The Arms Control Otaku　『軍備管理のオタク』

This is the end

2007-10-01T19:02:00.001-04:00

Well folks, it appears that the State Department uncovered my true identity through their background investigation. My boss asked me very politely today to put the blog on ice and I have decided to honor his request.

To be honest, I hate the idea of self-censorship, but it looks like I have no way around it while I'm a Presidential Management Fellow. I can't have my (possibly controversial) personal views to undermine the credibility of the policy advice I will dispense over the next two years.

I never really imagined sticking with the civil service until retirement. This is just more of an incentive to explore all of my options when my PMF bid is up.

I don't know whether I will need to delete the blog entirely or just let it gather dust until I'm no longer a government official. For now, it will gather dust.

I'd like to end activity on this blog by giving an enormous 'thank you' to my readers. You are what made this blog worthwhile. I will miss our conversations and your always relevant input and criticism.

Update (10/3/2007): Thanks again for all of the support. You've encouraged me to talk to DS about keeping the blog, but refocusing it on my photoshoping and artwork. I can't let this creative outlet completely go to waste.

DISCLAIMER: The following posts represent only my personal views prior to October 1, 2007. They have no bearing on the advice may provide to current or future employers.

How can he say this stuff with a straight face?

2007-09-30T14:59:00.000-04:00

I apologize for not picking up on this sooner. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University on Monday eclipsed most American coverage of President Bush's speech at the United Nations General Assembly the following day:

This great institution must work for great purposes -- to free people from tyranny and violence, hunger and disease, illiteracy and ignorance, and poverty and despair. Every member of the United Nations must join in this mission of liberation.

First, the mission of the United Nations requires liberating people from tyranny and violence. The first article of the Universal Declaration begins, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." The truth is denied by terrorists and extremists who kill the innocent with the aim of imposing their hateful vision on humanity. The followers of this violent ideology are a threat to civilized people everywhere. All civilized nations must work together to stop them -- by sharing intelligence about their networks, and choking their -- off their finances, and bringing to justice their operatives.

In the long run, the best way to defeat extremists is to defeat their dark ideology with a more hopeful vision -- the vision of liberty that founded this body. The United States salutes the nations that have recently taken strides toward liberty -- including Ukraine and Georgia and Kyrgyzstan and Mauritania and Liberia, Sierra Leone and Morocco. The Palestinian Territories have moderate leaders, mainstream leaders that are working to build free institutions that fight terror, and enforce the law, and respond to the needs of their people. The international community must support these leaders, so that we can advance the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security.

Its too bad the Palestinian people tried to vote those Palestinian leaders out of office a few years ago. Its also too bad that U.S. is doing nothing to prevent Israel from declaring the Gaza Strip an 'enemy entity' and closing it off to everything but humanitarian aid. But I digress. The speech only gets better:

Brave citizens in Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq have made the choice for democracy -- yet the extremists have responded by targeting them for murder. This is not a show of strength -- it is evidence of fear. And the extremists are doing everything in their power to bring down these young democracies. The people of Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq have asked for our help. And every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand with them.

Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship. In Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration. Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear. Basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking, and rape are common. The regime is holding more than 1,000 political prisoners -- including Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party was elected overwhelmingly by the Burmese people in 1990.

The ruling junta remains unyielding, yet the people's desire for freedom is unmistakable. This morning, I'm announcing a series of steps to help bring peaceful change to Burma. The United States will tighten economic sanctions on the leaders of the regime and their financial backers. We will impose an expanded visa ban on those responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights, as well as their family members. We'll continue to support the efforts of humanitarian groups working to alleviate suffering in Burma. And I urge the United Nations and all nations to use their diplomatic and economic leverage to help the Burmese people reclaim their freedom.

In Cuba, the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end. The Cuban people are ready for their freedom. And as that nation enters a period of transition, the United Nations must insist on free speech, free assembly, and ultimately, free and competitive elections.

In Zimbabwe, ordinary citizens suffer under a tyrannical regime. The government has cracked down on peaceful calls for reform, and forced millions to flee their homeland. The behavior of the Mugabe regime is an assault on its people -- and an affront to the principles of the Universal Declaration. The United Nations must insist on change in Harare -- and must insist for the freedom of the people of Zimbabwe.

In Sudan, innocent civilians are suffering repression -- and in the Darfur region, many are losing their lives to genocide. America has responded with tough sanctions against those responsible for the violence. We've provided more than $2 billion in humanitarian and peacekeeping aid. I look forward to attending a Security Council meeting that will focus on Darfur, chaired by the French President. I appreciate France's leadership in helping to stabilize Sudan's neighbors. And the United Nations must answer this challenge to conscience, and live up to its promise to promptly deploy peacekeeping forces to Darfur.

Maybe these words would mean more if they were spoken before we opened an extra-judicial prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. Or before we established secret prisons. Or before the abuses at Abu Ghraib happened. Or before we started torturing people. Or before we enlisted other states to torture on our behalf.

Setting aside the matter of whether all of the above had to happen in order to 'save lives,' does President Bush realize that making speeches like this only hurt America's image abroad? I'll be the first cop to hypocrisy in U.S. foreign policy. It is a dirty business full of questions with no right answers.

But must President Bush use such self-righteous and indignant language in front of the whole world when he knows that is the U.S. is adding more 'War on Terror' skeletons to its closet every day? Why didn't he just talk about poverty or women's rights or some other issue that the U.S. is not actively disrupting. Heck, talk about global warming for all I care.

Just stop embarrassing the country with this hollow talk of freedom. It doesn't fool anyone.

Hear that? Its the sound of norm disintegration...

2007-09-30T14:53:00.000-04:00

Back in April, I remember hearing rumors around the water cooler that the Israelis were lobbying the Nuclear Suppliers Group for a 'Bush-Singh' type of nuclear trade agreement. At the time, I wasn't able to uncover any news items to confirm such talk, so I dismissed it as Pentagon gossip.

Well, it appears that the rumors were true. According to a piece in today's Post, Israel did lobby the NSG back in March and they are now taking a proposal to Capitol Hill:

The Israeli presentation, made in a "nonpaper" that allows for official deniability, was offered in the context of the NSG's debate over India's bid for an exemption, according to a March 17 letter by the NSG's chairman. Among the nations that have not signed the treaty, only India and Israel would qualify for admission to the NSG under the Israeli proposal.

David Siegel, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said it would be "grossly inaccurate" to suggest that Israel is demanding an exemption or linking its efforts to any other issue, such as the India debate.

"Israel has never asked the NSG for any exemption to its nuclear supply guidelines, nor has Israel made any Israeli-specific request of the NSG," Siegel said. "Israel, recognized to be a full-fledged adherent to the NSG guidelines, has urged the NSG to consider adopting a generic, multi-tiered, criteria-based approach towards nuclear technology transfers." He noted that some NSG countries previously have suggested such an approach.

"Modification of the NSG guidelines, were it to take place along the lines proposed by Israel, would considerably enhance the nuclear nonproliferation regime," Siegel said.

The Israeli plan offers 12 criteria for allowing nuclear trade with non-treaty states, including one that hints at Israel's status as an undeclared nuclear weapons state: A state should be allowed to engage in nuclear trade if it applies "stringent physical protection, control and accountancy measures to all nuclear weapons, nuclear facilities, source material and special nuclear material in its territory."

If you look at the tenor of Bush administration nonproliferation policy, they should be inclined to agree with such a proposal. Prior to 2000, nonproliferation was about keeping the declared and undeclared portions of the nuclear weapons club as small as possible. Now, nonproliferation is about keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of 'tyrants' and 'terrorists.'

While I would be the last one to advocate for giving a 'tyrant' or a 'terrorist' a nuclear weapon, I would like to point out two flaws in the White House's logic: (1) What exactly are the criteria for applying either label to a nation or group? (2) How do plan on convincing all states with relatively mature nuclear industries to sign up to those definitions?

Right now, the answer to the first question looks a lot like 'those nations or groups who oppose U.S. foreign policy.' If the administration has an answer for the second question, I sincerely hope it does not have the word 'followership' in it. It wouldn't surprise me if it had the word 'U.S. sanctions' in it though.

Fortunately, I think the Bush administration will keep its distance from the Israeli proposal for fear of doing harm to their India deal. This is probably also why we are hearing about Israeli activity on Capitol Hill. If the White House was really receptive to the proposal, the first time we would have heard about it is when a final agreement was ready for signature.

Canada's sleeper hit: Trailer Park Boys

2007-09-30T09:43:00.000-04:00

It appears that in the grand tradition of Kids in the Hall, American is once again ignoring a rich source of comedy gold coming out of Canada. Trailer Park Boys is a COPS-style mockumentary about the white trash who occupy the fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park in Cold Harbor, Nova Scotia.

The show centers around two ex-cons named Ricky and Julian, as well as their friend and neighbor Bubbles. The trio spend most of the series coming up with ways to make money, both legally and illegally. They are joined by a cast of characters that would be very recognizable on Jerry Springer, including a stripper who is also an unwed mother, a white wannabe-rapper cum porn director, and a drunk ex-cop who serves as the park's supervisor and frequent villain.

Most of the time, the show's plot centers around a money-making scheme hatched by either Ricky or Julian. That being said, there is a great deal of story continuity between episodes and the relationship between all of the characters evolves quite a bit over time.

I imagine bet the main reason Trailer Park Boys never caught on in the U.S. is the show's heavy use of profanity. With prominently displayed episode titles, such as "F*ck Community College, Let's Get Drunk and Eat Chicken Fingers," "If I Can't Smoke and Swear I'm F*cked," and "Where the F*ck is Oscar Goldman?" you can probably imagine the version briefly aired by BBC America was more heavily censored than the average episode of Jerry Spinger.

Profanity aside, the writing on Trailer Park Boys is cleverest I've seen in years. It makes America's take COPS mockumentaries, Reno 911!, look like it was produced by monkeys.

For those who are interested, episodes of the show can be readily found on Google Video, but I would highly recommend getting the DVDs because they are packed with hilarious special features. I can't put it on my site because of the profanity, but here is the 30-second clip that first drew me to the show.

Transitions and gifts

2007-09-28T20:04:00.000-04:00

Well, today was my last day with the Army. While I'm eager to start work on the nonproliferation projects my boss at State is cooking up, I'm also sad to the organization.

America's soldiers aren't perfect and sometimes they need a little civilian direction, but they're about the only people I know who regularly (and humbly) pull off the impossible. It felt good to know to lend our boys and girls in green a hand during a particularly rough time.

Thankfully, I won't be complete 'out of the green' at the State Department. Many of my coworkers are retired chemists from Ft. Detrick and the Edgewood Chem-Bio Center. Working with so Marylanders will be a bit of a transition, but I can cope.

In other news, I have gifts to offer my readers. I pre-ordered the Orange Box, which is a game package that includes Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life 2 and its two episodes. Since I already own Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2 Episode 1, I can transfer them to another person as a gift.

Valve products are served up the purchasers electronically over their Steam network, so I won't need to mail the recipients anything. If you are interested in receiving either game, please send an e-mail to robot.economist AT gmail DOT com. I will pick the recipients on the evening of October 10th using a method based on a random number generator.

I will try my damnedest to ensure that all of my readers (including those outside of the U.S.) have a fair shot, but be aware that Steam may not extend service to your country.

Land Warrior in Iraq

2007-09-26T08:45:00.000-04:00

Major props go to Noah Schachtman, who took time out of a busy schedule of alternatively living in Ba'athist palaces and sleeping in fetid kitchens to look in on how the tech demonstrators from the now-cancelled Land Warrior are doing:

Captain Jack Moore, the commander of the 4/9's "Blowtorch" company, peers into his Land Warrior monocle. Inside is a digital map of Tarmiyah, a filthy little town about 25 kilometers north of Baghdad that's become a haven for Islamists. Blue icons show two of his platoons sweeping through the western half of the town. Two other icons represent Blowtorch soldiers who have teamed up with special forces and Iraqi Army units to raid local mosques with insurgent ties.

A red dot suddenly pops up on Moore's monocle screen: 3rd platoon has found a pair of improvised bombs -- black boxes, filled with homemade explosives. Other troops will circumvent the scene.

As the other platoons move south to north, green lights blink on Moore's map. Each of these "digital chem lights" represents a house checked and cleared. It keeps different groups of soldiers from kicking down the same set of doors twice.

A year ago, these chem lights weren't even part of the Land Warrior code. But after a suggestion from a Manchu soldier, the digital markers were added -- and quickly became the system's most popular feature. During air assaults on Baquba, to the northeast, troops were regularly dropped a quarter or half-kilometer from their original objective; the chem lights allowed them to converge on the spot where they were supposed to go. In the middle of one mission, a trail of green lights was used to mark a new objective -- and show the easiest way to get to the place.

[snip]

[Capt. Aaron] Miller is still not happy with how much the system weighs. "Look, I need this like I need a 10th arm," he sighs. And all this stuff (Land Warrior does), my cell phone basically does the same at home." But Miller is committed to soldiers being networked. So he's willing to be the digital guinea pig. "It's got to start with someone."

The system has become more palatable to the Manchus because it's been pared down, in all sorts of ways. By consolidating parts, a 16-pound ensemble is now down to a little more than 10. A new, digital gun scope has been largely abandoned by the troops -- the system was too cumbersome and too slow to be effective. And now, not every soldier in the 4/9 has to lug around Land Warrior. Only team leaders and above are so equipped.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised how accurately my concerns about the Land Warrior played out on the battlefield. The blue force tracking and land navigation functions are very popular, while the computing and scope pieces were largely relegated to the rubbish bin.

Complaints that the system would better if it were only a quarter of its current weight also indicate that either the underlying technology is not mature enough or that the designers crammed it with superfluous features. I'm going to bet that the latter is a far more likely culprit than the latter -- especially considering how many weapons systems in the pipe feel disconnected from current needs.

The most ironic bit of Capt. Miller's comment about how his cellphone back at home does many of the same functions as the Land Warrior. That sounds a lot like the result of this JASONS report issued two years ago, which theorized that adapting commercial communications platforms to military use might be a better method of improving situational awareness at the lowest levels.

This brings us to something I have been thing about since I read this Defense News piece on how the DoD is effectively hiring a lead system integrator to support their counternaroctics efforts. If there is little evidence that DoD bureaucrats can successfully plan and develop successful weapons platforms for the U.S. military, why shouldn't we be outsourcing large chunks of the acquisition process?

You can at least terminate contractors when it is clear they cannot deliver on the terms of their contract. The same cannot be said about the thousands of 'acquisition professionals' who are barely doing their job right now.

Air Force going out of business?

2007-09-24T08:51:00.000-04:00

My one-sentence interpretation of Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne's speech last week:

My service made bad force planning decisions in the mid-to-late 1990s that have made it increasingly irrelevant. I blame everyone but the Air Force.

I love how Wynne focuses his lamentations on the Air Force's offensive air-to-air capabilities, but doesn't mention its other roles -- specifically strategic airlift and close air support.

In a way, the Air Force is paying for its role as the dominant military service in the 1950s and 1960s. It took a much larger portion of the budget back then, which allowed it to fund some of their most impressive and enduring aircraft: B-52, C-5, C-130, AC-130, A-10, and F-15. Fortunately, it looks like the Air Force invested in airframes that have withstood the test of time, both in terms of performance and utility.

It makes one wonder whether the F-22 or F-35 will still be relevant as long as the B-52 has.

Movie Review: The Kingdom

2007-09-21T20:45:00.000-04:00

If I had to summarize Peter Berg's upcoming film The Kingdom in one sentence, it would be: "So good Jennifer Garner couldn't ruin it."

Before I dive into the meat of my review, here is a quick outline of the story. An attack similar to the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and 2003 Riyadh compound bombing racks up huge death toll at a Western oil engineer enclave in Riyadh. Jamie Foxx plays the slick leader of an FBI terrorism task force that uses his bureaucratic wiles to get a himself and a small team (Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman) into Saudi Arabia to investigate.

The political and bureaucratic resistance that Mr. Foxx's team encounters in Riyadh becomes an interesting microcosm of the difficulties in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The Americans want to participate in the investigation and find the perpetrators. The Saudis keep Foxx's team at arm's length because they don't want to be seen by the Arab public as inviting Western paternalism.

In the end, Foxx makes a strong professional bond with a Saudi State Security colonel played by Paradise Now's Ashraf Barhoum that opens the right political doors for a energetic, joint Saudi-American investigation. The most gripping part of the film by far is a sequence where the U.S.-Saudi group battle to save a team member from a fate similar to Daniel Pearl.

While Foxx did a fairly good job, Barhoum's nuanced character really stands out in the film. In the same way that Foxx and Barhoum's relationship is a microcosm of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, Barhoum is microcosm of Saudi Arabia itself -- an earnestly pious nation that is being pulled apart by ineffectual leadership and an unyielding radical minority.

The best bit part goes to Jeremy Piven, who plays a stereotypically fast-talking, risk-averse deputy chief of mission for the U.S. embassy in Riyadh. Jennifer Garner even did a good job in her role as a quiet, conservatively-dressed forensic pathologist for the FBI. As my girlfriend said, Garner's performance was enhanced by the fact that she kept her enormous, uh, 'talent' underneath nondescript black T-shirts.

Altogether, The Kingdom is a great movie. Think of is as a far more subtle and less didactic version of Syriana. It is easily worth the price and hassle of seeing it on opening night (September 28th).

Oh and before you ask, the huge building used as the set for a Saudi palace is not actually a palace. It is the Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi.

Vacation pictures!

2007-09-20T22:59:00.000-04:00

I apologize for the lack of updates recently, but a whirlwind trip to San Diego and my transition to the State Department have been keeping my pretty busy. I should have everything straightened out soon.

I did upload some shots from my vacation though. I'm particularly proud of this picture of a tiny sand crab. Macro photography hasn't been easy for me.

I will also have a review for The Kingdom up soon (my girlfriend and I stumbled into a sneak preview last weekend somehow).

In the meantime, here is a music video for the Japanese metal band The Hizaki Grace Project. Hizaki is the blond chick in the red dress totalling shredding on lead guitar in their first hit, "Philosopher."

Hooray for chicks in metal bands.

Back in town

2007-09-16T09:10:00.000-04:00

I am back from the Outer Banks. It was a pretty good trip and I only had to work about 12 hours the entire week. I will be posting some pictures that I took using my new camera on my Flickr site today.

I returned to DC to discover that my interim clearance has finally come in at the State Department. I am supposed to start orientation on Monday, but I will be San Diego that day on Army business. So that's going to be a bit of a mess.

In the meantime, I point my readers to two things I stumbled across on vacation. First is this Get Your War On strip from late July:

Sure, sometimes Get Your War On is a little whinny, but sometimes it hits comic gold, such as the above strip. Second, here is a video of guys playing with their home made flamethrower and other such nonsense:

~~I will have pictures uploaded and movie reviews posted later today.~~ I will do all of that when I get back from San Diego. Sorry about being such a tease.

RE in NC

2007-09-08T19:49:00.001-04:00

I've strayed from my native soil of Virginia for a beach vacation in North Carolina's Outer Banks. Unfortunately, tropical storm Gabrielle also decided to visit 'OBX' this week, so I don't know how much time I will be spending on the beach.

If the weather forecasters are correct, I may have plenty of time to update my blog from NC...

They did it again

2007-09-06T20:40:00.000-04:00

First of all, I can't believe I totally scooped the ExportLawBlog on this story. Clif Burns runs a tight ship over there, so I'm assuming this is the one and only time I will beat him to an export control story.

What is left for an administration that has secretly signed and negotiated a treaty with India that punches a huge hole in our nuclear export control regime and another that punches a hole in defense export procedures for Great Britain? Go for a hat trick by steathly negotiating and signing a similar arms trade treaty with Australia!

In a very low-profile meeting on September 5th, President Bush and long-serving Australian Prime Minister John Howard did just that. The State Department issued a fact sheet on the subject that is pretty light on the details, but I would bet that the Aussies are getting the same deal with gave the Brits a few months ago.

Both Bush and Howard mentioned the treaty at their 'joint press availability' that day. Howard's statement danced around the details and as usual, Bush's statement was so inarticulate that he didn't need to do the same.

Frankly, I am a little surprised by this latest defense trade treaty on two accounts. Some of the folks in the defense cooperation community of the Pentagon were at least aware of the British DTCT a few months before it was signed. The Australian treaty, on the other hand, came as a complete surprise.

Moreover, I am surprised that the Bush administration signed a second DTCT before securing the first one. They have no conception of how the Senate will react when the first DTCT comes up for Congressional review. It is also my understanding that the U.S.-UK implementing arrangements are still being hammered out between State, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the British Ministry of Defence.

Bringing the Aussies to the table right now is probably going to spread our already over-tasked U.s. negotiators out even more -- and I would know, they are about 2 months behind on approving some agreements my office has negotiated.

I hear one OSD lawyer is so busy that he has to come in on Saturday and Sunday just to do his regular office work. If I was in his position, I would just walk away from that job. Life is way to short.

FCS Follies, Part 1

2007-09-03T17:28:00.000-04:00

In a fit of boredom a few months ago, I wrote a briefing paper outlining what I saw as handful of critical issues related to network-centric warfare that need to reconciled before the Army starts fielding Future Combat Systems. I was planning to hold it until right before I left for the State Department, mostly to avoid becoming persona non grata at PM FCS.

One of my coworkers stumbled upon my two-pager back in May and unbeknownst to me, passed it up to the FCS folks with his name on it. After straightening out the plagiarism issue, FCS sent me a polite, but dismissive 'mind your own business' e-mail. Needless to say, I think I was taken off their Christmas card list.

During this whole affair, my boss was sent a copy of the paper and his reaction was much more positive. He suggested expanding the paper by including some solutions to these issues. I've decided to test each of these expanded ideas on my readers. Here is part 1:

"Lit up like Christmas Trees"

Soon after the summer 2006 skirmish between Israel and Hezbollah concluded, claims surfaced that Hezbollah managed to hack into the IDF's U.S.-made SINCGARS radios. It turned out that Hezbollah hadn't actually hacked the radios, but instead used a bank of modified radio scanners to track the electromagnetic emissions of IDF units.

This example points to a key vulnerability of the network-centric model, namely its vulnerability to electronic warfare support. In order to provide the kind of real-time data exchange and blue force tracking capabilities envisioned in FCS, the density of wireless communication will have to expand manifold.

Individual units and soldiers will not only be swapping a wider variety of tactical information, they will also be giving off a constant amount of positional data. They will be lit up like Christmas trees adorned in intense, but invisible lights. Each tank, truck and soldier will be a beacon of electromagnetic radiation that can be intercepted, triangulated and tracked.

Since it was playing defense on familiar territory, Hezbollah didn't need to crack the IDF's radios to carry out effective operations. They knew where their resources and units were located, so it was only a matter of triangulating IDF locations and feeding the information to nearby assets.

A future reduction in the cost and complexity of compact anti-radiation guidance packages for indirect-fire munitions would pose an even bigger threat to a network-centric force. If a simply seeker package just doubled the accuracy of the simple artillery rockets and mortars favored by insurgents, it could lead to serious casualties. Tactical network hubs will be easy targets at the very least.

There is no easy solution to this problem because it exploits the most indispensable part of network-centric warfare, the network itself. Lasers are the only wireless media that do not 'leak' a traceable amount of electromagnetic radiation, but it requires line of sight. DARPA has been contemplating a laser-based work-around for blue-force tracking called 'Dynamic Optical Tags' or DOTS for short.

In the DOTS system, each vehicle and soldier would be equipped with a tag that functions as a passive light modulator. When the tag's receiver is struck by an encoded laser signal, it modulates the beam to pack it with new information and reflects it back at the point of transmission. A powered version of this process could be used as a two-way interface between the tag and the light source.

This system would still be limited to line of sight and would have to mounted to an UAV (a blimp maybe?), but it would very difficult to intercept and track.

The problem with the phrase 'evil-doer'

2007-09-03T14:04:00.000-04:00

I had conversation with a friend over lunch last week that got me thinking about how the word 'evil-doer,' specifically how use of the word has become more common in foreign policy discussions. This friend has been working for Program Executive Officer Soldier since he finished undergrad in 2005. He had limited exposure to politics or history as an accounting major, so he was picking my brain about the 'surge' and the War on Terror more broadly.

