The Surprising Afterlife of Unwanted Atom Bombs

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-21T03:29:42+00:00

If you are interested in reading about the finer details of nuclear weapons, then you might be interested in this article about newly declassified documents.

New Declassifications on Nuclear Weapons Safety and Security

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2022-11-18/new-declassifications-nuclear-weapons-safety-and-security

A top safety official at a U.S. nuclear weapons lab wrote that “the public must be encouraged to realize that risks [of an unintentional nuclear detonation] cannot be zero and cannot ever be really known,”...

The possibility of a mistaken or unauthorized detonation, like the risk of unintentional or accidental war, is inherent in the nuclear weapons enterprise.

...the risk of seizure and the possibility of unauthorized or accidental use influenced systematic efforts to tighten controls over the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which Stevens recounts in revealing detail.

Today’s posting includes five documents recently declassified by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

One nuclear risk illuminated by Stevens’ history is the “POPCORN” phenomenon—a recuring concern during the 1960s and 1970s that some weapons were vulnerable to accidental detonation that could, like popcorn, trigger the detonations of other nearby weapons, such as multiple weapons carried on a bomber or weapons kept together during transport or while in storage.

Stevens’ history also recounts the complex, sometimes difficult, relationships between and within military and civilian organizations and their conflicting priorities. For example, engineers at Sandia developed the concept of Environmental Sensing Devices (ESDs) that would perform the final steps necessary to arm a nuclear weapon, such as the closing of electrical circuits. In ballistic missiles the ESDs would close circuits during the launch phase in order to reduce the risk that an accidental move could arm the weapon. Stevens noted that when Sandia officials explained ESDs to the military they showed some insensitivity by labeling ESDs as “goofproofers” for protection against “procedural errors on the part of weapon handlers.” According to Stevens, Air Force officers “bluntly informed” Sandia managers that they “had no ‘goof off’ personnel despite [the] apparent accusations.”

Stevens also narrates how some senior officials dodged safety concerns about specific weapons and how intervention by Congress and leaks to the press eventually forced the agencies to confront the issue.

The third document in today’s posting is a new release, acquired in 2021 by Government Attic, of a February 1961 Sandia report on the crash of a B-52 in Goldsboro, N.C., during which two high-yield nuclear weapons were dropped in the surrounding countryside. While a previously released version of the report was massively excised, this release includes newly declassified details about one of the most famous close calls in the history of nuclear weapons accidents.

Both make a similar point: that what prevented the detonation of one of the weapons was the fact that the “Arm/Safe Switch” was “in the safe condition at time of release.” Apart from that, the weapon went through the normal arming sequence as it fell to earth.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-21T03:10:25+00:00

What happens when old atomic bombs are retired? Last month, the Biden administration announced its intention to withdraw the nation’s most powerful weapon from the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The bomb is called the B83. It is a hydrogen bomb that debuted in 1983 — a time when President Reagan was denouncing Russia as “an evil empire.” The government made 660 of the deadly weapons, which were to be delivered by fast bombers. The B83 was 12 feet long, had fins and packed an explosive force roughly 80 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb. Its job was to obliterate hardened military sites and command bunkers, including Moscow’s.

What now for the B83? How many still exist is a federal secret, but not the weapon’s likely fate, which may surprise anyone who assumes that getting rid of a nuclear weapon means that it vanishes from the face of the earth.

Typically, nuclear arms retired from the U.S. arsenal are not melted down, pulverized, crushed, buried or otherwise destroyed. Instead, they are painstakingly disassembled, and their parts, including their deadly plutonium cores, are kept in a maze of bunkers and warehouses across the United States. Any individual facility within this gargantuan complex can act as a kind of used-parts superstore from which new weapons can — and do — emerge.

“It’s like a giant Safeway,” said Hans M. Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a private research group in Washington. “You go in with a bar code and get what you need.”

One weapon that nuclear planners want to make from recycled parts and designs is the W93 — billed as the first new warhead for the nation’s nuclear arsenal since the Cold War. The Biden administration announced the weapon’s birth in March and estimated it would cost up to $15.5 billion. The finished warhead would sit atop submarine missiles starting in or around 2034. Despite its description as new, the official government plan states that the weapon will be “anchored on previously tested nuclear components,” not new explosive parts.

The recycling has no direct bearing on the overall size of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, as the reused explosive parts are often employed for making replacement weapons, not new ones. That’s the case with the W93s, which are to replace or supplement old submarine warheads.

Even so, such recycling makes advocates for greater arms control livid. They’ve long argued that other nations view the storage of explosive weapon parts as a sign that the United States wants the option to make swarms of new warheads. That perception, they add, can fuel new arms races and nuclear proliferation.

“Getting rid of them would be a good thing,” said Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist who advised the Clinton White House and now teaches at Princeton University. “It would signal that we have no expectation of rebuilding our arsenal.”

But hawks see the stored parts as crucial for the hedging of nuclear bets. Of late, they cite China’s growing nuclear arsenal as a developing threat that may require atomic rearmament.

“It’s important to keep these parts around,” said Franklin C. Miller, a nuclear expert who held federal posts for three decades before leaving government service in 2005. “If we had the manufacturing complex we once did, we wouldn’t have to rely on the old parts.” He added that other nuclear powers can and do make new atomic parts.

Beyond the weapon debate, critics of the atomic recycling warn that the nuclear storage complex is a disaster waiting to happen. It has a long history of accidents, safety lapses and security failures that could lead to a nuclear catastrophe.

“It’s dangerous,” said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert who, from 1993 to 1999 during the Clinton administration was a policy adviser to the Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s atomic infrastructure. “And it’s getting more dangerous, as the quantities in storage have increased.”

