In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta left little doubt as to whether the People’s Republic of China was assisting North Korea with their ballistic missile program.  From the Reuters article:

“I’m sure there’s been some help coming from China. I don’t know, you know, the exact extent of that,” Panetta told members of the House Armed Services Committee when asked whether China had been supporting North Korea’s missile program through “trade and technology exchanges.”

While understandably unable to delve into details due to “sensitivity”, Secretary Panetta gave voice to the deep suspicions many have had since the beginning of China’s rise twenty years ago.   It should be clear for all to see that China gains advantage by having a belligerent and nuclear-capable North Korea as a major thorn in the side of the United States in precisely the region that is the future focus of US Defense strategy, the Western Pacific.

The People’s Republic of China has consistently thwarted the efforts of the US and her allies to bring the DPRK under control  China refused to condemn North Korea for the sinking of the ROK frigate Cheonan, which killed 46 ROK sailors.  Nor did China offer any meaningful criticism for the shelling of Yeongpyong Island, which resulted in the deaths of two ROK Marines, other than an admonition not to “escalate”.  When taken with the Chinese watering-down of UNSC sanctions against North Korea, continued military assistance, collaboration with DPRK in cyber attack efforts, ambivalence toward DPRK weapons and technology proliferation into the Middle East, and a blind eye to provocative border and SOF incursions into South Korea, these actions are indicators of China’s tacit approval of North Korea’s actions and posture.

There have been many who have sounded the warning klaxon.   The issue has been addressed here, and the December 2011 Proceedings “Now Hear This” article by Defense analyst Joseph Bosco.

While China’s role in keeping the North Korean regime in power—and in the WMD business—is indisputable, analysts have offered unconvincing explanations of Chinese motives. U.S. experts have assured us that China shares our nuclear concerns but fears instability on the Korean peninsula. They accept China’s argument that even threatening to cut economic aid would collapse Kim Jong Il’s regime and trigger a refugee flow into China. But it has been clear for 60 years that the sole cause of instability between the Koreas has been Pyongyang’s own bizarre and dangerous behavior, despite substantial aid and concessions from accommodating South Korean governments. Yet China stands by its ally.

Indeed.  Despite the consistent platitudes from Chinese diplomats and military officials of their willingness to be of assistance in “managing” North Korea, the reality is that China has very successfully played power politics in developing and maintaining North Korea’s military capabilities and belligerent posture.   Chinese assistance to North Korea in developing a ballistic missile capability to carry a nuclear warhead well beyond the Korean peninsula is not a shocking aberration, but another in a long and consistent series of actions that cannot point reasonably to any other conclusion.  North Korea will try again with the missile launch.  And with Chinese assistance, they will eventually succeed.

The assertions to the contrary grow equally foolish-sounding, and detached from reality.  One, in a rebuttal to the Bosco article, was that “The prospect of a better outcome lies not in blaming China but in working imaginatively with China and others to transform North Korea under new leadership”.    Don’t you believe it.  China has proven for decades they are more than willing to live with their recalcitrant southern neighbors, and the only “transformation” that Chinese leadership is interested in is making North Korea a more potent threat to the United States and its Western Pacific allies.

As has been said before, the time has long since come to recognize at the highest military and civilian levels of leadership in the United States that China is very far from being a benevolent ally, and even farther from sharing any kind of common interests or vision of either Asia and the Pacific Rim, or any other geographic region where they perceive their interests to lie.  And this includes China’s subsidizing of the brutal, aggressive, repressive regime in North Korea.

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As if on cue, DPRK ratchets up the rhetoric.    And this telling summation from MSNBC:

In Beijing, North Korea’s biggest ally, China’s top foreign policy official met Sunday with a North Korean delegation and expressed confidence in the country’s new young leader, Kim Jong Un.

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Seems the nuclear DPRK is no longer a hypothetical, if US estimates are correct.   Which magnifies every last occurrence of Red China’s assistance to the Hermit Kingdom.

