Rangers, Delta Force operators and other troops dead. Uncounted hundreds of Somalis, many of them clan fighters, were killed in the clash.

Al-Shabaab rose out of the anarchy that followed the U.S. and U.N. withdrawal. The group grew to control the Indian Ocean port of Kismayo and parts of Mogadishu, only to be forced out by an international force deployed by the African Union.

In 2007 President George W. Bush sent a small contingent of commandos to Somalia to battle al-Shabaab. President Barack Obama intensified that effort, ordering targeted airstrikes on al-Shabaab leaders.

President Donald Trump initially escalated the campaign, authorizing 203 airstrikes on al-Shabaab targets. Then, weeks before leaving the White House in January 2021, he stunned American commanders by withdrawing all 700 U.S. troops from Somalia.

The Pentagon relocated many to neighboring Kenya and Djibouti, from which they visited Somalia to coach local forces. But U.S. commanders complained that al-Shabaab gained ground without the full-time presence of American troops and the Pentagon pressed the new Biden administration to reverse the withdrawal. 

U.S. special operations troops help train Danab forces.

Danab commandos in training.

Shortly before the Hiiraan uprising began, Biden ordered U.S. Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and other troops back to Somali bases to advise and train Danab commandos.

Now the U.S. has special-operations teams in Mogadishu, Kismayo and Baledogle, aided by some 60 military advisers from Bancroft Global Development, a contractor hired by the State Department. Bancroft advisers accompany Somali commandos on missions but are only authorized to use force in self-defense. Uniformed U.S. troops, though allowed to accompany Somalis in rare cases, almost always advise from safe positions in the rear.

“There is no appetite for U.S. casualties,” said Col. David Haskell, commander of American special-operations troops in Somalia.

In a typical operation in July, a company of Danab commandos attacked an al-Shabaab camp in dense brush near Bud Bud, in central Somalia. The militants were armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The Somali commandos lost a couple of men and pulled back.

The next night they approached the campsite in Toyota pickup trucks mounted with machine guns, reinforced by Turkish-trained Somali infantrymen.

A U.S. drone sent live overhead video to Haskell’s team at Mogadishu’s heavily defended airport complex.

Col. David Haskell, commander of American special operations troops in Somalia.

The Joint Operations Center headed by Haskell, where forces oversee operations and drone activities.

The Americans spotted some 80 militants converging on an isolated group of Danab, who were running low on ammunition. The U.S. team warned the Somali soldiers that they were stepping into an ambush. “They had those guys pinned down,” recalled Haskell.

The Biden administration has been far less willing than Trump’s administration to use lethal U.S. air power, in part out of concern about causing civilian casualties and stirring public resentment.

U.S. special operators can order airstrikes if their Somali partners are in a disadvantaged position or in immediate danger of being overrun, Haskell said. If the situation looks grim, Haskell calls a U.S. embassy official, who informs President Mohamud, day or night. A U.S. military lawyer must also give approval, and only if there’s virtual certainty that no civilians are at risk. 

The U.S. has carried out 15 airstrikes in Somalia this year. 

One took place during the Danab mission in Bud Bud, when the Somali unit appeared likely to be overrun. The drone, launched from a U.S. base in neighboring Djibouti, hit a cluster of militants, killing 25, according to U.S. estimates.

“This is the first time I’ve felt the U.S. is very serious about this fight against Shabaab,” said Malik Abdalla, a dual U.S.-Somali national and member of parliament representing Hiiraan.

Turkey operates drones in Somalia with fewer restrictions than the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates are starting to provide close-air support for Somali troops, said Sheikh-Ali, the national security adviser.

“Without air support, we don’t have much clear advantage in the battles,” he said.

Troops unload cases of AK-47s.

Danab forces at Baledogle Airfield.

The U.S. provides medical care for wounded Somali commandos, a critical morale booster. Contract helicopter crews evacuate the injured to an American field hospital. The surgical team in Mogadishu treated 64 Somali military casualties between December and the end of July.

This month, U.S. Africa Command said it evacuated two children injured during a Somali army operation against al-Shabaab in El-Lahelay. One child later died, in addition to one woman and three children killed at the site of the operation. U.S. forces advised the Somali troops but weren’t in El-Lahelay during the operation and didn’t conduct any airstrike, an Africa Command spokesperson said.

In a recent video released by al-Shabaab, Mahad Karate, a senior figure in the group, blamed U.S. forces for the civilian deaths in what he called a “Satan-inspired invasion.”