It is difficult to discuss U.S. foreign policy towards the Near East in the abstract, so before delving into my views, I asked him about how much he knew about the region. Not surprisingly, his response was 'very little,' so I refined my question to 'Do you know why a guy like OBL is a terrorist'? The response to that was 'He hates America and wants to take over the Near East. I don't know why he uses terrorism though. Evil is kind of hard to understand.'

At this point, I gave him a 20 minute primer on the origins of linkage between Islamic fundamentalism and grand terrorism -- starting from Sayyid Qutb's Milestones to today. He was particularly surprised to hear that even though Osama bin Laden and Saddam are not explicitly linked, al Qaeda's existence and mission are deeply intertwined with the 1991 Persian Gulf War and its aftermath.

[Explainer: Part of bin Laden's hatred towards the Saudi royal family comes from the fact that they chose American support over his offer to wage an Afghan-style guerrilla war in defense of Kuwait. Bin Laden's 1996 fatwah states that the presence of U.S. troops on Saudi soil as an affront to Islam. It also claims that the U.S. is culpable for the deaths of the millions of Iraqi children due to sanctions.]

We need to move away from terms like 'evil-doer' because they allow people to paper over the murky elements of politics and war. We're not facing-off against an opaque, cartoonish foe, such as Cobra Commander or Skeletor. Bin Laden and his ilk more like Tony Soprano or even Tony Montana. They ruthlessly pursue a set of fairly clear objectives in a manner that is bounded by their own twisted sense of right and wrong.

After mentioning this conversation to another friend, she suggested that I photoshop Cobra Commander into the photo of Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein shaking hands in the 1980s.

Update: SG has just been brimming with great ideas. Here is a rough breakdown of what goes into G.I. Joe's definition of the "The Battle":

Is Taiwan's referendum fever bad?

2007-08-29T21:27:00.000-04:00

So I've received a few e-mails from concerned readers recently asking about my view of the 'U.N.' referendum situation. Although there was some variation across e-mails, the main thrust of each was essentially: "Now that the U.S. has labelled the referendum a 'mistake,' will Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian go through with it? Is there a chance the Kuomintang will intervene?

The answer to those questions is unfortunately yes and no. President Chen has demonstrated before that he is willing to beat the independence drum to garner votes from the activist wing of his Democratic Progressive Party, even when such actions only wound the cross-strait relationship further. It appears that the DPP leadership will continue to embrace this tactic, as evidenced by the party platform they recently crafted for the 2008 elections.

In terms of KMT intervention, the situation is far more complex. The members of the panel charged with implementing referendum questions are apportioned according to party representation in the Legislative Yuan. Since the KMT leads a coalition that has a legislative majority, they have an procedural veto. They have already used this veto to throw out a more inflammatory referendum question about whether the nation should seek U.N. membership under the name 'Taiwan.'

The problem is that pursuing membership in international organizations, particularly those that do not require de jure sovereignty, is quite popular. KMT leaders understand that they can't not put that issue to a vote now that it has been raise by the DPP. As a result, they moved to water down the language of the referendum question. It currently reads:

Do you agree on Taiwan's using a practical and flexible name to apply for reentering the U.N. as well as joining other international organizations? In other words, do you agree on Taiwan applying for reentering the U.N. and other international organizations under the name of Republic of China, Taiwan, or any other name that would be helpful both to the U.N. bid and to maintaining Taiwan's dignity?

The only way to make that question any more confusing is to offer voters a 'GTFO' option in addition to the more traditional 'Yes' and 'No' choices.

This watered down language will temporarily inflame nationalism on the mainland, strain relations with the United States and increase the political divide between pan-Green and pan-Blue. With a bit of luck, it will only take a few months for the Taiwan situation will drift back into the equilibrium it has occupied off-and-on since 2000.

In the meantime, grey hairs will continue to proliferate at that Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs as things ramp up to the vote in March.

I had never thought I would say this...

2007-08-28T17:55:00.000-04:00

I'd like to extend my most sincere thanks for the Communist Party of India. A few days ago, CPI's leadership threatened to pull out of the Congress Party's ruling coalition if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh continued to pursue its nuclear deal with the U.S.

Indian leftists have traditionally served as a main driver of India's policy of non-alignment. Even though it has made them increasingly unpopular with the Indian public, leftists are sticking to their guns.

Since Monday, CPI has softened its position some and agreed to form a review panel to re-examine India's nuclear independence in terms of the extremely deferential 123 Agreement that has taken shape over the last few months. This may provide them with some cover to abandon their position, but it will at least stay the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime's death sentence a little longer.

Before I get a few e-mails excusing me of being 'backward' or a 'China-lover,' I will explain my thinking. If both PM Singh and President Bush think that their nuclear deal will create an opening for a U.S.-India partnership, they are selling an illusion.

The Indian public overwhelmingly supports the deal because they believe the NPT regime is unjust. They also believe that many U.S. policies are equally unjust and offer only tepid support for a strategic partnership that goes beyond nuclear cooperation. The CPI should receive credit for recognizing this fact and approaching the Bush-Singh deal with suspicion.

Memo to BG Mike Brogan

2007-08-27T20:48:00.000-04:00

In response to Marine Brigadier-General Mike Brogan's comment that press coverage is inflaming insurgent interest and turning the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle into a 'symbolic target,' I have the following response:

BG Brown is forgetting one issue, namely that dead soldiers are the 'symbolic targets' that the insurgents are actually after. Getting the insurgents to concentrate their attention on the handful of MRAPs that will enter the arsenal over the next year will take some pressure off targeting the more plentiful up-armored HMMWV.

That will undoubtedly save lives and saving lives is the only reason why the public is allowing the Pentagon to grossly mismanage the MRAP program with few consequences. What he is really concerned about is looking bad when we drop $20 billion on a gas-guzzling monster of a wheeled transport that only offers a marginal advantage in protection.

In a sense, the MRAP is symbolic -- it is a symbol of the military's complete inability to recognize that peace-enforcement and peacekeeping have been very common military operations since the end of the Cold War. In order to make up for the two years we spent in Iraq without a cogent counterinsurgency manual or effective military strategy, they are dropping a huge wad of cash to field a weapons system at the 11th hour that isn't even really ready.

Don't get me wrong, I feel strongly that we should issue our troops with gear that will provide them with a generous amount of protection. My heart is always crushed when I see those poor wounded vets that come by the Pentagon every week.

I just think the Pentagon's acquisition strategy over the last six years has been to schizophrenically jump from one technology to the next in search of silver bullets. As a result, we let the insurgents set the technological tempo in Iraq, forcing the U.S. military to expend a premium of blood and treasure playing catch-up.

Why am I so incensed by this issue? Because I know that folks in the Army Secretariat periodically examined the issue of mine-protected vehicles going back to at least 2002. Instead of dusting off the concept in 2003 or 2004, the Pentagon blindly focused on IED jammers instead of simple armor issues.

But hey, I'm the crazy one, remember. Someone get me a straitjacket and a comfy padded room.

Now that is cool

2007-08-27T08:54:00.000-04:00

Explosives-geek and writer David Hambling recently did a short piece for Noah Shachtman's DANGER ROOM blog on Navy beach-clearing experiments using continuous-rod warheads. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a CR warhead is cylinder of explosives jackets in ductile metal rods that are welded together at opposite ends. When the warhead goes off, the rods deform into a ring of hot metal that can deeply into targets. CR warheads are typically used on anti-aircraft missiles because their effect radius can compensate for a mediocre guidance package.

This is a picture from the Wikipedia entry for CR warheads and there are only two words that can possibly describe it: flippin' sweet. (Note: A reader pointed out that this may be a picture of a Canadian pipe bomb and not a CR warhead. Either way, it is still an amazing photo.)

Seeing power and rubles

2007-08-26T18:21:00.000-04:00

I want to apologize for not updating recently. My office's sister organizations in the Air Force, Navy and Office of Secretary of Defense agreed recently to engage some Lean Six Sigma gurus in pursuit of 'business process improvement.'

The whole thing feels like it is some sort of pyramid scheme. I just have this sneaking feeling that nothing will get done until four or five of my civilian coworkers get their 'green belt' or 'black belt' certification.

Anyways, I wanted to offer an alternative narrative for recent Russian military exercises and pronouncements. One might see the Kremlin's decision to dust-off its strategic toys and its participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as demonstrations of Russian power, but I tend to see ruble signs as well.

My thinking on this issue goes back all the way back to Peace Mission 2005, which was a series of joint Russo-Chinese military exercises ostensibly aimed at counterterrorism operations. The counterterrorism theme didn't stop Russia from rolling out its strategic bombers for the occasion.

This idea was reinforced the following year by reports of Putin crowing over record-breaking arms sales figures in 2005. My curiosity was peaked, so I tracked down the most recent copy of the Congressional Research Service's "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Countries" report. I prefer the CRS report to other surveys of arms sales when it comes to French, Russian and Chinese sales. This is because sales to the developing world generally constitute 80-90% of total sales for each country.

The information on Russian sales since 1998 is very revealing, particularly relating to combat aircraft. Russian R&D spending on aircraft technology bottomed out after the transition from communism in the early 1990s. As a result, Russia's last new aircraft (the Su-34) had its maiden flight in 1990 and took almost 15 years to go into production. Sukhoi is supposedly pushing a fifth-generation fighter (the PAK FA) into production by 2012, but even with Russia's influx of foreign currency, I wouldn't hold by breath for it.

In order to complete with increasingly advanced U.S. and European designs, the Russians have agreed to riskier payment structures and more deferential production terms. That will only so far though. Another way for Russia to keep sales up is to demonstrate that its aging equipment is still relevant on today's battlefield.

The People's Liberation Army Air Force generals didn't bite back then, so the Russians may be upping the ante. What is a better selling point than 'these bombers are serious enough to scare Europe's NATO members'?

The same could be said about Russia's decision to put the Admiral Kuznetsov back to sea. Showing the Chinese what their Varyag hull could do when completed might quiet some of their complaints about cost and schedule overruns.

If market penetration in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia has dipped in recent years, joint military exercises can be an effective way to showcase what they've been missing.

I'm not saying the prospect of sales is the only motivation for these decisions, nor am I discounting the argument that arms sales in and of themselves can be a power play. My point is that many of the recent Russian military activities I highlighted also have clear monetary motivations.

Book Review: Survivor

2007-08-22T08:15:00.000-04:00

Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk's second novel. It came out about three years after Fight Club was published, but around the time the movie adaptation came out in theaters.

It also shares many of Fight Club's style and themes. A socially marginalized narrator hero overcomes the emptiness of today's post-modern, materialistic society by becoming a humorous Nietzsche superman. The writing style uses a short, conversational format that is loaded with pop culture references and neologisms.

This time, the narrator hero is the sexually-repressed survivor of a religious cult that is part Puritan and part People's Temple. The New York media machine quickly descends on him to harvest his fame and morph him into a made-for-TV religious icon.

As his 15 minutes of fame wind down, he is approached by the sister of man he convinced to commit suicide name Fertility. She shares her deceased brother's ability to see into the future, as well as the depression that comes with knowing everything.

Fertility promises to feed him with predictions that catapult him back into the lime light. The strategy works and he becomes an enormously popular icon with his own radio and television programs, prayer books, and dashboard figurines. He even lends his name to a landfill for America's used pornography.

A shadow from his past appears and changes everything. The story ends with the protagonist in the pilot's seat of hijacked airliner that is going to crash somewhere in the Australian outback. In fact, the book is written in reverse as the main character dictates the tale of his rise and fall into the airliner's flight data recorder. Even the chapters and page numbers count backwards to the end at page 1 of chapter 1.

Although the porn landfill is interesting, my favorite part of the book is where the author describes crossing the country by hiding in 18-wheel borne sections of prefab trailer homes. That is definitely a means of covert travel that I would have never envisioned. The best phrase from Survivor comes from the narrator's agent, who states that "[t]he only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage." I find that phrase disturbingly relevant today.

If you reading experience encourages you to write Chuck a letter, go with those feelings. He goes to great lengths to answer his fan mail and is know for sending odd gifts with his replies.

A friend of mine from college who first turned me on to Palahniuk was sent an autographed toilet seat and a reply written on 12 restaurant napkins.He had both pieces framed and hung them up in his dorm room. They made for an interesting conversation piece.

All in all, Survivor was an interesting break from my usual stack of history texts and journals and I would recommend to anyone with an unexpired library card or 14 bucks to burn.

Although I am going to finish that Gunther Rothenberg piece on Napoleonic warfare next, Survivor made me want to read more of Palahniuk's works. I think I will tackle Choke sometime in the near future, before the upcoming film adaptation hits theaters.

Arkin hearts Richardson

2007-08-20T09:02:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the lack of posts this weekend, but I just turned 25, so I decided to focus on birthday cake instead of blogging. Got a pretty sweet Canon SD1000 to replace my old S330. Letting the well-travelled, old clunker go is a little sad, but I think the new camera's seven megapixels of photographic goodness will help me get over it.

Onto to the news: After a long period of opinion estrangement, Bill Arkin and I appear to be back on the same page:

Now read how Bill Richardson handled the question of new nuclear warheads: "We do not need a new generation of nuclear weapons," he says, speaking as a former Energy secretary. "Under my administration, we will lead the world toward the reduction of nuclear arsenals, not their augmentation," he writes.

And then he tied it together with other objectives to make it real: "The Non-Proliferation Treaty commits non-nuclear states to forego nuclear weapons, and it also commits the nuclear weapons states to the goal of nuclear disarmament. Too often, this aspect of the Treaty is forgotten. In order to get others to take the NPT seriously, we need to take it seriously ourselves. We should re-affirm our commitment to the long-term goal of global nuclear disarmament, and we should invite the Russians to join us in a moratorium on all new nuclear weapons. And we should negotiate further staged reductions in our arsenals, beyond what has already been agreed, over the next decade."

Richardson also excels at answers on Russia, Iran and North Korea, on Pakistan, and on actual moves he might take to reduce the chance the nuclear weapons or nuclear materials would make their way into the hands of terrorists. "Negotiations to reduce our arsenal also represent our diplomatic ace-in-the-hole," Richardson writes. "We can leverage our own proposed reductions to get the other nuclear powers to do the same -- and simultaneously get the non-nuclear powers to forego both weapons and nuclear fuel enrichment, and to agree to rigorous global safeguards and verification procedures."

Although I don't agree with Richardson's aggressive stance on ending the Iraq War, it is only one negative in a broad range of positives -- most important of which is his libertarian-leaning domestic platform. As he said during Sunday's ABC News-hosted Democratic debate, he has both an interesting policy platform and experience as an administrator.

I don't like to wade too deeply into politics, but seeing as how Richardson's chances at snagging the Democratic nod are pretty long, I am endorsing his candidacy for the vice presidential slot on the Democratic ticket in '08. So vote [insert name here]/Richardson in '08!

What an idiot

2007-08-17T12:24:00.000-04:00

The following paragraph was plucked directly from Rudy Giuliani's essay in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs:

Another step in rebuilding a strong diplomacy will be to make changes in the State Department and the Foreign Service. The time has come to refine the diplomats' mission down to their core purpose: presenting U.S. policy to the rest of the world. Reforming the State Department is a matter not of changing its organizational chart -- although simplification is needed -- but of changing the way we practice diplomacy and the way we measure results. Our ambassadors must clearly understand and clearly advocate for U.S. policies and be judged on the results. Too many people denounce our country or our policies simply because they are confident that they will not hear any serious refutation from our representatives. The American ideals of freedom and democracy deserve stronger advocacy. And the era of cost-free anti-Americanism must end.

That statement makes the inconsistencies in Mitt Romney's piece from the last issue look relatively minor.

Does Giuliani know what the Foreign Service does on a day-to-day basis? Most spend their time issuing visas, helping U.S. citizens abroad, conducting intergovernmental business and most importantly, maintaining an understanding of the countries they are working in. We are in the second decade of the Information Age and the Hypertext Markup Language is more than 15 years old. The president can present U.S. policy to the world in a thirty minute press conference. He doesn't need drones to mindlessly repeat U.S. policy ad nauseam.

This brings us to the fact that Rudy Giuliani's approach to foreign policy demonstrates the savvy and depth of in a high school boy who goes to debate club meetings to cruising for girls with low self-esteem issues. Members of the international community don't disagree with us simply because we haven't explained our position well enough. They disagree because they don't like some (or all) aspects of U.S. policy.

Despite what a neoconservative will tell you, there is no such thing as objective moral high-ground in international relations. The U.S. can't just state its foreign policy to the international community and assume that anyone (short of the British and Australians) will blindly follow suit. Leadership is not just stating policy, but instead, its haggling and cajoling allies, friendly and even hostile countries needed to get everyone on board with a policy.

Giuliani's approach feels like it will be all talk, but no action. I mean, how exactly does he propose raising of the cost of anti-Americanism abroad? Imposing sanctions? Ending diplomatic relations? Punitive military action? Get real...

One last thing: Does anyone else remember the News Hour interview with Condi Rice from late 2002 where she almost says 'leadership breeds followership'? It was such a classic demonstration of the Ameri-centric worldview that is becoming popular among baby-boom generation politicians and foreign policy elites.

Congress hearts Iran sanctions too

2007-08-16T21:43:00.000-04:00

Galrahn, the Armchair Admiral, recommended that I also do an analysis of the Iran sanctions bills currently moving through the House and Senate.

One of these three bills is the "Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2007" that was originally sponsored by Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) and introduced in the House in May.

HR.2347 "Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2007"

The bill orders the Department of Treasury to maintain a list of foreign or U.S. persons who have invested more than $20 million in the Iranian oil industry. It then gives investors who divest themselves from a person on the Treasury list a safe harbor from civil, criminal and administrative actions and suits against the divestiture.

It also makes it the policy of the United States to support decisions by state and local governments and educational institutions to divest themselves from persons who are on the Treasury list.

The bill was passed by a hefty margin (408-6) in the House in early July and was introduced in the Senate in early August. I know socially responsible investing is really popular with folks on the left, but I bet the tangible impact of this Representative Frank's bill will be marginal.

The other two bills share the title "Iran Counterproliferation Act of 2007" and share most of the same content. The House version was introduced in March 2007 by Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA).

HR.1400 "Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007"

The Lantos bill closes off the exemptions for the importation of Iranian rugs, foodstuffs and informational materials and the exportation of civil aviation safe equipment. Not surprisingly, exemptions for medicine and food exports are left alone, no doubt the handiwork of the pharmaceutical and farm lobbies.

It also mandates the President impose six types of sanctions on persons found to be violating the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. Currently, the President is only require to impose two sanctions from a list that includes exclusion from the U.S. financial system, being listed as a denied party under all of the major export control regulations and disbarment from doing business with the U.S. government. It also removes the President's ability to waive these sanctions under any circumstances.

The bill also makes the foreign subsidiaries of any U.S. company subject to the Iran Sanctions Act by making the parent company liable for the subsidiary's sanctions busting. The definition of a foreign subsidiary is also defined down from super majority ownership to simple majority ownership.

Ironically, Lantos's bill would require that the executive list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp as a 'specially designated global terrorist,' a 'foreign terrorist organization' and a 'weapons of mass destruction proliferator.'

S.970 "Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007"

The Senate version of this bill was introduced shortly after the Lantos bill in March 2007 by Senator Gordon Smith (D-OR).

The only major difference between the House and Senate bills is that the Senate takes the additional step of negotiation and implementation of a U.S.-Russian 123 agreement until the President can certify that Russia has stopped assisting the Iranian nuclear program.

Given the broad scope of unilater U.S. sanctions already imposed on Iran and persons who deal with Iran, I imagine the impact of any of these measures will be marginal as best. At worst, they will have no impact on Iran while driving a larger wedge between Russia, Europe and the U.S.

Want to put money on that?

2007-08-16T10:46:00.000-04:00

Cato's Justin Logan wrote a smart piece in National Interest about applying to predictive markets to TV pundits and intelligence officials:

Foreign-policy analysts have an incredibly difficult task: to make predictions about the future based on particular policy choices in Washington. These difficulties extend into the world of intelligence, as well. The CIA issues reports with impossibly ambitious titles like "Mapping the Global Future", as if anyone could actually do that. The father of American strategic analysis, Sherman Kent, grappled with these difficulties in his days at OSS and CIA. When Kent finally grew tired of the vapid language used for making predictions, such as "good chance of", "real likelihood that" and the like, he ordered his analysts to start putting odds on their assessments. When a colleague complained that Kent was "turning us into the biggest bookie shop in town", Kent replied that he’d "rather be a bookie than a [expletive] poet."

Kent’s instinct was right. More bookies and fewer poets are what the United States needs, both in intelligence analysis and in foreign-policy punditry. University of California Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock examined large data sets where experts on various topics made predictions about the future. He was troubled to discover "an inverse relationship between how well experts do on scientific indicators of good judgment and how attractive these experts are to the media and other consumers of expertise." He proposed one way to reform the situation: conditioning experts’ appearance in high-profile media venues on "proven track records in drawing correct inferences from relevant real-world events unfolding in real time."

[snip]

It’s a fair question. The best way to correct the situation is by developing a predictions database, where experts can weigh-in on specific, falsifiable claims about the future, putting their reputations on the line. Something like this was envisioned in a DARPA program developed under Admiral John Poindexter in 2003. The so-called "policy analysis market" was designed to allow analysts to buy futures contracts for various scenarios. As the value of these contracts went up or down, other analysts could observe and investigate why, determining how and why others were "putting their money where their mouths were", and whether they should do the same.

But the "policy analysis market" sank beneath a wave of demagoguery from congressmen who had an astonishing lack of understanding how prediction markets are used to great effect in the investment banking, insurance and other industries.

I bet if the idea of predictive markets had been proposed by someone other than a quack like John Poindexter, we'd probably have a Intellindex to go along with other recent innovations such as intel analyst blogs and Intellipedia. I'm particularly enamoured with Intellipedia because even its unclassified level is great resource offering everything from long-view analyses to organization charts.

There is one issue that most folks overlook when discussing markets in the context of the Intelligence Community. Managers and executives should be careful when trying to incentivize participation in such an index. Offering bonuses to analysts who are consistently correct is one thing, but tying market performance to personnel evaluations will probably encourage analysts to make overly conservative wagers.

What's better than sanctions? More sanctions!

2007-08-15T20:24:00.000-04:00

I had to produce an primer for my boss and coworkers today about the Bush administration's decision to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp a 'specially designated global terrorist' and I figured I would share it with my readers:

What happened?

The United States Government designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a subset of the Iranian military, to be a 'specially designated global terrorist group' pursuant to the rules of Executive Order 13224 signed by President George W. Bush on September 23, 2001.

What is Executive Order 13224 and what is an SDGT?

E.O. 13224 allows the U.S. Government to block the property of any person (including corporate persons) in the U.S. that is listed in the order's annex. It also allows the government to block transactions between U.S. persons and anyone listed in the annex.

The Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State or Attorney General also have the power to declare a U.S. person or person within the U.S. as being subject to the limitations imposed by the order. The grounds for such a declaration are if that person has 'committed or poses a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the U.S.' or if that person has 'assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material or technological support or other services' to support acts of terrorism or to persons listed in the annex.

SDGT is just a fancy way of referring to the individuals and groups on in the E.O.'s annex. The simplified list of SDGTs is 11 pages long, while the detailed list is a little over 100 pages long.

What has changed?

In practice, the 'State Sponsor of Terrorism' designator hasn't translated into the same set of restrictions for each country on the state-sponsors list. For Iran, being on the 'bad boys' list means that no U.S. person or person within the U.S. can trade with or conduct transactions in Iran or with the Iranian Government. There is a narrow exception to this rule for importing Iranian trinkets, information, foodstuffs and, most importantly, Persian rugs, through foreign intermediaries.

Being designated an SDGT closes the Iranian Transaction Regulations' import exemptions on trinkets, food and carpets. It also allows the U.S. government to go beyond merely blocking transactions to actually freezing IRCG assets in the U.S. or held by U.S. persons.

It is not clear whether this change will actually have a tangible impact on the IRCG. The U.S. government seized most Iranian government assets shortly after the 1979 revolution. It has imposed an unilateral embargo on Iran continuously since E.O. 12613 was put in place by the Reagan administration.

There have been so few opportunities to legally acquire any Iranian property that I imagine the number of U.S. persons or persons in the U.S. holding IRCG assets is microscopic.

Is this going to be BDA Redux?:

Maybe. If the SecTreas, SecState and AG decide to use their authority to determine whether someone has assisted or provided support for the IRCG liberally, they could prohibit U.S. persons or persons in the U.S. from doing business with foreign firms that do business with the IRCG and its avatars.

