With the JSF two full years behind schedule and the F-22 program dead, the USAF's fleet projections for the next 7-8 years are pretty ugly. Fortunately, the Obama administration will be retaining the Navy's robust fighter force to meet our air defense demands. Or... not:

At a discussion this week on the Navy’s “fighter gap” at the Center for National Policy in Washington, one of the defense world’s most knowledgeable sources on all things Navy, CRS’ Ron O’Rourke, tried to put a definitive number on that “gap.” From the Navy’s public statements, O’Rourke calculated the number at anywhere between 125 and 243 aircraft, although some in industry contend it’s 300 or more. The peak of this shortfall is projected to occur around 2015; the Navy contends a shortage of strike-fighters could reduce the number of available carriers from 11 to seven around that time.

An interesting report from the Washington Post claims that the White House launched an "aggressive, coordinated effort" to slash the fifth generation fighter from the defense budget:

When a showdown vote loomed on July 15, Senate Democratic leaders who backed Obama's effort to scuttle the program did not think they had the votes to win. There was opposition in their own caucus: Sen. Patty Murray wanted the F-22 funding (and ultimately supported it in the final Senate vote, as did her fellow Democratic senator from Washington and the two Democratic senators from California). There were only about 20 votes that could be counted on to scrap the F-22 program, and even with those undecided and leaning, "we didn't crack 50," a Senate aide said.

So they put off the vote by shifting attention to a provision in the defense bill to expand protections under laws against hate crimes. That gave the Obama administration several days to restart its lobbying effort to win the vote. That afternoon, the administration, in a statement from the Office of Budget and Management, repeated the veto threat, emphasizing the point by underlining the sentence.

"People had to ask: Did we want this to be the first time he vetoed a bill from Congress?" said one senior Democratic Senate aide.

Why did the White House fight so furiously against the jet's sustainment? Raising an objection to F-22 acquisition is one thing, launching a Napoleonic campaign -- over the objections of both Congress and the military -- is excessive. There were some serious, deeply intelligent strategic thinkers who had some equally serious, intelligent justifications for building a larger fleet of Raptors. Considering the fighter's admittedly steep price is but a drop in the health care/stimulus bucket, it's a little hard to believe the administration's only motivation was to eliminate waste in the defense budget.

Christian Lowe reports:

A top Pentagon official told a small group of defense reporters this morning (July 23) that the upcoming QDR will likely propose the formation of an aviation cadre devoted solely to irregular warfare.

The Pentagon's guru for special operations and low intensity conflict, the renowned Michael Vickers, told us that he believes a light strike, light reconnaissance aircraft would be useful to troops in an unconventional fight.

"That's one of the issues that this QDR is looking at about how to create these sort of irregular warfare air units -- should we do that, number one, because nothing has been decided -- then what that mix might be. But it might not reside in the special operations forces, it might reside in the general purpose forces as sort of a counterinsurgency capability," Vickers said.

I've heard rumblings that both the Air Force and Navy are looking to the Super Tucano for their primary ground attack bird. That's an excellent choice for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being the ST's long loiter time and impressive array of machine guns, a 20mm cannon, and rocket pods. It's also a proven in the field. A Columbian Air Force Super Tucano dropped the bomb that killed FARC #2 Raul Reyes during a cross-border raid into Ecuador last year.

Additionally, the Air Force has fielded a new squadron of MC-12 ISTAR birds in a Iraq, an intelligent solution to a long standing capabilities gap between ground pounders and the overtasked UAV fleet. Key to both the MC-12 and (proposed) Super Tucano acquisitions is that they're cheap enough to be purchased by second and third world allies plagued by indigenous insurgencies, easing the tricky task of standing up friendly foreign air forces. This is all part of a smart new COIN v2.0 campaign sweeping the Pentagon, and evidence that the US Air Force is finally getting serious about counter-insurgency.

As Goldfarb pointed out, the key to ballistic missile defense is redundancy. European deployment of the system affords Western allies a critical level of protection, as well as the first line of a robust, layered defense of the US mainland. The threat, however, isn't limited to Iran. Proliferation of ballistic missiles and ICBM/MRBM technology over the past 30 years has been nothing short of staggering. Check out the Missile Defense agency's troubling before and after missile proliferation charts -- the lion's share of the long range stuff is in unfriendly hands. It's also mostly Russian, something that the Obama administration should consider the next time Moscow cries foul over broken ABM treaties.

Interesting concept art of Russian's new Sukhoi PAK-FA fighter jet, informally dubbed the "Raptor Killer" by Russian aficionados. Scheduled for its maiden flight later this year, the PAK-FA purportedly boasts many of the F-22's bells and whistles: stealth, supercruise, advanced phased array radar, and the latest in air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. Sukhoi is keeping the PAK's design pretty close to their chest, so no telling if this is a true to life rendition of the bird or just the fantasy of some talented Russian artist.

H/T - Defense Tech

More job cuts expected in U.S. defense sector :

Big defense contractors could be poised to shed jobs as the Pentagon cuts traditional weapons spending, while smaller, niche companies may ramp up their hiring as the United States expands resources to protect ground troops and computer networks.

Industry leader Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) said this week it would cut 600 jobs, mainly in Owego, New York, as a result of the U.S. Defense Department's decision to terminate the VH-71 presidential helicopter program.

Aircraft maker Boeing Co (BA.N) said announced Pentagon cuts would claim 1,000 jobs in its defense business, affecting staffing at various U.S. work sites in missile defense and in the Army's Future Combat Systems modernization program, which is being opened to more competition.

Boeing, which has also been hit by the slump in commercial aerospace, declined to say whether the defense staff cuts were included in 10,000 jobs set to be pared companywide this year.

Tally up the tens of thousands of jobs that will be shed by the now defunct F-22 program. The administration can trump up new hirings by small scale defense shops, but those pale in comparison to the heavy hitters like Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed. Multiple missile defense systems, the littoral combat ship, the Army's future combat systems, and the Zumwalt-class destroyer (among others), are also on the chopping block, amounting to hundreds of thousands of skilled labor jobs lost. Considering the untold billions channeled into stimulus projects of questionable necessity, it's strange that the White House doesn't consider programs that actually strengthen our nation's Armed Forces an equally worthy investment.

One of the main justifications for killing the F-22 program was that the hyper-advanced fighter was irrelevant in a world of small wars and contingency actions. Secretary Gates is fond of pointing out that the jet has never flown a combat sortie over Iraq or Afghanistan -- an argument that's equally irrelevant. Our warfighting strategy, for decades, has relied on dominance of the skies. The fact that an American soldier hasn't been strafed by enemy aircraft since the 1950s is no accident. Even in Iraq and Afghanistan's counter-insurgency operations, we're dependent on freedom of airspace to fly our UAVs, air-assault troops, and gunships. The F-22 was the world's first air supremacy fighter. It was a guarantee that America would enjoy the luxury of friendly airspace for the next 15-20 years. It was also a tremendous deterrent against potential competitors, the strategic lynchpin for far-thinking Pentagon planners who considered American power critical to global stability.

Such is the real tragedy of the jet's long and controversial existence. The F-22 was perhaps the most misunderstood weapon system in history -- never about winning small wars, but rather ensuring that wars stayed that way.

It would be the finishing touch on their decade-long dismantling of Her Majesty's Armed Forces:

The U.K. should re-examine its commitment to the Lockheed Martin F-35, a left-leaning think tank suggests, as part of a broader review of defense procurements.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says that as part of a “Strategic Security Review” the U.K. government should “re-examine … its defense equipment requirements. This re-examination should explore all viable options for capability downgrading and quantity reductions, as well as for complete cancellation of some equipment programs.”

The IPPR’s Commission on National Security in the 21st Century’s final report, “Shared Responsibilities, A National Security Strategy For The United Kingdom,” published June 30, argues that given the pressure on defense procurement and the need for savings, these would best be made in areas “where we are members of an alliance that already possesses the relevant capabilities in abundance.”

In other words, the British left is perfectly content allowing us to handle sea and air superiority on our own. Though British defense policy has centered around the U.S.-U.K. alliance since the beginning of the Cold War, this is the first time in memory that leading British policy wonks have advocated anything less than total security independence (U.S. forces would undoubtedly be needed to supplement a smaller Royal Navy and Air Force). The commission also suggested reviewing the massive twin Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers (Nimitz-class sized ships that are the core of future British naval strategy), the Type-45 destroyer, and the Astute-Class attack submarine.

Killing these programs, along with the Joint Strike Fighter, doesn't simply degrade the British Armed Forces -- but America's as well. Here's hoping that the Tories are swiftly voted into power, before Labour is allowed to further weaken the once-mighty British military.

Great idea if you can get the other guys to play ball, but -- let's face it -- the other guys never play ball. Which is precisely why the idea has been unsuccessfully advocated during the tenures of the past five US presidents.

In today's world, America's nuclear arsenal is as important as ever. Consider that Russia is undergoing a nuclear renaissance, upgrading its bombers, building new ballistic missile submarines, and bending the language of the START treaty in order to buff up their ICBM force. China, currently limited to a one-dimensional MRBM/ICBM strategic force, is working to construct a nuclear triad similar to that of the United States and Russia. North Korea is trying to build a bomb and a delivery system, as is Iran, and as were the Syrians until the Israelis brought an abrupt halt to construction. India and Pakistan remain at the ready to paint each other green, while Japan flirts with the idea of developing a deterrent of their own. Cuba and Venezuela are courting the Russians to base long-range strategic bombers on their soil (because that worked so well the first time the Cubans did it), while every Jihadist from Brooklyn to the Hindu Kush scours the globe for anything and everything that even sounds atomic.