“We say to the Americans—we will avenge the death of our people, however long it takes,” Karate said. “You have the watches; we have the time.”

Some 280 clan militiamen have died in the Hiiraan uprising, according to Ali Jeyte Osman, who, as regional governor, helped lead the fight. “People were tired of al-Shabaab,” said Jeyte.

Initially Mohamud’s government only intended to deploy commandos to Hiiraan for a few weeks but, inspired by the success of the popular uprising, the president ordered last year’s offensive, Jeyte said.

In response, militants torched villages and set off car bombs in city centers. They dumped dirt into some wells, blew up others and poisoned many that remained.

Al-Shabaab fighters ambushed a convoy of civilian mini buses, killing 27 people, including a toddler, Jeyte said. One 6-year-old child ran for it; militants chased him and killed him, Jeyte said. Al-Shabaab fighters hunted down and killed a dozen wounded militiamen who had been taken to Mogadishu for treatment, Jeyte said.

The aftermath of an al-Shabaab attack on a police station on the outskirts of Mogadishu last year. PHOTO: HASSAN ALI ELMI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The latest phase of the government campaign is being closely fought in central Somalia, with both sides recruiting allies among rival clan militias, according to Acled. The government has poured thousands of troops into the back-and-forth battle. 

The militants have adapted their tactics, deploying battlefield car bombs and infantry rigged with explosives, said Hussein, the Danab brigade commander. “You’ll have a whole platoon running at you and detonating themselves,” he said.

The next phase, in southern Somalia, is expected to prove an even tougher slog.

Complicating the government’s military plans is the impending departure of an African Union force that first deployed to Somalia in 2007. The Somali government, unsettled by the ferocity of al-Shabaab counterattacks, appealed to the U.N. last week to delay the imminent withdrawal of 3,000 of the 18,000 African Union soldiers.

“This unforeseen turn of events has stretched our military forces thin, exposed vulnerabilities in our frontlines and necessitated a thorough reorganization to ensure we maintain our momentum in countering the al-Shabaab,” Sheikh-Ali wrote in a letter to the U.N. Security Council.

The remaining African Union troops are slated to leave Somalia by the end of next year.

U.S. and Somali officials say the African Union troops haven’t carried out major offensive operations this year, largely remaining in bases where they have absorbed repeated al-Shabaab attacks.

Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti have pledged thousands of troops for 90 days to help Somali forces push al-Shabaab out of southern Somalia. Those units have yet to materialize, according to U.S. officials.

Al-Shabaab is deeply embedded in many southern communities, where the group’s administrators provide some services and Islamic courts settle disputes. Al-Shabaab extracts taxes at roadside checkpoints and on the docks in Mogadishu, revenue the U.S. estimates has reached $130 million annually during the group’s best years.

Somali and Western officials say the campaign’s success or failure will depend heavily on whether the government will quickly provide liberated areas with healthcare, education, water, corruption-free courts and a long-term security presence.

If the Somali government comes through, said Haskell, the American special-operations commander, “we can continue winning without the negative effects of a large U.S. presence.”

Write to Michael M. Phillips at Michael.Phillips@wsj.com

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the September 28, 2023, print edition as 'America Finally Sees Progress in War on Terror'.

21. Nuclear Brinkmanship in AI-Enabled Warfare: A Dangerous Algorithmic Game of Chicken

Nuclear Brinkmanship in AI-Enabled Warfare: A Dangerous Algorithmic Game of Chicken - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by James Johnson · September 28, 2023

Russian nuclear saber-rattling and coercion have loomed large throughout the Russo-Ukrainian War. This dangerous rhetoric has been amplified and radicalized by AI-powered technology — “false-flag” cyber operations, fake news, and deepfakes. Throughout the war, both sides have invoked the specter of nuclear catastrophe, including false Russian claims that Ukraine was building a “dirty bomb” and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s allegation that Russia had planted explosives to cause a nuclear disaster at a Ukrainian power plant. The world is once again forced to grapple with the psychological effects of the most destructive weapons the world has ever known in a new era of nuclear brinkmanship.

Rapid AI technological maturity raises the issue of delegating the launch authority of nuclear weapons to AI (or non–human-in-the-loop nuclear command and control systems), viewed simultaneously as dangerous and potentially stabilizing. This potential delegation is dangerous because weapons could be launched accidentally. It is potentially stabilizing because of the lower likelihood that a nuclear strike would be contemplated if retaliation was known to benefit from autonomy, machine speed, and precision. For now, at least, there is a consensus amongst nuclear-armed powers that the devastating outcome of an accidental nuclear exchange obviates any potential benefits of automating the retaliatory launch of nuclear weapons.