That would be same tactic used by the Treasury Department to pressure Banco Delta Asia in Macau into freezing $25 million in North Korean assets. Iran's economy is less isolated from the world market than North Korea, so it is unclear whether the BDA strategy will be effective in this instance.

Either way, it definitely a bad day to be in the Persian carpet business. Maybe the industry should rebrand their products freedom rugs...

Dunlap is right, but does his point matter?

2007-08-14T21:34:00.000-04:00

For my readers who don't feel like reading through the recent essays written by Air Force Major General Charles J. Dunlap, I can summarize his point in two sentences:

Advocates of traditional counterinsurgency doctrine argue that air power is not as effective as ground presence when fighting an insurgency. They are wrong because ground troops can cause just as much collateral damage to the local population.

He's right to a certain degree. Ground troops can easily harm just as many civilians as a pilot in an F-18. If you abstracted Dunlap's logic to its furthest extent, ground forces should actually be causing the preponderance of civilian casualties because there are more of them and operate closest to them. I'm even willing to accept that statement on its face value.

The only problem with Dunlap's argument is that it is missing one key element: The objective of counterinsurgency is to establish and maintain public order, not merely fight off insurgents. Just read this statement:

Consider, for instance, this astonishing statement from a ISAF spokesman: “I am assured by uniformed colleagues in NATO that there is a marginal difference to the potential for civilian casualties between using a 500lb bomb and a 2,000lb bomb."

If military people really believe that there is only a “marginal” difference between a 500 lbs. bomb and a 2,000 lbs. bomb, then the depth of misinformation is truly disturbing. Accordingly, my article will examine the technologies and processes that operate today to limit collateral damage from air-delivered munitions.

What does collateral damage matter when you accidentally bomb a wedding? Or someone's home? Does an Iraqi care whether the Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb in his neighborhood or is a quarter-ton okay?

Setting aside accidents and collateral damage, how would General Dunlap feel if bombs rained down on his hometown at random intervals? Does he think he could live a normal under such conditions?

The key to winning a counterinsurgency is understand both the military and the social dimensions of the conflict. An aircraft can attack insurgents, drop leaflets and provide humanitarian relief, but it can't establish trusting relationships with the locals, gather intelligence, or ensure basic order like ground troops can.

Unless the Air Force is willing to get out of its collective cockpit and spend some serious time working with the locals, it will never be flexible enough to play anything more than a supporting role in stability operations.

Sometimes its hard to work for the Army

2007-08-13T11:56:00.000-04:00

I imagine every soldier in the U.S. Army -- from the lowest private to the highest general office -- about whether they prefer their battledress uniform or dress uniform, they will almost always pick their BDUs. Its just more comfortable and easier to care for.

Wearing BDUs while playing in the 1st Cavalry band is a bit much though, even when you're stationed in the Green Zone:

They could have at least taken their helmets off.

Figures...

2007-08-12T12:54:00.000-04:00

Due to Matthew Scully's tell-all on Micheal Gerson in the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly, I take back anything nice I have ever said about the former White House speechwriter:

By page 3, a “solemn quiet” has fallen over the Oval Office, and we have one of those crossroads moments that come in every White House memoir. Large and consequential matters were in the balance, “the keepers of the budget” were about to crush the hopes of millions, only truth well spoken could save the day, and guess who had the courage to speak it? The conviction and idealism of his words were so characteristic that, in Mike’s telling of the story, President Bush declared, “That’s Gerson being Gerson!”

The president’s little tribute, however, would much better describe what happened after this incident, when the story of “Gerson being Gerson” found its way into a Washington Whispers item by a friend of Mike’s at U.S. News & World Report. Someone had to tell the reporter about this inspiring moment, and I have a feeling it wasn’t the keepers of the budget. It was always like this, working with Mike. No good deed went unreported, and many things that never happened were reported as fact. For all of our chief speechwriter’s finer qualities, the firm adherence to factual narrative is not a strong point. He has chosen the perfect title for his book, because in his telling of a White House story, things often sound a lot more heroic than they actually were.

I must have been naive to think that the Bush administration could actually attract senior staffers who are genuinely not interested in self-aggrandizement. This example really captures Scully's point:

My most vivid memory of Mike at Starbucks is one I have labored in vain to shake. We were working on a State of the Union address in John’s office when suddenly Mike was called away for an unspecified appointment, leaving us to “keep going.” We learned only later, from a chance conversation with his secretary, where he had gone, and it was a piece of Washington self-promotion for the ages: At the precise moment when the State of the Union address was being drafted at the White House by John and me, Mike was off pretending to craft the State of the Union in longhand for the benefit of a reporter.

He yearned for escape sometimes and preferred the “buzz” of the coffee shop to the “solitude” of his White House office, Mike explained in a 2002 ABC News Nightline segment, “Up Close: Michael Gerson.” This is a lengthy discourse on the craft of speechwriting (and indeed on how speechwriting “cultivates a sense of humility,” as Mike told Nightline) that happily I missed at the time and only came upon recently. To fully appreciate the dramatic tension here, just remember that as a matter of undeniable fact—entered in the permanent records of the United States, which will include more than 10,000 different speech drafts saved on the computer we shared—every major Bush speech of the first term was written from start to finish in the office of John McConnell, by the good old team.

That is sad. Really sad. I guess the satirical commentary offered up in the 2004 comedy Saved! was right all along: Evangelism has nothing to do with being humble or good-natured.

Pimp my F-35

2007-08-11T17:04:00.000-04:00

In response to Noah's challenge, I tricked out the interior and exterior of the Joint Strike Fighter using the standard "Pimp My Ride" formula: Add a frivolous multimedia center to the interior...

...and cover the exterior with an obnoxious, brightly-colored pattern.

I considered putting some high-gloss faux-woodgrain panels in the interior, but there is literally too much crap in the cockpit for such a Photoshop feat to be worthwhile.

AEGIS to Taiwan, not a stretch

2007-08-07T09:49:00.000-04:00

The top story at TaiwanSecurity.org a few days ago was about possible Taiwanese plans to buy AEGIS cruisers of the U.S.:

Taiwan wants to buy at least six Aegis-equipped destroyers from the United States at a cost of more than $4.6 billion, a newspaper said on Monday, a plan sure to anger China which claims the island as its own.

The United Daily News quoted unnamed sources as saying Deputy Defense Minister Ko Cheng-heng and Chief of the General Staff Chen Yung-kang would travel to the United States this month to try to secure the deal.

The defense ministry declined to comment.

The navy could eventually buy an additional two destroyers after the initial six depending on the circumstances, the newspaper said.

The Aegis air defense radar and weapons system is capable of tracking and attacking dozens of missiles, aircraft and ships all at once.

The United States, the island's main arms supplier, in 2001 put off a request from Taipei to buy four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with the Aegis system, but kept the option open should China pose a sufficient threat.

Sudden announcements of Taiwanese intent to purchase major arms packages from the U.S. is certainly not unheard of. The Armchair Admiral over at Information Dissemination is correct to greet this news with a healthy dose of skepticism. He is also right to point out that the Navy doesn't exactly have surplus Arleigh-Burkes to sell the Taiwanese.

Normally, I would agree with the assessment that this AEGIS announcement is just another example of Taiwanese politicians playing politics with their defense budget. Not on this though. I think the Taiwanese want to get their hands on two of the four U.S. Block I AEGIS cruisers stationed in the Pacific. Armchair Admiral dismisses them because they have been reconfigured for ballistic missile defense, but I would argue that is the core reason for Taiwanese interest in the ships.

What is my basis for defying conventional wisdom? A conversation that emerged during a Presidential Management Fellows job interview I had at the Missile Defense Agency. Here is a rough dramatization of the conversation:

Robot Economist: So what would you think is the major drawback of working for the MDA? The political sensitivity of the work?

Female MDA Official With Too Much Eye Shadow: That is problematic to a certain extent, but right now, I would say being BRAC'd to Huntsville. We've been having trouble keeping young people who want to stay in the DC area.

RE: Are you going to staff any embassies or international field offices? Possibly some in Asia?

FMDAWTMES: Yes, we definitely will. The only one we have planned for the Pacific will be in Taipei.

RE: Wait, you mean Tokyo, right? The Japanese should get one since they are going to be such a big partner.

FMDAWTMES: No, I meant Taipei, in Taiwan.

After stifling a double-take, I let the issue drop -- but as you can imagine, those words have been stuck in the back of my mind for months. I can't find any specific evidence to support this odd conversation, but this March 2006 briefing by MDA chief Lt. General Trey Obering does indicate that Taiwan is on their radar (pardon the pun).

This is one thing that I am definitely going to keep my eye one.

Still rebuilding

2007-08-07T09:09:00.000-04:00

I've received a handful of very kind e-mails from folks offering me access to their mp3 libraries as I rebuild my own. I appreciate the offers, but I've been trying to stay away from more egregious acts of Internet piracy. Its one thing to download a bootlegged Essential Mix (still looking for that UNKLE performance broadcast back in January 2002), its another to rip off a copy of The Blue Print 2.

I'm about halfway through iPod reconstruction (7.8 GB out of an estimated 16.3 GB), so things should be relatively back to normal by Friday.

So what's up with these Near East arms deals?

2007-08-06T10:59:00.000-04:00

One news item from recent headlines is Bush administration's plans to build up a tighter anti-Iran block in the Near East through arms deals. Specifically, they plan to sell at least $20 billion worth of arms to the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates), as well as increase the amount of military aid given to Israel and Egypt.

Before I critique the Bush administration's approach, I would like to correct a common misunderstanding about U.S. arms sales to the Near East. First of all, the U.S. sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms to GCC states on an annual basis. Between 2000 and 2006 alone, Saudi Arabia purchased $5.8 billion worth of defense articles and services through the Foreign Military Sales system. We also signed off on direct commercial sales of $1.8 billion worth of U.S. defense articles and services to the Saudis as well. (Both FMS and DCS numbers compiled from annual reports, send me an e-mail if you want them in a spreadsheet.)

The Bush administration is proposing that we relax some of the limitations we have placed on the types of weapons the U.S. can sell to Saudi Arabia. To be fair, some of these restrictions were based on tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, so relaxing them now makes sense in the face of recent Arab-Israeli detente. If we're going to sell arms to the GCC states anyways, we might as well sell them as much as we can for practical economic reasons, if not strategic ones. As one Navy-focused blogger points out, if the Saudis can't buy more advanced weaponry from the United States, there are plenty of other relatively advanced arms exporting states willing to fill the gap.

The real flaw of this decision is that it will probably do nothing to achieve its intended goal of adjusting the military balance between the GCC states and Iran. As Bill Arkin aptly points out, the Saudis and their GCC neighbors aren't planning on buying the advanced weapons we are offering in large enough quantities to be useful. His point about the drivers and limitations behind Saudi procurement planning is particularly important. The Saudis will only buy enough JDAMs, F-16s and M1A2s to keep their prince-generals happy. They cannot buy enough to become a force of reckoning the Near East because they afraid of making their military too powerful.

If you take a look at the publicly available Function 150 sales toplines published by the State Department, there appears to be some evidence of this. The Saudis averaged about $700-800 million in arms purchases between 2000 and 2006. If you look at the 655 Reports that the Federation of American Scientists obtained for these years, the largest portion of annual Saudi purchases are for defense services (i.e. maintenance, logistics, administration, training, etc.).

Even though this $20 billion deal will effectively double Saudi spending on arms imports, I am sceptical about how much of this spending will actually go to platforms. History doesn't paint an optimistic picture. If the arms sales only serve as a window dressing on the U.S. side (subject to interpretation) of the military balance across the Persian Gulf and if al Qaeda uses U.S. arms sales to House of Saud as a justification for its mission, then why sell them arms to begin with? The only reason I can think of is that we really have viable alternative.

Our hands are tied by decades of 'lowest common denominator' policy-making capped off by the invasion of Iraq and the complete collapse of the Bush administration's freedom agenda.

Oh well, just add the Near East to the list of Baby-Boomer legacies that my generation will spend their entire careers trying to fix.

A short dramatization

2007-08-05T00:48:00.000-04:00

Apple Headquarters, just outside of San Fransisco:

iTunes Software Engineer 1: Hey, you know what would be totally awesome?

iTunes Software Engineer 2: No, what?

iTunes Software Engineer 1: Let's design an update to iTunes that reformats people's iPods shortly after installation.

iTunes Software Engineer 2: Great idea! Since we assume that everyone only loads their iPods with music purchased from iTunes, instead of from their extensive CD collections, nothing bad should come of this.

iTunes Software Engineer 1: Yup. And people wonder why Apple products aren't more popular.

iTunes Software Engineer 2: I know!

RE's apartment, somewhere in Northern Virginia:

Robot Economist: Hey, an iTunes update. Maybe the iTunes guys spruced up the graphical interface this time...

End of dramatization. I was going to write something about arms deals in the Near East, but instead I will be spending this weekend ripping my CD collection again. F*cking Apple...

Dump the 'Thayer System'? Yeah, like 100 years ago...

2007-08-02T10:48:00.000-04:00

I normally don't read the Weekly Standard, but Op-For's John Noonan wrote an interesting piece about reforming the current professional military education (PME) system by dumping the 'Thayer System':

FOR NEARLY 200 years, cadets at the United States Military Academy have been guided by the "Thayer System," a rigid structure of unyielding regulation, austere discipline, fierce loyalty, and strong emphasis on math, science, and engineering. The method is calculated to produce Army officers of the highest caliber. And the system has worked. West Point graduates constitute some of the most celebrated, highly decorated officers in American history. No doubt if you traveled further back in time, West Pointers would rank amongst some of the finest combat leaders in the history of warfare.

Thayer's system has changed little since it was implemented shortly after the War of 1812. Like war itself, West Point traditions and culture slowly evolved over time to meet and conquer the new challenges that the profession of arms demanded. But today we stand at a point in history where technology, the decentralization of military force, and the abandonment of the established, traditional law of armed conflict is changing warfare in such a swift and profound way that the U.S. Armed Forces will either have to adapt or face a slow creep towards irrelevancy.

[snip]

The core of the Thayer system--discipline, honor, and ferocious loyalty to the Constitution--must never change. That's precisely why the system has stood as it is for so long; America will always need men and women who live by the stoic creed of duty, honor, country. However, one of the cornerstones of Slyvanus Thayer's system, his dated academic infrastructure, no longer meets the needs of the mission. The same can be said for nearly identical curriculums at Annapolis and Colorado Springs.

West Point and all of the service academies promote math and engineering above all other disciplines. Thayer wanted math savvy artillery officers. The Navy sought officers with a firm grasp of engineering to keep their ships running and navigate the seas under the harshest of combat conditions. And the Air Force desired officers capable of operating the service's cutting-edge technology. It's the perfect academic infrastructure for a young cadet, if we expect him to fight the Cold War.

I completely agree with Noonan and what's more, there is plenty of evidence to show that adherence to the engineer and math-heavy French tradition of PME has enabled a number of military disasters. First, a brief history lesson on PME:

Despite the sizable number of British-trained military officers in the Continental Army, the U.S.'s first military academy at West Point has been largely modelled on French PME traditions since the 16-year (1817-1833) superintendency of Sylvanus Thayer. Thayer was an engineer and mathematician by trade and his views of PME were heavily influenced by the two years he spent studying at the French military academy E'cole Polytechnique.

The French institution itself was founded by a pair of Revolutionary-era mathematicians. They established a curriculum that emphasized the sciences, civil engineering, and Vauban's classics on fortifications and siege warfare -- which ironically contrasts with the French army's exploitation of maneuver warfare under Napoleon.

Thayer's West Point curricula reflected much of what he had learned in France. His influence over the school was extended by Dennis Hart Mahan, a graduate during Thayer's reign who spent 40 years teaching from the French tradition at West Point.

Mahan emphasized the ideas of Antoine-Henri Jomini, a French-Swiss military theorist who attempted to capture Napoleon's genius by reducing it to elements of geometry. Having taught virtually every Union and Confederate commander of the Civil War, Jomini's emphasis on interior lines and strategic bases is fairly evident in many Civil War engagements. For those who have picked up Bruce Catton's A Stillness at Appamattox, you can imagine that many of the trenches around Petersburg resembled the teachings of Vauban.

It would not be a stretch to argue that the French PME tradition and French conceptions of strategy and maneuver factored two of the bloodiest, least decisive land wars in history: the American Civil War and World War I. American commanders in the 1860s were so indoctrinated by Mahan's teachings that Abraham Lincoln to turn to a drunk and someone who had had a nervous breakdown in order to wage total war against the South.

The French commanders that presided over the meat grinders that were the Battle of the Somme, the Great Retreat and the first Battle of Ypres were also students of Ecole Polytechnique and disciples of Jomini.

The take-home message of all of this history is that the French PME tradition has a poor history of success and should have been abandoned a long time ago. Understanding the science and engineering of warfare is important, but as Sun Tzu aptly put it, so is understanding your potential adversary. It is high time West Point (and the other military academies for that matter) offer more robust curricula in the social sciences, history and (gasp!) the humanities.

PEO BOONDOGGLE, 1st draft

2007-08-02T08:08:00.000-04:00

Well folks, here is my first draft of the Program Executive Officer Battle-Oriented Optical Network Data Operations Ground Geared Linkage Elements (PEO BOONDOGGLE) seal. I think I am going to tweek it some tonight -- seems like I haven't crammed enough platforms into it.

Defense LOLs - 31 July 2007

2007-07-31T09:54:00.000-04:00

This quote is from a Boston Globe puff piece on the Navy's $3 billion-a-pop DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers:

Its challenge will be to orchestrate the medley of technologies produced by more than 700 suppliers in 40 states while avoiding the cost overruns that have plagued past Navy shipbuilding programs. "Cost realism is important," said Edward Geisler, the Raytheon vice president and program manager for the Zumwalt class destroyers.

lol. Now pull the other one. This guy must have taken notes from the Northrup Grumman when they made the B-2 -- better yet, from Boeing and Future Combat Systems.

FCS's new name

2007-07-30T22:32:00.000-04:00

Ladies and gentleman, I present you with the new name for Future Combat Systems, the Totally Awesome Force. I've even taken the time to put together a new seal that combines all of the elements of what will truly be an awesome force for today -- ninjas, lasers, satellites, UAVs, futuristic tracked vehicles, and most importantly, America! Hooah! Army Strong!

I have even been meditating on a motto for the Totally Awesome Force, but I can't decide between "F*ck yeah!" and "Kicking ass and taking names since 2015."

My take on the JIEDDO paper

2007-07-30T15:36:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm finally free of the Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (or as my office calls it, the kiddie pool), I wanted to discuss JIEDDO in light of the research paper written by Colonel William Adamson for the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

To be completely honest, I started reading Col. Adamson's paper (available here) in the hopes of finding evidence to further my argument that JIEDDO is wasting money by being overly focused on gadgets designed to counter improvised explosive devices (IED). Instead of finding more proof the caricature, I was surprised to find that this insider's history of JIEDDO went beyond caricature into a study of the DoD's various cultures.

From Col. Adamson's description, the genesis of JIEDDO was nothing like the organization it is today. Both the Army and Marine Corps initially responded to the use of IEDs as a matter for explosive ordanance disposal (EOD) specialists. The Corps' Counter Explosive Exploitation Cell and the Army's IED Task Force focused on enhancing the EOD capabilities of individual units by assigning EOD specialists and collecting and disseminating lessons learned from the field. This was mostly a function performed by and for the soldiers in the field.

Everything changed in 2004 when General John Abizaid, then commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), wrote a personal letter to Donald Rumsfeld asking for the Pentagon to sponsor a 'Manhattan-like Project' to counter IEDs. This marked the decline of the EOD approach used by troops in the field and the rise of what Adamson calls the 'Title 10' approach.

For those not familiar with how the U.S. government bureaucracy works, the attitudes and direction of each agency or department is defined by the U.S. Code. Title 10 is the title governing the missions and authorities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military departments. What Adamson is referring to is the statutory mission of each military department, which is to train, equip and supply the armed forces of the United States. To this end, the military departments tend to solve military issues with procurement or recuitment strategies because they are more in keeping with their mission.

So when the fruit of these early steps were handed off to a Joint IED Defeat Task Force and Joint Integrate Process Team (JIPT), the Pentagon naturally shifted its focus to technological solutions. This undercut comprehensive and aggressive efforts to counter IEDs in three ways:

First, doctrinal innovation took a back seat to technological innovation, even though it is easier and cheaper. There is a reason why 'doctrine' comes 3 letters before 'materiel' in DOTMLPF -- enough said.

Second, there was a tension between the Pentagon, CENTCOM and unit commanders over the completeness and efficacy of IED solutions. CENTCOM wanted to push anything that had at least a 51% success rate out to the troops, where as Pentagon acquisition folks wanted to only hand out robust, 'turnkey' solutions. The acquisition wasn't the only point of resistance though because unit commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were wary to use unproven technology.

Finally, the technology-focused approach treated IEDs like the problem when they really were only a symptom of lawlessness and ineffectual governance. The billions poured into technology might have had a greater impact if they were focused on improving Iraqi police or the Iraqi judicial system.

Col. Adamson concludes the paper by arguing that JIEDDO's effectiveness would be enhanced by greater interagency cooperation. In his defense, the good colonel brings up plenty of instances where JIEDDO reached out to other elements of the U.S. government for assistance and, not surprisingly, they were turned away in most instances. He proposes overcoming this problem by establishing an IED 'integration center' that is strikingly similar to the National Counter-Terrorism Center. Building such a center would allow the U.S. government to shift away from its focus on countering IEDs to predicting and preventing them by blending intelligence, military and law enforcement action.

This approach has two key weaknesses:

1. It still treats IEDs like the problem instead of a symptom. Wouldn't an interagency coordinator or process focused on building Iraqi governance capacity ultimately be just as effective at stopping IEDs? Or for that matter, what about simply pouring more resources into rounding up loose munitions and explosives? Recent efforts to go after the IED production and deployment process has forced some bomb-makers to resort to cruder designs, including ANFO-based truckbombs.

2. It trips on the common source of all failed interagency efforts -- poor resource allocation. The reason why many of the other elements of the U.S. government couldn't sign up to assist JIEDDO is because they couldn't afford to take resources away from their own missions. The FBI and ATF are staffed to deal with domestic threats within the context of the United States. They are only given enough resources to handle a narrow set of operations and in practice, they rely heavily on the support of state and local police forces. It would probably easier for the DoD to build up its capacity to police, investigation and dispose of bombs than it would be to bring external law enforcement resources to bear. The Intelligence Community is the same way -- it can't be expected to divert day-to-day collection and reporting resources away from the strategic missions it must support.

Col. Adamson should be very proud of himself -- his paper is a well-written history of bureaucracy and organizational adaptation. If the process wasn't so personality-driven, I would recommend it as a case study for anyone interesting in organizational behavior. His proposals are innovative and very detailed, but unfortunately, even the most innovative bureaucracy can't make up for problems caused by contradictions and deficiencies in U.S. foreign policy.

Spinning back up

2007-07-30T12:39:00.000-04:00

I'm back finally and I'm working on a post about JIEDDO that I hope to wrap up in an hour or two. In the meantime, read this post from the Federation of American Scientists' Strategic Security Blog about the history of the recently signed (but still under wraps) U.S.-UK Defense Trade Cooperation Trade. It also makes a fairly convincing case for why the treaty is bad for America and the legislative process. Good stuff.

Pardon the dust

2007-07-25T15:37:00.000-04:00

I apologize for the lack of posts, but I have been forced to sojourn from the safety and comfort of the five-sided kingdom this week. I am conducting a series of visits to the Nightvision Lab at the dreaded Ft. Belvoir.

Don't get me wrong, Belvoir is probably a nice place to work -- just not when you have to take the Fairfax County Parkway during rush hour to get there.

I'll be back Friday.

Ridin' Shotgun?

2007-07-25T15:14:00.000-04:00

I normally pay too much attention to the news items fielded on the Army's website, but being a fan of the AH-64 Apache, I felt compelled to read this story:

Two pilots flying their last combat mission risked their lives in an unorthodox casualty evacuation to transport a critically-wounded Soldier in Ramadi June 30.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Kevin Purtee and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Allen Crist, from Company B, 1st Battalion, 149th Aviation Regiment (Attack), 36th Combat Aviation Brigade, delivered the Soldier of Company A, 1st Battalion, 77th Armor, to prompt medical care. The Soldier had been shot in the face and the arm during a battle near Donkey Island.