The United States, on the other hand, has steadily shrunk and neglected its nuclear stockpile for the past 17 years. We haven't even tested a bomb since the mid-90s. Our primary nuclear bomber, the B-52, was built in the 1950s and our Minuteman III ICBMS were built in the 1960s. We're currently the only nuclear power not actively upgrading, or planning to upgrade, its strategic force, and we stopped growing nuclear weapon experts circa 1992. The USAF has allowed its nuclear focus to slip to the point where they accidentally shipped four nosecone fuses for the Minuteman III missile to Taiwan and lost custody of six bombs (later found halfway across the country) last year. America's nuclear enterprise, though still capable, is sailing into troubled waters.

President Reagan was mocked for preaching the abolition of nuclear arms while reinvigorating America's strategic triad. A few years later, no one was laughing. Reagan's genius was its simplicity. The stronger we are, the more eager the other guy is to talk. President Obama has already announced his intention to gut our conventional arsenal, and our enemies are smelling blood. Should he treat our nuclear forces the same way, things could get downright dangerous.

Not happy with the shape of the US Air Force? Propose your own! The Dew Line reports:

Pierre Sprey -- father of the A-10, co-father of the F-16 and ardent F-22/F-35 critic -- has teamed up with ex-Vietnam fighter jock Col Robert Dilger to propose a fascinating vision for an "effectiveness-based" airpower fleet.

4,000 smaller, more agile A-10s = $60 billion
2,500 turboprops as forward air controllers = $3 billion
100 new tankers = $28 billion
1,000 dirt-strip C-123-like airlifters = $30 billion
1,100 smaller, faster F-16s = $44 billion
183 F-22s already purchased
200 F-35s redesignated as A-35s "to meet commitments to allies" = $50 billion

A couple points, starting with the name. "Effects based" strikes me as somewhat silly. All of the USAF's weapons are 'effects based,' lest anyone believe we're procuring ineffectual aircraft.

Second, although I love the idea of 6,700 new ground attack aircraft blotting out the sun, all those air-to-ground platforms are useless unless the USAF can continue its half-century plus streak of total air supremacy. F-16s are still highly capable strikers, but would have a tough time matching the newer classes of MiGs and Suhkois. Seizing the skies has been the strategic cornerstone of every American military victory since Overlord, which means we simply must -- and I'm theatrically biting my knuckle here -- buy up more F-22 Raptors.

Last, where are the ISR platforms? UAVs aren't great in a medium-to-high threat environment, but they're still some of the best weapons we've got when it comes to detecting, tracking, and killing al Qaeda baddies. Plus, they're border-busters. What's more provocative? An A-10 crashing in northwest Pakistan, or an unmanned drone?

Sprey's an unusual character, but he does know military aviation. Though clearly overboard, the attack-heavy component of his plan pushes the ever-raging airpower debate in the right direction. That makes Sprey's overall strategy, if nothing else, worth a bent ear.

Hat Tip: Defense Tech

Russia's plan for the new Iskander theater ballistic missile doesn't stop with their proposed Kaliningrad deployment. Aviation Week reports that once domestic requirements are met, Russia may export the weapon to Syria, India, and the UAE -- to start. Algeria, Belarus, Kuwait, and Vietnam have also expressed interest in the SCUD replacement, though Russia claims to be working on an "Echo" variant of the rocket for export that reduces the Iskander's range from 400km to appx. 280km.

Russia's export of its latest and hottest weapon system isn't exactly news -- they've been supplying the world with military hardware for decades. What is interesting is the potential for another East v. West technological showdown in the Israeli-Syria theater. Israel is currently deploying a robust rocket and missile shield that is designed to knock out everything from short range Hezbollah rocket attacks all the way up to an Iranian Shahab-III ballistic missile laydown. That shield will include top-of-the-line American missile defense systems such as the Patriot PAC-3, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), and a highly-sensitive new x-band radar, as well as Israeli weapon systems like David's Sling and Iron Dome.

As with the Six Day War, the October War, and the invasion/occupation of southern Lebanon, Israeli and Syria may once again test the mettle of US vs. Russian weapon platforms in the near future. Considering the frightening power of ballistic missiles one would hope that America's defense technology again proves superior.

If nothing else, Ivan's callous proliferation of these heavy shooters should be enough to cast doubt on any existing plan to cut missile defense from the budget.

[Photo: Aviation Week]

The Financial Times reports that Barack Obama is “negotiating terms” under which Robert Gates will remain as Secretary of Defense in an Obama administration. It was widely assumed that Gates would keep his job regardless of who won the election and while I’ve heard conflicting reports about whether he wants to stay, his success means he will almost certainly be offered the choice. If McCain had won, Gates merely would have been rewarded for his competence -- a rare quality in the Bush administration but one that was increasingly visible in the management of the war. For Obama, Gates could be of far greater value.

Barack Obama's problem is that he promised a withdrawal from Iraq that is neither prudent nor possible. More than that, withdrawal at the pace Obama demanded during the primary is no longer warranted: it’s clear we’re winning the war. It was good politics to promise a withdrawal during the primary, and it was something of a wash during the general election, but it would be a complete disaster to deliver on that promise as President. Perhaps the most serious foreign policy mistake Obama made during the election was to support unconditional meetings with our enemies (bad politics and bad policy), and he’s since made fairly clear that he has no intention of following through on that promise. Why should his 16 month timeline for withdrawal from Iraq be any different?

The new Iraqi deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces is 32 months, rather than the 16 Obama had promised during the primary, and it may well be possible to safely remove the bulk of U.S. forces by the end of 2011. What Gates can do is provide Obama with the cover to remove troops more quickly. Gates will be one of only a few voices who can credibly say that the facts on the ground allow for Obama's timeline -- that Obama isn’t threatening the gains made by U.S. troops. But Gates can also help provide Obama with the cover to move a little more slowly than his supporters might like -- another voice cautioning, from the inside, against too quick a draw-down.

There’s almost no one who would object to keeping Gates at the helm. As Harry Reid approvingly noted, Gates isn’t even a registered Republican. The usual suspects will whine about how this isn't the change they were promised, or that keeping Gates furthers the perception that Democrats are soft on defense -- in this case too soft for even Obama to find one up to the task of secretary -- but that's all background noise.

Pardoning Lieberman, reaching out to Clinton, and keeping on Gates -- perhaps things won't be as bad as we feared.

A website intended to showcase great American role models in uniform was launched today by Matt Daniels and Sequoia Capital.

GreatAmericans.com is an online video portal, similar to YouTube, that features videos of American soldiers, policemen, firefighters, and others.

Matt Daniels, the creator of the site, grew up in Spanish Harlem in New York without many positive role models. "I became convinced that one of the great disasters of our time is the utter absence of good role models in the media culture," he says.

"Role models are how we transmit values. Values are not transmitted in the abstract; they are transmitted by example. Society rises or falls by the role models we lift up."

Citing public polling critical of the media's infatuation with celebrity culture, Daniels says he is confident that there is an audience hungry to see real heroes like those in the U.S. military. He also plans to help educators use the website to teach American children about duty, service, patriotism, and character.

The front page of GreatAmericans showcases a preview of an exclusive, extensive interview with retired general Norman Schwarzkopf.

This Veterans Day, take a few minutes to learn about some of America's past and present military heroes.

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave another in the remarkable series of speeches of recent months, laying out the course he believes the U.S. armed forces must follow to prepare themselves for the conflicts of the 21st century. Addressing the National Defense University, he again complained of “Next-War-itis,” and “the defense bureaucracy’s priorities and lack of urgency opposed to a wartime footing and a wartime mentality.” In marked contrast to Donald Rumsfeld, the man he replaced at the Pentagon, Gates described the war on terror not as a high-tech global manhunt but as “in grim reality, a prolonged, world-wide irregular campaign.”

Even as Gates was telling unpleasant truths to people in uniform--for it is they who will most bear the brunt of the Long War--congressional Democrats revealed how deeply they remain a state of denial. Rep. John Murtha, the chairman of the House appropriations defense subcommittee, announced his opposition to the Bush administration’s plan (and the supposed position of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama) to increase the size of the active-duty Army and Marine Corps. Taking a page out of the Rummy pre-9/11 playbook, Murtha told Congressional Quarterly's Josh Rogin that the Pentagon “is going to have to cut personnel in order to pay for procurement.”

To be sure, the Defense Department faces critical budget problems. Procurement needs are genuine: Most current major U.S. weapons systems are products of the Reagan build-up. But, as Gates puts it, you have to win the war you’re in. The Bush troop plan is, if anything, a belated half-measure, a snail-paced increase that would bring the combined size of the Army and Marine Corps to about 750,000 in 2013, just 10 percent more than it was in 2005. Sen. John McCain has called for a larger, longer-term surge that would bring total land-force strength to 900,000.

The theme of Gates’s NDU speech was a warning about the limits of wonder weapons. While lauding “advances in precision, sensor, information and satellite technology,” he admonished the military to “never neglect the psychological, cultural, political and human dimensions of warfare, which is inevitably tragic, inefficient and uncertain.” He concluded his talk with words from one of the greatest American practitioners of irregular warfare, Gen. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, whose experience taught him “no matter how a war starts, it ends in mud. It has to be slugged out--there are no trick solutions or cheap shortcuts.” It is ironic that Gates, the soft-spoken former intelligence officer, better understands the need for boots on the ground than Murtha, the gruff former Marine.

But Murtha led the way when Democrats turned hard against the Iraq war in 2006; without his imprimatur, surely, Speaker Nancy Pelosi might have moderated her anti-war, San Francisco instincts. Apparently the Democratic strategy is now to limit the prospects for future mischief--that is, the prospects for successfully waging the Long War--by withholding the manpower that is needed. They’re doubling down on defeat.

The international community's "responsibility to protect" populations from failed or predatory states is set to become the most hotly debated concept in foreign policy, no matter who becomes president on January 20, 2009. Bret Stephens explains why:

A solution for Zimbabwe's crisis isn't hard to come by: Someone – ideally the British – must remove Mr. Mugabe by force, install Mr. Tsvangirai as president, arm his supporters, prevent any rampages, and leave. "Saving Darfur" is a somewhat different story, but it also involves applying Western military force to whatever degree is necessary to get Khartoum to come to terms with an independent or autonomous Darfur. Burma? Same deal. ...