While below some comments express abhorrence of the spectre of a nuclear exchange, it is highly useful to remember that the People’s Republic of China and by proxy, her ally North Korea, do not necessarily share that view.    I would caution the use of the term “well-reasoned” when framing the Korean peninsula in terms of American values and viewpoints.  Which brings the argument back to that of being strong and capable enough with our conventional and nuclear arsenal to deter both countries from precisely the bellicosity that one has repeatedly threatened and the other has excused and minimized.

Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Air Force, Army, Books, Foreign Policy, Hard Power, History, Homeland Security, Marine Corps, Maritime Security, Naval Institute, Navy, Proceedings, Uncategorized | read comments (33)

CDR Salamander and I venture again into the world of live internet radio Sunday, April 15 at 5pm (1700) U.S. Eastern with our Episode 119 Offshore Balancing the Indian Ocean 04/15 by Midrats on Blog Talk Radio:

What is real, and what is a mirage? Can something be a cost effective strategic option, or a fool’s errand?

As outlined by our guests in their lates work in the periodical, Asian Security: An Ocean Too Far: Offshore Balancing in the Indian Ocean; the United States is beset by war weariness after over a decade of war and a half century plus of global committments. We find ourselves with a stagnant economy, and skyrocketing defense procurement costs. It is seductive to think of retiring from continental Eurasia, but if history calls us back – returning in times of systemic conflict would be problematic – even in the relatively accessible rimlands of Western Europe and East Asia.

In a part of the world with the planet’s largest democracy – offshore balancing is close to impossible in the Indian Ocean.

As it turns out, offshore balancing in the Indian Ocean may be no balancing at all.

From “The complex network of global cargo ship movements” by Pablo Kaluza, et al. (oval added)

Our guest for the full hour to discuss their article will be U.S. Naval War College Associate Professors James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara.

Offshore balancing? What the heck is that? Tune in and find out – and, if you can’t make the live show because you are buried in receipts and other paper as you try to reduce your tax burden before April 17 – well, join us in the “not so live” downloads from here or from the Midrats iTune page.

Posted by Eagle1 in Foreign Policy, Hard Power, Maritime Security, Navy, Soft Power | read comments (0)

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation look at the strategic move of sending in the Marines to the Northern Territory.

A continuation of a 60 year alliance and a message:

ALAN DUPONT, INT. SECURITY STUDIES, UNSW: It’s not so much the Marines themselves but it’s the symbol – the signal it sends to the region that Australia is – and the United States are working together to meet these common challenges. So I think it’s quite an important shift.

UPDATE: Robert Kaplan has a related analysis at Stratfor America’s Pacific Logic:

Were the United States not now to turn to the Indo-Pacific, it would risk a multipolar military order arising up alongside an already existent multipolar economic and political order. Multipolar military systems are more unstable than unipolar and bipolar ones because there are more points of interactions and thus more opportunities for miscalculations, as each country seeks to readjust the balance of power in its own favor. U.S. military power in the Indo-Pacific is needed not only to manage the peaceful rise of China but also to stabilize a region witnessing the growth of indigenous civil-military post-industrial complexes.

Posted by Eagle1 in Foreign Policy, Hard Power, Marine Corps, Maritime Security, Navy | read comments (1)

From the April 2012 Edition of Leatherneck Magazine:

By R. R. Keene

If you’ve never been to Dong Ha, you haven’t missed a thing. Well, perhaps with the exception of Easter 1972.

No one really knows how many of those who were there are still around to talk about it. The South Vietnamese Marines are no more: banished or dead. The North Vietnamese soldiers who fired their weap­ons in frustration from across the Cau Viet River are scattered and old or dead. John Ripley’s been dead for three years and wasn’t the kind to brag.

So, from time to time we have to retell his legendary tale and pass it to every generation of Marines.