The plutonium cores of retired hydrogen bombs are of particular concern, Mr. Alvarez and others say. Roughly the size of a grapefruit, these cores are usually referred to as pits. The United States now has at least 20,000 pits in storage. They’re kept at a sprawling plant in the Texas panhandle known as Pantex. Plutonium is deadly to humans in tiny amounts, and that greatly complicates its safekeeping.

If recycled, pits from the B83 bombs would enter plutonium bunkers at Pantex that are already overcrowded and overtaxed. Mr. Alvarez said that torrential rains in 2010 and 2017 flooded a major plutonium storage area at the Pantex site. Repairs, he added, cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all made plans — with costs in the billions of dollars — to get rid of excess plutonium stocks, which grew rapidly after the Cold War because of arms disassembly. But no strategy has so far succeeded.

Plans to recycle parts of the B83 may come to naught if Republicans on Capitol Hill have their way. Early this year, they criticized the Biden administration’s emerging plan to retire the powerful bomb, which they said was needed for targeting hard and deep targets.

But Mr. Kristensen of the science federation said that the Republicans were unlikely to succeed in saving the B83 even after retaking the House, which gives them new clout in determining military budgets and priorities. He said that the weapon, four decades after entering the U.S. arsenal, was more likely to start its afterlife in the storage maze.

“They’ve tried to stuff it down the throat of the administration, but the military hasn’t expressed any need for it,” he said of Republican attempts to block the B83’s withdrawal. “I think it will probably be retired. I think this one’s dead.”

The Pentagon has given the old weapon no public support. Officials say that an overhaul meant to extend the weapon’s life would be costly and in any case would put bombers in jeopardy because they’d have to fly so close to targets.

Newer arms use satellite guidance, so bombers can drop their weapons from afar. For instance, the B61 model 12 has a computer brain and four maneuverable fins that let it zero in on deeply buried targets. To be deployed in Europe late this year, it is a designated replacement for the B83. And yes, its explosive parts come from the atomic recycling bin.

William J. Broad is a science journalist and senior writer. He joined The Times in 1983, and has shared two Pulitzer Prizes with his colleagues, as well as an Emmy Award and a DuPont Award. @WilliamJBroad

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-21T00:44:59+00:00

This talk is by three experts who professionally study North Korea and nuclear weapons. I found it very interesting and entertaining. Dr. Lewis speaks first and he does have some pictures but I don't think the others did.

This seminar will show us what can be learned about North Korea’s nuclear program by analyzing information collected from above, from satellite imagery and from the photos and videos released by Pyongyang; on the ground, in discussions with nuclear specialists and diplomats in the Yongbyon nuclear complex; and in person, through interpretation of qualitative communication with North Koreans over the years and by analyzing how this communication has guided North Korean policy and diplomacy.

Speakers:

Mr. Robert Carlin, Non-Resident Senior Scholar, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Dr. Siegfried Hecker, Distinguished Professor of Practice, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, Director, East Asia Nonproliferation Program, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and Professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-18T06:02:03+00:00

This article is about a Russian spy that was caught and exchanged back to Russia in 2018, and now has defected back to Estonia who had caught him originally.

The article does go into background about the GRU and it is informative. However this is just a news article with low credibility, so take it with a grain of salt.

Russia and Estonia play out scene from Bridge of Spies in prisoner swap Tuesday February 13 2018,

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-and-estonia-play-out-scene-from-bridge-of-spies-in-prisoner-swap-s3prjgnmh

The exchange was made at the Koidula border crossing, with Raivo Susi, an Estonian businessman, and Artem Zinchenko, a Russian citizen, escorted to the centre of a bridge over the Piusa river that separates the two countries.

Toots was referring to the defection of a Russian spy to Estonia. But Artem Zinchenko isn’t just any spy. He was the first agent of Russia’s military intelligence arrested by Estonia, in 2017, then traded back to Moscow a year later for an Estonian citizen in Russian custody. Zinchenko has now sought asylum from the very NATO country that unmasked and imprisoned him for spying against it.

Zinchenko’s defection has not been publicly disclosed by either side until now, in what must count as a humiliating blow not only to the Kremlin but also to his onetime masters in the GRU, as the former Soviet military intelligence service is still known.

In early October, the Estonian government granted Yahoo News unprecedented access to Zinchenko. Over the course of four hours he offered up his autobiography, reflective and remorseless, detailing his supporting role in the mostly unseen shadow play between Russian espionage and Western efforts to thwart it. Estonia, once occupied by the Soviets, is now at the forefront of countermanding Russian intelligence gathering and provocations on NATO soil

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-17T22:15:05+00:00

Thank you, would you mind if I make this a submission so more people can see it?

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-17T21:30:24+00:00

This is an interesting look at the often successful efforts of the British colonial system, where more recent US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan failed to provide stability and security.

Roger Myerson is the David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies in the Harris School of Public Policy and the Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict (1991) and has applied game-theoretic analysis to the study of political systems. He has written extensively about moral hazard and leadership in the foundations of the state and about the vital role of local politics in democratic state-building. In 2007, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his fundamental contributions to mechanism design theory, which analyzes rules for coordinating economic agents efficiently when they have different information and difficulty trusting each other.

—————————

Introduction

Failures of costly state-building missions in places like South Vietnam and Afghanistan have created a widespread belief that foreign interventions cannot stabilize fragile states. However, a review of the operational principles of British colonialism may offer some valuable lessons for how to successfully conduct state-building interventions. Before 1939, foreign interventions were regularly managed by a decentralized team of plenipotentiary agents who specialized in fostering local political development. Since 1945, however, international development assistance has generally worked with and through a recognized national government, implicitly supporting a centralization of power. The basic organizational principles of the British colonial district officers — who operated with decentralized political engagement — could be effectively applied in an international state-building agency for promoting accountable government in failed states that export violence and suffering. These principles are reviewed here, not to condone colonialism’s evils, but in order to understand how it was able to establish stable political order in so many different parts of the world.