So let's by all means end the hand-wringing and embrace the responsibility to protect, wherever necessary and feasible. Let's spare the thousands of innocents, punish the wicked, oppose tyrants, and support democrats – both in places where it is now fashionable to do so (Burma) and in places where it is not (Iraq). If that turns out to be Mr. Obama's foreign policy, it will be a worthy one. It does come oddly close to the Bush Doctrine.

Indeed, Obama's statement on Zimbabwe is arguably more interventionist than McCain's. Both Obama and McCain agree that Robert Mugabe's government is no longer legitimate. They both call for increased sanctions against the Mugabe gang. But Obama writes: "If fresh elections prove impossible, regional leaders backed by the international community should pursue an enforceable, negotiated political transition in Zimbabwe that would end repressive rule and enable genuine democracy to take root."

That door to intervention is absent from McCain's statement, which suggests the administration "consider expelling Mugabe’s diplomats from Washington and explore options with our friends in Africa and beyond, including suspending Zimbabwe’s participation in regional organizations as long a Mugabe clings to power."

Obama is already moving to the center on a host of issues. How will the Angry Left react when - not if - President Obama participates in the long and noble tradition of American humanitarian intervention?

From Defense Tech

With his decision to tap Gen. Norton Schwartz to be the next Air Force chief of staff, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has done two things.

First, he has smashed an Air Force culture ceiling by putting into the top job a pilot who does not come out of the fighter or bomber community.

Second, Gates has put into place someone who can help heal the rift between the Air Force and the Army, one that has grown in recent years over the Air Force's heavy-handed move to take ownership of the Joint Cargo Aircraft--originally an Army program--its seeming stinginess in getting to ground commanders badly-needed UAV assets and the service's lack of interest in sending Airmen to help out on Army missions.

"A couple of things about 'Norty' Schwartz that a lot of folks didn't realize [before] - he spent a lot of time in the special ops arena," said a retired four-star who, like Schwartz, once headed U.S. Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base, Ill. "And any of our blue suit guys who have spent time in the special ops arena have a tendency to be closer to our Army brethren and others. I think that's a positive thing."

I agree, that's a very positive thing. The old saying goes that you can fly over the land, you can bomb the land, you can render the land uninhabitable, but you don't own it until you can stand a 17 year old kid with a rifle on top of it.

Schwartz wasn't Gates's only green-brained nomination. Michael Donley, in line replace Michael Wynne as Secretary of the Air Force, served in the both the Army Airborne and 5th Special Forces Group as a young company-grade officer.

This is a cultural change that is long overdue. Despite the spectacular effects that the Air Force brings to the fight, it's still--at its core--a support organization. Schwartz and Donley both seem to be men who understand that the Air Force exists largely to prop up the infantry, not the other way around.

A word on today's purging of USAF leadership. Official line is that Air Force brass let the nuclear mission slip in the years since the Berlin wall fell. That's true, for a variety of reasons. Standing down Strategic Air Command, the post-Vietnam leadership handoff from nuclear bomber pilots to fighter pilots, the odd square peg that is the kinetic-effects-based Air Force in the round hole of the low-intensity war on terrorism, and the end of the Cold War... all contributed to an overall deemphasis on strategic operations.

Still, this is a really old school way of doing business. Back during the Strategic Air Command days, a Wing Commander who lost custody of one of his bombs--even for a second-- would be immediately relieved. Secretary Robert Gates is an old SAC hat--he was an intelligence officer assigned to a strategic missile wing--so I can't say I'm surprised that he dealt with the Minot AFB and ICBM fuze screwups with Strategic Air Command's tell-tale iron fist.

All that said, the USAF has a ways to go. Looking back on its history, dismantling SAC ranks up there in the service's all time worst decisions. Air Force Space Command isn't a good fit for our 500 ICBMs and the fighter orientated Air Combat Command isn't a good fit for nuclear bombers. Effective reorganization that cuts through the miles of red tape and re-simplifies the strategic mission is what the nuclear world really needs.

Now the unofficial line. There's been a series of incidents over the past few years that have isolated Air Force leadership from the rest of the Pentagon. The overly simplified version is that the other three services went out to fight this new war while the Air Force sat at home and demanded hyper-expensive weapon systems. They tried to grab at the Army's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) force, were reluctant to deploy increased numbers of UAVs into theater, crawled from acquisitions disaster to acquisitions disaster, and capped it all off with the twin nuclear fiascos.

Again, that's over-simplified. But it is the popular perception in the Pentagon. And Gates seems to have had enough. These firings look like a warning shot to the entire service: either get with the program, or I'll find someone who will.

For years, there's been a rivalry between fighter pilots and bomber pilots for command of the Air Force. Ever since the B-52 community took horrendous losses during Linebacker I & II, the fighter pilots have ruled. I'll be most curious to see if the new Chief is a bomber guy and if the reign of the fighter pilot has come to an end.

A key House Committee has approved legislation that addresses the controversial tanker contract awarded by the Air Force to an EADS consortium, instead of a rival Boeing bid. But the legislation leaves the status quo in place -- at least for now:

House defense authorizers are directing the Air Force to review whether illegal government subsidies played any role in a contentious refueling tanker contract...

However, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) offered a caveat in his chairman’s mark: Any inquiry would be done after the World Trade Organization (WTO) delivered its rulings on trade disputes between the United States and the European Union over illegal subsidies to Airbus and tax breaks for Boeing . The two bitter rivals on the world’s commercial aircraft market are also at the center of the tanker controversy...

Based on what the WTO finds in either case, the Air Force Secretary would have 90 days from the rulings to conduct a review, allowing time for public comment on the effect of illegal subsidies on the program, for consultation with federal government experts, and to speak with officials at both the Northrop Grumman-EADS team and Boeing.

If the Air Force determines the illegal subsidy had a “material impact” that calls into question the “fairness” of the contract award, the service leaders have the right to take “appropriate measures” to remove the impact of the illegal subsidy and make the process “fair to all,” according to the legislative language in the chairman’s mark.

The legislation leaves it to the discretion of the Secretary of the Air Force how to make the outcome 'fair to all.' Further, it's not clear when the World Trade Organization will rule on the subsidy question, but the decision may not come for several months. In the interim, the Air Force is not prohibited from going forward with the contract.

That said, if the World Trade Organization does rule against the European Union, and determines that launch subsidies gave EADS an unfair advantage, expect a new round of lobbying to undo the deal, assuming that it's not already too far down the road.

In the May 2008 issue of National Defense magazine, respected industry analyst Sandra Erwin writes about the emerging competition between the U.S.-designed F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and a range of less capable but much cheaper alternatives in the international fighter aircraft market:

The Pentagon is counting on its prized new Joint Strike Fighter to guarantee victory against future enemies. But before it can secure its place as the world’s premier combat jet, the JSF must first be able to beat its canny competitors in the global aerospace industry. European manufacturers of warplanes such as the Eurofighter and the Gripen are out there, aggressively marketing their products as cheaper and easier-to-acquire alternatives to JSF. These companies offer industrial "offsets" so buyers get a share of the production work. That is bad news for JSF, which will have to play catch-up against these savvy marketers. One issue of concern is that European companies are offering attractive incentives to JSF partner nations to buy their jets, possibly at the expense of future JSF purchases. That is something that worries Air Force Maj. Gen. C.R. Davis, program executive officer for the JSF. "What keeps me awake at night is how those airplanes are marketed," he told "This Week in Defense News."

As was noted here, the United States needs a large production run for the JSF in order to amortize its astronomical development costs, and to that end has created a team of multinational partners to share the burden. But as the cost of the aircraft has increased rapidly over the past several years, a number of these partners, most notably Norway, have begun suffering a combination of sticker shock and buyer's remorse, and are now searching for more affordable alternatives. As Reuben Johnson noted here, the Swedish JAS.39 is very much in the running, but so are the EADS Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafael, the Boeing FA-18E/F Super Hornet, as well as different models of the Russian MiG-29 and the Su-30. As Erwin's article notes, this is a cause of great concern within the USAF, because without substantial foreign sales, the United States cannot afford to buy the JSF in the numbers required to maintain fighter strength at a reasonable level as the F-15, F-16, and older models of the FA-18 begin to retire.

Cost is just one part of the equation. Many potential foreign buyers are deeply concerned over the export control and technology transfer restrictions placed on various aspects of the JSF, particularly those concerned with low-observable (stealth) and counter low-observable systems. In many cases, the United States will only sell this technology in the form of a sealed "black box," which the user country cannot open either for maintenance or for upgrades; this places the user country at the mercy of the United States, which can withhold supplies of critical spare parts. In other instances, the United States may provide less capable versions of critical systems, so that the buyer gets a second-class bird for a first class price.

The United States also places restrictions on third party sales, meaning that even JSF partners cannot sell JSF-derived technologies without first obtaining an export license from the United States. While this helps ensure that our "family jewels" do not fall into the wrong hands, it also places European companies at a competitive disadvantage against both the United States (which can deny the necessary licenses) and other companies that do not use U.S.-derived components. Licenses are covered under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which are greatly resented in Europe because of the limits it puts on the sale of technology and because of the bureaucratic hassles involved in getting a license (which is needed for anything beyond the most cursory of discussions about a system or technology).

Photo courtesy of Navy blogger Instapinch.

The latest Navy fast-burner's feet are officially wet.

The second Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), USS Independence, has been launched after a complex operation in Mobile, Ala.

The ship first saw the sun April 26 when workers at Austal USA moved the striking, aluminum-hulled trimaran out of its building shed and onto a floating drydock. The 417-foot-long ship was balanced on its center section while stanchions steadied the outriggers covering the craft's 100-foot beam.