Colonel John W. Ripley: When they talk of Marines with cojones, one thing comes to mind—Ripley as a captain at the bridge at Dong Ha.

****

At 33, Ripley was an “old Asia hand” on his second Vietnam combat tour. He deployed in country as a reconnaissance platoon leader in 1965 and then commanded “Lima” Company, 3d Battalion, Third Marine Regiment. “Ripley’s Raiders” they call themselves, and they insist the “33” label of Vietnamese “Ba Muoi Ba” Bier (beer) really means 3d Bn, 3d Marines. They liked Ripley. He was no wuss. He gave his Marines no slack, kept them in the field and got them in plenty of combat, but also took good care of them, and they took their wounds together.

In addition to the Purple Heart, Ripley won a Silver Star during an attack with Lima Co against an NVA regimental com­mand post.

The men of Lima Co admire their “skip­per” and like telling stories about him.

One Marine said, “I remember Staff Sear­geant Joe Martin saying, Ripley was on Harlan County [(LST­1196)] in port on the Caribbean in 1964. He was cross­deck­ing when one of the ‘squid’ officers of the day said something insulting about the Corps. ‘Rip’ threw him in the drink. They put him in ‘hack’ down over the bilges in the bowels of USS Boxer [(LPH­4)], where the hull makes a V. He did push­ups all day. Eventually he took over Weapons, 2/2 and was Martin’s platoon commander.”

Ripley, even for a Marine, was a physical fitness animal. He was a “The ­more ­you­ sweat ­in ­peace, the ­less ­you ­bleed­ in­ war” believer who’d taken it to heart—and all the other muscles of his body—as an enlisted man and later as a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy. It gave him an edge on his exchange tour with the British Royal Marines on the Malay Peninsula, at the U.S. Army’s Airborne and Ranger schools and with the Navy’s underwater demolition teams. He had be­ come jump­, scuba­ and Ranger ­qualified.

Ripley said, “Endurance: We confuse this with fitness … but mental endurance is like an extra bandolier. … You lock­ and­ load and keep going.”

Read the entire article here at Leatherneck Magazine

More about the Memorial to Company L, 3d Battalion, Third Marine Regiment gathered at Semper Fidelis Memorial Park, National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va., to dedicate the “CAPTAIN J. W. RIPLEY LIMA CO RVN-1967” Memorial, honor their fallen comrades and remember their commanding officer.

*******

Thank you Leatherneck Magazine and Mr. Keene.

Semper Fi Dad

Posted by admin in From our Archive, Hard Power, History, Marine Corps | read comments (4)

Let’s get this list going.

As an observation and a nod, not a criticism (of course) of our Vice President Joe Biden –  who observed that, “You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.”

Because this will be a list, compiled into one blog post, whatever you put in the comments (respectfully and to the point of the post) we will incorporate into the post – then delete. Please submit your comments to us here or via blog@usni.org or give us your submissions via Twitter  or Facebook . And when the first 500 hits it, [UPDATE]: WE WILL MAKE A BRACKET COMPETITION.

Give us your best of the best who were audacious – winners or losers – those who dared. We will update the list daily, no repeats – so dig deep when your favorite has already been mentioned.

Listed in order of submission and raw commentary (and without attribution and to protect the innocent):

500. SEAL mission per Vice President Joe Biden: Audacious on the part of our Commander in Chief, President Obama.

499. Japanese attack on Pearl was an Orange/Blue war-gamer exercise 6 or 7 years before 1941.

498. Entebbe, anyone? Or one might even argue that the raid on Bin Laden’s compound would not have been possible without the lessons learned from the even more audacious (if ultimately unsuccessful) plan of Operation Eagle Claw.

497. Lets start early. 1519 Hernan Cortez landed 600 Spaniards and about a dozen horses at Cozumel. He BURNED HIS SHIPS so there was no way to escape, and he and his men had to fight to the death. He led his men to destroy the entire Aztec Empire something that no invader had done in over 6 centuries. In the process he actually convinced the Aztecs that he was THEIR GOD.