Regardless, it is important to grapple with a question: How might AI-enabled warfare affect human psychology during nuclear crises? Thomas Schelling’s theory of “threat that leaves something to chance” (i.e., the risk that military escalation cannot be entirely controlled) helps analysts understand how and why nuclear-armed states can manipulate risk to achieve competitive advantage in bargaining situations and how this contest of nerves, resolve, and credibility can lead states to stumble inadvertently into war. How might the dynamics of the age of AI affect Schelling’s theory? Schelling’s insights on crisis stability between nuclear-armed rivals in the age of AI-enabling technology, contextualized with the broader information ecosystem, offer fresh perspectives on the “AI-nuclear dilemma” — the intersection of technological change, strategic thinking, and nuclear risk.

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In the digital age, the confluence of increased speed, truncated decision-making, dual-use technology, reduced levels of human agency, critical network vulnerabilities, and dis/misinformation injects more randomness, uncertainty, and chance into crises. This creates new pathways for unintentional (accidental, inadvertent, and catalytic) escalation to a nuclear level of conflict. New vulnerabilities and threats (perceived or otherwise) to states’ nuclear deterrence architecture in the digital era will become novel generators of accidental risk — mechanical failure, human error, false alarms, and unauthorized launches.

These vulnerabilities will make current and future crises (Russia-Ukraine, India-Pakistan, the Taiwan Straits, the Korean Peninsula, the South China Seas, etc.) resemble a multiplayer game of chicken, where the confluence of Schelling’s “something to chance” coalesces with contingency, uncertainty, luck, and the fallacy of control, under the nuclear shadow. In this dangerous game, either side can increase the risk that a crisis unintentionally blunders into nuclear war. Put simply, the risks of nuclear-armed states leveraging Schelling’s “something to chance” in AI-enabled warfare preclude any likely bargaining benefits in brinkmanship.

Doomsday Machine: Schelling’s “Little Black Box”

How might different nuclear command, control, and communication structures affect the tradeoff between chance and control? Research suggests that chance is affected by the failure of both the positive control (features and procedures that enable nuclear forces to be released when the proper authority commands it) and negative control (features that inhibit their use otherwise) of nuclear weapons. For instance, some scholars have debated the impact on crisis stability and deterrence of further automation of the nuclear command, control, and communication systems, akin to a modern-day Doomsday Machine such as Russia’s Perimetr (known in the West as “the Dead Hand”) — a Soviet-era automated nuclear retaliatory launch system, which some media reports claim now uses AI technology.

On the one hand, from a rationalist perspective, because the response of an autonomous launch device (Schelling’s “little black box”) would be contingent on an adversary’s actions —and presumably clearly communicated to the other side — strategic ambiguity would be reduced and thus its deterrence utility enhanced. In other words, the “more automatic it is, the less incentive the enemy has to test my intentions in a war of nerves, prolonging the period of risk.” In the context of mutually assured destruction, only the threat of an unrecallable weapon — activating on provocation no matter what — would be credible and thus effective. Besides, this autonomous machine would obviate the need for a human decision-maker to remain resolute in fulfilling a morally and rationally recommended threat, and by removing any doubt of the morally maximizing instincts of a free human agent in the loop, ensuring the deterrent threat is credible.

On the other hand, from a psychological perspective, by removing human agency entirely (i.e., once the device is activated there is nothing a person can do to stop it), the choice to escalate (or deescalate) a crisis falls to machines’ preprogrammed and unalterable goals. Such a goal, in turn, “automatically engulfs us both in war if the right (or wrong) combination comes up on any given day” until the demands of an actor have been complied with. The terrifying uncertainty, chance, and contingency that would transpire from this abdication of choice and control of nuclear detonation to a nonhuman agent — even if the device’s launch parameters and protocols were clearly advertised to deter aggression — would increase, as would the risk of both positive (e.g., left-of-launch cyber attack, drone swarm counterforce attack, data poisoning) and negative failure (e.g., false flag operations, AI-augmented advanced persistent threat or spoofing) of nuclear command, control, and communication systems.