Launched, but not commissioned. Though the Indy is floating, Lockheed still has a laundry list of work to do before she's ready to assume her official USS designator and (presumably) start sending Somali pirates to Davy Jones' Locker or put the fear of Allah in Iranian fast-boast crews. She comes in at an estimated $400 million (or two F-22s!), which is an awful lot of dosh for a job that could probably be accomplished with a volley from a 5-inch Mark 45 deck gun.

In fairness though, the trimaran hulled LCS does bring in a whole new class of capabilities that would be quite useful in fighting, say, off the target-rich shores of the Iranian gulf isles. Wonder if her older (but lamer looking) sister ship, the Freedom, is first tasked with escorting battle groups in and out of the Persian Gulf.

A number of contributors to this blog have written on the controversial tanker deal awarded by the Air Force to EADS, and currently being investigated by GAO (examples here, here, here, here, and here). Now it looks like the House at least, is getting ready to pass legislation to undo the deal:

First, those lawmakers are readying measures that would prevent the Air Force from following through on the contract, which was awarded to a team led by Northrop Grumman Corp. and the U.S. arm of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space company (EADS).

Second, they propose to permanently change Pentagon contracting rules that they believe favor foreign firms over U.S. companies...

The Buy American movement could be helped by a slowing economy, growing concern about the outsourcing of jobs abroad and the pressures of an election year, analysts said. In the House, particularly, the odds are good for passage of legislation related to the tanker deal.

The White House is likely to issue a veto threat on any legislation to retroactively overturn the contract award. This probably gives Boeing advocates in Congress a free pass: they can vote for legislation to protect American jobs, knowing that in the end it won't be enacted. That's assuming of course, that Congressional leaders are content to let the issue die after a veto.

The more significant question is what U.S. trading partners do if and when Congress adopts legislation to reverse the award. Congressional actions typically get a lot of attention in foreign capitols.

The latest salvo? The SECDEF says that the Air Force is sandbaggin' it in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"In my view we can do and we should do more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt," he said. "My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield."

He cited the example of drone aircraft that can watch, hunt and sometimes kill insurgents without risking the life of a pilot. He said the number of such aircraft has grown 25-fold since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

He said he has been trying for months to get the Air Force to send more surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, like the Predator drone that provides real-time surveillance video, to the battlefield.

"Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth," Gates said. "While we've doubled this capability in recent months, it is still not good enough."

I'm curious about context here. From what I've seen, the Air Force has been more than eager to prove their small war utility, mostly in the form of UAV coverage, tactical airlift, and close air support. So I'm thinking that this may be a case of the force being willing, but the bureaucracy being weak. In other words, Air Force has clogged itself with so many regulations, it appears to have lost touch with two of the guiding lights of successful warfare: speed and simplicity.

While I'm skeptical of claims that the Air Force is reluctant to get in the fight, the service is in need of a massive system flush, one that purges the ranks of overregulation, top-heavy leadership, and unnecessary bureaucratic constructs. Most of the public affairs wounds that the Air Force has suffered in the past few months have been self-inflicted, so looking inward may be the best way to cure the service's woes.

Air Force news story here. But I was more taken with this delightful quote from General Gary Harencack:

"The B-2 is airpower at its purest, most elegant and deadliest form," the general said.

Open admiration for air-delivered death and destruction is rare in this day and age of politically correct Air Force leadership. Some people think that military leaders should play the part of remorseful warrior, always apologetic for the terrible violence they must commit in defense of the Republic. Nonsense...let good men like General Harencack make our enemies squirm.

I take it the Associated Press is not a fan of the "Dirty Dozen" approach.

Under pressure to meet combat needs, the Army and Marine Corps brought in significantly more recruits with felony convictions last year than in 2006, including some with manslaughter and sex crime convictions.

Data released by a congressional committee shows the number of soldiers admitted to the Army with felony records jumped from 249 in 2006 to 511 in 2007. And the number of Marines with felonies rose from 208 to 350.

There's two sides to this coin. On one hand, the military is an excellent way to realign misguided souls who would--in all likelihood--continue down the wrong path upon release from prison.

On the other hand, I tend to agree with guys like General Barry McCaffrey, that these "are not people who should be wearing the uniform." So I suspect there's a happy medium here, and that the Army and Marines are carefully screening individuals with records before assimilating them into the military ranks, thus rendering breathless reporting on the subject unnecessary.

Haven't seen news like this since the Cold War...

New B-52 Squadron Coming to Minot AFB:

North Dakota’s congressional delegation announced Tuesday that the Air Force has informed them Minot Air Force Base will get a second squadron of B-52 bombers and about 1,090 more personnel.

The Air Force announced Tuesday that it plans to keep the nation’s total B-52 force at 76 aircraft instead of cutting the fleet to 56 aircraft as it had originally proposed.

Accidently transfer six thermonuclear cruise missiles across the continental United States? Congrats! Here's your new bomber squadron.

Unfortunately, the bombers are coming from Barksdale AFB and not being resurrected from the boneyard, so there won't be any net gain in the actual size of the bomber fleet. B-52s are among the cheapest aircraft in our inventory to fly, so bringing 20+ of the big fellas back from the dead, assigning them to the nuclear mission, and freeing up the rest of the Buff fleet for combat ops seems like it'd be a smart move. Never hurts to have more devastating firepower available in the increasingly important Pacific AoR.

Of course I'm biased. I'm a huge B-52 fan (the bomber, not the awful band).

From the UK's Daily Mail, top brass force Brown to review £1bn defence cuts:

An emergency review of the country's defences is due to take place following a crisis meeting between the heads of all three armed services and Gordon Brown.

The chiefs are understood to have said that cuts ordered by the Prime Minister threatened to undermine current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the future viability of the forces.

At least two senior officers, believed to be Army generals, have threatened to resign - according to several sources.

The story is a bit old, 3 weeks or so, but still quite relevant. America needs a strong British military to help form the backbone of the alliance against Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, the ruling Labor Party has steadily slashed defense budgets for the past decade or so, reducing Her Majesty's Armed Forces to what some are calling a glorified gendarmerie.

Even if the British defence chiefs get their way and force Labor into properly financing the military, the situation will remain dire. Increases proposed by the MoD only get the Brits back up to status quo, instead of compensating for years of neglect. As our military objectives are the same, the Labor cuts also negatively affect US campaigns. The traditionally trustworthy British forces no longer have the ability to project power into more than one or two areas of operation, forcing American and fledgling Iraqi or Afghani units to fill the gaps.

Though it's a tough pill to swallow and we'd undoubtably prefer the Brits, perhaps it is time to start looking at Sarkozy's France as our new special defense partner?

Air Force Cyber Command's mission remains unclear:

While the U.S. Air Force is busy setting up a cyber command, defense experts are busy debating what, exactly, a cyber command should do...

When describing the new command's mission, its chief, Air Force Maj. Gen. William Lord, said it is defending "the whole electromagnetic spectrum."

The whole spectrum eh? From radio to gamma rays? I thought we were just talking about cyberspace here. This has been a real problem with the Air Force as of late. The service has been inundated with bureaucratic edifices that clog up productivity while having a negligible impact on the war.

The Air Force's need to hack and to defend against hacks is obvious, so I doubt that anyone challenges Cyber Command's utility. What is questionable is the value of standing up the enormous administrative component needed to support a Major Command. The Air Force is hard-pressed for money right now, yet they continue to bloat the service with highly expensive, officer-heavy support and administrative units instead of concentrating on the basic mission essentials.

Ergo, you've got an entire Major Command whose mission is "uncertain."

Cyber Command could be ahead of its time. But if it does exist to defend our networks and hack our enemies back to the stone age, then CC's battle geeks will need to be quick, adaptable, and surprising in their actions. Unfortunately, excessive administrative bureaucracy specializes in making operations slow, rigid, and highly predictable. Best idea I've heard yet on Cyber Command? Stick them in the now-vacant Cheyenne Mountain complex, and put a crazy cigar chomping general in charge of geek-ops.

I know a few venerable Strategic Air Command warriors who will be more than a little peeved when they see the new Air Force Cyber Command unit patch.

Resentment at proposed Cyber Command patch:

Cyber Command’s new emblem can’t be anointed officially until the new command is stood up this October, but the one in the works replicates the former Strategic Air Command’s patch.

Only “minor modifications” have been made to the SAC emblem to create AFCYBER’s design and “bring it up to current Air Force emblem standards,” according to service documents.

In other news, the Air Force has "emblem standards." Leadership!

Armed Forces Journal reports:

It might be tempting to dismiss the U.S. Navy’s potential focus on China as a passing fad — part of the now-familiar phenomena of “China fever.” Another perspective holds that this focus can best be explained by a simple case of enemy deprivation syndrome. While there is a kernel of truth in both of these intellectual approaches, facts on, above and especially under the water increasingly belie these conclusions and demand serious attention from American strategists.

China has launched more than 36 new submarines since 1995 — far outpacing U.S. intelligence estimates from a decade ago. Additionally, supersonic indigenous cruise missiles, rumored development of an anti-ship ballistic missile, dynamic mine warfare and amphibious warfare programs, invigorated aerial maritime strike capabilities, as well as a variety of new, sleek and modern surface combatants, suggest a broad front effort by the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

This is slowly becoming a dangerous situation.

Not because I think that we'll be at war with China anytime in the near future, but rather that the rapidly shrinking gap between China's military capabilities and our own makes a quick localized war over Taiwan or the Spratley Islands more likely.

This is precisely the reason that we need to retask the Air Force and Navy with their old primary mission as our principle strategic warfighting services. Back during the Cold War, the Air Force's Strategic Air Command had a great motto: Peace is our profession. That eventually blossomed into Reagan's peace through strength (or my favorite, peace through superior firepower), but the message was clear: the power of America's strategic forces assured the world that the Cold War would never go hot.

The same applies to China. The more we weaken our strategic forces, refuse to modernize the Air Force and bolster the size of the Navy, the higher the probability of war in the Far East. The Army and Marines--properly equipped and sized--can handle counterinsurgencies and low-level conflict, while a powerful Air Force and Navy will ensure that America's wars are contained and statistically small.