496. Henry V at Agincourt – Nope, too early. 

496. (Do-over) ‎”Kedging“- How USS Constitution Sailors evaded 170 guns of HMS Africa, Shannon, Belvidera & Aeolus!

495.

Dare I say George Washington before the Battle of Trenton? Christmas Day 1776.

George Washington Crosses the Delaware in the dark of night to attack the British in Trenton.

For me there is one and only one #1. Without it an army driffs away, an idea dies, a piece of paper signed at the greatest personal risk becomes meaningless. General George Washington’s decision to attack Trenton on the morning after Christmas 1776 with a night march of impossible proportions couples not only audaciousness, but the greatest risk. For me it is the single most important moment without even a close second in American history, and for the idea of freedom as the world knows it today, possibly. My own telling here: http://blog.projectwhitehorse.com/2010/12/christmas-1776-the-crossing/

494, Eben Emael and the raid to free Mussolini

493. CDR “Red” Ramage, USS Parche, Pacific, 1944: as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Parche http://www.homeofheroes.com/moh/citations_1940_wwii/ramage.html

492.  Col Robin Olds, Operation BOLO Mig Sweep, North Vietnam, 1967 http://user.icx.net/~arlisk/bolo.html

491.  Doolittle Raid Doolittle Raid, 1942…(while a japanese radio broadcast stated, almost to the moment of the attack, how Japan would never be attacked, with air raid sirens suddenly going off-a “baghdad bob” moment)…which in turn, caused grave consternation, and thus triggered rash action by the Imperial Japanese Navy, resulting in catastrophic loss at Midway, with which they would lose their offensive initiative for the remainder of the war…despite efforts to regain it at Guadalcanal and others.

490. Admiral David Farragut leads his ships into Mobile Bay, 1864. Approaching the mine field laid by the Confederates the USS Tecumseh (first in the battle line) hit a mine and exploded, shocking the entire fleet. The USS Brooklyn stopped dead in the water, and the Captain asked the Admiral for instructions. Farragut ordered his ship, the Hartford, to steam around the Brooklyn and take the lead, signaling his forces “Damn the Torpedoes…Full speed ahead!” The entire column of 14 ships passed safely through the mine field and took Mobile.

489. April 22, 1778. At 11 p.m. on this day in 1778, Commander John Paul Jones leads a small detachment of two boats from his ship, the USS Ranger, to raid the shallow port at Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are anchored.

488. Captain Charles Stewart of USS Constitution taking on two warships simultaneously in February 1815.

487. Though unsuccessful, Desert One was audacious.

486. How USS Constitution Sailors evaded 170 guns of HMS Africa, Shannon, Belvidera & Aeolus!

485. Berlin Airlift

482. Market Garden (for a not-so-successful example)

481.Camp Century Greenland, 1959-1966.http://gombessa.tripod.com/scienceleadstheway/id9.html. A nuclear powered, under-the-ice-camp of about 200 men doing Arctic military research and testing the feasibility of siting ICBMs in the Greenland icecap. Project Iceworm was the code name for a US Army Top Secret proposal during the Cold War (a study was started in 1958), to build a major network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The ultimate objective of placing medium-range missiles under the ice – close enough to Moscow to strike targets within the Soviet Union – was kept secret from the Danish government.

480. Manstein Plan, France 1940 (replaced the original von Schlieffen plan), bait the allies into the low countries, cut them in half, and take the entire region in 6 weeks.

479. 1588, english channel, England vs Spain. English ships, more maneuverable, chipped away at the snds of the Spanish Armada’s ships (arranged in an arcing format) instead of taking them head-on. Forced the Spanish ships into disorder, and over a few days, whittled them down to near-insignificance…forced the Spaniards into a roundabout route around Scotland back home…but were destroyed in a storm before they could make it back, save 50…out of 130.
Audacious to say the least.