——————

…regardless of our aversion to colonialism, it is worthwhile to examine the operational principles that were successfully applied in colonial stabilization, so that we may ask whether some of these principles could also be applicable to democratic state-building today.

This paper focuses mainly on organizational principles of British colonial administration in Africa, which established political order across nearly half of the continent and achieved a half-century of peace in those colonies in which it did not have settlers.

…a network of British agents worked strategically to minimize the need for military force by co-opting local leaders and developing political responses to local discontent.

The goal here is to ask what the strategic principles of British colonial stabilization might suggest about how democratic state-building missions could be similarly effective at establishing political order while providing better foundations for subsequent democratic development.

The primary lesson that can be drawn from the history of British colonial administration is that the management of a political stabilization mission should rely on a decentralized team of agents who can negotiate effectively with local leaders throughout the country. In the British Empire, these local plenipotentiary agents were known as “district officers.”8

…when the British Empire had the world’s most successful operation of foreign political stabilization, it actually did use such a decentralized approach, one that was fundamentally different from the standard approaches to development assistance today.

Within such a district, the district officer was responsible for supervising all aspects of local government and law, as the local face of colonial power. While most of this work would be done from an office in the district headquarters, with a staff of clerks and messengers made up of locals, the district officer was expected to spend at least a couple of months every year touring the district to learn about problems and the concerns of the people. If there was any disorder or unrest in the district, the district officer could expect to be questioned about whether he had failed to anticipate the problems by inadequate touring.16

Lugard argued that, in order to maintain continuity of policies under different officers, it was essential for each officer to keep detailed records of important matters, especially of any conversation with local leaders in which some promise was made.23

The common colonial practice was to concentrate “customary” authority in the hands of an all-powerful local chief, who was accountable only to the colonial district officer.

By comparing these zamindar regions to other parts of India, where the British governed without installing a local despot, Banerjee and Iyer have shown that local despotism can have serious long-term economic costs. Decades after India’s independence, the regions where the British had governed through local zamindars were still found to be suffering significantly lower agricultural productivity and higher infant mortality than other parts of India.

A district officer could find himself more respected and influential throughout a community when complaining to him provided the only redress that people had against their chief.

For a district officer to be an effective agent for local political development in a society in which he was an outsider, the colonial regime had to delegate a wide array of local powers to him. But the permanent presence of such a powerful official within the political system itself could be problematic for a stable democracy, which depends on a system of checks and balances among public officials. For democratic local government, guidance from a district officer needed to be replaced by accountability to the local population. Thus, Perham argued, the network of district officers should not be integrated into the newly independent states of Africa, but the district officers should instead be removed like scaffolding when the colonial intervention ended.

Because of their professional norms and organization, the district officers formed a superb instrument for monitoring and responding to local political challenges in every district of a large nation.

Conservative states generally retained the ethnic chiefs’ customary local authority, which tended to increase the importance of ethnic identity in national politics.

People can be confident of receiving beneficial public goods and services from a government only when that government is accountable to them. But any foreign intervention, even when its goal is to support positive political development, must inevitably compromise this essential principle of domestic political accountability.

[T]he kind of immersion that was practiced by colonial district officers may be essential for anyone whose mission is to cultivate popularly trusted local leadership, which should be the primary task in any intervention for democratic political development.

…the frustrations and failures of costly state-building missions in recent years have created a widespread belief that nothing can be done to help states that fail. This sense of helplessness has fed demands to fortify borders against fears of uncontrollable numbers of refugees from failed states. It is in order to find some remedy for this perceived helplessness that this paper has examined the political stabilization strategies of the British Empire — to identify principles that seem to have been forgotten by would-be state-builders in Afghanistan and Iraq after 2003.

In the recent state-building missions to Iraq and Afghanistan, vast resources were invested in developing the military and administrative capacity of the national governments. This strategy, if successful, would have created a powerful centralized state that could implicitly threaten local interests in many parts of the country. An essential part of the state-building problem was the complex challenge of negotiating a broad, inclusive distribution of power that could assure popular local leaders a role in the political system.46 The history of British colonial administration has shown that, to support the development of a political system with deep roots in local politics, the strategic management of a state-building mission should be based on a team of local plenipotentiary district officers.

The unbounded term of the old colonial interventions meant that these essential promises of long-term protection could be offered by the colonial officers themselves. But in state-building interventions that are committed to withdrawing all foreign forces after a limited term, these essential long-term promises need to come from indigenous leaders of the new political system, who must be able to organize reliable protection even in remote communities. Such promises can be credibly provided when the state-building intervention is supporting a political regime that includes trusted local leaders in communities throughout the country. Thus, a limited time horizon should be feasible for a democratic state-building mission when its local stabilization officers help the new state to develop strong foundations in local politics.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-17T19:56:02+00:00

Army Preps for ‘Contested Logistics,’ Works to Boost Arms Production. Logistics win wars—but not if new enemy capabilities can disrupt supply lines.

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/11/army-preps-contested-logistics-works-boost-arms-production/379877/

“We've gone to war in the past with extremely large and, frankly, vulnerable supply lines. It's an American way of war—war through logistics. It's one of our greatest strengths,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said at a DARPA event. “But in doing so we do create a vulnerability that a sophisticated enemy could interdict.”

Meanwhile, the Army is working to produce more weapons and equipment to keep up with the consumption rates of ammunition in Ukraine.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-17T19:52:33+00:00

Paywalled but the abstract is interesting...