David Axe over at Danger Room, in a fine display of alliteration, puts the latest mishap into perspective.

B-1 Crash: Bad Year for Bombers

The B-2 crash was the type's first, and took out a full five percent of the fleet. Today's crash is the ninth for the currently 70-strong B-1 fleet. Prior to today, 17 people had died in B-1 accidents.

While crashes are a fact of life in the Air Force, you can't help wonder if the recent spate of accidents isn't putting pressure on the Air Force to get serious about its so-called "2018 bomber."

In fairness, the Air Force has been deadly serious about force modernization for several years now. Less serious are the service's detractors in Congress and at the Pentagon, though many legitimately question the need for hyper-expensive weapon systems in a time of counterinsurgencies, low-level conflict, and small wars.

I'd really like to see the Air Force just come out and declare a single mission and purpose one of these days. They're in bad need of focus. Insisting that we need F-22s and new hyper-sonic bombers to win the war on terror isn't credible. But there will always exist a need for a strategic vanguard against powerful nation-states, irrespective of the sole-superpower times that we live in. That's the Air Force's bread and butter, and if the service was to simply come out and say "We exist to protect America against rival nations" instead of acting like they're the very keystone of non-kinetic operations, they'd likely have an easier time of modernizing and replacing their ancient fleet of aircraft.

Jeffrey Lewis flags some interesting testimony from a recent hearing on the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). Here's Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, apparently unaware that the Pentagon was not responsible for the program, or maintaining the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile in general:

MR. ENGLAND: So Mr. Hobson, I guess I was not aware that we were not paying for these programs —

REP. HOBSON: You’re not.

MR. ENGLAND: — with Department of Energy, because — okay, I guess that’s a surprise to me. I mean, I always thought we were funding those development programs and funding the DOE labs to do work for us. So I though there was a money transfer to DOD (sic) to do this. I guess I’m surprised —

That's like finding a couple billion in your pocket, right? Maybe it's even enough to convince England that the Air Force can afford a few extra F-22s.

Last night from Hugh Hewitt:

The EADS Tanker Can't Refuel The USMC Osprey?

Boeing's Mark McGraw just told me that on air. Doesn't it strike you as a pretty significant advantage for Boeing that its proposed tanker could refuel the new Marine Corps platform while the Airbus tanker can't? If there was a huge gap between the two tankers, that might not make a difference, but by every account, it was a dead heat, so this difference seems very significant on its face.

Word on the street is Boeing lost on four of five evaluation criteria; how that amounts to a dead heat, I don't know. Regarding the ability to refuel "new" Marine Corps platforms, the new MV-22 Osprey at present is not fitted for aerial refueling, but when it is, it, like other helos, will use the probe-and-drogue system shared by the rest of the Navy. At present, because of their low speed, helos do not refuel from jet tankers, but instead use KC-130 Hercules, which are more closely matched to them in speed. The Osprey, being capable of 300 knots, could, flying flat out, match speeds with a jet tanker, but it would be iffy. Assuming that this is a mission requirement, both the Boeing and Airbus tankers are dual-capable; i.e., they have both flying boom (used by the Air Force) and probe-and-drogue (used by the Navy) units, just like the existing KC-10.

The Boeing offering is smaller, has less range, less cargo capacity, and less fuel transfer capacity. On the bright side, Boeing says it is cheaper (we'll have to wait on that one), and can be operated from forward bases (why on earth would you want to do that?), which the company claims obviates the shorter range. But then Boeing ignores the vulnerability and strategic issues inherent in forward basing, as well as the additional cost of shipping fuel to forward bases, to say nothing of the O&M costs associated with creating forward base detachments for every tanker squadron in USAF.

All-in-all, sounds like McGraw is blowing smoke, but the Boeing objective at this point is to keep the protest alive through the election cycle in the hope that the new President and Congress will be more protectionist in outlook and will cancel the contract award (ideally, from his perspective, mandating a sole source award to Boeing).

Boeing was arrogant and ticked off its customer by ignoring mission requirements--in effect, telling the Air Force that it knew better than they did what the Air Force needed. This is never a good business strategy. They also assumed that USAF would never make a major award to a foreign manufacturer. Obviously, this was a faulty assumption. As to why the Airbus award constitutes a dire threat to U.S. national security, your guess is as good as mine. We buy a commercial airframe, half of which is built in the U.S., from Airbus, and we give it to Northrop to stuff with all the refueling, communications and other mission equipment, which is worth more than the value of the airframe. The Airbus deal will create as many new jobs in the U.S., albeit at the expense of some Boeing jobs--my guess is a net gain in U.S. employment. Security of supply is not an issue, given that France is a member of the LOI (Letter of Intent) Six, which all have memoranda of agreement in place with each other to ensure access to parts and services from each other. The Boeing protest, and its supporters, in short, are making a straightforward protectionist argument, which in the long run will come back to bite all U.S. defense manufacturers.

Though the Ruskies still aren't happy about it:

Russia's foreign ministry said March 19 it was studying written proposals from the U.S. aimed at allaying Moscow's concerns over Washington's missile defense plans in Europe.

The proposals came after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates held talks in Moscow on Monday and Tuesday with outgoing President Vladimir Putin, president-elect Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials.

"We've literally just received the written proposals of the American side on missile defense and will proceed to study them," foreign ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin told Russian news agency Interfax.

Sounds like diplo-fluff to me. Quite frankly, I don't blame the Russians for throwing a fit over the proposed missile defense radar and interceptors. If they wanted to stand up similiar installations in Canada, we'd be reacting the exact same way. It's not that a few interceptors aimed at containing Iranian Shahabs would stop a full-out, over the pole ICBM lay down between the United States and Russia, but rather the simple fact that the boost-phase interceptors will jumble up Ivan's targeting equation something awful. I've heard stories about the condition of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces from U.S. START Treaty inspectors: launcher tubes filled with water, hatches that won't blow when the missile is released, rocket fuel leaks, etc. They need all of the working missiles that they've got just to cover the bare minimum of targets needed to maintain effective deterrence.

So I suspect that when Putin meets with NATO in April, the only benefit of Russia's analysis will be that their "no" comes with a polite smile.

GovExec has the story:

House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., threatened during a hearing in early March to "stop the money" for the contract. Rep. Norman Dicks, a Democrat from Washington whose district would see an influx of jobs if Boeing won the contract, argued that "we're going to start this thing over."

Others have focused their resistance on EADS, the French-based parent company of Airbus. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., said "we should have an American tanker built by an American company with American workers," and Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, argued that the decision would hurt "national security interests..."

If GAO upholds the decision, Congress has the power to cancel funding for the project or direct program funds to Boeing through an earmark. But such a move, contracting experts said, would be virtually unprecedented and could spark a wave of unintended consequences.

Congress has complained that the Defense Department 'changed the rules' for the acquisition midstream, but now Members of Congress are talking about doing the same. While bureaucrats are required by law to disregard job impacts when making acquisition decisions, legislators are arguing to overturn the award on the ground that that consideration should have been paramount. If Congress decides to wade into this after it's already been decided, it will delay delivery of critical hardware, add uncertainty to the acquisition process, and give European governments an excuse to shut their markets to American companies. And it will give John McCain the chance to take a more prominent stand against the ultimate earmark--a stand which is unlikely to cost him electoral votes in Washington, Illinois, or even in deep-red Kansas.

Tom Barnett's piece in the April issue of Esquire is blamed--or credited--with bringing about the fall of Adm. William Fallon, who will step down soon as commander of U.S. Central Command. Barnett portrayed Fallon as a guy who stood up to the president on Iran. Barnett also portrayed Fallon as a scourge of "hardliners led by [Vice President] Cheney," "neocons," and "supporters of Israel."

Now, not too long ago, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was also known as a hardliner, and even in some circles as a "neocon." Of course, such people use the term "neocon" as nothing more than shorthand for either "hardliner" or "friend of Israel," which makes it sound like a coinage of the department of redundancy department.

But guess who wrote a profile of Don Rumsfeld three years ago, one at least as fawning as the one of Fallon? Why none other than Tom Barnett.

The piece, which appears in the same magazine's July 2005 issue, is entitled "Donald Rumsfeld: Old Man in a Hurry: The inside story of how Donald H. Rumsfeld transformed the Pentagon, in which we learn about wire-brushing, deep diving, and a secret society called the Slurg." Here is what Barnett has to say on the first page of the piece:

It is from this suite of rooms that Rumsfeld has become one of the most loathed and revered men in the world. The man is too impatient, too damned arrogant, too beyond politics, and just too stubborn for his own good. He is the famously combative, two-time SecDef (both youngest and oldest ever) who chews up and spits out experienced reporters in what are easily the most skillfully performed press conferences since John Kennedy walked the earth. He has brilliantly executed a couple of wars, and badly botched a peace. Let us stipulate all these truths just to move the conversation along.

But something else has been going on in this office, and it's nothing short of the most profound transformation of the U. S. military since World War II--a historic process that will, paradoxically, yield a force Americans haven't seen since our frontier days. The United States had one Defense Department on January 20, 2001, and it will have a very different one by January 20, 2009. Donald H. Rumsfeld, thirteenth and twenty-first secretary of defense, is the reason why.

Does one whiff a touch of opportunism floating on a tainted breeze?

I would also note that when Robert Kaplan wrote a piece for the June 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly entitled "How We Would fight China," Barnett referred to it on his website as "Kaplan's strategic lap dance for the U.S. Navy and Pacific Command?"

He continued: "'Sell out' isn't too strong a term for what Kaplan does in this piece. As someone who's worked for the Navy for a decade and a half, I don't think I've ever seen analysis that whores itself more for the most over-the-top strategic fantasies of naval leaders who feel embittered and betrayed by the end of the Cold War. This is U.S. Navy and Pacific Command propaganda at its best."

Oh, by the way, guess who was commander of Pacific Command at the time of the Kaplan piece. None other than Adm. William "Fox" Fallon.