478. 1970, USAF and Army Special operations crash land an HH-3 helicopter in the middle of the Son Tay prison complex in North Vietnam in an attempt to rescue 65 American POWs. The operation is carried out perfectly, but the prisoners were moved a few months earlier to different accommodations.

477. Operation Dynamo, the “miracle of Dunkirk” in WW2

476. Battle of the River Plate, 1939.  One of the greatest psyche-outs in naval annals. Spee literally pulverized UK’s Ajax, Achillies(NZ), and Exeter.  One’s fire control was out, another’s main gunnery was out, the third was mauled but intact.  GS was also damaged, and thinking the UKs 3 were still coming after him (most would’ve broke off by then),  he made for Montevideo…where he was told to leave within 72hours. GS was relatively intact, despite some damage, and could have re-engaged.  Thinking there were more heavies coming (via the radio traffic of the 3, who remained, even though they would have been cut to pieces had the GS came out to face them),  Capt Langsdorf scuttled the Graf Spee without a battle.  3 days later he shot himself. Sheer audacity, and well executed…using nothing but guile.(the truly genius strategist finds ways to war without battle-Sun Tzu)

475. The bayonet charge of Joshua Chamberlain on July 2, 1863 at Little Round Top during the Gettysburg battle.

474. Bridge at Dong Ha

473.  ‎1918 Battle of Belleau Wood

472. June 1995 rescue of Scott O’Grady

471. Battle of the Bulge, with the Germans scraping up enough armor, soldiers and fuel to give the US and Allied Armies a real good scare

470. USS ENGLAND taking the bull by the horns, and sinking 6 Japanese subs in less than 2 weeks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by admin in Air Force, Army, Aviation, Coast Guard, Foreign Policy, Hard Power, History, Homeland Security, Marine Corps, Maritime Security, Navy, Piracy, Proceedings, Soft Power | read comments (25)

Tomorrow, 11 March 2012, the storied USS Enterprise (CVN-65) will leave home port to ply the world’s oceans for the 22nd, and last time.  As she is about to head toward Middle Eastern waters, the Associated Press published a nice piece about her, and the challenges that her crew of 4,000 face in keeping a ship that is older than most of their parents operating and ready.

Since SWMBO reminded me how expensive picture books were to print, I figured I would take advantage of this newfangled internet thing to post some pictures of the Big E, and relate some things about her 52 years in service.   A good deal of these pictures will come from familiar places, such as NavSource.org,  and DANFS, as well as some others included from various spots.

Enterprise under construction in Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, 1960

Christening, September 24th, 1960

Enterprise in original configuration, perhaps on sea trials, with no embarked air wing. She reportedly exceeded 40 knots.

It is staggering to think of a ship 52 years in commission.   How long is that?   Here are some facts about Enterprise and her history:

The sitting Secretary of the Navy, William B. Franke, whose wife christened CVAN-65, had been born in 1894.   He lived to be 85, and still died 33 years ago.

Enterprise’s first CO, Captain Vincent P. de Poix, Annapolis ’39, had been a World War II aviator, and is still with us at 95!

In February of 1962, Enterprise stood by to assist with the recovery of the first American to orbit the Earth, LtCol John Glenn, USMC, in Mercury 6.

Enterprise was a part of the Second Fleet force that established the “Naval quarantine” of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October, 1962.

Iconic photo of Enterprise (CVAN-65), Long Beach (CGN-9 next to starboard), and Bainbridge (DLGN-25) during 30,000 mile unrefueled global circumnavigation, June, 1964 (Operation SEA ORBIT)

Enterprise was the first nuclear powered warship ever to operate in a combat zone, off Vietnam, December, 1965.

Enterprise remains the longest warship ever to put to sea at 1,102 feet, 2 inches.

On May 24th, 2011, a Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet of VFA-11 made arrested landing number 400,000 on Enterprise.