Moreover, fully automating the nuclear launch process (i.e., acting without human intervention in the target acquisition, tracking, and launch) would not only circumvent the moral requirement of Just War theory — for example, the lack of legal fail-safes to prevent conflict and protect the innocent — but also violate the jus ad bellum requirement of proper authority and thus, in principle, be illegitimate.

In sum, introducing uncertainty and chance into a situation (i.e., keeping the enemy guessing) about how an actor might respond to various contingencies — and assuming clarity exists about an adversary’s intentions — may have some deterrent utility. If, unlike “madman” tactics, the outcome is in part or entirely determined by exogenous mechanisms and processes — ostensibly beyond the control and comprehension of leaders — genuine and prolonged risk is generated. As a counterpoint, a threat that derives from factors external to the participants might become less of a test of wills and resolve between adversaries, thus making it less costly — in terms of reputation and status — for one side to step back from the brink.

Human Psychology and “Threat that Leaves Something to Chance” in Algorithmic War

In The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, Robert Jervis writes that “the workings of machines and the reaction of humans in time of stress cannot be predicted with high confidence.” Critics note that while “threats that leave something to chance” introduce the role of human behavioral decision-making into thinking about the threat credibility of coercion, the problem of commitment, and the manipulation of risk, Schelling’s research disproportionately relies on economic models of rational choice. Some scholars criticize Schelling’s core assumptions in other ways.

Two cognitive biases demonstrate that leaders are predisposed to underestimate accidental risk during crisis decision-making. First, as already described, is the “illusion of control,” which can make leaders overconfident in their ability to control events in ways that risk (especially inadvertently or accidentally) escalating a crisis or conflict. Second, leaders tend to view adversaries as more centralized, disciplined, and coordinated, and thus more in control than they are.

Furthermore, “threats that leave something to chance” neglect the emotional and evolutionary value of retaliation and violence, which are vital to understanding the processes that underpin Schelling’s theory. According to Schelling, to cause suffering, nothing is gained or protected directly; instead, “it can only make people behave to avoid it.” McDermott et al. argued in the Texas National Security Review that “the human psychology of revenge explains why and when policymakers readily commit to otherwise apparently ‘irrational’ retaliation” — central to the notion of second-strike nuclear capacity. Because a second-strike retaliation cannot prevent atomic catastrophe according to economic-rational models, it therefore has no logical basis.

An implicit assumption undergirds the notion of deterrence — in the military and other domains — that strong enough motives exist for retaliation, when even if no strategic upside accrues from launching a counterattack, an adversary should expect one nonetheless. Another paradox of deterrence is threatening to attack an enemy if they misbehave; if you can convince the other of the threat, the damage inflicted on the challenger is of little consequence. In short, deterrence is intrinsically a psychological phenomenon. It uses threats to manipulate an adversary’s risk perceptions to persuade against the utility responding with force.

Human emotion — psychological processes involving subjective change, appraisals, and intersubjective judgments that strengthen beliefs — and evolution can help explain how uncertainty, randomness, and chance are inserted into a crisis despite “rational” actors retaining a degree of control over their choices. Recent studies on evolutionary models — that go beyond traditional cognitive reflections — offer fresh insights into how specific emotions can affect credibility and deterrence. In addition to revenge, other emotions such as status-seeking, anger, fear, and even a predominantly male evolutionary predisposition for the taste of blood once a sense of victory is established accompany the diplomacy of violence. Thus, the psychological value attached to retaliation can also affect leaders’ perceptions, beliefs, and lessons from experience, which inform choices and behavior during crises. Schelling uses the term “reciprocal fear of surprise attack” — the notion that the probability of a surprise attack arises because both sides fear the same thing — to illuminate this psychological phenomenon.

A recent study on public trust in AI, for instance, demonstrates that age, gender, and specialist knowledge can affect peoples’ risk tolerance in AI-enabled applications, including AI-enabled autonomous weapons and crime prediction. These facets of human psychology may also help explain the seemingly paradoxical coexistence of advanced weapon technology that promises speed, distance, and precision (i.e., safer forms of coercion) with a continued penchant for intrinsically human contests of nerves at the brink of nuclear war. Emotional-cognitive models do not, however, necessarily directly contradict the classical rational-based ones. Instead, these models can inform and build on rational models by providing critical insights into human preferences, motives, and perceptions from an evolutionary and cognitive perspective.