Hmm. It sounds like Barnett did Kaplan one better. If Kaplan's piece on Fallon's PACOM in 2005 was a lap dance, Barnett's fawning piece on Fallon last week might best be described by a word that ends in "job".

From National Journal, The Bills Come Due:

Since 1991, the United States has been the world's sole superpower. Now, 17 years later, the armed forces that underwrite that status have begun to fray. Nowhere are the limits of the U.S. military more evident than on the ground in Iraq, and so Congress and the media have focused their attention on the stretched ground forces of the Army and Marine Corps. U.S. control of the seas and skies is something that the public and policy makers tend to assume, as they have since the fall of the Soviet Union. But on the sea and in the air, America has coasted for two decades on investments made in the 1980s. Now, after a generation of heavy use around the globe, from Somalia and the Balkans in the 1990s to Afghanistan and Iraq today, hardware bought during the Reagan buildup is simply wearing out.

The Air Force and Navy, both more technologically dependent than their Army and Marine counterparts, have been increasingly vocal about their modernization needs. But Congress is reluctant to fund big-ticket weapon systems while soldiers and marines slog it out on the streets of Baghdad and the mountains of Afghanistan, irrespective of the condition of equipment that is--quite simply--falling apart.

Also problematic is the perception that our defense spending is higher than it's ever been. I say perception, because to argue that we're breaking the bank on defense isn't exactly accurate. As Goldfarb and I have pointed out ad naseum, we're only pumping some 3.5% of the GDP into defense. That's fractional compared to past wars, including the Cold War.

So our Air Force and our Navy are falling apart, but neither are doing too much of the fighting. That's not a lack of will, obviously, this just isn't a high-tech war. The Army and Marines are neck-deep in combat, but they've had to posture themselves against the type of war that they spent decades training to fight. Therein lies the problem, as we've appropriately adjusted ourselves to fight low-level conflicts and insurgencies, the pendulum has swung too far into the low-intensity spectrum, costing us our ability to dominate peer actors. So how do we strike a balance between peer/near peer conflict while continuing to prosecute non-state actors on the micro level?

The answer is the two-force solution. End the procurement holiday. Give the Air Force the Raptors that they need and the Navy their 330 fighting ships. Let the Navy and Air Force rediscover their Cold War roots as the powerful strategic aegis against the Russian Bear and Chinese Dragon, while the Army and Marines fight the skirmishes across the globe. Winning a war is only half of the Armed Forces' mission, the other half is preventing one.

Vice President Dick Cheney is willing to poke fun at his critics:

This is a clip from Cheney's appearance yesterday at the Heritage Foundation to discuss the 25th anniversary of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The full text of his remarks is available here. A highlight:

There is still a great deal yet to accomplish in the field of missile defense. But we’re a lot farther along than we would have been if Ronald Reagan hadn’t set this effort in motion 25 years ago. At the end of his address to the nation, Reagan said, “Tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There will be risk, and results take time. But I believe we can do it.” Well, time has shown that he was right. We can do this. We are well along in making good on the promise of strategic defense. The project gathers together American idealism, American ingenuity, and American optimism. And that is an unbeatable combination.

H/T: Rob Bluey

Just posted on THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online is an article by Mackubin Thomas Owens about Admiral William "Fox" Fallon and his recent resignation. Owens explains that Fallon's resignation was largely due to a recent Esquire article about Fallon's very public disagreements with the Bush administration over foreign policy. Owens writes:

While reasonable people can disagree over the wisdom of the Bush administration's policy regarding Iraq, the really troubling aspect of this article is that it reveals the extent to which a combatant commander had taken it on himself to develop and disseminate policy independently of the president. This flies in the face of the American practice of civil-military relations, going back to the American Revolution.

He continues that it is

undeniable that as commander of CENTCOM, Fallon acted in a way that exceeded his authority. The tenor of Fallon's public pronouncements was in stark contrast to that of statements made by other high-ranking military officers who, while they have no desire to provoke a war with Iran while the U.S. military is heavily engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, have not taken it upon themselves to constrain American foreign policy to the extent that Fallon has. Indeed, had Fallon not stepped down, the president would have been perfectly justified in firing him, as Abraham Lincoln fired Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, as Franklin Roosevelt fired Rear Admiral James O. Richardson, and Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Read the whole thing at THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online.

Some of The Blog's friends had similar things to say about Fallon. One foreign affairs expert remarked, "That's very thoughtful of Fox Fallon to spare President McCain the necessity of firing him." And what's next for Fallon? Another scholar speculates, "Just think...we now will have the round of Fallon on every talk show possible. He'll make Wes Clark appear shy and retiring is my guess."

According to the most recent Gallup poll, "A record proportion of Americans -- 47% -- say the United States' national defense is not strong enough. Another 41% say the country's defense is about right, while 10% say it is stronger than it needs to be."

This is a very interesting finding, particularly given all the emphasis in the media on the unpopularity of the war in Iraq. The movement of these numbers over the past four years is even more intriguing. The percentage of Americans who say the U.S. national defense is not strong enough has increased steadily since 2004 and now is at its highest point since Gallup has been asking this question in 1984.

It’s possible the ongoing U.S. engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan is contributing to an ever-larger proportion of Americans desiring a stronger military. Whatever the reasons, the trend over the past four years is striking.

However, despite nearly half of Americans saying the U.S. needs a stronger military, Gallup also finds a 44 percent plurality says the U.S. is spending "too much" on national defense and the military. Gallup notes, "Despite or perhaps because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the percentage of Americans saying too much is being spent on the military and defense has increased over the past seven years."

Gallup also raises a noteworthy historical point about how these numbers shift over time. "The all-time high point of sentiment that too much was being spent on the military came in November 1969, in the middle of the Vietnam War (the first time Gallup asked the question using this wording), when 52% said this. In January 1981, just as President Ronald Reagan was taking office, a little more than half of Americans said the United States was spending too little on defense, perhaps as a reaction to Reagan's presidential campaign positions that the military needed strengthening. By 1987, in the middle of Reagan's second term, only 14% said the United States was spending too little."

The partisan differences in the poll are also stark. 61 percent of Democrats believe the government spends too much on the military, while only 20 percent of Republicans share that view.

See the full results here.

We reported here last week that a Northrop-Grumman/EADS coalition was the surprise winner over Boeing in the competition for the Air Force’s new tanker. It seems the push backfrom the Hill has already commenced:

At a sometimes emotional hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, members expressed worries that the decision would imperil U.S. jobs, defense industrial capability and even sensitive technology...

Tiahrt was among the senior members of the panel from states where the Boeing tanker would be built. Their complaints were echoed by several other members who do not have a direct local connection to either bidder. While the panel has yet to decide what, if anything, it will do to affect the deal, there was no mistaking its “Buy American” sentiment.

To date, no legislation has been introduced to force a re-examination of the deal, but that's not really the point. The rhetoric from Capitol Hill is designed to demonstrate to Boeing -- and their constituent employees -- that the lawmakers will likely lend support to a challenge, if the aircraft manufacturer chooses to bring one (highly likely). Another fact that has come to light which may encourage Boeing to contest the award is the news that France is trying to lock U.S. firms out of the European defense market.

On the subject of a potential challenge, defense analyst Loren Thompson encourages Boeing to think twice:

..."Northrop Grumman's victory was not a close outcome."

While both Boeing and Northrop Grumman satisfied requirements established by the Air Force, Northrop was clearly the better buy. With Northrop, the military could have "49 superior tankers operating by 2013," Thompson said, while Boeing's proposal would give it "only 19 considerably less capable planes" by then.

Boeing will reportedly be 'debriefed' on March 7, when the Air Force explains why the firm's bid fell short. We should learn soon thereafter whether the final chapter has been written on this deal, or whether the saga will continue--further delaying the production of badly-needed aircraft.

If Colombia and Venezuela were to come to fisticuffs over this latest South American crisis, the Bogota government could quickly find itself in trouble.

Colombia's Army is both larger than Chavez's and battle-hardened from years of fighting the FARC. They know the terrain, have greater mobility via their enormous helicopter fleet (including 90 modern Blackhawks), and are supported by a Colombian Air Force that specializes in close air support.

But Chavez would undoubtedly control the skies, or at least come close to it. The Venezuelan Air Force sports 80 or so operational fighters, including F-16s and Sukhoi-30s. Colombia's Air Force, postured for the close air support mission, has only a single squadron of 20 Dassault Mirage V/Kfirs, airframes that wouldn't last long in an aerial bar fight with their socialist opponents. Without freedom of the skies to clear the way for Colombian Tucanos and helicopters, Bogota's advantage on the ground is sharply reduced.

Colombia is our ally, FARC is our mutual enemy, and Chavez has built an entire career as an anti-American posturer. So here's a three-fer: Let's have joint U.S.-Colombia exercises involving a squadron or two of our new F-22s. It would concentrate the mind of Chavez, who adores his new Sukhois. His prized fighter-force would soon become scrap metal against F-22s.

The presence of the Raptor would at once remind Chavez of his place in the hemispheric pecking order, help prevent a war, aid an ally, and reassure the American public of the value of the F-22. Let's get those Raptors to Colombia!

The BBC reports:

China says it plans to increase military spending by nearly 18% this year to 417.8bn yuan ($59bn; £30bn)....

But experts believe the actual amount allocated to the Chinese military is two to three times larger than the published figure.

There was a huge fuss last year over an increase of 17.8 percent, for a total of $44.94 billion. And you'll note that last year's increase was, at the time, the largest on record.

Of course, I don't put any stock at all in these numbers. The actual number is certainly far higher, once unofficial programs (like a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, anti-sattelite weapons, and lord knows what else) are taken into account. Figure in the lies they're telling themselves about how much corruption and inefficiency is built into their own military-industrial complex, take account of purchasing power parity--you could be talking about a figure not unlike what the United States is spending every year, except without all the health care expenses, the two wars, the blue water Navy, the global commitments, etc. etc. Oh, and they also don't include procurement in the official budget. How much might production of six submarines a year cost (the U.S. builds one a year) or the new, indigenous J-10 multirole fighter? Nobody really knows.