When Enterprise joined the fleet in October of 1961, she was one of 24 carriers, and the only nuclear-powered carrier, in a Navy of 870 ships.  Today she is one of 11 nuclear-powered carriers in a Navy of 285 ships.

Flames on aft flight deck from fire that killed 28 Sailors and destroyed fifteen aircraft, 14 January 1969

Enterprise after 1979-82 modernization at Puget Sound

Enterprise deployed to Vietnam six times, Operation SOUTHERN WATCH three times, Operation ENDURING FREEDOM four times (about to be five), and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM three times.   Her CO, Captain William Hamilton, was not yet three years old when Enterprise was commissioned, her XO would not be born for another five years.

Enterprise celebrates her 50th, November 2011

Best of luck to all the Officers and Sailors who crew this venerable old warship.   She carries a glorious name proudly.  One day you can tell your grandchildren you sailed on her.    When you return, she will pass from the Navy list and into history.

But perhaps her name can live on with CVN-80.  There always should be an Enterprise in the US Navy.

Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Aviation, Books, From our Archive, Hard Power, History, Marine Corps, Maritime Security, Naval Institute, Navy, Proceedings, Uncategorized | read comments (25)

Many of the decision points in our lives can be sorted into four specific guiding questions.  They provide an excellent means of evaluating our decision, our choices, and most effectively melding what we need with what we can afford.   The questions can correspondingly apply to selecting a college, or to  prospective employment.  They work well when designing and building a house, or buying a car.  Purchasing insurance.  Even when deciding on marriage.  What are these four questions?

• What can I live with?
• What can I live without?
• What can’t I live with?
• What can’t I live without?

Simple questions, really.  But their answers require a good deal of thought.

They are also questions that should be asked when developing National Security Strategy, and its subcomponent, National Military Strategy.  Those questions need to be asked as we determine the size, posture, and capability of our military and its supporting industrial base.   Those four straightforward questions must eventually be asked of our Navy at a number of different levels.

The first is to address the size and capabilities/capacity of our Navy.    What can we reasonably expect our Navy to do?  For how long?  In how many places at once?  Hard questions that demand realistic and informed discussion.   Currently, we have a Cooperative Strategy that cannot be executed under any but the most benign conditions on the world’s oceans.   How long are we going to continue to make promises to ourselves and our allies that we cannot keep?   What are we willing to have the courage to say openly that we cannot do with current capabilities?

Related to the above queries, but not identical, is to ask how big will our Navy be.   Numbers tossed around in the previous decade and a half range anywhere from 340 down to the current 285-ish.  (The disparity of 55 ships is equivalent to the strength of two Royal Navies, so it isn’t trivial.)  Yet, the budget realities and the cuts made to shipbuilding projections point to a number closer to 260, if not lower, by the end of the decade.  While it is true that 260 modern warships have tremendous combat power, it is also axiomatic that they cannot have the same global forward presence that 340 warships, some with somewhat less capability perhaps, can have.

The next level at which the four guiding questions need to be asked is the level of ship design and shipbuilding.    This cannot be done in isolation, but must be informed by serious and exhaustive discussion regarding what Admiral Zumwalt called the “high-low mix”.  How many capital ships of extensive capability are required for our missions, and how many of lesser but more appropriate capabilities does the Navy need?   It is this level in particular that the Navy seems unable, in fact abjectly refuses, to answer.   Not every ship needs every capability.   When we believe it does, we end up with multi-BILLION dollar platforms chasing skiffs off the Horn of Africa, and a fleet so expensive that the risking of a single unit for a dangerous but necessary mission becomes all but unacceptable.

There has been much discussion of those issues in the pages of Proceedings, and among Naval Officers and strategic thinkers, Naval enthusiasts, and the legions of the Great Unwashed who blog the intertubes.    One of the more interesting remarks in this regard was an assertion, perhaps rightly, that with its current philosophy and unwillingness to address the high-low question, the Navy is incapable of building a platform in between the under-gunned and unsurvivable LCS and an Aegis-capable Arleigh Burke.