Leaders operating in different political systems and temporal contexts will, of course, exhibit diverse ranges of emotional awareness and thus varying degrees of ability to regulate and control their emotions. Moreover, because disparate emotional states can elicit different perceptions of risk, leaders can become predisposed to overstate their ability to control events and understate the role of luck and chance, and thus the possibility that they misperceive others’ intentions and overestimate their ability to shape events. For instance, scared individuals are generally more risk-averse in their decisions and behavior compared to people who display rage or revenge and who are prone to misdiagnose the nature of the risks they encounter.

A fear-induced deterrent effect in the nuclear deterrence literature posits that the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons is premised on nonrational fear (or “existential bias”) as opposed to rational risk calculation, thus initiating an iterative learning process that enables existentialism deterrence to operate. Whatever the cognitive origins of these outlooks — an area about which we still know very little — they will nonetheless have fundamental effects on leaders’ threat perceptions and cognitive dispositions.

Actors are influenced by both motivated (“affect-driven”) and unmotivated (“cognitive”) biases when they judge whether the other sides pose a threat. Moreover, the impact of these psychological influences is ratcheted up during times of stress and crisis in ways that can distort an objective appreciation of threats and thus limit the potential for empathy. Individuals’ perceptions are heavily influenced by their beliefs about how the world functions, and the patterns, mental constructs, and predispositions that emerge from these are likely to present us. Jervis writes: “The decision-maker who thinks that the other side is probably hostile will see ambiguous information as confirming this image, whereas the same information about a country thought to be friendly would be taken more benignly.”

At the group level, an isolated attack by a member of the out-group is often used as a scapegoat to ascribe an “enemy image” (monolithic, evil, opportunistic, cohesive, etc.) to the group as a unitary actor to incite commitment, resolve, and strength to enable retribution — referred to by anthropologists as “third-party revenge” or “vicarious retribution.” In international relations, these intergroup dynamics that can mischaracterize an adversary and the “enemy” — whose beliefs, images, and preferences invariably shift — risk rhetorical and arm-racing escalatory retaliatory behavior associated with the security dilemma.

While possessing the ability to influence intergroup dynamics (frame events, mobilize political resources, influence the public discourse, etc.), political leaders tend to be particularly susceptible to out-group threats and thus more likely to sanction retribution for an out-group attack. A growing body of social psychology literature demonstrates that the emergence, endorsement, and, ultimately, the influence of political leaders depend on how they embody, represent, and affirm their group’s (i.e., the in-group) ideals, values, and norms — and on contrasting (or “metacontrasting”) how different these are from those of out-groups.

The digital era, characterized by mis/disinformation, social media–fueled “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” — and rapidly diffused by automated social bots and hybrid cyborgs — is compounding the effects of inflammatory polarizing falsehoods to support anti-establishment candidates in highly popularist and partisan environments such as the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections and 2016 Brexit referendum. According to social identity scholars Alexander Haslam and Michael Platow, there is strong evidence to suggest that people’s attraction to particular groups and their subsequent identity-affirming behavior are driven “not by personal attraction and interest, but rather by their group-level ties.” These group dynamics can expose decision-makers to increased “rhetorical entrapment” pressures, whereby alternative policy options (viable or otherwise) may be overlooked or rejected.

Most studies suggest a curvilinear trajectory in the efficiency of making decisions during times of stress. Several features of human psychology affect our ability to reason under stress. First, the large amount of information available to decision-makers is generally complex and ambiguous during crises. Machine-learning algorithms are on hand in the digital age to collate, statistically correlate, parse, and analyze vast big-data sets in real time. Second, and related, time pressures during crises place a heavy cognitive burden on individuals. Third, people working long hours with inadequate rest, and leaders enduring the immense strain of making decisions that have potentially existential implications (in the case of nuclear weapons), add further cognitive impediments to sound judgment under pressure. Taken together, these psychological impediments can hinder the ability of actors to send and receive nuanced, subtle, and complex signals to appreciate an adversary’s beliefs, images, and perception of risk — critical for effective deterrence.

Although AI-enabled tools can improve battlefield awareness and, prima facie, afford commanders more time to deliberate, they come at strategic costs, not least accelerating the pace of warfare and compressing the decision-making timeframe available to decision-makers. AI tools can also offer a potential means to reduce (or offload) people’s cognitive load and thus ease crisis-induced stress, as well as people’s susceptibility to things like cognitive bias, heuristics, and groupthink. However, a reduction in the solicitation of wide-ranging opinions to consider alternatives is unlikely to be improved by introducing new whiz-bang technology. Thus, further narrowing the window of reflection and discussion compounds existing psychological processes that can impair effective crisis (and noncrisis) decision-making, namely, avoiding difficult tradeoffs, limited empathy to view adversaries, and misperceiving the signals that others are conveying.