So what are we doing different this year? Here's the story from March 4, 2007:

The United States is calling on China to be more transparent on its military buildup. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte made the call in Beijing Sunday after Chinese officials announced they plan to boost their military spending by nearly 18 percent to $45 billion this year..

And here's the story from March 3, 2008:

An annual Pentagon report on China on Monday said Beijing's lack of transparency posed risks to stability, voicing concern over how it would use expanding military power.

Seriously. The same exact story one year on. And could the Chinese be anymore transparent? They're building a war machine, they're going to seize Taiwan at the first hint of domestic instability or Taiwanese independence, and they're going to give the U.S. Navy and Air Force a hell of a bloody nose in the process.

Update: I forgot the cherry on top:

China Southern Airlines (CSA) announced on Monday that it will launch non-stop direct flights from Beijing to Tehran and double the frequency to four flights per week, starting on March 31.

If only we could discern their intentions...

CJCS to Military: Ditch the peacetime mentality...

In a broad-ranging all-hands meeting with Joint Staff members here today, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen discussed the stand-up of U.S. Africa Command, the challenges of leadership in a changing world, and the increased speed of war.

Military officials need to adopt a wartime attitude, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Mullen said he believes that, more than six years into the war on terror, people still follow a peacetime frame of mind. “There are things that we’re still doing that’s under peacetime rules,” he said. “We’re in a couple of wars, and too often we get caught up in what I call peacetime responses or adapting peacetime rules, policies, regulations to what we need to do in responding very rapidly." . . .

Changes in the world have convinced the chairman that U.S. conventional forces are going to have to take on some of the attributes of special operations forces. Conventional forces are going to have to be more culturally aware; they are going to have to build relationships with other peoples and make quick decisions under constant and extreme pressure, he said.

Both Stuart Koehl and I have received our fair share of angry letters for suggesting that the military needs to lose the chickenshit attitude and rediscover the "damn the torpedoes" warrior ethos that has characterized America's historical dominance on the battlefield. Now that the Chairman has gone on record saying what is in effect the exact same thing, I'm hoping that the administrative military takes a strong look inward.

This war stops on a dime and changes direction in the blink of an eye. It is perhaps one of the fastest paced conflicts that we've ever had to fight, in that the military is forced to continuously reinvent the wheel so as to stay one step ahead of an enemy unencumbered by the administrative suck. The bad guys move fast, while the peacetime military--still prevalent in our ranks--has built career officers and NCO careers in a bureaucratic fashion straight out of the Dilbert comic strips. Focus groups and committees, risk aversion, bloated command structures and a disproportionate ratio of bosses to war fighters, all bring operations that should be fast-paced, flexible, and innovative to a screeching halt.

That the top man in uniform has said "enough!" is one small step for the military, one giant leap for the war on terror. I'm eager to see Admiral Mullen's vision translated into policy, and hope that step one in the implementation strategy is a force-wide ban on Microsoft Powerpoint. That’d do a hell of a lot more for military productivity than a ban on blogs.

Northrop Grumman and EADS have somehow managed to defeat heavy-favorite Boeing in the battle to replace the Air Force's aging fleet of aerial refueling tankers. The initial contract for 80 aircraft is valued at $40 billion, and the service has plans to purchase as many as 100 more at an as yet undetermined cost.

The Northrop KC-30, which is based on the EADS Airbus A-330 passenger jet, had been considered the more capable aircraft. It's bigger, which means it can carry 20 percent more fuel, 20 percent more passengers, and 30 percent more cargo. It can also carry 45,000 pounds more fuel than Boeing's KC-767. But Boeing had pitched the smaller size of the 767 as a feature, rather than a handicap. However, the 767 is at the end of its commercial life. The military would have been the only customer for the airplane had Boeing won the contract, raising concerns about maintenance costs.

The KC-30 will be assembled in Mobile, Alabama, but much of the work will be done in Airbus's facility in Toulouse, France. There had been doubts as to whether the Air Force, and Congress, would award such a massive contract to a French firm, but a thaw in relations following the election of Nicolas Sarkozy may have eased concerns. Also Northrop claims that its aircraft will create 25,000 American jobs.

The Air Force's tanker acquisition program first received national attention in 2001, when Senator John McCain called into question a no-bid contract that would have seen the service lease, rather than buy, 100 tankers from Boeing. Upon further investigation, it became clear that Boeing had offered illegal inducements to Air Force officials in exchange for the contract. The ensuing scandal led to jail sentences for two Boeing officials, including the firm's CFO.

McCain has repeatedly noted his role in exposing the corrupt deal during this year's presidential election.

There's a great story about General George C. Marshall, who--while posturing the nation for war--took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to hear out some gentleman from the automotive industry. After listening to them for about 5 minutes, Marshall nodded and said "Ok, do it."

And so the Army Jeep was born.

Different times, eh?

The Air Force's often-delayed announcement of which defense contractor will be awarded a multibillion-dollar contract to provide new aerial refueling tankers has been postponed until 5 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 29, a defense industry analyst said.

I've got my money on Boeing. But with a bureaucracy as impenetrable as the Air Force, it's anyone's guess. Updates after the announcement.

(For more on the competition, check out this piece comparing the two aircraft -- ed.)

The Air Force, which needs all the help it can get on the public relations front, has banned access to blogs:

The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest move in a larger struggle within the military over the value -- and hazards -- of the sites. At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream."

Until recently, each major command of the Air Force had some control over what sites their troops could visit, the Air Force Times reports. Then the Air Force Network Operations Center, under the service's new "Cyber Command," took over.

Cyber Command, which is a bureaucratic construct of questionable necessity built around the need for effective network defense, has now expanded its mission from network defense to regulating internet usage within the Air Force's Major Commands. It seems reasonable, then, to ask whether time spent policing the internet habits of those in the service will, by diverting scarce resources, undermine the command's ability to defend against legitimate cyberattacks, and to return fire.

Also problematic is the fact that USAF bloggers have been among the most credible advocates for force-modernization plans, offering their strong support for the acquisition of the full fleet of 380 F-22s in particular. The Air Force has in one fell swoop discarded a valuable media asset, forcing the public to rely on cumbersome--and typically boring--USAF press releases instead.

Because Air Force public relations isn't so much an effective media campaign as it is a crawl from one PR disaster to another, the service needs bloggers now more than ever. Which makes this a strange and almost certainly counterproductive move.

Senator Lieberman on the floor of the Senate today:

Mr. President, it's been only a year since General David Petraeus arrived in Baghdad and took command of American forces in Iraq. But in these brief 12 months, he and the American Coalition troops under his command have brought about a tectonic shift in Iraq that has altered the course of the war there, and with the future of at least two great nations--Iraq and the United States of America--and the lives of hundreds of millions of people in those two nations and so many others threatened by violent jihadist terrorists in the Middle East and beyond.

Mr. President, when the surge first began a year ago, many doubted that the violence then raging in Iraq could be brought under control. Even as American troops began implementing this bold new counterinsurgency strategy, some opponents of the war inside and outside of Congress declared that the war in Iraq was already lost, that the surge had already been tried and failed, and that it mattered more, frankly, that we get out of Iraq than that we succeed in Iraq. They could not have been more wrong.

He goes on to say that al Qaeda is facing a humiliating defeat, and that "rather than admit the possibility that they [antiwar groups] had been wrong," they have shifted the debate to political reconciliation. And yet progress is now being made on that front as well, he says. He also called the Democrats out for hypocrisy--pointing out that they are trying to impose the very kind of national caveats on our troops in Iraq that we are trying to convince our European allies to lift from their troops in Afghanistan. And he did a riff on the Obama "just words" clause--citing JFK, Truman, and Roosevelt’s calls to defend freedom abroad. Go Joe!

A letter from Major General Robert H. Scales (Ret.):

Stuart Koehl’s piece "Fighting for the Army’s Soul" if left unanswered may cause harm to those of us who can claim to have an Army soul and who are deeply offended by his ill informed and cruel indictment of the Army officer corps.

Readers of defense literature know that I’m not an apologist for the Army. Over the past five years I’ve been very critical of many of the same policies and conditions that Mr. Koehl criticizes. But my criticisms are based on almost four decades of real experience rather than the apparent sole source of Mr. Koehl’s information: the dissatisfied soldier son of a friend who served in Afghanistan.

Koehl claims that the Army’s ills are caused by an excessively high proportion of officers to enlisted men and that the soul of the Army can be saved by cutting that number in half. First, let’s clear the air about proportions of officers. The ratio of officer to enlisted he cites is misleading. A very high percentage of the Army’s officers are not in combat units. Most perform duties unrelated to the Army’s core mission of fighting wars. If you take away the doctors, nurses, lawyers, chaplains, pilots, scientists, technicians, IT professionals, and administrators, the proportion of officer to enlisted in combat units is actually a bit less than in other Western armies.

He suggests that the experiential pyramid is inverted, that a combat experienced junior officer and enlisted force is being led by a group of inexperienced senior officers. Again, if you look at officers in the combat arms you will see that this is not true, that in fact senior officers, at least the ones that I know well from my visits to the combat zone are enormously well credentialed in combat. Many battalion and brigade commanders I’ve met in my travels have not only served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan but have accumulated combat time in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Panama, Somalia and Desert Storm. If Mr. Koehl thinks the Army’s senior ranks are staying at home he should talk to some of their spouses and children.

Koehl wants to cut the officer corps in half presumably thinking that junior officers will appreciate the subsequent reduction in “chickenshit,” a euphemism for interference in their lives by senior officers who have no other purpose but to harass them. But is that what younger officers really want? After all, in a few years junior officers become senior officers. How would you tell them that their reward for service in Iraq is to be discharged because there are no places for them at the top? Young men and women in the Army are no different from those in other professions. They want some day to lead. They want to spend time with their families. They want to be rewarded for their service. Reducing the Army’s leadership by half would remove any prospect of promotion or hope that they will be able some time in their careers to get off the deadly treadmill of repeated deployments.