So the question of the mix is not new.  Captain Jerry Hendrix wrote of it with his Buy Fords, not Ferraris in the April 2009 Proceedings.   Discussion at the last three USNI/AFCEA West conferences was rich with commentary.    In this month’s Proceedings, Norman Polmar evokes Plan URR with his A Paradigm Shift, asking whether a much larger number of STOVL carriers would be more effective than a small and likely shrinking number of $15 billion dollar CVNs.   (A hat-tip woulda been nice!)   When I asked the question of high-low mix at this year’s Shipbuilding Panel in San Diego, the panelists all but admitted that there hadn’t been much discussion on the subject, and that the goal was still 313 ships.

The final level at which those four questions above need to be asked is in the experimentation with “Optimal Manning”.   Anyone who even occasionally glances at this site knows my aversion to reducing crews of ANY equipment or weapon platform below what is required to drive, fight, fix, and maintain.  The biggest decision for the Navy has to be defining “optimal”, and to whom the term applies.   Is it “optimal” for the Navy leadership to show reduced manpower costs to our Congresscritters while our warships continue to experience serious maintenance issues and are not mission capable?    Do we want crews so thin that there is only time for eating, sleeping, and operating?   No time for training in the myriad skills and requirements of basic seamanship, damage control, or weapons proficiency?  Do we want crews that have no ability to absorb any casualties without compromise of mission?

Again, difficult questions.  Senior Navy leadership, and senior Defense Department officials, are going to have to make some hard calls.  The answer is not to exhort our Sailors to do “more with less”.   That bit of self-delusional platitude is the path to a head-on collision with the realities of combat, with usually catastrophic results.

The discussions must be informed, serious, and realistic.   And they need to be soon.   In May, USNI/AFCEA will be holding the Joint Warfighting Conference in Virginia Beach.    The theme is “Joint and Coalition Forces; The Inflection Point.  What to Hold and What to Fold?”  Without these discussions, commentary will again be nearly blind speculation, akin to a hand of five-card stud, but deciding which cards to keep and which to discard without looking at them.    If we continue to insist on playing our cards in such a way, we ought not to be surprised if the betting patterns of our potential adversaries change accordingly.

Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Aviation, Coast Guard, Foreign Policy, Hard Power, History, Marine Corps, Maritime Security, Naval Institute, Navy, Piracy, Proceedings, Uncategorized | read comments (3)

Episode 113 “To be Blunt on Afghanistan 03/04 by Midrats on Blog Talk Radio
CDR Salamander writes:

Where is the line between truth, optimism, spin, happy-talk, and lies?

Those of us who have served in Afghanistan and those serving now all have our stories. Our guest this Sunday has a few as well.

“Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.
…
When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start. “

Using his article in Armed Forces Journal; Truth, Lies, and Afghanistan as a starting point – our guest for the full hour will be Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, US Army.

For those of us who served in earlier wars this might bring back some memories. And the common warrior question: “What is ground truth?”

Join us live at 5pm here or download the show later from the same location or iTunes.

Posted by Eagle1 in Army, Foreign Policy, Hard Power, Soft Power | read comments (3)

The January 2012 issue of Proceedings Magazine contained an excellent article from Dr. Norman Friedman (“A Different Kind of Blast”, pg. 88-89) referencing the May 2011 testing of a cruise missile containing a Counter-Electronics High Microwave power (CHAMP) warhead.   As Dr. Friedman explains, high-power microwave (HPM) is a short-range and non-nuclear alternative to Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), something which the US Military is becoming reacquainted with after a post-Cold War hiatus.

Dr. Friedman goes on to explain the differences between those two phenomena and that of electronic jamming:

EMP and HPM differ from electronic jamming in that they operate at much higher power and across a broad frequency spectrum; their users do not need intimate knowledge of how their targets function in order to disable them.