[snip]

Chief Crist and three other infantrymen lifted the wounded Soldier up into the Apache's front seat. "He was bandaged up, and blood was all over him," said Chief Crist, who strapped in the Soldier.

Chief Crist then went to the left side of the Apache and ran a tether to the aircraft and hooked it to his air warrior vest. Sitting on the small wing with his feet on a narrow walkway lining the fuselage, the chief then knocked on the window to let Chief Purtee know he was ready for the flight.

“We were leaving a very dangerous area," Chief Purtee said. "It wasn't a long flight, but it felt like it took forever."

Chief Crist said flying outside the aircraft was similar to "sitting in the back of a truck going down the highway." Reaching the medical pad, Chief Crist stayed with the wounded Soldier while medical personnel waited for the ambulance to move him to the hospital.

Now that's what I call riding shotgun. Crist is the guy on the right in this photo. One can only hope that someone at LSA Anaconda got him a beer afterwards.

DRMS just can't win

2007-07-23T09:28:00.000-04:00

As I hinted at back in January, Congress is learning that it can't have it both ways with the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service:

Of roughly $1.8 billion worth of equipment the Defense Department downgraded to scrap from January through June, at least $330 million worth came from categories of gear the Pentagon most frequently buys back from surplus dealers, according to the National Association of Aircraft & Communication Suppliers. Those include parts for aircraft, weapons and communications systems, the group said.

The association, a lobbying group for surplus dealers, is worried the military's recent decision to shred retired F-14 "Tomcat" fighter jets is the start of a broader effort to destroy Pentagon leftovers that surplus dealers once bought routinely. Iran is aggressively seeking F-14 components for its own aging Tomcat fleet.

[snip]

Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., wrote to Lt. Gen. Robert Dail, director of the Defense Logistics Agency, asking whether surplus equipment is being scrapped, including new items such as Camelbak backpack-style hydration packs.

"I have received reports that usable items such as sleeping bags and gloves, and auto parts such as mufflers, are being scrapped because DRMS has stated that it is unable to identify them," Shadegg wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. The DRMS is the Pentagon's Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service.

Shadegg said he also is concerned about the loss of government revenue from surplus sales and about harm to small businesses in the surplus industry.

Contrast this with what Representatives Shays had to say about DRMS back in January:

"The military should not sell or give away any sensitive military equipment. If we no longer need it, it needs to be destroyed - totally destroyed," said Shays, until this month the chairman of a House panel on national security. "The Department of Defense should not be supplying sensitive military equipment to our adversaries, our enemies, terrorists."

Shadegg's interest isn't too surprising, considering that DRMS's main contractor, Government Liquidity LLC is located in the Pheonix suburb of Scottsdale. A quick check of Arizona's Congressional map puts Scottsdale inside Shadegg's 3rd District.

Aside from Shadegg's personal political interest in DRMS sales, I do agree with his sentiment as a fellow taxpayer. The Department of Defense should try to recoup some of its costs by surplusing excess or antiquated hardware -- but that's just me.

I can also see why the DRMS folks are taking the cautious route by choosing to scrap a larger percent of their surplus. Sure, Camelbaks, binoculars and boots seem like fairly innocuous items, but if they are "specifically designed, developed, configured, adapted, or modified for a military application," they may be classified as defense articles under part § 120.3 of the International Trafficking in Arms Regulation.

When it comes to items that have commercially-available equivalents, defense article determinations are up to State Department policy wonks and Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators. There are often few publicly available guidelines for this grey area, so it is easy to see why DRMS is choosing to err on the side of caution by scrapping everything that raises questions.

None of this is the fault of DRMS, State or ICE. Each agency is simply doing its job in an ambiguous legal environment. This isn't a hard problem to solve either. Congress just needs to decide whether recouping some of the DoD's annual price tag is as important as maintaining the current export control regime and then pick one or the other. Its not realistic for the Congress to simply assume that bureaucrats or their contractor minions can overcome these conflicting priorities.

A problem like this requires a political solution crafted by elected officials. Heck, its what we hire them to do.

Update: Reader Tom T. suggests a third route, "Let Shays and Shadegg settle their dispute over DRMS in a bare-knuckle boxing match on the House floor." Normally, I would throw my support behind such a proposal, but I'm afraid the House's Sergeant at Arms would end up indicted like Mike Vick. Zing!

Second Update: J and a few other readers familiar with Scottsdale, Arizona were quick to point out that most of the town is actually located in the 5th Congressional district. Having more than a passing familiarity with that area myself, I looked into the matter shortly after reading the military.com article cited above. With the aid of Scottsdale's Chamber of Commerce and the Congressional districts layer of Google Earth, I discovered that Government Liquidation is indeed in the 3rd distrct by a few hundred feet. Here is a screen capture (the red line is district border):

Hypotheticals for presidential debates

2007-07-20T14:21:00.000-04:00

Hart Seely at Slate wrote this hilarious article lampooning this ridiculous question Brit Hume asked during the May 15 Republican debate:

Here is the premise: Three shopping centers near major U.S. cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured off the Florida coast and taken to Guantanamo Bay, where they are being questioned. U.S. intelligence believes that another larger attack is planned and could come at any time. First question to you, Senator McCain. How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantanamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?

Here are a few of the questions Seely wrote:

Candidates, pay attention: An international financier has smuggled an atom bomb into Fort Knox. He loves only gold. Only gold. After an amazing sequence of events, including car chases, sexual conquests, and your defeat of the assassin known as Oddjob, you find yourself staring at the interior of a nuclear device. The final seconds are ticking down. This goes to you, Senator Clinton: Do you cut the blue wire, or do you cut the red wire?

***

Three criminals from Krypton, freed by a nuclear blast in outer space, have come to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal man. Worse, Superman has disappeared. The criminals' leader, General Zod, orders you to kneel before him as a symbol of America's defeat. I'll start with you, Senator Brownback. If the act means saving millions of lives, and perhaps buying time until the Man of Steel returns, would you forsake your belief in Jesus Christ and bow before this evil alien?

I've got one myself:

This question is Senator McCain: Aliens have destroyed most major cities across the country. You are camped out in an disclosed location, but the aliens will eventually discover your location through an irresponsible leak of classified information to the press. You have sent a small multiracial team of comedians to disable the enemy's network, but it is uncertain whether they will succeed. Would you jump into cockpit of a fighter jet to help defend America and risk of leaving the country leaderless at this critical hour?

***

Updated: In exchange for spinning straw into gold on three occasions, you promise a magical dwarf your first born child. When he comes to collect the child years later, you convince him to abandon this debt if you can guess his name. If there isn't enough time to obtain a court order to wiretap his phone, do you do have the National Security Agency do it anyways? Alternatively, do you have special forces cross into a neighboring friendly country to capture or kill the dwarf? If you capture him, would you subject him to enhanced interrogation techniques, to include waterboarding, in order to obtain the information you need?

***

Due to an altercation with some ruffians in your hometown of Philadelphia, your mother has sent you to live with you aunt and uncle in California. After arriving at LAX, you hail a suspicious-looking cab with an odd licence plate. Do you get in the cab or report the cabbie to federal immigration authorities?

Watch this space, I may come up with some on the way home. Please feel free to submit your own via e-mail or comment.

Military doctrine under 'informatization'

2007-07-20T08:25:00.000-04:00

Despite my earlier jab, Barry Rosenberg's cover article from this month's Armed Forces Journal is really fantastic. His thesis? The U.S. military must be prepared to make some enormous cultural changes if it really wants to embrace network-centric warfare:

Until recently, collection assets would feed information up the line to divisional commanders and they would pass it up or parcel it down on a need-to-know basis. However, today, many war fighters have access to the same data as their commanders and are being given the opportunity to not only critique that information but also to act upon it independently of commanders' orders.

As a result of everyone having access to the Global Information Grid (GIG), leaders are faced with the challenges of commanding young men and women who have been plugged in to communications and entertainment devices since they were kids, while at the same time respecting the traditional pyramid model of command. In many instances, the growing pains are obvious.

"There's no way to run a military without a hierarchical structure," said retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former director of the National Security Agency under President Reagan. "When you hook everyone up to the Internet and give them processing capability, you are essentially flattening the chain of command. If everybody is making independent decisions, the likelihood they will be coordinated to a mission goes down."

Odom said that what we're experiencing today are "constipated information channels" and "diarrhea of the e-mail." Both have increased the capability and propensity of senior leaders to micromanage from afar. The question now is whether the military can develop senior commanders who will allow lower commanders to make decisions — and then stay out of their hair and live with the results.

In the broadest sense, LTG Odom is right -- the military requires a certain amount of hierarchy that is irreducible. If the general knew his history though, he would know that the idea of 'hierarchy' is sometimes flexible.

I imagine a guy like Field Marshal Donald Haig back in 1915 would have rejected the idea of using fire teams to infiltrate enemy trenches. He would have argued that giving foot soldiers enough autonomy to maneuver on their own would reduce the 'likelihood they will be coordinated to a mission' as well. Two years later, Germany's stormtroopers mostly proved him wrong.

[On an interesting historical note, stormtroopers weren't actually a German idea, but were instead based on the writings of a French Army captain named Andre Laffargue. He proposed this strategy of small units and infiltration to the French General Staff in 1915 and they dismissed it out of hand. In response, Laffargue self-published the operational concept as a pamphlet, which the Germans captured and translated in 1916.]

So how should the military resolve this issue of autonomy? Rosenberg gives commanders a simple four-point plan: 1) Clearly articulate the objective, 2) provide your troops with operational boundaries, 3) set their rules of engagement, and 4) take a very hands-off approach. Frankly, I couldn't agree more. U.S. troops are smarter and better trained today than at any point in the military's history. Sure, they will probably need more classes in anthropology and foreign languages, but changing that is easy enough.

Rosenberg also converges with Marine General Charles Krulak's idea about the strategic corporal. Krulak argues that future battlefields and future missions will be so complex and fluid that troops on the ground will rarely have time to reach up the chain of command for orders. In response, the military should be prepared to devolve leadership to the lowest level, the squad leader, who is typically only a corporal.

Krulak's position seems reasonable enough, but there is a tension between his "strategic corporal" thesis and what is referred to as the "7000-mile screwdriver" -- a term coined to describe Donald Rumsfeld's micromanagement of the Iraq War. Improvements in headquarters-level situational awareness have encouraged commanders to micromanage their troops at a time when they need a greater amount of autonomy.

If current problems any indicator, giving troops more autonomy will probably be far more difficult than suiting them up for network-centric warfare. On the one hand, you have politicians who would rather blow millions on a pie-in-the-sky global strike program than take risks or ask for sacrifice. On the other, you have an inbred generation of military leaders who prefer to go into battle unprepared over providing civilian leaders with objective (but sometimes unpalatable) advice.

Matching doctrine to technology is definitely possible, let's just say I'm not confident about the prospects.

I don't know where this guy gets his ideas

2007-07-20T08:15:00.000-04:00

Shorter Krauthammer: The U.S. can push al-Qaeda out of Iraq by leaving the country in a Mexican standoff.

Not exactly a 'chick magnet'

2007-07-18T19:35:00.000-04:00

While looking for a funny picture to photoshop for my upcoming C4ISR post, I ran across this picture of an Advanced Helmet Mounted Display:

I'm sure it is pretty useful for virtual simulations, I just don't think it would ever show up in a sequel to Top Gun or even Fire Birds.

Getting old before getting rich?

2007-07-17T08:56:00.000-04:00

I apologize for pushing my promised C4ISR article off, but I received some questions from Chris M. about demographics, development and China:

I have a question that I would like to run by an actual East Asian specialist. Much is made about how China will be the new world power- the one to replace the US. I just don't see how it is possible. China is in a demographic coffin corner and in 50 years they are going to be totally screwed. Look at the age/sex curve projected by the Census bureau for 2050. Sure, in 2050 they will have 70+ million young males of military age, but they are going to have 450 million people 60+ (they are going to have a population 60+ larger than the entire US!). How can an economy grow, a country afford a military (especially the opportunity cost of those productive young males), and the country be expected to do anything with that much population that old? Short of inventing robots to take care of all those old folks, who will? Indonesians? Who will pay for all of this? Their ratio of workers to 60+ people will be less than 2:1. That will be a severe problem, right?

What happens when a country that is somewhat poor per capita, but has a pretty industrialized economy, goes gray really rapidly? The closest I can think of is Russia and some of the old Communist countries, who have aged tremendously in the past 15 years, but isn't a lot of that due to immigration and economic distress, not totally broken birth rates (leaving the huge sex-ratio disparity in the PRC completely out of the picture)? We also can see what happens when a rich country (per capita) grays- we have Japan and Western Europe to show us the way, but I can't think of a good model for this sort of thing. They would have to fix a lot of problems in their universal education system to be able to follow the path that Japan and Western Europe are blazing.

No one who predicts that China is the coming threat to the US, or that China will soon be the world's economic engine seems to ever mention this problem. Why is that? Am I missing something that people who have actually studied the issue understand? I'm somewhat afraid that this is a kooky position, as I haven't seen it discussed in the popular press.

In answer to your first question - yes, the Census Bureau's figures on Chinese population growth should be considered a fairly accurate prediction of the future. Their country summary shows that Chinese fertility rates are well under the replacement rate. The projections show that China's population growth rate will go negative around 2035, which means their total population will peak at about 1.46 billion. By all accounts, Russia's total population peaked around 1995, Italy and Japan's peaked around 2005. In fact, if you look at the Global Population at a Glance report the Census Bureau issued in 2002, the human population growth rate peaked somewhere around 2000 and the mean global fertility rate is expected to drop below the replacement rate around 2050.

Now we get to the question, "So what does this mean for China?" Before I answer that, I want to dispel the myth that population aging is always a bad thing. Declines in population growth over time will push a country's demographic composition away from a traditional pyramid shape to something more akin to a paper lantern.

Chris is right to point out that this means this will tip the population balance away from the young toward the old, but it doesn't say much about who will work. Japan and Europe have been pretty lucky because they were able to transition their economies from manufacturing towards services, which is far more friendly to older workers. Older workers are generally better at service jobs because their experience and knowledge generally adds the most value. Service jobs are also less physically intense, which allows older workers to stay on the job longer.

This does not come without cost though. Older workers require a higher degree of medical attention and at some point that cost will outweigh their contribution to the economy. This will be particularly problematic if the inflationary trend in the price of medical care in the United States -- 7.9% in 2004 according to the Economist (sorry, subscription only) -- spreads to other countries. All is not lost though because there are two effects that may mitigate the medical care crunch Chris sees over the horizon. First, older workers save more because they don't have to care children. Second, spending on health care generates fairly high margin service jobs.

The key question is, can China fill those jobs? Maybe. The Chinese economic miracle is largely predicated on a delicate balance of fertility, development and migration. The reasonably well-educated middle class that has grown in coastal provinces would not be able to meet demand without the constant flow of unskilled workers from China's interior.

If migration slows down before the Chinese economy moves further up the product life cycle, growth may come to a screeching halt. China could mitigate this by accepting greater flows of immigrants from the poorer states of Southeast Asia (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, etc.), but it is not clear whether they would make such a dramatic policy shift before the foreign direct investment starts flowing somewhere else.

This structural movement is certainly possible. The Japanese and Europeans pulled it off in the 1950s-1960s and the Asian tigers did the same in the 1970s-1980s. So the take-home message on this subject is that population decline could seriously derail its economy, but shouldn't if the Chinese manage it correctly.

As for what things will look like after 2050, I don't know. At that point, the predictions of statisticians and economists are about as certain as fiction novels on the subject. One thing is for sure, China will probably have to get a lot more comfortable with accepting immigrants from the last few high fertility spots in the world (Africa, South Asia and the Near East).

The real question is what will happen to Russia. It looks like the boom in commodity prices and Russia's shrinking population are turning it into a full-blown rentier state. There are definitely indications that the Dutch disease's 'spending effect' is hollowing out parts of the Russian economy.

It finally happened

2007-07-17T08:24:00.000-04:00

The Army is hiring a handful of anthropologists to embed with units based in Baghdad. This replacement to Vietnam-era Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program (one of William Colby's few good ideas) is has been dubbed the Human Terrain System (HTS). I have been hoping that one of the anthropologists would blog about his/her experience and it appears a site has finally popped up. Christopher Newport University faculty member Marcus Griffin will deploy to Iraq sometime soon as an HTS advisor.

I definitely recommend checking in on this guy once in a while. It should be very interesting.

Ummm...

2007-07-16T14:38:00.000-04:00

I will write a longer piece on Barry Rosenberg's cover article from the July issue of AFJ in the next 24 hours. First, I wanted to highlight an ironic sentence that clearly deserves the label pentagonism:

Third, the commander must set the rules of engagement. On the military side, such rules might be "don't fire unless fired upon" or "don't bust down doors in a culture that finds that tactic extremely insulting."

I don't know about you all, but I imagine most people, regardless of culture, would probably feel insulted by having their door busted down -- especially by a bunch of well-armed foreign soldiers. Somehow, I don't think the 12,000 M100 Grenade Rifle Entry Munitions that the Army is going to buy from Rafael will be popular either.

So disappointing...

2007-07-13T08:29:00.001-04:00

Michael Gerson wrote a very thoughtful, but misguided piece on atheism in today's Post:

Proving God's existence in 750 words or fewer would daunt even Thomas Aquinas. And I suspect that a certain kind of skeptic would remain skeptical even after a squadron of angels landed on his front lawn. So I merely want to pose a question: If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?

If God were dethroned as the arbiter of moral truth, it would not, of course, mean that everyone joins the Crips or reports to the Playboy mansion. On evidence found in every culture, human beings can be good without God. And Hitchens is himself part of the proof. I know him to be intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind, when not ruthlessly flaying opponents for taking minor exception to his arguments. There is something innate about morality that is distinct from theological conviction. This instinct may result from evolutionary biology, early childhood socialization or the chemistry of the brain, but human nature is somehow constructed for sympathy and cooperative purpose.

But there is a problem. Human nature, in other circumstances, is also clearly constructed for cruel exploitation, uncontrollable rage, icy selfishness and a range of other less desirable traits.

[Snip]

Some argue that a careful determination of our long-term interests -- a fear of bad consequences -- will constrain our selfishness. But this is particularly absurd. Some people are very good at the self-centered exploitation of others. Many get away with it their whole lives. By exercising the will to power, they are maximizing one element of their human nature. In a purely material universe, what possible moral basis could exist to condemn them? Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.

So as long as you throw out consequentialism, atheism looks flimsy? If you threw out the idea of the supernatural theism would look pretty flimsy as well. When will atheists and theists realize that they waging a metaphysical war that neither side can win. Theists can't disprove atheists and atheists can't disprove theists. Both sides just need to realize that they are at their best when they carry out their unending war in the minds of men and at their worst when such battles are fought in the halls of government.

So why Azerbaijian and does it matter?

2007-07-12T19:15:00.000-04:00

I imagine that by now, most of my readers have had a chance to read Noah Shachtman's piece on FCS and Azerbaijan. For those who have not, I will summarize: As part of the Operational Requirements Document used to justify the efficacy of Future Combat Systems, the Army prepared a summary mission profile for a hypothetical set of missions. These hypothetical missions just happen to take place in the oil-rich former Soviet state and now Republic of Azerbaijan.

At this point, some of my readers are probably asking themselves: "Azerbaijan, is that like where Borat goes for summer vacation or something? Why did the Army pick that place?" To be certain, Azerbaijan wasn't selected for political reasons. Azerbaijan isn't exactly the most democratic ex-Soviet state, but the government of President Ilham Aliyev is pretty friendly with the United States. Plus, the U.S oil firm Unocal (now part of Chevron) also owns about a 9% stake in the $3.6 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

Azerbaijan may be a friend, but is one of the roughest and most volatile neighborhoods in the world. The Azeris and the Armenians fight over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Georgians and the Russians fight over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the Armenians and the Turks fight over whether the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against ethnic Armenians in 1915-1917 (I am definitely not going to wade into that one). To top that off, all of this strife crammed into a small mountainous region sandwiched between Iran and Chechnya. Sometimes I'm surprised that countries stopped bickering long enough to allow the 1776 kilometer Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline get off the drawing board.

Small, U.S.-friendly, oil-producing state locked in a far-off, volatile region of the world. Doesn't that sound like another country in the Near East, one that we've successfully liberated before? Kuwait perhaps?

In my view, Azerbaijan was picked because its size, terrain, and political environment fit the assumptions that shape FCS. They picked a relatively small country to accentuate the ability of a single FCS Brigade Combat Team to rapidly achieve "decisive maneuver" against a larger opposing force in 48-60 hours. Azerbaijan is also a relatively remote, mountainous area bordered by few U.S. allies. This reflects the Army's emphasis on performing combat operations on short notice and without pre-positioned equipment. Finally, there is the potential (however remote) that the Army may be called upon to one day liberate the Azeris from an encroaching neighbor. Remind anyone of an incredibly successful "left-hook" the Army pulled off a little more than 15 years ago?

My main concern with the Azerbaijan scenarios is that they highlight a fundamental flaw of FCS. This billion-dollar force recapitalization project is focused on refining existing capabilities at a time when the Army needs to develop entirely new capabilities. To me, being able to successfully conduct stability operations campaign the day after a 72 hour blitzkrieg is worth far more than shaving that blitzkrieg down to 48 hours. Does the Army honestly expect a brigade of 4000 troops trained and equipped for maneuver warfare against a modern opposing army to manage 8 million people spread over a country the size of Maine? We have multiple brigades in Baghdad (a city of 7 million) and they can't even keep the peace without support from the Iraqi military.

At the very least, one would hope that as soon as images of the National Carpet Museum in Baku being looted by anonymous brigands are splashed across CNN the hypothetical Secretary of Defense overseeing one of these imagined combat operations would have something more conciliatory to say than 'Stuff happens.'

I'm not saying the Army doesn't need to recapitalize the force and I'm not exactly opposed to the idea of network-centric warfare either. I'm just arguing that the Army's vision of the future force is shackled by a set of overly narrow assumptions about what kind of wars it will fight. As Colin Gray asked in a great monograph published by the Army War College back in 2005, if the Army is putting all of its development dollars into FCS, is FCS robust enough to counter the broadest set of future war scenarios? In terms of fighting a major urban counterinsurgency campaign (Iraq) or managing a fractured, poor state (Afghanistan), I think the evidence is pointing towards 'no.'

Book Review: A Stillness at Appomattox

2007-07-11T20:49:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, I finally finished reading the final book in Bruce Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy, A Stillness at Appomattox. I picked this book up at a used book sale last year after it was mentioned during a debate in a military history class at GW. We were having a hypothetical discussion about the Schlieffen Plan and what lead the German General Staff to ignore the factors that would lead to the trench warfare that dominated World War I. My background is in Asian history, so I naturally pointed to the blood battles of the Russo-Japanese War just a decade earlier, while some of my classmates mentioned the German experience in the closing months of the Franco-Prussian War as further evidence.

At this point, our professor interjected to mention that the American Civil War had degenerated into trench warfare as early as the Battle of Cold Harbor in early June 1864. I remembered seeing some pictures of trenches from the Siege of Petersburg in an undergrad military history course that reminded me of the Western Front. They were shocking, but I didn't comprehend their true gravity until it was mentioned again at GW. How could the German General Staff completely miss warning signs warning signs, such as the Siege of Petersburg and the Battle of Mukden?

Since my knowledge of the final year of the Civil War was basically limited to a chapter from Russ Weigley's The American Way of War, I asked my professor for some recommendations. I was particularly interested in Catton's book because it fleshed out the actions of my favorite Civil War figure, Emory Upton. During the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, then 25 year-old Colonel Upton came up with a tactic that helped the Army of the Potomac overcome Confederate fortifications -- line up troops in a column formation and force them through a single weak point in the Confederate line. The German General Staff eventually used the same tactics during their Spring Offensive in 1918 and managed to make some serious gains late in the war. But I digress...

The book was compelling and well-written. You can really feel the exhaustion of the Union troops and you will probably also enjoy the quixotic relationship they develop with the Confederate troops in the opposing trench lines. I even found myself sympathizing with General Grant as he racked up huge casualties in each engagement. Breaking Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was a difficult task, particularly with the Union's absolutely poor standards of generalship. It also spends a fair amount of time describing just how tenuous Lincoln's re-election felt as late as March 1864.