People’s judgments rely on capacities such as reasoning, imagination, examination, reflection, social and historical context, experience, and, importantly for crises, empathy. According to philosopher John Dewey, the goal of judgment is “to carry an incomplete [and uncertain] situation to its fulfillment.” Human judgments, and the decisions that flow from them, have an intrinsic moral and emotional dimension. Machine-learning algorithms, by contrast, generate decisions after gestating datasets through an accumulation of calculus, computation, and rule-driven rationality. As AI advances, substituting human judgment for fuzzy machine logic, humans will likely cling to the illusory veneer of their ability to retain human control and agency over AI as it develops. Thus, error-prone and flawed AI systems will continue to produce unintended consequences in fundamentally nonhuman ways.

In AI-enabled warfare, the confluence of speed, information overload, complex and tightly coupled systems, and multipolarity will likely amplify the existing propensity for people to eschew nuance and balance during crisis to keep complex and dynamic situations heuristically manageable. Therefore, mistaken beliefs about and images of an adversary — derived from pre-existing beliefs—may be compounded rather than corrected during a crisis. Moreover, crisis management conducted at indefatigable machine speed — compressing decision-making timeframes — and nonhuman agents enmeshed in the decision-making process will mean that even if unambiguous information emerges about an adversary’s intentions, time pressures will likely filter out (or restrict entirely) subtle signaling and careful deliberation of diplomacy. Thus, the difficulty actors face in simultaneously signaling resolve on an issue coupled with a willingness for restraint — that is, signaling that they will hold fire for now — will be complicated exponentially by the cognitive and technical impediments of introducing nonhuman agents to engage in (or supplant) fundamentally human endeavors.

Furthermore, cognitive studies suggest that the allure of precision, autonomy, speed, scale, and lethality, combined with people’s predisposition to anthropomorphize, cognitive offload, and automation bias, may view AI as a panacea for the cognitive fallibilities of human analysis and decision-making described above. People’s deference to machines (which preceded AI) can result from the presumption that (a) decisions result from hard empirically based science, (b) AI algorithms function at speeds and complexities beyond human capacity, or (c) because people fear being overruled or outsmarted by machines. Therefore, it is easy to see why people would be inclined to view an algorithm’s judgment (both to inform and make decisions) as authoritative, particularly as human decision-making and judgment and machine autonomy interface — at various points across the continuum — at each stage of the kill chain.

Managing Algorithmic Brinkmanship

Because of the limited empirical evidence available on nuclear escalation, threats, bluffs, and war termination, the arguments presented (much like Schelling’s own) are mostly deductive. In other words, conclusions are inferred by reference to various plausible (and contested) theoretical laws and statistical reasoning rather than empirically deduced by reason. Robust falsifiable counterfactuals that offer imaginative scenarios to challenge conventional wisdom, assumptions, and human bias (hindsight bias, heuristics, availability bias, etc.) can help fill this empirical gap. Counterfactual thinking can also avoid the trap of historical and diplomatic telos that retrospectively constructs a path-dependent causal chain that often neglects or rejects the role of uncertainty, chance, luck, overconfidence, the “illusion of control,” and cognitive bias.

Furthermore, AI machine-learning techniques (modeling, simulation, and analysis) can complement counterfactuals and low-tech table-top wargaming simulations to identify contingencies under which “perfect storms” might form — not to predict them, but rather to challenge conventional wisdom, and highlight bias and inertia, to highlight and, ideally, mitigate these conditions. American philosopher William James wrote: “Concepts, first employed to make things intelligible, are clung to often when they make them unintelligible.”

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James Johnson is a lecturer in strategic studies at the University of Aberdeen. He is also an honorary fellow at the University of Leicester, a nonresident associate on the European Research Council–funded Towards a Third Nuclear Age Project, and a mid-career cadre with the Center for Strategic Studies Project on Nuclear Issues. He is the author of AI and the Bomb: Nuclear Strategy and Risk in the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2023). His latest book is The AI Commander: Centaur Teaming, Command, and Ethical Dilemmas (Oxford University Press, 2024). You can follow him on X: @James_SJohnson.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by James Johnson · September 28, 2023

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