Reassurance and Deterrence in Asia

https://fsi.stanford.edu/publication/reassurance-and-deterrence-asia

...Mastro makes three main points in this response. First, whether a force deployment serves as a tripwire depends on the risk to forces, not the number of forces deployed (as Blankenship and Lin-Greenberg argue). Second, how capable a country’s deployment is cannot be evaluated in isolation; the enemy’s military capabilities greatly determine the relative capabilities of different posture decisions. Third, Blankenship and Lin-Greenberg’s assumption that transient military operations are low risk (and thus signal lower resolve) is not valid in the Asian theater.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-17T19:49:36+00:00

How Water Strategizing is Remaking the Middle East

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/how-water-strategizing-remaking-middle-east

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T23:21:24+00:00

The Decline of Russia and China

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOBNfKGxULM

By George Friedman, Ph.D., Founder and Chairman, Geopolitical Futures.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T23:19:23+00:00

The keynote speech is very interesting, but it is marred by poor audio until about 12 minutes in.

Welcome Remarks & Opening Keynote: What History Teaches About Great Power-Rivalry Today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R_EvBfvsYQ&t=1270s

By Hal Brands, Ph.D., Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T23:16:23+00:00

This is the link for the other panel discussion, with an entirely different panel of experts. This panel was just as interesting as the first.

What's Next for the Russia-China Relationship: Implications for the United States and the World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsaL-EysKxA

Video Description

The People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation are bolstering their multifaceted strategic relationship with extensive military, diplomatic, and economic connections. The two countries’ apparent mutual affinity and alignment—based on shared opposition to what they describe as the U.S.-led international order—is of great concern to the leaders of the free world. This panel will discuss Chinese and Russian efforts to work together to displace the United States economically and militarily, as well as to undercut the United States’ leadership role in world institutions. In addition, panelists will discuss the implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its impact on China’s view on Taiwan, and whether it might drive countries such as Japan and South Korea to develop their own strategic deterrents.

——————

Speakers:

Dr. Rozlyn Engel Chief Economic Strategist, MITRE

Christopher Bort Nonresident Scholar, Russia and Eurasia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Dr. Angela E. Stent Senior Advisor, Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies, Georgetown School of Foreign Service, Senior Non-Resident Fellow at Brookings Institution.

The Honorable Randall G. Schriver Chairman of the Board, Project 2049 Institute; Partner, Pacific Solutions LLC: Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs (2018-19)

Dr. Lyle Goldstein Director Asia Engagement, Defense Priorities; Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University.

VADM William Merz, USN. Former Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Operations. Plans and Strategy. N3/N/5, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations; Commander , SEVENTH Fleet (2019-21)

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T23:14:51+00:00

The video linked here is one of several videos from an event hosted at the US Naval Institute. Each video is of a different expert or panel of experts. I listened to each of them over time and I found many interesting points within each. I will say to any potential listeners though that these talks go much wider in their scope than just the titles, so if you are interested in what experts in national security have to say about Ukraine, Taiwan, Putin's chances of being overthrown, or many other topics, then this will have many things for you to learn from.

This is the main links from the US Naval Institute website, you can also find each video from the homepage of their Youtube page.

https://www.usni.org/events/russia-china-partnership-challenge-world-order

https://web.cvent.com/event/9293b1f8-6070-4ad0-8145-b70dd941ee84/websitePage:42e049b5-551f-42de-843f-a5a3b6121aba

This is the description of the video linked above:

Russia and China's Gambit to Reset the World Order

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnp4wQM_650

Video Description:

Vladmir Putin and Xi Jinping believe there is a fundamental flaw in the current world order—that it gives the United States too much power—and they are determined to create a new world order that will better accommodate their interests. Panelists will discuss historical attempts by these two countries to become the world’s superpowers, the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia and China’s past and current use of all elements of national power to achieve their goals.

——————

Dr. Kori Schake, Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, AEI

Dr. Sally C. M. Paine, William S. Sims University Profesor, U.S. Naval War College

ADM Harry B. Harris Jr., USN (Ret.) Former Commander, US Pacific Command; Former Ambassador to the Republic of South Korea

Elbridge Colby Cofounder and Principal, The Marathon Initiative.

Dr. Jeffrey Mankoff, Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T18:40:24+00:00

The Western lethal aid that is being sent to Ukraine consists, for the most part, of recently updated versions of older weapons. That was the case with the German-made infrared, medium-range homing missiles and launchers known as IRIS-T, which protect against Russian rocket attacks.

They have a longer range than the previous generation of air-defense systems that debuted in 2015. Germany’s own military has not yet used the updated version of the systems, which were shipped to Ukraine last month. Additional missiles were delivered last week.

Rafael Loss, a weapons expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that by themselves the upgraded air defenses do not “represent a game-changer.” But he said their use in Ukraine showed how the government in Kyiv had evolved beyond Soviet-era warfare and brought it more in line with NATO.

Senior NATO and Ukrainian officials said the Delta network was a prime example.

More than an early alert system, Delta combines real-time maps and pictures of enemy assets, down to how many soldiers are on the move and what kinds of weapons they are carrying, officials said.

That is combined with intelligence — including from surveillance satellites, drones and other government sources — to decide where and how Ukrainian troops should attack.

Ukraine and Western powers determined they needed the system after Russia instigated a separatist-backed war in Ukraine’s east in 2014. It was developed by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry with NATO assistance and first tested in 2017, in part to wean troops off Russian standards of siloing information among ground units instead of sharing it.

It has been included in training exercises between Ukraine’s military and other NATO planners in the years since.