That is not to say the book is entirely about Lincoln or his generals. Most of it is written from the perspective of front line soldiers and Catton draws heavily on the correspondence of enlisted troops to illustrate their attitudes and opinions. Although Catton offers a some insight into Grant's thoughts, the general is more often described from the perspective of his troops. Even the momentous meeting of Grant and Lee at the Appomattox Court House is a blip compared to a single Union soldier who crosses over to the Confederate line to chat with his former foes.

A Stillness at Appomattox clearly deserved the Pulitzer Prize it received shortly after publication in 1954. It is a wonderful read and is worth the time of anyone with even small interest in American history or the Civil War. The only problem is that it was last reprinted as an individual volume back in 1990, so you may have to buy the whole 'Army of the Potomac' trilogy just to get it -- and I hear the first two books aren't nearly as good.

Update: Has anyone read Stephen Ambrose's Upton and the Army? I want to know if its any good before I spend a weekend hunting down a copy.

Arm wrestling in Iraq

2007-07-11T19:51:00.000-04:00

There is something deeply ironic about this short video clip. I'm glad to see that at least some of our troops are getting along with the Iraqi military well enough to horse around.

American wins indeed.

A memo to Vlad and George

2007-07-11T14:45:00.000-04:00

To:
George W. Bush, President of the United States of America
Vladamir Putin, President of the Russian Federation

From: The Robot Economist

Subject: Missile defense and arms control -- a grand bargain

It is clear that the United States and the Russian Federation are at an impasse over two issues related to the proliferation of missile technology and nuclear weapons. The first conflict is over the United States' plan to implement a missile defense system, some of which will be based in Europe. The second conflict is over the future of the U.S.-Russian arms control regime that evolved during the Cold War.

This impasse can be easily broken with a grand bargain designed to satisfy each nation's concerns and put U.S.-Russian cooperation on a strong, institutionalized footing. As part of the the bargain, the United States would agree to build both its planned interceptors and radar station within Russian territory. The Russian Federation will participate in managing the system's day-to-day operations, but will also allow the U.S. to protect sensitive technology in a U.S.-only facility on Russian soil. The Russians will also be given access to missile defense technology as part of a U.S.-Russian missile defense development program, but it will only be allowed to sell the resulting technology as part of U.S.-Russian joint ventures. The United States will reserve the right to expand its missile defense system outside of Europe.

The United States will agree to at least a 15-year extension of both the Strategic Ordnance Reduction Treaty (SORT) and the inspection provisions of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). In exchange, the Russian Federation will drop its threats to abandon the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and defer discussions of additional arms control agreements for at least 10 years.

This bargain delivers what each country desires most. The United States is allowed to have a missile defense system that can shoot down missiles coming from the Near East without threaten Russia. Russia gets to keep the Cold War-era arms control regime around for another generation.

It is by no means a solution to U.S.-Russian strategic relations. Instead, it is designed to tackle the one obstacle that prevents such cooperation, a lack of trust on strategic issues stemming from the Cold War. This lack of trust is an antiquated notion because the quest for national power is no longer a zero-sum game. It is both nations to realize that fact and build a relationship that will ensure both American and Russian strategic power for another generation.

Another paradox of American power

2007-07-11T09:44:00.000-04:00

Stephen Biddle summarizes in one paragraph the point I've been trying to make on the Iraq War since late 2003:

If the surge is unacceptable, the better option is to cut our losses and withdraw altogether. In fact, the substantive case for either extreme -- surge or outright withdrawal -- is stronger than for any policy between. The surge is a long-shot gamble. But middle-ground options leave us with the worst of both worlds: continuing casualties but even less chance of stability in exchange. Moderation and centrism are normally the right instincts in American politics, and many lawmakers in both parties desperately want to find a workable middle ground on Iraq. But while the politics are right, the military logic is not.

The United States should either pony up significant amount of blood and treasure that it will take to fix the Bush administration's broken endeavor in Iraq or it should go home. Half measures, including phased withdrawals or "strategic redeployments," will only waste resources and perpetuate an issue that has led to sharp divisions on foreign policy. End of story.

The situation in Iraq highlights another Joseph Nye's paradoxical element of American power, something I like to call the impatient enormity factor. Americans are willing to make enormous sacrifices and take on a significant amount of risk on foreign policies. In return for their sacrifice, however, they expect rapid results to match the scope of that sacrifice. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was George C. Marshall who said that the U.S. public wouldn't abide more than five years of fighting against Germany and Japan. This contrasts significantly with the degree that we celebrate U.S. involvement in World War II as popular and even noble ('greatest generation' anyone?).

Contrast this with the United States' response to the Cold War. Rather than contest Soviet power directly, we picked the relatively low-cost, low-risk route of basing U.S. troops in friendly nations, funding proxy wars and backing tinpot dictators. Sure, we funded an expensive reconstruction programs in post-WWII Europe, but it only lasted four years. The only deviation from this pattern was in Vietnam, but like Iraq, we went in thinking the endeavor was going to be relatively easy and come at a low cost.

We get ensnared in the impatient enormity problem when promise of an easy, low-cost effort does not pan out. The administration of the sitting president takes it as an affront to his re-election prospects and/or legacy. I think we can guess how these scenarios end -- the word 'badly' comes to mind. But that is not the only problem with impatient enormity.

The flip-side of the costly overcommitment is the marginal mission creep. This is a scenario where a low-cost policy (frequently sanctions) is applied to a briefly fashionable cause (Burma, Cuba, Libya, Sudan, Venezuela, etc.). Once the policy is put in place and the now-sated populace and the media loose interest, control over it is ceded to one of three groups: (1) members of Congress on the far left or far right (the activists), (2) members of Congress with a vested in the policy outcome (the lobbied), or (3) fanatical mid-level political appointees (assistant secretary and below).

These groups tend to come into office bent on expanding the current set of policies, but not always. I may complain about the Bush administration's efforts to slowly dismantle the arms control institutions of the Cold War more often, but it is no worse than our mindless sanctions against Cuba and Burma.

But hey, I hear that superpowers don't do windows, so I'm probably just illustrating a useless point.

'Rollins Show' is pretty good

2007-07-10T08:39:00.000-04:00

Based on J's interesting post on the Henry Rollins Show, I decided to check it out myself. I'll admit I had some misgivings at first. I'm a libertarian with a fair amount of Mill and Friedman in my library. Rollins's contemporary message is about as hardcore left-wing as Black Flag was in the 1980s and Rollins Band was in the 1990s. We will probably agree on some issues, but I doubt we'd ever get along -- even after spending an hour or two around the beer pong table.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed most of the show. Sure, sometimes his critiques degrade to him jumping up and down yelling 'Bush and Cheney are dicks!' Most of the time, however, he is incredibly witty and demonstrates that he is a master of satire. The interviews can be real misses. Rollins rants about consumerism, but fails to take Penelope Spheeris to task about her filmography and his interview with Ozzy Osbourne was barely intelligible. The interviews with Patton Oswalt, Eddie Izzard and Michael Chiklis were really fantastic though.

I'm not 'so underground that I haven't heard of myself,' but I did recognize most of Rollins's musical guests. Like the interviews, some are great (Jurassic 5 and the original lineup of Dinosaur Jr. stick out in my mind) and while others prove the old adage that even the greatest musician can have terrible taste in music.

All in all, the show is pretty entertaining, even for someone who doesn't agree with Rollins's politics.

I'm no Ralph Nader

2007-07-10T08:23:00.000-04:00

In response to the deluge of e-mails: I promised Noah Shachtman that I would hold my comments on his intriguing poll on Future Combat Systems until after Wednesday.

C'mon folks, Noah is a great journalist and I bet he busted his hump on whatever story will crop up tomorrow. It wouldn't be fair to interfere in his work.

Taepodong 2 = complete failure?

2007-07-06T15:31:00.000-04:00

I've been mediating on the judgements made by the Japanese Ministry of Defense report in the article I translated on Tuesday. I agree with their view and here is my logic:

North Korean missile designers are resourceful, but their current string of designs lack originality. They nailed down the R-11 'Scud' design in the 1980s and have been producing it domestically for ever since. The North Koreans have even made a modest income exporting Scuds that have been modified to extend their range. The medium-range No Dong is often credited as an indigenous North Korean design, but most accounts of No-Dong development either describe it as a scaled-up Scud or a modified version of the ancient R-13 'Sark' submarine-launched ballistic missile.

Either way, North Korean engineers can only squeeze so much more additional range out by lengthening the missile and shaving down the payload.

This brings us to the Taepodong-1, North Korea's first attempt at building a multi-stage missile. The Taepodong-1's design is familiar enough -- a modified Scud-B affixed to the top of a No Dong missile. The only new component is a small, solid-fueled third stage (maybe an KN-02?) situated on top of the Scud B. When the North Koreans attempted to launch the Taepodong-1 back in August 1998, the first and second stages appear to have worked, but third stage did not.

The Taepodong-2 also represents a relatively bold step away from the previous incrementalism of the North Korean missile program. Not only that, it appears to be very different from its similarly named cousin. The Taepodong-2 launch last July appeared to be a two-stage missile -- a No Dong missile fixed to the top of what may have been first stage of a DF-3A. Whatever the first stage was, it probably need to go back to the drawing board because it flamed out after only 40 seconds of burn time last year.

Based on this track record, I feel pretty sanguine about the prospect of vertical missile proliferation in North Korea. Pyongyang's best brains were only able to crack the Scud formula after decades of incremental reverse-engineering (and probably a fair amount of trial and error). Attempts to incorporate new technology appear to be consistently (forgive the pun) blowing up in their faces. This gives me a pretty strong impression that we should be far more worried about North Korea's nuclear scientists than their missile engineers.

Dude...

2007-07-05T18:53:00.000-04:00

So I saw the Transformers movie last night. It was 'aaaite' -- the story was pretty incoherent, but the 144 minute run time offers enough hot robot-on-robot action to make it worth paying full price for a ticket.

What I thought was far more interesting was the trailer for next film to come out under J.J. Abram's Bad Robot Studio currently dubbed Cloverfield. It was an intense experience that blends the first-person point of view cinematography of the Blair Witch Project with what appears to be some sort of Godzilla-type theme.

The whole thing is being done under a pretty heavy veil of secrecy. The film's site offers little more than an ominous picture of two frightened young women looking behind the camera. Paramount, who is going to be the distributor on this flick, won't avow its existence, except to tell the guys at slashfilm.com to take an embed link to an illegally-captured screener of the trailer off of their site. I doubt Paramount will happen upon my blog, so here is a screener I found on Youtube. There are also all of these 'Ethan Haas was right' videos on Youtube, which you can access by figuring out the puzzles on this site.

Weird stuff.

Upate: There is apparently an 'Ethan Hass was wrong' blog as well and the Cthulhu is clearly mentioned among the gibberish and Hindi script used on the site.

Translation: "Taepodong 2 drops off the coast of North Korea, 400 kilometers --> dozens of kilometers, complete failure"

2007-07-03T22:15:00.000-04:00

Dr. J over at the ArmsControlWonk asked me to run down the Mainichi Shimbun article referenced in the first paragraph of AFP story from July 30, 2006. By the power of Greyskull and the wonder of Dow Jones's Factiva, I managed to track it down and the following rough translation (the original Japanese text has been attached to the comments section):

"Taepodong 2 drops off the coast of North Korea, 400 kilometers --> dozens of kilometers, complete failure"

* No Dong 2 and Scud 4 also tested -- Japanese Defense Agency report.

July 30, 2006

By Akitaka Furuhon

The Japanese Defense Agency (JDA) released an outline of a reconnaissance report concerning high-profile ballistic missile tests conducted in the vicinity of North Korea on July 29. Of the seven missiles tested, it concludes that the third missile, which has specifically classified as the two-stage Taepodong 2, was a complete failure. The 400 kilometer flight path estimated was revised to read "Only a few dozen miles off of the coast in North Korean waters." Of the remaining six missiles, report concluded that two were "No Dongs" and four where "Scuds."

The July report was the result of the JDA reconciling early information like missile trajectories seen by the Marine Self-Defense Forces' Aegis cruiser radars with later data from the U.S. military's ground-based radar.

The Taepodong 2 missile was launched from Musudanri in northeastern North Korean. Its first stage is newly designed booster and its second stage is a Nodong missile. At first, the missile appeared to have dropped into the ocean 350 kilometers north-north west of the coast of Niigata prefecture, which would have been a distance of 400 kilometers. The result of several data analyses, however, revised this distance based on the conclusion that the first stage burned out after 40 seconds and the second stage did not separate. The observed burn time of less than three minutes under normal operating conditions leads to the conclusion that test was a complete failure.

On the one hand, the report said "the probability that the missile's target was the Pacific Ocean is high," but it avoided specifics because the launch was far from normal.

The remaining six missiles were launched towards the northeast from Kittaeryong in southeastern North Korea and they were seen falling into the ocean about 400 miles away. The missile trajectories were not tracked long enough for accurate analysis, but the report ends it analysis by stating "the six launched missiles fell within dozens of kilometers of their range" without providing the actual impact sites.

Using the six missile's initial velocity and burn pattern, two were classified as No Dongs and the four others were classified as Scuds. Based on the trajectory analysis, the report judges that a new IRBM (Editor's Note: the Japanese author translates the acronym IRBM to 'submarine-launched medium range missile' -- like the Norks have subs large enough) currently in development was not included in the tests. The report does offer some minor specifics on the Scuds and ends with the observation that "it is possible that a new Scud design was included among the missiles tested."

(Editors's note: I am not very confident about my take on this next sentence) In regards to the launch procedures used by North Korea, Japanese and American intelligence agencies are waiting to see whether the tests are proclaimed a demonstration of North Korean power. The report also does not draw conclusions on North Korea's intent.

(Update: MTC was kind enough to translate the last paragraph correctly. By misinterpreting the meaning of "打ち上げ順序," I screwed the whole paragraph up -- my bad.)

As for the order of the missile firings, the intelligence agencies of both the U.S. and Japan have said, "It is really not in our best interest to reveal our capabilities." They defer on making a public statement. They will also not be confirming in a published report the mappings out of any of the missile firings.

Interesting stuff. Let me know what you think -- I'm going to weigh in on it sometime tomorrow.

My 8 hour irony-fest

2007-07-02T20:41:00.000-04:00

So I was stuck representing the Army at a Department of Defense-wide meeting hosted by the Office of the Secretary of Defense all day today. We were talking about a currently contentious piece of security cooperation policy. As one might expect, the meeting quickly degenerated into a bland war of words over bureaucratic turf, but I did notice one thing: Even in a community that is as abstracted from the soldiers in the field as security cooperation policy, the cultural stereotypes about different DoD components still hold true.

The security cooperation community recently experienced in a significant slowdown in one its main policy processes. In response, each military department proposed a solution that largely matched up with the strategic preferences described in Carl Builder's classic The Masks of War:

1. The Navy thought the problem could be fixed by giving the military departments more autonomy and delegated authority.

2. The Air Force wanted to introduce a cutting-edge information technology application to improve communication and situational awareness.

3. The Army argued that each service should dedicate more manpower to tackling the issue.

In addition to the predictable responses of each military department, the proposals of the other DoD components present were fairly stereotypical. The Missile Defense Agency thought increasing visibility with the executive branch was the answer, while the Defense Threat Reduction Agency believed we should take the issue to Congress. Not surprisingly, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wanted to throw out current procedures and rules in favor of a high-risk, experimental approach.

The entire meeting was so ironic that if you had thrown in a Mountie, a Sumo wrestler, a mariachi band and a French guy in a beret smoking cigarettes, one might easily mistake it for an elaborate costume party -- or as I saw it, a cruel joke.

Of export controls and special relationships

2007-06-29T09:12:00.000-04:00

Export controls are probably the least popular, but most important component of nonproliferation policy. They are the where the 'rubber meets the road' when it comes to stopping the flow of technology, weapons and money to proliferators, terrorists and other 'evil-doers.' Despite being both the largest economy and the largest manufacturer in the world, the United States has one of the most obtrusive and tight-fisted export control regimes as well.

Some would argue that this is the result of America's obsession with proliferation and its preference for trade sanctions as punishment, but that is a story for another day...

Booking Danno

So here is the situation: Vermont cop sees kid out tipping cows and a chase ensues. Kid crosses the Canadian border and the cop follows in hot pursuit. Cop loses kid and attempts to return to the U.S., but is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

What was his offense, you may ask? Was it his hot pursuit into another sovereign state? No, but he did violate the Arms Export Control Act by bringing his sidearm across the border without either first obtaining an export license from the State Department or declaring it to U.S. customs agents.

Thankfully this situation has yet to occur, but in order to head-off this potentially embarrassing diplomatic incident, the U.S. and Canada are hammering out an international agreement to cover such an eventuality.

Just how far does that 'special relationship' go?

One of Tony Blair's last actions as the British Prime Minister was to quietly sign a defense cooperation treaty with the U.S. that will supposed loosen some of the export restrictions that have been hampering some security cooperation. This is an issue my office in the Pentagon deals with all the time because of the UK's close involvement in FCS and the F-35.

Back in late 2005-early 2006, the UK almost pulled out of the F-35 program after having invested $2 billion in the fighter's development. This was largely because the U.S. was refused to let the Ministry of Defense or British defense contractors hired to performance maintenance and upgrades on the F-35's on board software. The flap was eventually deflated with an agreement that guaranteed access to enough technology to give the British 'operational sovereignty' over their fleet of fighters.

One of the key hang-ups over this issue is how the U.S. and UK define exports. Under the U.S.'s International Trafficking in Arms Regulation, an export occurs whenever you give a controlled item or piece of information to a foreign person, firm or government. The UK system, on the other hand, merely applies the movement of items and information across geographical locations. The key difference here being that giving a foreign an U.S. export-controlled item in the U.S. constitutes an export, but the same would not be true of UK export-controlled items in the UK. This largely stems from the fact that the UK, like Canada and many European nations, cannot discriminate on the basis of nationality (i.e. dual citizens and non-permanent residents), whereas the U.S. does.

The interesting part of this latest agreement is the extent to which the UK is doing back flips in order to relieve export license requirements. The exact text of the treaty hasn't been released yet (we don't even have a copy at work), but the Society for British Aerospace Companies released a summary of its high points. I was particularly surprised to read the following paragraph:

Currently, information and material supplied by the US to the UK is usually passed under individual export licenses issued by the US Government to the exporter. This is protected by the receiving company in the UK as part of its contractual relationship with the US supplier, but this protection is not subject to UK legal constraints. In future, information and material supplied from the US under the treaty will have a UK security classification attached to it, which means that its handling is subject to the UK Official Secrets Act (OSA) and therefore enforcement action by HMG in the event of any transgression. This is a major departure for HMG, which has hitherto not offered any UK-based legal protection for the handling of material exported under license from the US. The step is particularly significant as the OSA covers any unauthorised transmission of classified items, irrespective of where it happens geographically or of the nationality of the recipient, whereas UK export controls apply only to the physical transmission of items outside of the UK. The significance of this step by HMG should not be under-estimated, but the British government believes it to be justified as an enabler for an improvement in the flow of sensitive material between the UK and US.

So if SBAC is reading the treaty correctly, the UK has gotten around the difference in our two export control regimes by agreeing to treat U.S.-origin export-controlled information and items as if it were classified -- even if it was not classified by the U.S. government. This extra layer of protection will apparently be enough to allow for unrestricted retransfer within an 'approved community' in the UK.

I won't comment on the UK's decision, but I will say this: Does anyone know the name of the firm that makes classified information safes for the UK government? It is time to invest in that company's stock because this treaty will lead to an explosion in the amount of classified information held by the UK government and its defense contractors.

Worth the price of admission in most localities

2007-06-29T08:22:00.000-04:00

My girlfriend dragged to the theater yesterday evening to see the fourth iteration of the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard (the twist on New Hampshire's state motto is a bit awkward). I know what you're probably thinking, "But RE, why would an IT-savvy defense wonk like yourself go to see an action flick about some preposterous cyber-terrorism plot?" Well I have two good reasons:

First, my girlfriend loves Bruce Willis. To give you sense of the scope of her affection, she actually enjoyed Willis's "The Return of Bruno" album and the Spinal Tap-style mockumentary that accompanied it.

Second, I was dying to see how the director managed to fit a F-35C into the storyline. Given that the U.S. government has been so tight-fisted about the F-35's software code we almost came to blows with the UK back in 2005, I wanted to see how the director justified pitting one against America's everyman hero, John McClane. Hacking a JSF was going to be too big a leap for me. To my surprise, the sequence was fairly logical, if not completely ironic in the face U.S. military tactics since 2002.

Ultimately, the movie was worth the 20 bucks. My (fan)girlfriend aside, John McClane can still deliver the pain... And driving a police car into a helicopter is pretty awesome.

Readers in Mauritius?

2007-06-28T22:01:00.000-04:00

So someone pointed this out to me today: I supposedly have readers out in the middle of the Indian Ocean:

Pretty wild huh? If only it were true... The hits are probably coming from a proxy server based in Mauritius (or possibly the overseas French department Réunion).

Arkin on defense posture: "Toys speak louder than words"

2007-06-28T14:14:00.000-04:00

My readers will rejoice at this temporary reprieve from the impending post on export controls. I just have to respond to Bill Arkin's latest blog post celebrating the symbolic meaning of Ohio-class Trident submarines:

This officer's unhappiness, I submit, is not with the submarine but with our overall predicament: the way the war in Iraq has inflamed so much hate and put so many Americans in harm's way with no decent strategy for victory. In reality, we are involved in an ancient man-to-man battle with a well-motivated enemy. This is a battle we cannot win, at least the way we are fighting it, because our technologically oriented, electronically agile, modern nation is not willing to commit the same manpower -- that is, to sink to the level of barbaric attrition.

Still, this officer's Trident is doing more to counter terrorism than the boots on the ground are. Not because it can lob nukes at anyone, and certainly not because it can counter terrorists under some Strangelovian WMD scenario. Its power is more symbolic: It represents the true superpower. It is a quiet and unobtrusive behemoth that no one else can hope to own and everyone is a bit in awe of -- even if they won't admit it.

Think of the sub as a kind of "mansion on the hill." We drive by it and wonder what it would be like to live there, to have that amount of money. If its owners are good neighbors and not too ostentatious, if they contribute to the community and don't swagger around town arrogantly, we don't get too jealous. If someone breaks into their house, we don't say they deserve it (nor do we call out the Army to rid the county of all house thiefs). We may even shake our heads when the mansion's owners decide not to press charges, and feel a little sad when we see contractors installing a new security system.

My correspondent's submarine is that mansion. The struggle for hearts and minds that we all pay lip service to is not some distant and high-tech information war. It begins at home.

Before 9/11, I would have never thought the military needed more Trident submarines. Now, however, I see their value: Quietly patrolling, threatening no one directly, occupying no one's soil, they help to keep order. And they send a powerful message that says we all have no choice but to play by certain rules and respect each other.

Arkin is on to something, but I think his concluding argument is slightly off the mark. The Ohio-class does have an awesome symbolic power about it, but it is not the benevolent masion on a hill to our allies.

To Arkin, the United States is a hegemony that commands the attention and friendship of its neighbors simply because it is powerful and benevolent. This makes it easy for countries to bandwagon with U.S. policy because the U.S. is both strong and non-threatening. The problem is that this is a false image. Even before the birth of American internationalism after World War II, the intentions of U.S. foreign policy have rarely been benevolent.

So why do we have so many allies? In most cases, our long-standing alliances are the result of a substantial sacrifice on the part of the U.S. Those Tridents that Arkin has fondly meditated on are part of that sacrifice. They represent how much the United States was willing to expend to ensure the security of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. They not only represent the cost of the U.S. was willing to pay in their defense (nuclear holocaust), it also represents the billions we sacrificed to 'deter' Soviet aggression with a superior fighting force.

The problem is that those days are long gone and despite its quiet majesty, the Ohio-class is still a waste of money. In the age of the Internet, the easiest and cheapest way to generate the same sense of sacrifice is to invest in peacekeeping forces. The culturally-adroit, lightly-equipped peacekeeping force that we need to win hearts and minds in Iraq and Afghanistan is exactly the same kind of force that would generate good will in the post-Cold War/post 9-11 world.

The aggregate level of threat to the U.S. and its allies are quantitatively lower today than during the Cold War. Ponying up the cash needed to build fancy weapons platforms and operate them far from home is no longer enough to impress allies and friendly nations. The sacrifice needs to be bigger. We now need to show we're laying American lives on the line for international security.