The applicability of this weapon in beginning to reduce the Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) threat, and thereby helping to enable Operational Access,  is potentially very interesting.  Among the chief concerns to strategic and operational planners is the proliferation of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles, the latter in supersonic and hypersonic form, which are likely to saturate US Navy missile defenses with lethal warheads, even a small number of which would cause significant damage.  This is not a new paradigm, as any Destroyer sailor on the Okinawa picket line in 1945 could attest.

However, with a weapon such as the CHAMP warhead, which by all reports is a more or less directional weapon, the ability to much more effectively and efficiently eliminate the targeting radars of air defense and anti-ship missile systems we would likely find in an A2/AD environment may be realized.

Previous discussions as to how to counter such numerous systems had centered around destruction with kinetic warheads, or disruption with “cyber” (there’s that word again) disruptions.  The first is likely beyond the reach of current capabilities.  Hardened and concealed positions will require precise, complete targeting and a prolific expenditure of munitions into areas where collateral damage may be considerable.   The second, the “cyber” option, assumes a level of networking that most of our adversaries have not achieved, and with known and assumed US capabilities, something that is often purposely avoided.  Indeed, a good deal of the air defense and anti-ship radars operate on purpose-built and relatively closed-loop networks, making intrusion into those networks a doubtful prospect.

Rather than destruction with kinetic munitions, or through disruption/intrusion, CHAMP/HPM offers the ability to blind those systems by burning out the processors and microprocessors of their operating equipment.

The recently-published Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC) has a number of key imperatives that would be greatly enhanced by such capabilities that a directional HPM weapon can provide:

• Prepare the operational area in advance to facilitate access.
• Exploit advantages in one or more domains to disrupt enemy anti-access/area-denial capabilities in others.
• Disrupt enemy reconnaissance and surveillance efforts while protecting friendly efforts.
• Create pockets or corridors of local domain superiority to penetrate the enemy’s defenses and maintain them as required to accomplish the mission.
• Attack enemy Anti-Access/Area-Denial defenses in depth rather than rolling back those defenses from the perimeter.

While I am always hesitant to employ the overused and hackneyed term “game-changer”,  it would appear that countermeasures to something like CHAMP may be difficult to develop and expensive.  The technology required to produce the HPM-protection equivalent of a “Faraday Cage” may be beyond many countries and non-state actors to develop and employ.  The result of such limitations may render the A2/AD systems of smaller adversaries vulnerable to US capabilities.  Such may also significantly reduce the number of effective nodes of near-peer adversaries, who will have to choose which of the critical A2/AD systems they wish to make survivable.

As with every emerging capability, we need to be aware of the effects of such weapons on our own weapons systems and information/operating networks.  We aren’t the only ones developing such systems.   The back-and-forth of measures and counter-measures will be the future of such development.  With the widespread industrial espionage capabilities attributed to some of our adversaries, their development cycle will be foreshortened by the ability to steal information and technical data.

The myriad challenges of Anti-Access and Area Denial environments will require continued development and experimentation with equipment. technology, and doctrine.  However, the capability of a directional HPM weapon such as CHAMP provides a potential key to one of the A2/AD challenges that has increasingly become the focus of those thinking Operational Access.

Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Air Force, Army, Aviation, Hard Power, History, Marine Corps, Maritime Security, Naval Institute, Navy, Proceedings, Uncategorized | read comments (5)

Among the Americans serving on Iwo island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.

-Admiral Chester Nimitz

America lost 6,821 of her sons on Iwo Jima.  More than 19,000 were wounded.  Twenty-seven Medals of Honor and more than 200 Navy Crosses were awarded for heroism on that island.

Where is USS Michael Strank?  USS Franklin Sousley?  USS Harlan Bloch?

Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Air Force, Army, Aviation, Books, Coast Guard, Foreign Policy, From our Archive, Hard Power, History, Marine Corps, Naval Institute, Navy, Proceedings, Uncategorized | read comments (46)
Tags: Alexander Martin