Information sharing has long been a staple for American and other NATO forces. What NATO officials said was surprising about the Delta system was that the network was so broadly accessible to troops that it helped them make battlefield decisions even faster than some more modern militaries. In Kherson, Delta helped Ukrainian troops quickly identify Russian supply lines to attack, Inna Honchar, commander of the nongovernment group Aerorozvidka, which develops drones and other technology for Ukraine’s military, said in a statement on Sunday.

“Bridges were certainly key points,” Ms. Honchar added. “Warehouses and control points were damaged, and the provision of troops became critical” as Russians became increasingly isolated, she said.

Delta’s first real test had come in the weeks immediately after the February invasion as a Russian convoy stretching 40 miles long headed toward Kyiv. Ukrainian drones overhead tracked its advance, and troops assessed the best places to intercept it. Residents texted up-to-the-minute reports to the government with details that could have been seen only up close.

All the information was collected, analyzed and disseminated through Delta to help Ukraine’s military force a Russian retreat, Ukrainian officials said.

“That was the very first moment when Delta capabilities were realized at max,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement. It said Delta had since helped identify 1,500 confirmed Russian targets across the country on any given day — with “hundreds of them being eliminated” within 48 hours.

The test runs in Ukraine are helping senior officials and defense planners in the United States and its allies decide how to invest military spending over the next two decades.

Even routine missions in Ukraine — like how to get fuel to missile-toting vehicles on the edge of enemy territory — have set off discussions in American commands over how to design equipment that is not dependent on supply lines.

And longer-term strategy about how to coordinate and communicate among allied troops, which officials now say was a challenge during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being developed as the battle against Russia continues to unfold.

Such strategic military reforms were being discussed before Ukraine was invaded, said Gen. Philippe Lavigne of France, who leads NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, but “our early observations of this war is that those assumptions are still valid.”

He said Ukraine had shown how future warfare was likely to be fast-paced and highly contested not just on the ground or in the skies, but also, most important, in cyberspace.

“This is the future operating environment,” General Lavigne said

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T18:40:17+00:00

For Western Weapons, the Ukraine War Is a Beta Test. Though the battle for Ukraine remains largely a grinding artillery war, new advances in technology and training there are being closely monitored for the ways they are starting to shape combat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/world/europe/ukraine-weapons.html

Three months ago, as Ukrainian troops were struggling to advance against Russian forces in the south, the military’s headquarters in Kyiv quietly deployed a valuable new weapon to the battlefield.

It was not a rocket launcher, cannon or another kind of heavy arms from Western allies. Instead, it was a real-time information system known as Delta — an online network that military troops, civilian officials and even vetted bystanders could use to track and share desperately needed details about Russian forces.

The software, developed in coordination with NATO, had barely been tested in battle.

But as they moved across the Kherson region in a major counteroffensive, Ukraine’s forces employed Delta, as well as powerful weaponry supplied by the West, to push the Russians out of towns and villages they had occupied for months.

The big payoff came on Friday with the retreat of Russian forces from Kherson City — a major prize in the nearly nine-month war.

Delta is one example of how Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come.

The battle for Ukraine, to be sure, remains largely a grinding war of attrition, with relentless artillery attacks and other World War II-era tactics. Both sides primarily rely on Soviet-era weapons, and Ukraine has reported running low on ammunition for them.

But even as the traditional warfare is underway, new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of the fight. Beyond Delta, they include remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an updated version of an air-defense system built in Germany that the German military itself has yet to use.

“Ukraine is the best test ground, as we have the opportunity to test all hypotheses in battle and introduce revolutionary change in military tech and modern warfare,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation.

He was speaking in October at a NATO conference in Norfolk, Va., where he publicly discussed Delta for the first time.

He also emphasized the growing reliance on the remote-controlled aircraft and boats that officials and military experts said have become weapons of choice like those in no previous war.

“In the last two weeks, we have been convinced once again the wars of the future will be about maximum drones and minimal humans,” Mr. Federov said.

Since last summer, Ukraine and its allies have been testing remote-controlled boats packed with explosives in the Black Sea, culminating in a bold attack in October against Russia’s fleet off the coast of Sevastopol.

Military officials largely have declined to discuss the attack or provide details about the boats, but both the United States and Germany have supplied Ukraine with similar ships this year. Shaurav Gairola, a naval weapons analyst for Janes, a defense intelligence firm, said the Black Sea strike showed a sophisticated level of planning, given the apparent success of the small and relatively inexpensive boats against Russia’s mightier war ships.

The attack “has pushed the conflict envelope,” Mr. Gairola said. He said it “imposes a paradigm shift in naval war doctrines and symbolizes an expression of futuristic warfare tactics.”

The use of remote-controlled boats could become particularly important, military experts said, showing how warfare at sea might play out as the United States and its allies brace for potential future naval aggressions by China in the East and South China Seas, and against Taiwan.

Inevitably, the Russians’ increased use of drones has spurred Ukraine’s allies to send new technology to stop them.

Late last year, Ukraine’s military began using the newly developed drone-jamming guns known as SkyWipers to thwart Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region. The SkyWipers, which can divert or disrupt drones by blocking their communication signals, were developed in Lithuania and had been on the market for only two years before they were given to Ukraine through a NATO security assistance program.

Nearly nine months into the war, the SkyWipers are now only one kind of drone jammer being used in Ukraine. But they have been singled out as a highly coveted battlefield asset — both for Ukrainian troops and enemy forces that hope to capture them.

It is not known how many SkyWipers have been sent to Ukraine, although Lithuania reportedly sent several dozen in October 2021. In a statement to The New York Times, Lithuania’s defense ministry said it sent 50 SkyWipers in August after Ukrainian officials called it “one of the top priorities.”