Pardon the dust

2007-06-28T13:46:00.000-04:00

My Internet connection back at home base has been down for two days. It should be back up this afternoon, just in time for me to post something on everyone's favorite topic, export controls.

Bottom falling out of the freedom agenda?

2007-06-25T20:35:00.000-04:00

First off, I apologize for the lack of a substantive post in about a week. The Army saw fit to leave me in charge of a skeleton crew at the Pentagon while everyone and their mom from the Army security cooperation program went to the Paris Air Show. I know, you're probably asking yourself "What are a bunch of groundpounders doing at some flyboy convention?" Well the Army does have its fleet of combat helicopters and cargo planes to think about.

Anyways, I examine how recent events in the Palestinian territories and the United States' policy responses have hammered the final nails in the coffin for the Bush administration's "freedom agenda":

It has been almost two weeks since Fatah's security forces lost Gaza to Hamas gunmen. Not long after the Presidential compound was seized by Hamas, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert moved firmly behind Palestinian Authority (PA) President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. They also agreed, along with the EU and UN, to release millions in Palestinian tax revenue and international aid that had been embargoed since Hamas joined the PA government after winning a majority on the Palestinian Legislative Council back in January 2006.

The Arab states neighboring also met with Abbas and Olmert for about 45 minutes today in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to throw their weight behind the Fatah government in the West Bank. All of these theatrics have apparently encouraged Hamas to return to dialogue with Fatah, but it is way to early in the game to know whether this opening will be big enough to drive the 18-wheel power-sharing agreement needed to stem future violence through it.

The problem is that, as Robert Malley and Aaron D. Miller so aptly point out, Hamas's electoral victory can't be undone through the intervention of foreign powers into Palestinian politics. The Quartet has a legitimate reason for denying foreign aid and maybe even Palestinian tax revenue to a government led by an unrepentant Hamas. Palestinian finances and bureaucracy are often so opaque it would be very difficult to guarantee the cash wouldn't be used to fund suicide bombings or Qassam rocket attacks.

Trying to use such funding to create a reinvigorated Fatah party to muscle Hamas out of the political scene, on the other hand, is an incredibly short-sighted policy. It says to the average Palestinian that the U.S. is only interested in electoral democracy, as long as it produces governments with policies that are compatible to U.S. interests. As the disintegration of Fatah-Hamas relations in Gaza demonstrated, attempting to create a winner in Palestine will only serve to undermine what is left of the U.S.'s image as a well-intentioned mediator. It will also push the Palestinian people straight into the open arms of the extremists that we are seeking to undermine, while at the same time, allowing Fatah to become more corrupt and factionalized.

Think I'm crazy? Just look at how unflinching U.S. support for Jiang Jieshi's leadership of the Kuomintang turned out for Chinese democrats. If the Bush administration honestly thinks it can turn Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah into a winner in the West Bank, they need to think again. It is time to get Fatah and Hamas at the table and bang some heads together.

What I'm listen to

2007-06-21T21:11:00.000-04:00

I keep getting the same question from my Japanese readers: REさん、日本の音楽の中で、どれが一番好きですか？(Mr. RE, what is your favorite type of Japanese music?) Do listen to a fair amount of Japanese rap nowadays, but my favorite genre will always be Japanese metal.

Like most American aficionados of Japanese metal, my first exposure was X Japan's Blue Blood album. X Japan was a quintessential band for many reasons -- they dressed like the ill-gotten children of a one-night stand between Guns and Roses and Culture Club, their frontman hide met with a very Michael Hutchence end, their sound was very reminiscent of speed metal classics, such as Ace of Spades and Kill 'Em All.

During the heady days of Napster, when peer-to-peer sharing was really hitting its stride, I was able to sample a large portion of the Japanese metal genre. I also spent a summer in undergrad in the Kansai area, which afford me the opportunity to go to a bunch of concerts for relatively cheap (Japanese bands love to see Western fans in the audience). I would have to say my favorite band out of the genre is the now defunct speed metal group Sex Machineguns (yes, the name is a play on the Sex Pistols).

Their music videos are particularly interesting, check out this video for the 1997 hit "Burn":

And before I get a handful of quizzical e-mails asking about the guys in black jumpsuits running on treadmills and pounding mochi, I don't get it either. They show up on some of their other videos as well.

Update: I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention SEIKIMA II and their groundbreaking 1987 music video for "1999 Secret Object."

These guys are probably the most hardcore of any Japanese metal band. Like KISS, their make-up remained relatively unchanged for two decades. They also made good on their promised to break-up on December 31, 1999 and have stayed disbanded for 7 years despite popular pressure to reunite.

The best documentary I've seen in years

2007-06-20T09:12:00.000-04:00

If you have a free hour this evening, watch Frontline's documentary "Endgame" (its available for free on the website). It is quite possibly the most detailed and even-handed account of what went wrong in post-invasion Iraq I have ever seen. It really plumbs the depths of how the Bush administration's desire to play politics with the war and prioritize photo-ops over strategy sessions has created the quagmire we are in today.

On the flip-side, the documentary also makes an excellent case for supporting the "surge/escalation/bananaphone" being carried out by counterinsurgency and peacekeeping nerd Gen. David Petraeus. To be honest, I'm inclined to support the new counterinsurgency strategy if it means we might be setting the Iraqis on a future path that is not marred by violence. Its sad that the Bush administration has politicized the conduct of this way so much that writing what I writing the previous sentence leaves me with mixed feelings and a bad taste in my mouth.

Romney/Obama Foreign Affairs essay roundup

2007-06-17T17:22:00.000-04:00

The much talked-about July/August issue of Foreign Affairs arrived in the mail yesterday. It features essays on foreign policy from 2008 presidential candidates Barak Obama and Mitt Romney.

Both essays were pretty weak, but Romney's was just atrocious. If there is one reason for you to vote against him, let it be the contradiction between his description of the "defining challenge of our generation":

In the current conflict, the balance of forces is not nearly as close as during the early days of World War II and at critical points during the Cold War. There is no comparison between the economic, diplomatic, technological, and military resources of the civilized world today and those of the terrorist organizations and states that threaten it. Perhaps most important is the incredible resourcefulness of the American people and their unmatched education, inventiveness, and dedication. But today's threats are fundamentally different from those we grew used to confronting during World War II and the Cold War. Our enemies now have sleeper cells rather than armies. They use indiscriminate terror rather than tanks. Their soldiers -- as well as their victims -- include children. They count radical clergy among their generals. They communicate via the Internet. They recruit in schools, houses of worship, and prisons. They pursue nuclear weapons not as a strategic deterrent but as an offensive tool of terror.

And his first policy prescription:

The Bush administration has proposed an increase in defense spending for next year. This is an important first step, but we are going to need at least an additional $30-$40 billion annually over the next several years to modernize our military, fill gaps in troop levels, ease the strain on our National Guard and Reserves, and support our wounded soldiers. Looking at military spending over time as a percentage of GDP provides an interesting perspective. During World War II, the United States made huge sacrifices, investing more than a third of its economic activity to fight the war. As we confronted different enemies, such as those in Korea, our investment in defense responded accordingly. Since then, slowly but surely, it has decreased significantly. Through the buildup under President Reagan, it reached six percent of GDP in 1986 and helped turn the tide against the Soviet Union. Yet during the Clinton years, defense spending was dangerously reduced. More recently, although spending has increased, less than four percent of our GDP has been devoted to baseline defense spending. These ebbs and flows stemming from political dynamics have increased the costs and the uncertainty of our military preparedness.

The next president should commit to spending a minimum of four percent of GDP on national defense. Increased spending should not mean increased waste, however. A team of private-sector leaders and defense experts should carry out a stem-to-stern analysis of military purchasing. Accounts need to be thoroughly scrutinized to eliminate excessive contractor and supplier charges and prevent deals for equipment and programs that do more for politicians' popularity in their home districts than for the nation's protection. Congress needs to set stricter lobbying rules and keep a far more watchful eye on self-serving politicians, current and past, in regard to these matters.

So even though we completely outmatch the terrorists in resources and ingenuity, we have to grossly outspend them as well? I'd also like to see him try to enforce fiscal discipline on the military and the Congress. Let it be known that fighting the defense establishment can hazardous to the health of your SecDef. The rest of the essay is pretty incoherent and clearly demonstrates that he no grasp on why the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 actually worked when other attempts at bureaucratic reform didn't.

Obama's essay was a little better, but it felt pretty light on substance. He spends a good deal of the essay invoking the leadership of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, but never really defines himself as a leader. The bulk of the essay consists of paeans to fashionable Democratic foreign policy causes with no clear sense of policy priority. The most developed portion of the essay was on nuclear nonproliferation, which shouldn't be surprising considering that Obama has been under Sen. Dick Lugar's tutelage in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the last three years:

As president, I will work with other nations to secure, destroy, and stop the spread of these weapons in order to dramatically reduce the nuclear dangers for our nation and the world. America must lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years -- the most effective way to prevent terrorists from acquiring a bomb.

This will require the active cooperation of Russia. Although we must not shy away from pushing for more democracy and accountability in Russia, we must work with the country in areas of common interest -- above all, in making sure that nuclear weapons and material are secure. We must also work with Russia to update and scale back our dangerously outdated Cold War nuclear postures and de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons. America must not rush to produce a new generation of nuclear warheads. And we should take advantage of recent technological advances to build bipartisan consensus behind ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. All of this can be done while maintaining a strong nuclear deterrent. These steps will ultimately strengthen, not weaken, our security.

As we lock down existing nuclear stockpiles, I will work to negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material. We must also stop the spread of nuclear weapons technology and ensure that countries cannot build -- or come to the brink of building -- a weapons program under the auspices of developing peaceful nuclear power. That is why my administration will immediately provide $50 million to jump-start the creation of an International Atomic Energy Agency-controlled nuclear fuel bank and work to update the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. We must also fully implement the law Senator Richard Lugar and I passed to help the United States and our allies detect and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.

Finally, we must develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Iran and North Korea could trigger regional arms races, creating dangerous nuclear flashpoints in the Middle East and East Asia. In confronting these threats, I will not take the military option off the table. But our first measure must be sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy -- the kind that the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to use.

As I read it, Obama is interested in the CTBT, the Fissban treaty, an international nuclear fuel bank, cooperative threat reduction. He also poop-poos the rush to field the RRW and says diplomacy would be the core of his nonproliferation policy to Iran and North Korea. Can't say I disagree when any of that.

The rumors are true

2007-06-17T15:33:00.001-04:00

As some of my readers have already heard, I was hired by the Department of State to work on chemical and biological weapons proliferation. I will remain with the Army for another 3-6 months while I undergo additional background checks.

Best.Vietnamese.Evar.

2007-06-17T15:27:00.000-04:00

I finally uploaded and organized some of my pictures from Bourges. The photo set is here.

As a side note, if you ever find yourself in downtown Bourges and are hungry for Vietnamese, Tan Hong Phuc is your restaurant.

The Internet hearts Ron Paul

2007-06-16T09:19:00.000-04:00

According the front page of the Saturday Post, Ron Paul is making a big splash on the Internet:

On Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere, the most frequently searched term this week was "YouTube."

Then comes "Ron Paul."

The presence of the obscure Republican congressman from Texas on a list that includes terms such as "Sopranos," "Paris Hilton" and "iPhone" is a sign of the online buzz building around the long-shot Republican presidential hopeful -- even as mainstream political pundits have written him off.

Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times -- more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

[snip]

But while many Democrats have welcomed the young and fresh-faced Obama, who's trailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in most public opinion polls, Paul is barely making a dent in the Republican polls.

Republican strategists point out that libertarians, who make up a small but vocal portion of the Republican base, intrinsically gravitate toward the Web's anything-goes, leave-me-alone nature. They also say that his Web presence proves that the Internet can be a great equalizer in the race, giving a much-needed boost to a fringe candidate with little money and only a shadow of the campaign staffs marshaled by Romney, McCain and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

lol. That reminds me, I'm hosting a MeetUp meeting at my rustic log cabin/militia compound in Winchester this weekend...

No, seriously, Ron Paul has long been the golden boy of the Republican (and Democratic) libertarians. The only problem is that the libertarian population is relative small relative to other ideological groups -- just check out this handy Pew Center report on popular ideologies done last year. Whereas liberals, conservatives and populists each represent at least 15% percent of the population, libertarians only register around 10%.

This has lead to endless debate in the libertarian camp about winning strategies. Traditionally, the Libertarian Party and libertarians among the Dems and Republicans have chosen to gather around a handful of candidates with libertarian views. Young, Internet-savvy libertarians have been taking a different approach by actively trying to sell the libertarian ethos to the 40% of America that registers as ideologically ambivalent. Just look at the Freedom Democrats, a group of 20 and 30-something libertarians who identify with the Democratic Party. Ron Paul has been their patron saint for years and they spend a good deal of time arguing with the folks over at dKos about the ills of populism and protectionism.

Diet Coke Plus

2007-06-14T22:28:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting to do this photoshop for a while:

In-flight movie review roundup

2007-06-14T21:01:00.000-04:00

Having spent a little more than 40 hours in airplanes over the last two weeks, you can probably imagine that I've had my fill of in-flight movies. I've put together a brief review for each, as well as a ranking based on how much I would pay to go see it.

Shooter

Antoine Fuqua had some trouble following the blockbuster success of Training Day. I was particularly disappointed by how Tears of the Sun and King Arthur were basically the same movie, only separated by about 1600 years. I originally thought this loose interpretation of Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact would be similarly disappointing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a moderately good action movie. I also can't believe I'm about the same age as the beautiful Kate Mara. Dollar Value: I'd pay matinee price.

The Painted Veil

Going in, I initially had mixed feelings about this adaptation of the relatively obscure W. S. Maugham novel. The director, John Curran, only has a handful of artsy movies under his belt and I haven't been able to stomach Naomi Watts since the painfully over dramatic 21 Grams. On the other hand, I think Edward Norton is one of the greatest of the Generation X actors (a close second to Johnny Depp) and I think 1920s China is a great backdrop for story telling. The end result is very entertaining, but a touch formulaic. Dollar Value: Pay full price to take your girlfriend/boyfriend if they frequent art house cinema or fancy British period pieces, but don't pay full price otherwise.

Breach

The stars seemed to align for this film. Something seemed very right about putting Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillippe in a crime drama/spy flick directed Billy Ray (the only director to get a reasonably solid performance out of the pretty, but flat Hayden Christensen) and film delivers for the most part. If you enjoyed the political-bureaucratic backdrop of Now Way Out or wasted your late 20s in CIA counterintelligence, you will enjoy this movie. Your girlfriend and mom will think this movie is either "too dark," boring or both. Dollar Value: Rent it or put it at the top of your Netflix cue. That shouldn't be a problem because you'll probably have trouble finding someone to watch it with anyways (unless you're a current or former spook).

Music and Lyrics

eh. Dollar Value: Only go see this if you or your girlfriend likes Hugh Grant.

Bridge to Tarabithia

AnnaSophia Robb has a disturbingly elfish face, but that didn't kill the mood of the film. Overall, it isn't a bad film and would appeal to anyone who enjoyed the Harry Potter movies or the recent Chronicles of Narnia film. Be warned though, this adaptation stays true to the book, so there will not be a dry eye in the house at the end. I wouldn't recommend it for young kids. Dollar Value: Rent it if your audience includes the 12+ crowd or a Harry Potter-reading third date.

China wants military power = Duh...

2007-06-14T12:45:00.000-04:00

I'm growing so tired of boring pieces on China's military modernization. The latest example: American Enterprise Institute scholar Gary Schmitt's real snoozer in the op-ed section of today's Post:

Obviously, greater transparency by the Chinese would be helpful. But absent a significant shift toward political liberalization in China, there's no reason to expect that to happen. And anyway, after a decade and a half of military buildup, do we really need greater transparency to understand what China is up to?

The Chinese are a proud people and they want to be seen as a powerful, potentially dominant, state. And power, they understand, includes not only a strong economy but a powerful military. When the Chinese look at the world today, who gets in their way most of the time? It's certainly not the Europeans, who have economic strength but little hard power. It's the United States.

There is a tendency on the part of American Sinologists to think that China's "peaceful development" precludes it from craving what all rising powers before it have craved -- power and recognition. Yet the Chinese don't think the two are opposed at all. They view a growing economy as critical to solving their domestic problems, but they also know that it is critical to providing the resources for military modernization and expansion.

The lack of transparency is, if anything, a dodge we've used to avoid dealing with the real problem: China's ambitions to be as great a power as it can be. It's understandable, perhaps, that with all that is on America's plate at the moment, we're not inclined to add China. But that doesn't change the fact that Beijing believes the more military power it has, the more likely it is that those ambitions will be fulfilled.

I'll be the first person to agree with Mr. Schmitt's point here. China's military build up is almost entirely based its desire to amass national power. Since the end of the Cold War and its opening to investment from the West, threats against China have declined precipitously. There is an argument that modernization can sometimes reduce a military's long-term cost, but it would be hard to quantify this argument without reliable information on the PLA's current operating costs.

The problem is that Mr. Schmitt's argument does not answer two questions that are far more important:

Is this actually a threat?: The reason why American Sinologists pour over Chinese policy documents and lament about the PLA's lack of transparency is that foreign military power itself is not a threat. After the U.S., the next largest military spenders are the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan -- all of which are U.S. allies. One could easily argue that their $233 billion will be used against us any time soon. China is more of a black box. Do they plan on using their military to support the current U.S.-backed status quo or will they attempt to revise it? If they do intend to revise the status quo, how far are they willing to go to meet their objectives? These questions will lead to highly divergent requirements for the U.S. military that come with different future forces and price tags.

What can we do about it?: The U.S.'s military capabilities currently dwarf those of China and this is likely to continue for decades. Even China comes close to catching up, what can we do about it? U.S. military spending is pretty close to its budgetary limits and the Chinese have the sovereign right to build a military within the limits of international law. What does Mr. Schmitt propose we do if China's capabilities begin to rival our own? Raise taxes and increase defense spending? Launch a pre-emptive strike on China's materiel factories? Attempt to stifle Chinese economic growth?

China's interest in amassing military power tells me nothing. At the same time, "American preeminence" is an end state, not a strategy. Mr. Schmitt should come back when he has something interesting to say.

Home again, home again

2007-06-14T11:33:00.000-04:00

In response to the e-mail traffic, yes, I am back from France and yes, I did take a bunch of pictures of Bourges. There was a pretty bad rain/hail storm in Northern Virginia yesterdat and it knocked out my Internet connection all evening.

With luck, everything will be fixed by the time I get home this afternoon. I will provide a proper update then. Sorry about the wait.

Back from viking territory

2007-06-06T17:28:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm back. Our meeting with the Swedish Ministry of Defense went well and it looks like I won't need to make a second trip in the fall. (woohoo!)

I was a little weirded out by the Swedish MOD building's lack of security, but then again, I'm used to working in an enormous five-sided bunker. The building itself had some really interesting architecture and I wish I took some pictures of it (thinking the Swedes would be more concerned with counter-surveillance, I left my camera back in the hotel room).

I really wanted to get a photo of the beer tap installed next to the soda fountain in the MOD's canteen. Maybe its my puritanical American work ethic, but I can't get my head around Europe's casual attitude toward drinking in the middle of the day.

I had a few uniquely Swedish experiences in Stockholm. First, I played a little kubb with some of the younger MOD folks one day. Maybe it was just the beer, but that game is really fun. Second, I was sample a number of Swedish dishes at the Taste of Stockholm -- all of which tasted pretty funky. Finally, I got to see how ~~the undergrads of Stockholm University~~ Stockholm's high school grads [ed. Thanks anonymous in Stockholm, apparently my waiter's details were slightly off] celebrate graduation (namely, riding around the back of 10-12 flatbed trucks in downtown Stockholm, listening to really loud techno music and shouting at passers-by).

I would have taken a few more pictures, but I was worried about catching a beer can in the face like a hapless Japanese tourist did earlier in the day. You will find more pictures in my photo set (more to be added soon). As you might notice, I like taking pictures of urban landscapes.

Update Madness - 1 June 2007

2007-06-01T13:31:00.000-04:00

Faithful readers, the Army is sending me to Stockholm next week and around France the week after. Before you send me a nasty-gram advising me to "stop bragging" about my "awesome job," I will have you know that neither trip will be particularly enjoyable. If you think the politics of defense procurement are ugly here in the United States, imagine what it is like in Europe where most of the defense giants are partially or completely state owned.

Then add to that the years of fridged relations with the Continent since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and you will probably start to see what I mean. Things have improved some now that the Rumster is out of the Pentagon, but it will be another year or two before those in the security cooperation community can shed their bureaucratic parkas.

Worst of all, I will spend 15-20 hours in meetings with a bunch of Swedish defense officials. I seriously doubt any of them will look like this:

I will be back for a few days at the end of next week before I head off to Paris. Check back Wednesday night for new posts and maybe even photos.

Gates's speech at the Air Force Academy

2007-06-01T13:24:00.000-04:00

Fellow William and Mary alum and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a simply smashing commencement address at the Air Force Academy this year:

The world you are entering is much more complicated than it was when I was an Air Force officer during the Cold War. You will not always know who your enemies are. You will not always be able to understand their motivations. And you will not always be able to rely exclusively on technology to win battles or wars.

The challenges you face will test both your spirit and your resolve. At the Academy you have undoubtedly heard much about what it takes to be a leader. Well, the time for words has now passed. From this day forward, you will have to demonstrate that you can live up to the standards you were taught. That you can perform in a military that is unique in the world in terms of how heavily it relies on the judgment and integrity of its junior officers.

I can tell you that it will rarely, if ever, be easy. Far too often today we see the results of a failure of leadership at too many levels – whether in the home, in schools, in business, in government, and yes, even in the armed forces. It certainly does not have to do with the natural capabilities of our leaders. They are for the most part smart, educated, driven. They did not rise to positions of leadership by accident – but by demonstrating a capacity, and a willingness, to lead.

But the ability to lead carries with it great responsibilities – for it is just as easy, if not easier, to lead people down the wrong path. It is easy to try to cover your tracks if you make a mistake.

It is easy to give your superiors good news even when you know it is not warranted. It is all too easy to sacrifice the long-term interests of the service and the nation for short-term personal gains.

All these things are easy, but they’re wrong. Moral quandaries of the sort you will face are made more difficult by the realities of the world today.

We live in an age where friends and enemies alike will seek out and focus on any and all mistakes made under great stress; where the irregular battlefield will present life-and-death decisions, often with no good choices. Where the slightest error in judgment – or even the perception of an error – can be magnified many times over on the Internet and on TV and circulated around the globe in seconds.

You will face enemies who possess no conscience and no remorse – who will lie about and distort your actions, and who will purposefully blur the line between civilians and combatants.

Your actions will also be under scrutiny by those who support you – by the Congress, the press, and by everyday citizens. And make no mistake about it – your supporters at home will be watching – and setting their expectations high.

There is only one way to conduct yourself in this world – only one way to remain always above reproach. For a real leader, the elements of personal virtue – self-reliance, self-control, honor, truthfulness, morality – are absolute. They are absolute even when doing what is right may bring embarrassment or bad publicity to your unit or the service or to you. Even when doing what is right may require sacrificing personal allegiances and friendships for professional duty and ethics – for personal honor.

Those lucky flyboys.

Note to the Army: About those dropships...

2007-06-01T10:43:00.000-04:00

David Axe highlighted an interesting piece about efforts to refurbish the old S-64 Skycrane for modern use. Nestled down at the bottom of the article is a paragraph that caught my eye:

But there is a potential new role for which the Aircrane may be perfectly suited. The U.S. Pentagon is exploring a concept called Joint Heavy Lift, which calls for an aircraft capable of carrying 20 to 28 tons of combat systems to the battlefield. To that, Fraenkel was equally forthcoming. "We are at the beginning phase of making appropriate contacts within the military," he said. If the green light is given for re-start, Fraenkel said, "we would partner with M7 to produce center sections for us."

The Joint Heavy Lift has an interesting story behind it. The program was originally intended to provide a vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) heavy lift vehicle for the Marines and Army. It has been having trouble "getting off the ground" (pardon the pun) because the services want something vastly different. The Marines merely want a replacement for their CH-53 Super Stallions with something that can carry an external load of 14 tons over a 130 mile range.

The Army wants something far more ambitious. They want to produce a Heavy Lift VTOL system capable of hauling a 20 ton internal payload over a 1000 mile range. Just look at these wonderful computer-generated concept pictures available on Globalsecurity.org. It looks like a C-130 Hercules that has been mounted with a rotor blade that is the width of its wingspan.