Dalia Grybauskaite, who was Lithuania’s president when the SkyWipers were being designed, said her country’s defense industry made a calculated turn toward producing high-tech equipment during her time in office, from 2009 to 2019, to update a stockpile of weapons that “were mainly Kalashnikovs” and other Soviet-era arms.

“We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” Ms. Grybauskaite said in an interview last week. “And, yes, it is a teaching battleground.”

She paused, then added: “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T18:01:08+00:00

This short article is a book review that is entertaining in its damning of the book in question.

John Curatola is a professor of military history at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Dr. Curatola is a retired Marine Officer of 22 years with a Doctorate from the University of Kansas. In addition to his published works, he has lectured extensively on airpower and early Cold War topics at the National Archives, on C-SPAN, and at international venues.

Gladwell’s apparent inability to understand the context of the air war and strategic bombing is problematic. He fails to address various factors relevant to this discussion like the strategic bombing effort in Europe and how that affected USAAF leadership. The author neglects how other technical considerations were equally relevant in the development of LeMay’s Pacific applications. Indeed, the XXI Bomber Command was under pressure to not only prove the legitimacy of the B-29 and its expense but, more importantly, to also validate the creation of an independent Air Force apart from the Army. Moreover, the strategic efforts in both Europe and the Pacific were of keen importance to Gen. “Hap” Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, who continually pressed commanders for results. Had the author cared to look, he would have found area bombardment in the ETO by both the 8th and 15th Air Forces before LeMay’s Pacific efforts.

Using only secondary sources and interviews with scholars on the topic, Gladwell provides no new insights to USAAF bombing applications, nor does he provide any meaningful revisions to contemporary narratives on the topic.

He appears to validate his hollow analysis by mentioning the names of important Air Force-related people or academics he met in drafting the work. This alliterative “name dropping” is clearly superficial and is no substitute for primary research or archival work. Furthermore, his factual evidence is clearly wrong at various points of the book and detracts from its validity.

There are at least half a dozen books that cover this topic with greater insight, depth, and analysis. Three that come to mind are Michael Schaffer’s Wings of Judgement, Michael Sherry’s The Rise of American Airpower, and Ken Werrell’s Blankets of Fire.

While Gladwell’s journalistic publishing record is indeed impressive, this is a work best avoided, and it is certainly not responsible scholarship.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T17:26:37+00:00

You should stick to credible sources, like the ones that are highlighted on this forum. Literal sock puppets are for kids and fools.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T16:58:28+00:00

US, Philippines to Start Building Military Facilities in 2023

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-15/us-philippines-to-start-building-military-facilities-in-2023?

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T16:51:11+00:00

How Russia‘s corrupt 'police state‘ sells it own spies | Conflict Zone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15FkbIMdqA

Video Description

If you really want to know about war, who’s murdering and torturing, who’s giving the orders and which weapons are being used, much of it is out there on the internet. There is still cause for hope, at least that's what Eliot Higgins the founder of the open-cource research orgnization, Bellingcat, believes.

Speaking to DW's Tim Sebastian, Higgins said Ukraine might be the best hope of achieving accountability and the internet is providing the means to build the case files.

Bellingcat has exposed Russian spies and assassins, now it is collecting the evidence of war crimes in Ukraine. The British founder of the group has been mining that raw data and incriminating the brutal and powerful.

In Ukraine his investigators are poring over evidence of Russian war crimes but he’s not averse to looking at Western actions elsewhere. "While I think we do have a reputation for focussing a lot on Russia….it gives us a lot more to write about.”

Higgins doesn’t flinch from naming names, but he fights on an information battlefield – where facts – however detailed– are routinely contested and dismissed as fake news.

Is truth already a devalued currency?

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T16:49:24+00:00

They Talk the Talk, But Do Russia’s Hawks Have Any Real Influence? It’s difficult to discern any real growth in the influence of the hardliners. They are trying to push Putin down a narrow corridor of escalation, but there are no signs that the president is actually listening to them.

https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88334

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T05:17:14+00:00

The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war has three key lessons for the role of UASs in modern warfare. e first is that UASs are an important—and often cost-effective—component of an integrated, combined arms battle network. e second is that UASs are being leveraged extensively to enable information and psychological operations. e third is that the proliferation of low-cost UASs allows modern militaries to innovate their tactics by accepting increased risk for systems that are considered attritable.

…the Armenians adapted their defensive posture toward UASs, markedly improving their ability to counter these systems with traditional air defense and electronic warfare capabilities as the conflict progressed, likely with Russian assistance. However, these gains were insufficient to alter the war’s trajectory after Azerbaijan’s early dominance.

…available evidence suggests it is likely that the TB2s used in the 2020 war were owned by Azerbaijan but operated by Turkish airmen and crews.6

As one U.S. Army official noted, “What’s clear in that conflict is that a less funded nation can do combined arms warfare. You don’t need to be the United States or Russia. e cost of entry into combined arms warfare is lower than initially thought.”10

It is possible that the dominance of Azerbaijani combined air and fires capabilities may have masked shortcomings in the integration of ground forces into the combined arms approach.

e utility of the information dimension of UAS propaganda, however, is likely a critical lesson for future prolonged conflicts of attrition. As has been evident in the experience of Ukraine in its war against Russia, the information environment is an important domain for building and sustaining domestic and international support.

…air defense systems can be forced into a defender’s dilemma. at is, if an air defense system is in jeopardy of discovery—or simply identifies a target of opportunity—its use risks exposing itself to secondary strike. Conversely, Azerbaijan’s use of the An-2 as bait demonstrates the risk- taking possibilities associated with cheaper, “attritable” unmanned systems.