At this point, you are probably asking yourself, "So What? This isn't the cockamamie proposed military platform out there." True, but the HLVTOL's unbelieveability is important because it is the unspoken Achilles' heel of Future Combat Systems.

The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command issued a pamphlet entitled "The Army in Joint Operations: The Army Future Force Capstone Concept" in April 2005. This document is intended to provide a conceptual framework for how the Army intends to fight behind the helm of FCS. Here is an excepted paragraph from section 5.3 entitled "Intratheater Operational Manuever:

The Future Force executes intratheater operational maneuver (see Figure 5-3) to extend the reach of the joint force thereby enabling the joint force commander to respond to opportunity or uncertainty, isolate portions of the battlefield, exploit success, and accomplish key campaign objectives. Operational movement of the force by ground, sea, or air can secure positions of advantage to destroy key capabilities and forces, extend tactical reach, achieve surprise, preemptively seize key terrain, overcome or avoid difficult terrain, accelerate the advance of the overall force, and block enemy forces. Such operational maneuver repositions forces in depth for immediate attack, substantively changing the geometry of the battlespace to U.S. advantage, and increasing complexity for the enemy. It also potentially exposes the entire enemy area of operations to direct attack, prevents resynchronization of enemy combat power, and denies reinforcement and sustainment. In all cases, forces must have the capability to reorient against follow-on objectives, with minimum delay. The process is repeated in rapid succession, and in concert with other ongoing operations, until enemy cohesion is destroyed beyond recovery.

So the future Army will be depend on a network of air assets that allow them around the 'hop' around enemy ground forces -- like an airborne blitzkrieg. It is certainly an interesting idea, but what will the Army do if those assets do not materialize in time? For that, you have to flip to the back of pamphlet to read section E-2 entitled "Alternate Futures." Specifically, a failure to "develop advanced lift capabilities to enable the use of unimproved air and sea entry points for force projection, operational maneuver, and sustainment" would:

Should these conditions continue into the future, the capstone concept this pamphlet describes will not be achievable. True joint interdependence would remain out of reach, with the current level of joint and multinational integration remaining in effect. Similarly, the capability to effectively combine new defeat mechanisms of dislocation and disintegration would be compromised. Land operations would almost certainly be constrained to traditional linear frameworks in major combat operations against effective adversaries. Significant improvement in the strategic responsiveness and operational agility of the Army would remain out of reach, particularly for the heavy force. The net effect would be one of stagnation and perpetuation of existing joint and Army doctrine into the foreseeable future, with only modest improvement in capability and operational utility.

So let me get this straight: The success of FCS, in all of its $200 billion, network-centric glory, is dependent on this thing getting off the ground? And the Army says that I am the one with the crazy ideas about the future force...

MRAP and EFPs

2007-05-31T15:13:00.000-04:00

USAToday picks up on a key weakness of the military's new vehicular Ing'enue: The MRAP cannot stand up to explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs):

But the armor on those vehicles cannot stop the newest bomb to emerge, known as an explosively formed penetrator (EFP). The Pentagon plans to replace virtually all Humvees with MRAPs to provide better protection against roadside bombs, responsible for most casualties in Iraq.

The document, dated Jan. 13, is called an urgent universal need statement. The statements are written by field commanders in all services, who want commercially available solutions to battlefield problems.

Since MRAPs are so much safer against traditional roadside bombs, the document says, Iraqi insurgents' use of EFPs "can be expected to increase significantly."

As a result, the Marine commanders in Iraq who wrote the statement asked for more armor to be added to the new vehicles.

Armor performance information is pretty sensitive even when it is not classified, so I have waited until enough details surface in public before broaching the issue. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise consider that an EFP managed to penetrate the thick skin of a British Challenger 2 tank. If an EFP can go through a 60-ton tank encased in Chobham armor, what are the chances that the 15-ton MRAP's rolled steel would perform any better?

The MRAP's V-shaped hull design is really meant to deflect the energy of an explosion and not the EFP's focused blast. With enough armor, the hull curvature might deflect them in some situations, but the Marines shouldn't get their hopes up because EFPs have been known to resist even reactive armor.

I'm still not willing to dismiss the MRAP entirely because forcing the insurgents to use more EFPs could reduce causalities. Imagine that you are trying to pierce a 2-liter bottle of soda locked in a refrigerator and the only tools available were a ballista and a 18th Century cannon. The ballista's arrow would probably have enough force to go all the way through the fridge, but its damage would be highly localized. Heck, you might even miss the two-liter entirely.

Using the cannon is a different story. A cannonball might not pierce the fridge, but it would implode (or "spall") the fridge door, potentially destroying everything inside. Adding armor to the fridge would help you resist the cannonball's more distributed impact, but it would provide less protection against the ballista's bolt.

This may play out in Iraq in the same way. An EFP may injure one or even two passengers in an MRAP, but the rest of the crew would be relatively safe. Its not a perfect solution, but then again, are there any perfect solutions in war?

Soft pol-mil breakdowns and the Winograd Commission

2007-05-30T13:06:00.000-04:00

Center for Defense Information's Haninah Levine did a great translation and summary of the Winograd Commission's interim report. Among the report's findings, Haninah picks out three main themes that aren't strangers to this blog:

1. Western militaries are in active denial concerning the limitations of precision weapons.

2. There are real consequences to overstretching a military

3. Rhetorical praise for the troops must not interfere with honest assessment of their abilities

To be honest, I think Haninah's the second point is a little tautological. The term overstretched implies negative consequences that stem from having more responsibilities than one can handle.

It is still a wonderful analysis, but I propose rearranging the logical so that it flows more naturally. Specifically, the military's denial of the limitations of guided weapons warfare and a popular aversion to criticizing the military can lead to an 'overstretching' of military capabilities.

This conundrum is what could be called a "soft" breakdown of the classical Huntingtonian political-military relationship. In the Huntington formulation, civilians exert total control over military strategy, while military leaders are given control over tactics and operations. Problems arise when the line between strategy and operations/tactics is not clear and leaders on both sides are faced with the prospect of overstepping their authority. A "soft" breakdown occurs when civilian and military leaders avoid a conflict in this grey area by simply ignoring one another.

Last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah is a perfect example. The IDF did not warn the civilian leadership that it was given an set of strategic priorities that were greater than its capabilities. At the same time, the Olmert government failed to probe these capability gaps when they became apparent on the battlefield. This mutual distaste for broaching uncomfortable topics allowed the IDF's ineffective bombing strategy to drag on for days before new tactics were adopted.

The same could be said about the first 2-3 years about the U.S. experience in Iraq, but I will save that for another time.

Tie clips: the newest endangered spieces?

2007-05-30T12:42:00.000-04:00

I'll admit I'm a bit of a fashion person, but not in the "owns 12 pairs of shoes" way. I tend to buy the "good stuff" though, mainly because it ends up being more durable than the "cheap stuff." The one thing I do obsess over is tie clips.

The tie clip is a great invention. It keeps your tie straight and attached to your shirt without puncturing the tie (like a tie tack) or looking sloppy (like a tie chain). It has become increasingly hard to find tie clips in recent years and apparently I'm not the only one who noticed:

Already, though, the end was in sight. As the 20th century wore on, fashions became increasingly casual. Men discontinued the practice of wearing suits to baseball games and stopped wearing fedoras almost entirely. Perhaps the tie clip, too, became a sort of symbol of the "organization man," a badge of corporate servility and piety. As white-collar workers became less tied to one company and more like free agents, the tie clip was left in the junk drawer. And then, of course, there is the interesting correlation between the peak and decline of both the Cold War and the tie-clip boom. Could the tie clip have served some sort of unconscious psychological purpose in a war-ready nation—a little flash of light that recalled the gleam of a sword, or a military bar or stripe?

The tie clip is as functional as it ever was. If you are in the habit of standing up to shake hands, it helps to have one. (Such ornaments also draw attention to a nice tie, as T.S. Eliot noted in the "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.") And in those increasingly rare pockets of the world where jeans will never be considered a "dressy" option for men (such as some churches and private clubs), the tie clip may indeed hold out. But today it is mostly seen as old-fashioned, out-of-style, or aggressively dandyish. Vincent D'Onofrio wears one on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, but it reads as a sign of his character's daft iconoclasm, highlighting the mad-genius affectation he uses to solve crimes.

Still, there may be hope. The tie clip recently made a prominent appearance in a slightly cooler venue: athwart the ties worn by Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg in their new video for "Boss' Life." When the pocket square made a triumphant return a few years ago, it got a boost from the efforts of similarly intrepid wearers. If the tie clip turns up on a few more torsos, perhaps it can, like the ivory-billed woodpecker, mount a tentative comeback.

I love rap, but I don't know if we should rely on today's rappers to bring rescue an indispensable accessory like the tie clip.

New DoD report on China's military. (Yawn)

2007-05-28T15:34:00.000-04:00

The Office of the Secretary of Defense published its 2007 Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China. As you might expect, the report confirms that the People's Liberation Army is still pursuing a standard modernization strategy -- better command and control, more precise and longer range weapons, better space assets, etc. There are also references to PLA interest in asymmetrical capabilities, with the typical mention of cyberwar (i.e. digital attack), as well as a few paragraphs tying January's ASAT test into the Navy's beloved "anti-access" theme.

The report does has have two points that I found particularly interesting:

1. DF-31 goes ITA -- If you're my age, you were in high school when the Intelligence Community developed the idea of "initial threat availability." It was the IC's response to the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission Report's apt criticism that their existent analytical approach to missile threat estimation relied too heavily on past patterns of missile development. As time passed, it appeared that the Rumsfeld Commission's fear of rampant "at any cost" missile proliferation was overblown, so the idea has mostly gathered dust on a self somewhere -- that is until the afternoon of Friday, May 23.

In a bit of classical bureaucratic salami-slicing, the DoD pulled out the term to punt on the question of when China will actually field the DF-31s. According the report implies that the Chinese tested the DF-31 sometime in 2006, but they do not have all of the support equipment, personnel and command systems in place to support the missile. I vaguely remember a missile test in the Ghobi last year, but I can't pinpoint the time frame -- I'll do some digging.

2. Shock and awe is alive and well in Beijing -- It seems that the U.S. military experience in Iraq has done little to tarnish China's interest in cultivating network-centric warfare capabilities. The PLA's book on Joint Space War Campaigns even mentions the idea of "shock and awe" preemption as a form of deterrence (bottom of page 21).

It appears that the U.S. experience in Iraq hasn't caused the Chinese to question the value of either concept. The report even calls this issue out in terms of China's deterrence posture towards Taiwan (box at the top of page 33). What would China do if it couldn't compel the Taiwanese government with its missiles and "non-war" operations? Even if it had the assets to launch a successful amphibious invasion, a native insurgency would grind their land forces up (subtext: especially if it was U.S.-sponsored).

Update: Tequila, Yathrib and a few of my readers have taken issue with my musings about insurgency in a hypothetical post-invasion Taiwan. If one assumes (1) that the invasion is a unilateral move by the mainland and (2) it takes 3-6 months for the PLA to control the entire island, I see the following factors contributing to insurgency:

1. A history of divise sectarian rule -- Taiwan has been a democracy for less than a decade. Before then, it was a repressive, corporatist oligarchy run by mainlander elites. I can see any attempt by the Kuomintang to cozy up with the People's Republic ripping open the social and political wounds between the mainlanders, Fujianese and Hakka that are only now healing. In a sense, the political divisions Tequila mentions would serve a predicate for resistance and potential sectarian violence -- all it would take is another 228.

2. The training and materiel is already there -- True, commercial access to guns and explosives in Taiwan is limited, but then again, I imagine they weren't widely available in Iraq prior to 2003 either. The intervening variable here is Taiwan's 1.3 million reservists and their access to the Taiwanese military's stockpile of weapons and explosives. I am seriously skeptical of the Bush administration's assertion that Iran needs to supply the Iraqi insurgency when 7 million tons of materiel was pilfered from the Iraqi military's depots. The same situation could easily come to fruition in Taiwan, especially when PLA tanks start rolling down the streets of Taipei and Kaohsiung.

3. The PLA's slow invasion -- The PLAN's amphibious assault capabilities are pretty limited, so I doubt they could achieve the same kind of maneuver that got us into Baghdad so quickly. PRC rule on Taiwan would not be a sudden fait accompli for the government, businesses or localities. The government would have time to distribute arms. Failing that, an extended lapse in public security could seriously undermine public confidence in governance like it did in Iraq.

This was merely an intellectual exercise designed to challenge the potential assumptions of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It is by no means definitive or likely, but I would argue it is strong possibility with significant consequences for the mainland and Taiwan.

Second Update: I doff my hat to Tequila for all of his great comments. I'm glad to see that someone else is still interested in Taiwanese politics and society.

Memorial Day

2007-05-28T09:40:00.000-04:00

The best way to celebrate Memorial Day is to go out, find a current or former serviceman or woman and thank them for their sacrifice. Maybe give them a hug too (if appropriate).

As a side note, I watched both Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima this weekend. They are great movies. I highly recommend both of them.

Gerson calls it like it is

2007-05-25T13:52:00.000-04:00

I'm only the second generation of my family born in America, so I'll admit I'm a little sensitive about the current debate over immigration. One thing that really gets on my nerves is the idea that immigration threatens "our culture." America is nation of immigrants, so it is not bound by a cultural identity like many other states. The assertion that America has a cultural identity and that this identity can be subverted by demographic change feels almost racist to me.

Apparently, I'm not the only one. Former Bush administration speech writer Michael Gerson wrote a wonderful op-ed in today's Post about how this attitude may hurt the Republican Party's future:

In 1882, Congress passed and President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Today we don't name laws as bluntly as we used to. But anti-immigrant sentiments are very much alive, this time expressed in opposition to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007.

For a certain kind of conservative, any attempt to grant a legal status to illegal immigrants is as welcome as salsa on their apple pie. One conservative commentator claims that the law is "going to erase America" -- an ambition even beyond Ted Kennedy's considerable powers. Another laments that "white America is in flight" -- and presumably not just to Jackson Hole or Nantucket for the summer.

[snip]

But the real passion in this debate is not political, it is cultural -- a fear that American identity is being diluted by Latino migration. Tancredo is the lowbrow expression of this fear. Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, whom Tancredo calls an intellectual mentor, presents the highbrow version. Huntington argues that Mexican migration is a threat to American unity and to the "core" of our cultural identity. "America," he says, "was created as a Protestant society just as and for some of the same reasons Pakistan and Israel were created as Muslim and Jewish societies in the 20th century."

[snip]

Yet these are precisely the people that Tancredo Republicans are alienating. Not all Hispanics view immigration favorably, but 100 percent resent being targets of suspicion. When I talked this week with the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr., a prominent Hispanic evangelical, he said of congressional Republicans: "This is a party closing its door to us, hijacked by extremists."

"All I hear," he told me, "from conservative leaders I work with, very socially conservative people, is, 'I can't continue to vote for a party that is exposing threads of bigotry and racism.' " Conservatives need to be reminded that Latinos -- Protestant and Catholic -- are, in some ways, different from the mainstream culture. Higher percentages attend church regularly. Higher percentages of Latino immigrants are married; lower percentages are divorced. "The elephant in the room," says Rodriguez, "is the Latinoization of America. What are the results? America will be a more religious nation. America will continue to be a nation that promotes family values. Wow, that really turns American culture upside down."

I'm extremely suspicious of nativism and populism, so I would have probably voted Republican in a different era. Not today though. Democrats may have a propensity for dovishness, populism and protectionism, but you can at least haggle with them over policy.

Republicans, meanwhile, have taken a page from the Confucian obsession with virtuous leadership: "To govern by virtue, let us compare it to the North Star: it stays in its place, while the myriad stars wait upon it." Sound familiar?

Its over ten thousand!

2007-05-25T13:43:00.000-04:00

10,000 hits in the past 85 days. And only 9,000 of them are either my mom or my girlfriend...

MC Ahmadinejad's New Album

2007-05-24T23:54:00.000-04:00

In celebration of the IAEA's new report on the implementation of NPT safeguards in Iran, MC Ahmadinejad has released a new album entitled "My Nuclear Report Card."

Update: For those not familiar with the burgeoning hyphy hip-hop scene coming out of the San Fransisco Bay area, this cover is loosely patterned off of album cover of E-40's My Ghetto Report Card. Its a terrible album by the way -- the only redeemable song is last summer's hit "U and Dat."

Is the U.S. becoming too risk averse?

2007-05-24T12:43:00.000-04:00

UCSD professor and former Clinton administration official Richard Feinberg wrote an interesting op-ed piece in today's Post describing how U.S. embassies are turning into fortresses:

With threats to American power growing stronger and American prestige slipping around the world, our professional Foreign Service officers are more crucial than ever. Unfortunately, our approach to their security is making it almost impossible for many of them to do their jobs. Marooned in fortress-like embassies, cut off from the societies where they should be gathering intelligence and spreading American values, too many of them might as well be surveying the landscape from offices in Washington.

U.S. embassies are increasingly becoming like medieval fortresses -- remote, foreboding, impenetrable. Perched on suburban hilltops safely distant from more dangerous urban centers, they sit behind layers of high-security fences, reinforced concrete walls, thick glass windows and squads of armed guards.

[snip]

In violent cities, draconian security measures may be necessary. Diplomats in Baghdad inhabit the famous Green Zone, which generally shields them from car bombs and suicide bombers, even as U.S. intelligence has suffered from these separations. But this solution to extreme threats hardly seems warranted in most capitals. Yet in calm cities, from Singapore to Santiago, garrison embassy compounds are becoming the rule as strict security measures are standardized throughout the world.

Many security measures predated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and even the 1998 bombing of our embassies in East Africa. After the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, new embassies began to take on the fortress architecture, and tightened security was prioritized over diplomatic function. Certainly, when danger is demonstrable, smart security upgrades are warranted; security measures can partially be compensated for by attractive landscaping, and the loss of physical accessibility can be partially replaced by interactive Web sites. But in most places, the fortress embassies are overkill.

Yes, it's a dangerous world, but so is policing our own cities, and we do not suggest that police officers remain barricaded behind their precinct walls. Just the opposite: We now instruct law enforcement officers to walk the streets in their communities, believing that this is the best long-term approach to improving relations with citizens and, ultimately, reducing risk to the officers themselves.

Nor will it ever be possible to eliminate risk for overseas assignments, and attempts to do so become ever more expensive and self-defeating. The only foolproof way to eliminate risk to our diplomats is to bring them home. Better to restore a more considered balance between absolute security and diplomatic effectiveness -- and for the nation to recognize that diplomats, no less than soldiers, accept a degree of risk when they enlist.

I can commiserate with Mr. Feinberg's point. Two years after 9/11, I spent a summer working a U.S. consulate in Japan that was right on a major thoroughfare in the heart of a major Japanese city. The atmosphere of the facility was pretty open -- there were no concrete barriers on the sidewalk and the building's security detail was small cadre of polite Japanese security guards. The staff was so committed to this approach that they wouldn't even let a credible terrorist threat that copped up nearby hamper operations. In the end, their approach really paid dividends for the consulate in terms of public diplomacy and connecting to the local community.

Is this issue just part of a growing preference for risk averse foreign policies in the United States? One could easily see the parallels between the embassy issue and the public's obsession with "protecting our troops" by cocooning them in bulky body armor and increasingly heavy armored cars.

What about national security policy in general? Aren't programs like missile defense, prompt global strike, and the robust nuclear earth penetrator designed to substitute for policies that entail the risk of relying on the cooperation of foreigners -- such as cooperative security, international regimes and diplomacy?

FCS quote of the month

2007-05-23T22:01:00.000-04:00

From Renae Merle's article in last Friday's Post (which I can't believe I missed):

In a statement released Wednesday, the White House said that it "strongly opposed" the cuts to FCS, asserting that it would "force the Army to retain its Cold War hardware (developed in the 1970s and fielded in the 1980s) well beyond 2040, preventing our soldiers from fielding the best available equipment in the future."

That's funny. If you read their latest Modernization Plan, the Army clearly feels its "Cold War hardware" is good enough for 30 of the Army's 45 active-duty Brigade Combat Teams to use through 2030. Its not even clear that the Army plans to eventually replace all of its BCTs with FCS after 2030.

I'm amazed to see the White House play the same procurement shell game that they shot down back in 2002 when the Army tried to save the XM2001 Crusader self-propelled howitzer. This is all beside the fact that the Army is procuring hundreds of new tanks, trucks and aircraft to replace ones that were damaged, destroyed or worn down in Iraq -- to the tune of $17.1 billion in 2007 alone.

Crunching the numbers on MRAP

2007-05-22T21:09:00.000-04:00

I apologize for the silence, I've been having some trouble with Blogger. Specifically, I wrote two posts last night and they disappeared off the server between hitting "Save Now" and "Publish Post." I have reconstructed the first here:

I've been following the debate over Mine-Resistant, Ambush Protected vehicle closely because it could could be an important direction marker for the future Army. Despite having drug their feet on the concept, it now appears the Army and Marines plan on replacing a sizable part of their HMMWV fleet with MRAPs.

One thing that has gone largely unaddressed in the debate so far is how MRAP will effect the deployability of the Army. I give you an idea of how big this change might be, I've crunched some rough numbers for your edification:

Up-Armored HMMWV
Curb Weight: 4.9 tons
Volume: 705 cubic feet
Crew: 4
Range: 275 miles

Force Protection Industries Cougar 4x4
Curb Weight: 15 tons
Volume: 1336 cubic feet
Crew: 10
Range: 600 miles

Land Systems OMC RG-31 Nyala
Curb Weight: 8 tons*
Volume: 1463 cubic feet
Crew: 10
Range: 559 miles

I put a star next to the curb weight of the RG-31 because most of the data I've seen is conflicting. I've seen curb weights varying between 7.28 and 8.4 (metric) tons so, I rounded the figure to 8 tons for the sake of argument.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the dramatic increase in volume and weight between the up-armored Humvee and the MRAP candidates. This is pretty understandable though, considering that the Cougar and Nyala are twice the size, carry more than twice the troops and go twice as far. Whereas an average squad would require 2-3 Humvees, they would probably only need 1 MRAP. This should help economize on fuel (fewer engines) and manpower (fewer drivers) some.

The increased weight might raise questions about how the Army and Marines could deploy MRAPs from the U.S. to the theater, particularly airlift feasibility. We should be careful to note that strategic and operational airlift are largely still on the drawing board. The Army's current 'move' doctrine still reflects an assumption that the bulk of Army materiel (including vehicles) will be done by sealift.

Setting that reality aside, the Cougar and Nyala are not too heavy for traditional airlift. The C-17 has enough cargo capacity (85 tons) to carry an M1 Abrams, so it can probably fit as many as two MRAPs on board. The Cougar and Nyala also appear to come under the limits of the C-130's mere 22 tons of lift. They will probably be too big for the Joint Cargo Aircraft's projected 7-10 payload limit though.

Since the next generation of strategic air- (the heavy-lift vertical take off and landing aircraft) and sealift (the austere access high speed ship) are still decades away, I don't think the MRAP won't cause too much of a problem our "expeditionary" military.

Ron Paul is not crazy

2007-05-20T12:29:00.000-04:00

I'm more of a policy wonk, so I don't like to wade too deeply into politics, but I feel the need to defend my fellow libertarian, Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). He made a seemingly controversial statement in the May 15, 2007 Republican primary debate and Rudy Giuliani scored some cheap points off of it. Conservative blogs are predicting that the statement will cost him his chance at the Republican nomination, which is too bad because the congressman's point was not insigniciant to the U.S. Near East policy debate. In fact, the whole exchange with Giuliani was indicate of an important failure of U.S. strategy:

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

The Congressman's statement about al Qaeda's motivations leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks is only slightly wrong. Ron Paul suggests that our 10-year enforcement of no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq was a motivating factor for al Qaeda when in fact, it was the UN sanctions placed on Iraq. I direct your attention to the August 1996 fatwa issued by Osama bin Laden and published in the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper:

The youths hold you responsible for all of the killings and evictions of the Muslims and the violation of the sanctities, carried out by your Zionist brothers in Lebanon; you openly supplied them with arms and finance. More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanction) imposed on Iraq and its nation. The children of Iraq are our children. You, the USA, together with the Saudi regime are responsible for the shedding of the blood of these innocent children. Due to all of that, what ever treaty you have with our country is now null and void.

Iraq is mentioned again in second fatwa he and Ayman al-Zawahiri published on February 23, 1998:

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

The 9/11 Commission Report even mentions the subject in Chapter 2 "The Foundations of New Terrorism" (split across pages 48 and 49):

The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam's past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources-Islam, history, and the region's political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel.

I am not endorsing Osama bin Laden's view. Nor am I saying that the 9/11 attacks were invited or justified. My point is that when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States, he included his rationale and that rationale obviously appealed to some in the Near East.

It is true that Congressman Paul was inarticulate in making his point, but Rudy Giuliani's dismissive response indicated a foreign policy myopia that could be potentially dangerous for the United States. We may see Osama bin Laden's view as morally wrong, but the 19 hijackers on 9/11 clearly disagreed, so much so that they were willing to sacrifice their lives for it. This tendency to dismiss what it disbelieves will only continue to impose a heavy opportunity cost on U.S. strategy. If Rudy wins the election, we can only hope that he reads some Sun Tzu before moving into the White House. I'm thinking specifically about a passage from the Art of War at the end Chapter 3:

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win hundred times in hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose.

Hey, at least we understand ourselves... right?

OMG, he's got the pox!

2007-05-20T10:13:00.001-04:00

The New York Times had an interesting article in its Friday edition (h/t to DR) about a 2-year old Indiana boy who got a viral infection from his smallpox-inoculated father:

Experts said the father, who had eczema in childhood, should never have been given the vaccine because that fact made him more susceptible to side effects like vaccinia infection. And they said military doctors should have been doubly cautious because the son, too, suffered from eczema and would have been highly susceptible to infection. Military procedures call for asking about such conditions in soldiers and their families.

Vaccinia is the live virus used in smallpox vaccine. After vaccination, the body develops a resistance to vaccinia, a disease that is generally milder than smallpox, and the resistance also works against smallpox. The injection site can spread the vaccinia virus, however, and people without strong immune systems are particularly susceptible.

Smallpox was officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1979, and inoculation of military personnel was suspended in 1990. But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent cases of anthrax sent through the mail, the government began vaccinating military personnel and many health care workers, with 1.2 million vaccinated as of March of this year.

Since then, a handful of vaccinia cases have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including one, described in the May 4 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, of vulvar infection in an Alaskan woman whose sex partner was a serviceman.

I imagine that is all a little confusing, so I will briefly explain the history of the smallpox vaccine. Before 1796, the only way to protect someone against smallpox (Latin name: Variola) was inoculation, or purposefully infecting a subject with the smallpox virus in a controlled fashion. There is some debate over whether the first smallpox inoculation originated in China or India, the practice had been around for almost 600 years before it the West adopted the idea in the 17th Century.

Vaccination is the practice of introducing weak or dead pathogens into a subject and smallpox vaccine was the first ever vaccine. In the late 18th Century, British country doctor Edward Jenner realized that milkmaids who contracted and recovered from cowpox (Latin name: Vaccinia) rarely contracted smallpox. This discovery had huge implications because up until that point smallpox inoculation practices could only manage the disease's mortality rate. It could leave a person bed-ridden for up to two weeks and he/she would remain infectious for up to four weeks. Inoculation also only reduced, but could not reliably prevent smallpox's painful symptoms and sometimes permanent scaring.

This article is slightly ironic because few Americans realize that smallpox inoculation was a huge issue for the U.S. Army during the Revolutionary War (scroll down to the "The Army inoculated against smallpox"). A smallpox outbreak among the troops was a major factor leading to the failure of Benedict Arnold's expedition into Quebec in 1775. George Washington's decision to lay siege to Boston from April 1775 to March 1776 was also influenced by a smallpox outbreak in the city that year. There are even claims that British general Thomas Gage used biological warfare by sending smallpox infected Bostonians out of the city and into Washington's siege lines.

While British mandated compulsory inoculation for their troops, puritanical Americans were reluctant because the practice was seen as "going against God's will." This gave the red coats a significant upper hand during the opening years of the Revolutionary War. The Continental Army's commander, George Washington, was very cautious about exposing his non-immune troops to smallpox because of his own experience with the disease as a child. During a trip to Barbados, a smallpox infection not only robbed him of his surrogate father, Lawrence Washington, it permanently scarred his face and is probably the reason for his sterility later in life.

Washington was, therefore, a big proponent of preventive medicine in general and smallpox inoculation in particular. The Continental Congress and state governments resisted him at first, but the dire conditions and high smallpox infection rate at the winter encampment at Valley Forge forced him to take decisive action. He ordered his medical staff to begin inoculating the Continental Army and required universal inoculation for all new recruits. Many historians have credited this move, along with the training regime of Prussian drillmaster Baron Friedrich von Steuben as key to the Continental Army's turnaround in 1777-1778. One could even argue that it was "business process transformation."

Army turns up the rhetoric on FCS

2007-05-17T11:43:00.000-04:00

After taking a $800 million hit on its fiscal year 2008 Future Combat Systems (FCS) spending request, the Army is punching back by turning up the rhetoric [Update: The broken link is now fixed. Sorry about that.]:

“The cost in modernizing is first of all a cost in dollars, but failing to modernize is a cost that is sometimes registered in lives,” Lt. Gen. Speakes said today during a roundtable with Pentagon reporters.

“The program is on track,” he said. “We have met our performance standards and we are on the eve of some really great developments that are going to start hitting the Army literally overnight.”

[snip]

The Future Combat Systems also is fielding robots that can save lives. If robots make mistakes in defusing improvised explosive devices and the devices explode, no one dies, Lt. Gen. Speakes said. The robots are in use with units in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The proposed cuts to the program would effectively prevent the development of Future Combat Systems manned ground vehicles. This means Soldiers would operate Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles “indefinitely,” he said.

[snip]

Another concept that would be eliminated is called the Mule. This is a small wheeled vehicle that follows Soldiers carrying supplies, spare parts, ammunition and water. This is on the cusp of testing and would have to stop if the cuts in the system are made, he said. Another unmanned aerial vehicle would also be canceled.

Soldiers would be very negatively affected by these cuts, Speakses concluded.

“We will be doomed to spend the next 20 to 30 years with the existing combat platforms we have today,” he said. “It’s a betrayal of our trust to Americans when we don’t invest in them.”

I thought the Army was above exploiting force protection arguments, but I guess I was wrong. It isn't too surprising though, considering how the Army uses FCS as an all-or-nothing tactic to foist more than a dozen unproven platforms on the American taxpayer.

The phrase I hear the most around my office is "FCS is Army modernization," which implies the Army is actively not preparing a Plan B for its future force. FCS is a Swiss watch and the Army is gambling that the Congress or Secretary of Defense won't try to pare it down out of a fear that even a small change will cause the whole thing to fall apart.

The most galling part of this article is that the Army is threatening to drop the most innovate parts of FCS in response to the budget cuts. Why sacrifice great ideas like the MULE or the Class IV UAV just to save carbon-copy replacements for current platforms, such as the M1 Abrams or M2 Bradley? Shouldn't the Army be more concerned with generating new capabilities than just recapitalizing its fleet of armored vehicles?

The new wisdom of technology on the battlefield is that in the world of guided-weapons warfare, platforms don't matter as much any more. As I've pointed out before, precision-guided munitions have changed the traditional calculus of warfare. Platforms (and unmounted soldiers) can fire munitions farther and with such a degree of accuracy that metrics like rate of fire aren't important anymore. If the XM982 Excalibur makes the M109 Paladin more effective than modern howitzers, why design a new one?

I have one last parting shot for FCS advocates: Since the Army plans to equip the 3-year old Stryker with mortar, reconnaissance, and infantry carrier packages, why do they need the No-Line-of-Sight Mortar, Infantry Carrier Vehicle, and Reconnaissance and Surveillance Vehicle? This seems like a pretty clear duplication of effort.

How to achieve an info war 'reboot'

2007-05-16T22:00:00.000-04:00

The Brookings Institution's P.W. Singer wrote an interesting piece for the Think Tank Town column in yesterday's Washington Post:

Winning the war on terrorism depends substantially on winning the war of ideas; unfortunately, by most metrics, the U.S. is getting its clock cleaned. Public polling shows massive anger directed at the U.S. and our credibility at an all time low. In a few short years, the U.S. has gone from being seen as the Cold War beacon of Coca Cola, McDonalds and freedom to the dark "Long War" home of Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act and orange jumpsuits.

The deep and rapid deterioration of America's standing in the world is one of the greatest challenges the United States faces. More than just some lost popularity contest, the erosion of American credibility and leadership alienates our allies and reinforces the recruiting efforts of our foes. We are stocking the "sea" in which our enemies must "swim." It also effectively denies American ideas and policies a fair shake.

[snip]

Since 9-11, the Bush strategy has focused on a repetition of simple messages through controlled channels. But it has proven unrealistic for our complex information age, with our messages getting lost in the global cacophony of ideas. More importantly, the approach fails to account for the framework of interpretation. We focus on the messages we send; but the latest research shows we must equally focus on how people interpret and understand them.

Views have locked in and, unfortunately for America, people around the globe now look at any message from the U.S. government through a lens of doubt. This means even when we think we are saying the right thing, it can backfire; notice how such positive concepts as "democratization" are now largely reinterpreted in the Muslim world to mean "invasion." As the article sums it up, "Present strategic communication efforts by the U.S. and its allies rest on an outdated, 20th century message influence model of communication that is no longer effective in the complex global war of ideas."

Once people have seemingly made up their minds to interpret news and policies in a certain way, the study finds that only two things can change them. The first is receiving varied and complex sources of alternative information that force the individual to ask questions of what they earlier thought was true. As people get more and more information -- importantly from varied sources and leaders that they trust -- the old framework crumbles. A good illustration of this that the Bush administration can understand is how the once-strong levels of support for the Iraq war gradually tumbled over the last year. Early on, any bad news coming from Iraq was interpreted as being unpatriotic or something hyped by the left-wing "mainstream media." But, as the negative news became both continual and varied, with the sources ranging from journalists to retired generals, attitudes shifted even amongst the most fervent of the president's supporters. The lesson here is that U.S. strategic communications needs a similar shift from trying to spin simplistics to wrestling with complex realities. We must engage regional audiences in more than just pithy soundbites designed for Western audiences, but through a web of channels and local leaders that have far more validity than our own.

Singer goes on to suggest that the United States needs to 'reboot' its image by either solving the Arab-Israeli conflict or waiting until a new president enters office in January 2009.

The prospect of both options aren't great. Between the invasion of Iraq, its support for Israel's botched summer 2006 war against Hezbollah, and its general inattention to the issue, the Bush administration does not have the credibility to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. 'Rebooting' with new president isn't very unpalatable either because sitting on one's hands isn't appropriate behavior for a world-leading superpower -- especially when we are the ones who the world often looks to for immediate action.

All is not lost, however, because as Singer points out, image is driven by the expectations of others. Pulling of a miracle in the holy land and putting fresh blood are just two ways of shaking up public expectations with one drastic change. What about a trying a more gradual approach that involves moving on a group of smaller changes?

I'm a left-leaning libertarian, but I am not an ideologue. I don't think the Bush administration's foreign policy has any sinister intent nor do I think that Bush lied in the lead up to the Iraq War. I am very suspicious of the Bush administration's penchant for making simplistic, straw-man arguments. Their cognitive dissonance may look like obstinacy to some, but to those who do not implicitly trust the White House, it looks like they are trying to hide something.

For me, reversing the administration's overly ambiguous policy on torture would go a long way towards an information war reboot. This needs to go much farther than "We don't torture" or "We no longer torture," it must also include:

1. An explicit acknowledgement that the practices now labelled torture were used on certain detainees.

2. A full accounting of the interrogation techniques that were used that are now prohibited.

3. An admission that even though the decision to use torture was made during an extraordinary time of crisis, it was wrong.

I'm willing to accept their rationale for initially resorting to torture in the first year or so of the war on terrorism. Policy-makers are limited by bounded rationality and the immediate post-9/11 period was defined by conditions that only exacerbate those bounds. They were under pressure to quickly devise policy responses to a threat they didn't understand using information that was unfamiliar and difficult to process.

Bad policy decisions were inevitable and some of them resulted in the torture of human beings. It was a mistake and we should apologize for our error in judgement and the undue harm that it caused. That simple message would go far in shaking up international perceptions of the United States.

Update: Retired Marine Generals Charles "Strategic Corporal" Krulak and Joseph Hoar completely agree.

Second Update: In the interest of presenting some balance, the Post's national security blogger William Arkin does not think repudiating torture will matter.

I heart Provincial Reconstruction Teams

2007-05-16T12:50:00.000-04:00

David Axe wrote a totally sweet article for Military.com yesterday about U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in Iraq and Afghanistan:

First established in Afghanistan in 2002, PRTs were initially Army-led and included mostly Soldiers. But with the number and size of PRTs expanding throughout Central Command’s area of responsibility and constant deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan for combat operations, the Navy and Air Force have stepped in to relieve some Army’s manpower pressure, taking over leadership of 12 of the 24 American PRTs in Afghanistan.

Half of the 20 American PRTs in Iraq are led by the Army as well, with the other half led by State Department staffers - though, the department is having a tough time finding the personnel to assume the risky duty. There are as many as 100 people working in each PRT.

[Snip]

The problem is they don’t have the security to get around they way they should,” Cardon said.

Still, Cardon’s and Wilson’s teams managed. One of the Iraq teams’ biggest successes was coordinating pest mitigation for the large date palm industry in Karbala, a Shiite holy city south of Baghdad.

“There are these insects that come out and have to be sprayed within a six-week period. The Iraqis were having problems doing this for some time,” Cardon explained. So one of his PRTs stepped in, arranging for helicopters to do the spraying - a move that “should mean dramatic improvement in the date harvest.”

Next up: adding more State Department personnel to his PRTs and tasking them to train the Iraqi government in basic budgeting so ministries and local institutions can execute projects like the date palm spraying themselves.

“I’m trying to get the PRTs to focus more on building government capacity,” Cardon says.

I'll admit, I have a big soft spot for the PRTs. Peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction is a truly noble pursuit. The U.S. should treat it as an integral part of confronting terrorism and improving our image abroad.

The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) has done a great job of recording and studying the PRT experience. They have conducted debriefing interviews with about 75 former PRT staffers and published the transcripts on the USIP website as part of an oral history project on reconstruction. Robert Perito, USIP's senior program officer for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations has also written smashing reports on the evolution of PRTs in Afghanistan and Iraq. They provide an enormous amount of detail about the PRT's organization and missions, as well as some of the key problems they encountered.

I was really surprised to find out how very different the U.S. PRTs in Iraq and Afghanistan are. In Afghanistan, PRTs are essentially small infantry companies (fewer than 100 troops) with a representative from the State Department, Agriculture Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) attached to them. From Perito's description, it appears that the staffers from State didn't do much besides file reports, while the USAID and Ag representatives were out in the field working with the locals. Although the PRTs encountered some really problems, they have remained largely unchanged since 2004.

PRTs in Iraq, on the other hand, are sixty-man subunits attached to brigade combat team and they are lead by a foreign service officer. Their staff also comes from a much more diverse background, including 2-3 staffers from the State, 1 from Agriculture, 1 from Justice, 1 from USAID, two contractor advisers from civilian assistance companies, and only 3 soldiers. After undergoing a major reorganization in 2005, the roles and responsibilities of each PRT member are more clearly defined than for PRTs in Afghanistan.

The reports also reveal some interesting details about PRT work. PRTs in Afghanistan operate with a fair amount of autonomy from local governments because many local leaders are warlords. Since there is no real effort to coordinate the PRTs in Afghanistan, most of their projects are done in a scatter shot fashion. This is exacerbated by the fact that the notoriously short attention span of military commanders has lead to a number of ill-planned or rushed projects. PRT work in Iraq is better coordinated and planned out. They also work closely with local governments to improve governance, budgeting and public services. The main weakness of PRTs in Iraq is their lack of contact with the local population (not going "outside the wire" enough) and inadequate resources.

USIP also wrote a great report responding the oft-asked question of "Why aren't we enlisting the assistance of the NGO community?" According to Michael Dziedzic and Michael J. Siedl, working with the U.S. would tarnish NGOs' reputation of neutrality. Humanitarian groups are often afforded a great deal of mobility and access in war zones because place the idea of alleviating suffering above politics.

Where's the DOT before MRAP?

2007-05-11T09:26:00.000-04:00

I'm really impressed by the quantity and quality of the debate over U.S. Army and Marine Corp plans to purchase and field a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected MRAP vehicle to replaced the venerable HMMWV. MRAP skeptics, including writers on the left and right of the Iraq debate, as well as my contemporary (or should I say 'blogging upperclassman') J. Sigger point out that the benefits offered by the MRAP in Iraq does not outweigh its hefty pricetag:

We're talking about making a multi-billion dollar procurement deal on a system that hasn't been run through any operational tests, to replace a system that cost about a fifth of the armored vehicle, and the military wants to rush production of "low rate initial production" vehicles through five contractors to meet the demand.

Now I know why the politicians will vote for this, because they've got a knee-jerk reaction to any issue that includes the term "protection from IEDs" in the title. But you have to ask, what the hell are the military leaders thinking by rushing these vehicles to the field? "These MVAPs have to work, because... because... if they don't, it's our asses." There's no excuse to short-cutting the operational testing of this vehicle, not when the consequences of failure are so high. My frustration with these kind of decisions is in part fueled by the continued demands by the military leadership to continue modernizing their aging equipment simultaneous with funding the high optempo requirements of the war, while the training and repair infrastructure in the United States continues to crumble.

While MRAP supporters, such as defense tech super-reporters Noah Schachtman and David Axe, acknowledge this issue, but present a set of compelling counterpoints:

Jason has a point. But, just to be clear, it's not like the things have no military track record. Engineers and bomb squads have been riding in 'em for more than a year, now. And they're based closely on South African designs which I understand performed just fine.

Also, let's not fetishize "operational tests" overmuch. After all, the Predator flunked its 2001 operational exam -- even as it was taking out Taliban in Afghanistan.

Still, there's reason to be skeptical. As the Standard notes, "'Eliminating the source' [of IEDs] is indeed the only way to stop the bleeding. MRAP is a stop-gap measure, [albeit] a good one."

While both side present compelling points, I tend to side with the MRAP skeptics for two reasons. First, physics is a hard mistress and she currently favors the insurgents. The competition over ever-improving Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and counter-IED tactics and technology has been a central theme of the struggle between U.S. ground forces and insurgent groups. While both sides have been forced to continually innovate, the marginal utility of technological innovation declines as the operational needs bump up against the laws of physics. It is not even really clear whether an car chasis can be hardened enough to stop an explosively-formed penetrator.

Second, whatever happened to the Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities (DOTMLPF) process? For those unfamiliar with the term, the best description is found in Field Manual 1:

DOTMLPF is a problem-solving construct for assessing current capabilities and managing change. Change is achieved through a continuous cycle of adaptive innovation, experimentation, and experience. Change deliberately executed across DOTMLPF elements enables the Army to improve its capabilities to provide dominant landpower to the joint force.

The elements of DOTMLPF are organized in order of difficult, from easiest to change (doctrine) to most difficult (facilities). One thing that I have noticed about about U.S. operations in Iraq is a tendency to favor material solutions over doctrinal, organizational, and training solutions when a problem crops up on the battlefield. Just compare the $6 billion spent by JIEDDO on counter IED technology versus the years it took to the U.S. Army to role out a new counterinsurgency manual, despite the clear need for one.

Don't get me wrong, the military should replace part of its HMMWV fleet with MRAPs -- but not all of it. The Army will continue to need an medium-weight, all-purpose truck for missions that don't involve driving through a virtual minefield. Thankfully, it seem like the Pentagon is going to pick up just about the right number of MRAPs (15,000-20,000). In the meantime, I have a few radical proposals for doctrinal and organizational changes for the Army should meditate on:

1. If roadside bombs are such a problem for military supply convoys, why not consider sourcing some material locally? Laundry service, water purification and garbage collection, are could be outsources to local firms. The business will help build ties with the community and infuse some much needed cash into the local economy. As units build trusting relationships with the local population, they should consider outsourcing some functions that would involve a mild amount of risk, but employ important parts of the local economy. This would include preparing meals, mending uniforms and manufacturing basic consumables (batteries, non-sensitive spare parts, tires). Heck, if Iraq's oil ministry could get its act together, the U.S. Army's fleet of generators and trucks would be thirsty, high-paying customers.

2. If you can't make armored cars tough enough to resist IEDs then walk, or at least disperse Brigade Combat Teams into the urban environment even more. If Joint Security Stations commanded at the battalion level, some of them subdivide them into company-sized or even platoon-sized posts. The ultimate goal would be to saturate the security districts with small posts that aren't far apart and don't have to move much. Remember the painful lessons of the Kuomintang's early anti-communist campaigns -- insurgencies require space (or base areas). Slow and methodical encirclement is a proven way of starving insurgents of their space.

3. Abandon the idea of 'focused logistics.' The idea of 'tailored supplies' or 'just-in-time' delivery are not compatible with stability operations. When your mission is to provide 24-hour security to a town, you need to be preparing for everything. Building a 'mountain of metal' may be inexpensive or inefficient, but the opportunity cost of failing at your security mission can be even larger.

These ideas may seem risky, but successful stability operations often requires a wholesale abandonment of the military's conventional wisdom about the elements of operations -- like the 'battlefield,' the 'enemy,' and the whole idea of 'operations' itself.

Who's that driving, Patrick Swayze?

2007-05-10T21:07:00.000-04:00

If it wasn't enough for the Bay Area to give us Bubb Rubb, hyphy culture (pronounced 'hifee'), and the lamentable E-40 (""U and Dat" is a good song, but I'm sorry, My Ghetto Report Card was a terrible album), it has now delivered Mistah F.A.B. and his Ray Parker Jr.-sampling single "Ghost Ride It":

Hilarious. Not as funny as episodes 1 and 2 of Acceptable.tv's Who's Gonna Train Me? though...

The Arms Control Otaku 『軍備管理のオタク』

This is the end

How can he say this stuff with a straight face?

Hear that? Its the sound of norm disintegration...

Canada's sleeper hit: Trailer Park Boys

Transitions and gifts

Land Warrior in Iraq

Air Force going out of business?

Movie Review: The Kingdom

Vacation pictures!

Back in town

RE in NC

They did it again

FCS Follies, Part 1

The problem with the phrase 'evil-doer'

Is Taiwan's referendum fever bad?

I had never thought I would say this...

Memo to BG Mike Brogan

Now that is cool

Seeing power and rubles

Book Review: Survivor

Arkin hearts Richardson

What an idiot

Congress hearts Iran sanctions too

Want to put money on that?

What's better than sanctions? More sanctions!

Dunlap is right, but does his point matter?

Sometimes its hard to work for the Army

Figures...

Pimp my F-35

AEGIS to Taiwan, not a stretch

Still rebuilding

So what's up with these Near East arms deals?

A short dramatization

Dump the 'Thayer System'? Yeah, like 100 years ago...

PEO BOONDOGGLE, 1st draft

Defense LOLs - 31 July 2007

FCS's new name

My take on the JIEDDO paper

Spinning back up

Pardon the dust

Ridin' Shotgun?

DRMS just can't win

Hypotheticals for presidential debates

Military doctrine under 'informatization'

I don't know where this guy gets his ideas

Not exactly a 'chick magnet'

Getting old before getting rich?

It finally happened

Ummm...

So disappointing...

So why Azerbaijian and does it matter?

Book Review: A Stillness at Appomattox

Arm wrestling in Iraq

A memo to Vlad and George

Another paradox of American power

'Rollins Show' is pretty good

I'm no Ralph Nader

Taepodong 2 = complete failure?

Dude...

Translation: "Taepodong 2 drops off the coast of North Korea, 400 kilometers --> dozens of kilometers, complete failure"

My 8 hour irony-fest

Of export controls and special relationships

Worth the price of admission in most localities

Readers in Mauritius?

Arkin on defense posture: "Toys speak louder than words"

Pardon the dust

Bottom falling out of the freedom agenda?

What I'm listen to

The best documentary I've seen in years

Romney/Obama Foreign Affairs essay roundup

The rumors are true

Best.Vietnamese.Evar.

The Internet hearts Ron Paul

Diet Coke Plus

In-flight movie review roundup

China wants military power = Duh...

Home again, home again

Back from viking territory

Update Madness - 1 June 2007

The Arms Control Otaku　『軍備管理のオタク』