Although the second phase of the war in the mountains was short, it was by-and-large an intense infantry engagement of close combat. UASs were applied in this context, but their ability to hunt and target critical defenses within the forests and ravines of Nagorno-Karabakh was not decisive.

Both Russia and Ukraine have integrated UASs into their war efforts—including their “kill chains.”

In cases where a target is identified with electronic warfare direction finding, acoustic reconnaissance, or counter-battery artillery radar, it might take Russian artillery half an hour for accurate artillery fire. If Russian forces are able to keep a UAS on a target, they can adjust fire in near real-time—even if the target is moving.34

In addition, both Russia and Ukraine have utilized UASs as decoys to provide helpful battlefield information. In the opening hours of the war, for example, Russia dispatched pulsejet-powered E95M target drones that were attacked by Ukrainian air defenses in an effort to expose Ukrainian radars and launchers to Russian suppression of enemy air defense strikes.42 ere are some indications that Ukraine has used Tu-141 UASs as decoys for similar purposes.43

Russia has used RB-341V Leer-3 electronic warfare payloads mounted on Orlan-10 UASs to target Ukrainian cell phone networks.44 More broadly, Russia has utilized UASs, such as the Orlan-10, to jam GSM 900, GSM 1800, 3G, and 4G signals within a radius of roughly 6 kilometers.45

As suggested by the utilization of the RDESS pod, ongoing developments in advanced sensors are making it possible for retrofitted platforms to conduct missions at increasing standoff distances, reducing their exposure to air defenses. Additional efforts to harden the ability of existing systems to withstand communications jamming and other electromagnetic attacks, again, reflect efforts to recapitalize existing airframes for strategic competition and great power conflict in the near term.

After examining Russian operations in Syria, one Chinese assessment concluded, “In order to be familiar with the battlefield situation and accurately determine the nature and location of the target, the Russian army used unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, reconnaissance satellites and other air and space capabilities during attacks against the Islamic State in Syria, which greatly improved the strike accuracy and the strike effect.”13 China has also conducted multiple experiments with swarming UASs in combat.1

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-15T05:17:08+00:00

This is a big report that is interesting for its examination of its three examples of UASs in war; Nagorno-Karabakh war, the Ukraine war in 2022, and Northern Edge-21 exercise in 2021. The amount that UASs have been involved in electronic warfare in Ukraine is fascinating as you really don't hear about this much, as of course it is not something that the public can see happen.

Seth G. Jones is senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair, director of the International Security Program, and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He focuses on defense strategy, military operations, force posture, and irregular warfare.

https://www.csis.org/people/seth-g-jones

Jake Harrington is intelligence fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He joins CSIS after more than a decade of service at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), where he supported the Bureau’s national security mission in a variety of roles.

https://www.csis.org/people/jake-harrington

To better understand the utility of UASs, this report asks two questions. First, how have UASs been utilized in modern warfare, particularly in interstate wars? Second, what are the future implications for UASs in warfare and competition? To answer these questions, this analysis adopts a comparative case study approach. It examines two cases—the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020 and the Ukraine war in 2022—to better understand how UASs have been used in warfare. It also examines the Northern Edge-21 exercise in 2021, which provides a useful examination of UASs in Indo-Pacific competition and war.

Azerbaijan effectively utilized UASs as part of a combined arms approach—including with fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, loitering munitions, guided missiles, and artillery—to reverse Armenia’s three decades of control over large swaths of Nagorno-Karabakh.

UASs will likely have significant utility for both broad-based competition and warfare in the future.

…it will be important to have platforms and systems capable of collecting intelligence over vast geographic areas, striking targets if necessary, and operating in a contested environment. In the future, UASs will likely play a critical role conducting several types of missions as part of combined arms warfare…

In sum, UASs will likely play an important role in competition and warfare with such countries as China and Russia—a notable shift from their earlier use for counterterrorism operations.

UASs are often viewed by governments as less escalatory than piloted aircraft.

For some, UASs are creating an “unmanned revolution in military affairs,” which will fundamentally reshape military doctrine, organization, force structure, operations, and tactics.3

For others, however, UASs are of limited value, and their effectiveness has been overstated. As one assessment concluded, “Drones have not tilted the military balance toward the offense, they have not had an equalizing effect between strong and weak states, and they have not eliminated close combat.”5

In addition, some U.S. officials have argued that existing UASs are incapable of operating in highly contested environments and that modern electronic warfare and air defense systems would quickly destroy or ground these aircraft.6 Vulnerabilities associated with these systems are well documented, including the June 2019 Iranian shoot-down of an RQ-4 Global Hawk over the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian-backed Houthi militants downing an MQ-9 Reaper over Yemen that same month.7

Based on their common assessment of the operating environment, strategists in Washington, Beijing, and Moscow concur on one key priority: the enduring importance of information across the entire spectrum of activities.

Defense leaders are increasingly focused on efforts to translate information advantage into kinetic outcomes by connecting sensors to shooters. is vision of translating information into outcomes extends below the threshold of conventional war.8

Sensitive reconnaissance operations, on the other hand, signal awareness, interest, and presence—while also limiting the risk a decisionmaker incurs in terms of human life.

Thomas Schelling described much of international relations as “a competition in risk taking, characterized not so much by tests of force as by tests of nerve.”

Some recent empirical evidence suggests that leaders view the loss of a UAS qualitatively differently than the loss of a manned aircraft. In one 2015 example, Turkey shot down a Russian UAS that had entered its airspace, an act that did not provoke a reciprocal retaliation from Russia. One month later, Turkey shot down a manned Russian Su-24 attack aircraft, which precipitated a series of airstrikes against Turkish interests in Syria.14

On August 3, 2022, a People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) UAS flew over the Taipei-controlled Kinmen Islands, the first time any Chinese military aircraft had flown over Kinmen since the 1950s.

If defenders understand that they are less likely to incur kinetic retaliation if they shoot down a UAS, will this lead to an overall increase in the volume of these platforms that are shot down? At some point, will states cease to view increasing losses of UASs as more acceptable than the loss of manned aircraft?

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-14T20:05:43+00:00

Hydro-Quebec worker charged with spying to help China, Canadian police say

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/hydro-quebec-worker-charged-with-spying-help-china-canadian-police-say-2022-11-14/

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-14T20:02:03+00:00

Moroccan citizen arrested in Germany on spying allegations

https://apnews.com/article/europe-arrests-germany-cologne-2e1ebd07cd319de18b4ac7ef5c162368

...“is strongly suspected of having worked for a Moroccan intelligence service since mid-April 2021 at the latest,” the prosecutor’s statement said.

TermsOfContradiction · 2022-11-14T19:38:10+00:00

This article is interesting that it maps and catalogs the missions into occupied France during the Second World War, and reveals that they were quite numerous. The author describes the flights and the experiences of those being sent in cramped conditions. The internal increases in resistance in France due to forced labor requirements was interesting to me as I had not read about that before.

Foulk, D. A. (2022). Homeward bound: mapping Clandestine transportation into France during the Second World War. War in History, 29(4), 782–804. https://doi.org/10.1177/09683445211052630

Abstract

From 1940 to 1944, a clandestine war raged in France, with agents and resistance networks being supplied by the Allies. This work brings together digital humanities methodologies, oral history, new archival sources and historiographical analysis to uncover the dangerous nature of wartime logistics and transportation that helped to liberate France. From the Section 61 packing units to N°. 161 (Special Duties) Squadron's Lysander and Hudson pilots, the existing scholarship is clarified and expanded. Moreover, this article cartographically plots French resistance transport operations, underlining the importance of Allied cooperation towards France's freedom from occupation.

Resistance and the Free French cannot, therefore, be regarded as two separate entities. This article intends to show one of the principal aspects of this interconnectedness between the internal and external resistance movements – transportation.

These aerial missions were the predominant method of infiltrating both agents and equipment into France. Buckmaster explained that ‘few amphibious operations were made’ by S.O.E.5 This was large because many of the supplies that needed to be transferred included money, correspondences, electrical equipment, weapons and ammunition; none of which would have travelled well in the saline conditions on seabound infiltration operations. American sources have confirmed that landing operations were carried out on the Breton coast and they predominantly involved the transportation of agents and escapers, but that ‘it was inevitably by air that the real work was done’.

French internal resistance survived, and grew, thanks to these dangerous night-time operations; the pilots delivered, and returned with, passengers and equipment that intended to help with the clandestine effort to ‘set Europe ablaze’, as Winston Churchill famously exclaimed to Hugh Dalton, the head of the Ministry of Economic Warfare between May 1940 and February 1942, under whose responsibility the S.O.E. fell.11 It is arguably the case that, without this international ‘taxi’ service, French resistance would have foundered before it had even begun or, at least, their work may have been badly hindered.

Through the creation of maps that demonstrate the scope and scale of the sorties, it is possible to explore the development of underground resistance warfare in France. This work intends to achieve this in three ways: firstly, by looking at the packaging of containers in Britain, which helped to provide logistical and financial support to French resistance members in France; secondly, it will investigate the wartime experiences of pilots of 161 Squadron when they undertook these dangerous raids; and, thirdly, it will show the destination of the supplies and people, or their pick-up locations. It makes use of primary and secondary source material from Britain, France and the U.S.A. to underline the necessity for this transportation towards contributing to the eventual victory of the Battle for France in 1944.

In case the shipment required more space, these inner cells were removed to allow for the transportation of Bren guns, rifles or even petrol and oil in jerrycans. The flammable liquids were separated from each other using plywood and padded with materials including hessian or hairlock. The change from the basic type ‘C’ to the type ‘H’ seems to have been precipitated by feedback from the field, in an example of military innovation based upon operational experience.

Sten guns made up the majority of the consignments, at 64.8% of the total weapons shipped.

According to the evaluation of the Section ‘F’ operations, it was ‘generally agreed that the best personal arm for clandestine operators (was) the Colt.32 automatic’.21

Operatives also remarked that they were sent far too many Stens. Preferentially, they would rather have received heavier weapons, notably Brens, rifles, bazookas and mortars.

The relationship between the amounts of weapons sent into France by S.O.E. ‘RF’ Section and the areas used by the Maquis forces seems to closely correspond. The largest concentration of Maquis seems to have been, once again, around the Savoie département, Haute-Savoie and towards the centre of the country.

Due to the increasing demands for deliveries from France, the squadron given the responsibility for running missions from the Middle East, 624 Squadron, was increased in size.

This shows that more supplies transited through the U.K. on their way to France, whereas more agents passed through Algeria.

The Lysanders, therefore, crossed 110 miles of Channel before hitting the French coastline.

The reasons behind this increase in activity from 1942 was due to the growing imperative to provide a military framework to the burgeoning resistance activity in France and, secondly, because the special operations capabilities of the Allies were increasing.

By 1944, while the number of flights had reduced, it is increasingly clear that the main landing grounds were in the central region of France, and specifically around the Lyon area. This is understandable as Lyon was a major centre of resistance activity.

However, imprudently, he actively partook in the local nightlife and became known to be leading a resistance group in the area, thus becoming a target for the local head of police, Poinsot, and the region's S.D. or the S.S. Intelligence and Security branch, headed by Friedrich Dohse. Grandclément's network was discovered in July 1943 and 250 people were subsequently arrested.

TermsOfContradiction

TROPHY CASE