But they still can't have it:

Australia could be trusted with the United States' Lockheed F-22 Raptor fighter, US defence secretary Robert Gates says.

Currently an Act of the US Congress bars any foreign sales of the Raptor.

The aircraft is the US Air Force's most advanced fighter and its sale is prohibited to any foreign country, under a 1998 amendment to a budget bill moved by Wisconsin Democrat Congressman Dave Obey.

The production line will remain open until 2009, allowing for the next President to decide if we'll continue manufacturing the birds. If it's McCain, sympathetic ears may be willing to hear the Air Force out. Obama or HRC, maybe not. But the Raptor's current mission is as much about winning a war with China as it is about preventing one. In that sense, it's in our best interest to equip trustworthy Pacific rim allies with the world's most advanced fighter. If Australia gets access, so will the Japanese, which could mean as many as 200 allied F-22s in the theater.

The real problem: if the U.S. starts selling F-22s in the Pacific, it will come at the expense of the Joint Strike Fighter.

A B-2 bomber crashed out at Guam yesterday. Both pilots ejected safely. David Axe puts things into perspective:

[T]here were 21 B-2s. Now there are 20--a roughly 5-percent reduction in an instant. In terms of airframes, that’s the equivalent of 30 F-15s crashing at the same time, or 60 F-16s, or 6 F-22s. In terms of money, that’s equivalent to 20 F-15s, 24 F-16s or 10 F-22s.

Axe then suggests, rather cynically, that the Air Force will milk this for all its worth, using the crash to drum up support in Congress for the service's recapitalization plans. We should hope so. The Air Force currently has 85 B-52s, the last of which was built during the Kennedy administration, 65 B-1s, and now just 20 B-2s. That combined fleet provides plenty of firepower for low-intensity conflicts like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, but only the stealth B-2 can penetrate and destroy the kind of integrated defense systems we might face in a war with China--or Iran. The Air Force had initially planned to purchase 132 airframes, but at $1.2 billion a pop, that was never really an option.

Now the Air Force is looking to build a new stealthy bomber 2018, but consensus opinion is deeply skeptical the service will be able to meet that deadline. So in the short-term, this does seem like another reason to invest more money in the only stealthy airplane currently in production, the F-22.

For more on the B-2, check out Robert Kaplan's piece, "The Plane that would Bomb Iran."

The captain to whom Obama was referring presumably belongs to a battalion of the 10th Mountain Division, which is stationed at Ft. Drum, and as one of the Army's few truly light infantry units, has been deployed more than almost any other formation outside of Special Operations Command. As Jake Tapper reported earlier, the captain was in fact a lieutenant at the time, so he obviously could have been a platoon leader.

But his story isn't quite Obama's story. Obama gives the impression that these guys were about to go to Afghanistan, and then half of his platoon was detached and sent to Iraq instead. The actual story is more prosaic and typical of Army practice in most conflicts, including World War II. Over a period of some months, individuals in his platoon were transferred (not detached) to other units, probably based on immediate operational requirements; e.g., a unit about to deploy to Iraq was short of MOS-11B (Combat Infantryman), and the unit was fleshed out with drafts from other units. Happens all the time, has always happened. In World War II, it was not uncommon for units still in training, or newly arrived in a theater of operation, to be poached for troops to round out another unit about to go into battle.

On going into battle shorthanded--it's normal. If you aren't shorthanded when you hit the ground, you will be shorthanded almost immediately thereafter, as your unit takes casualties or has to detach men for other duties. All rifle squads, platoons and companies in a combat zone are generally short anywhere from 15-25 percent of their TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment) strength, and will remain so as long as combat intensity remains high and the unit stays in the line. On being pulled out for rest and recuperation, a unit will be fleshed out with replacements, who will receive some hasty orientation and training to augment the training they received beforehand. Then it's back into the line, and the unit will be under strength again. That's why a unit's combat readiness is inversely proportional to its employment: units that never see combat always have their full complement of men and equipment, hence are (on paper) always more ready than units which have been in combat for any substantial period. Does this mean that the unit with the higher readiness is more "combat effective" than the other one? Not necessarily--a combat-proven unit at reduced strength may be much better than a rookie unit at full strength. There's a tipping point, but defining it is a very complex subject.

Regarding the HMMWVs, at the time there was a critical shortage throughout the Army in M1114 Up-Armored HMMWVs due to shortages of armor plate. This would have happened, no matter what the Bush administration had done, simply because there was no surplus capacity to produce armor in the industrial base (we have since been importing armor steel from a number of sources, including Russia and Ukraine). Only having two or three operational vehicles ought to be considered par for the course. So is complaining about it. Using other vehicles to make up the shortfall? Also par for the course. In World War II, our troops, the most lavishly equipped in history, often used captured German transport--along with captured German weapons (for instance, the 88mm Panzerschreck and the disposable Panzerfaust anti-tank rockets were considered much better than the 2.76-inch Bazooka, and were picked up wherever they could be found).

On shortages of weapons and ammunition for training at Ft. Drum, again, this is typical of any army during a surge period. It has happened to our troops in every war. Our troops were, until well into 1942, forced to train with plywood mockups of tanks and dummy rifles. Heavy weapons such as the Mk.19 Automatic Grenade Launcher and the M2 Browning .50-cal machine gun are considered support weapons, and while it is nice to be able to train with them, I wouldn't call the inability to do so a crippling disability for an infantry unit. After all, neither one is actually on the TO&E of a rifle platoon.

Mounting a 12.7mm DShK in place of an M2 Browning? Not a particularly smart move, since the Browning has much better ballistics and is more reliable, but hey, with that big muzzle brake on the end, the Dushka really looks cool.

Jake Tapper may think the captain “backs up Obama’s story.” Not really--if the “story” is the story as told by Obama. His version is misleading as a reporting of what the captain said. More fundamentally, it was intended as an indictment of our management of the war. But in this respect it’s silly. In fact, the “story” here merely shows the operation of "real war," as opposed to "war on paper." That a presidential candidate would make something of it either shows a cynical attempt to score political points, or an appalling ignorance of military realities.

Reuters reports:

The Pentagon on Friday cast doubt on an account of military equipment shortages mentioned by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama during a debate with rival Hillary Clinton.

During the face-to-face encounter on Thursday evening, Obama said he had heard from an Army captain whose unit had served in Afghanistan without enough ammunition or vehicles.

Obama said it was easier for the troops to capture weapons from Taliban militants than it was "to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief," President George W. Bush.

"I find that account pretty hard to imagine," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

It is pretty hard to imagine, because that particular element of the story wasn't supported by the captain in his interview with Tapper. And while Obama did leave the impression that U.S. forces were serving "without ammunition or vehicles," that wasn't true either.

Now that the Pentagon has weighed in, it may be possible to get a fuller accounting of what exactly did happen. No doubt that Tapper felt the captain's story was credible, but the Pentagon can verify the details, and it should do so. Did the Pentagon poach members of the unit for duty in Iraq? If so, when did their replacements arrive? And was the unit really using Toyota pickup trucks to ride into battle? Given the liberties Obama took in retelling the story, these are fair questions to ask.

China Matters catalogues Chinese concerns regarding last night's satellite shoot-down:

1. Asserting China’s qualifications as a space power on par with Russia and the United States.
2. Imputing hidden motives to the US for conducting the operation
3. Expressing resentment that the US did a better PR job than the Chinese did with their test
4. Hoping that the US will screw up.

The post notes a Chinese "news report that the United States will call on fellow space powers Russia and China for assistance in tracking the hulk if the shootdown fails." The Chinese shouldn't believe everything they read in the paper. That never would have happened. And the Chinese can impute away, but whatever the reason for the shootdown, the administration effectively sold it as a public safety measure.

And it is the PR coup that most impresses. It's hard to see how this plays bad for the United States at home or abroad--though critics will surely take a different view (will Obama? doubtful). If the Russians and Chinese are convinced that this is evidence of some new capability, which it isn't, that's gravy. And our allies, especially those states who are collaborating with the United States on missile defense (Poland, Czech Republic, Japan), can only take this as evidence that the system is for real.

Leaving aside the left's criticism of the Bush administration as diplomatically-challenged, conservatives have long lamented the administration's inability to advocate on behalf of its own policies. But by taking this course of action, the Bush administration has done as much to assure future funding and allied support for missile defense as anyone could have hoped. Missile defense is one Reagan legacy that George W. Bush has safeguarded.

And, of course, we didn't screw up. The test was a complete and unvarnished success--assuming the plummeting debris doesn't destroy the island of Midway.

HT: China Rises

The "habit" being the Indian Armed Forces' addiction to Russian military gear. I'd love to see the West drive a wedge between India and the Russia-China defense partnership, this seems to be a start:

India is likely to make a formal announcement on the awarding of a one-billion dollar contract to Lockheed Martin for six Hercules transport planes in the biggest military aircraft deal with the U.S. in five decades, defense officials said.

U.S.-based Lockheed is also in the race for a 10-billion dollar contract to sell 126 fighter jets to the Indian air force and the tenders will be handed out next month.

India is also in talks with BAE Systems for 40 Hawk trainer jets worth 872 million dollars in addition to 66 aircraft it purchased for 1.45 billion dollars in 2004 from the British company.

India may also announce a two-billion-dollar contract with U.S.-based Boeing for eight long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft during the event besides forging several tie-ups between the Indian private sector and global companies.

Russia is still learning the ins-and-outs of capitalism, in that it appears that some of the most obvious rules of the free market still escape them. Rule No. 1: if you push an inferior product, customers will look elsewhere.

Let this be a lesson to potentially hostile North Korean and Chinese fishermen:

Experts sounded alarm on Feb. 20 over the Japanese military's ability to defend the country after one of its most advanced naval destroyers crashed into a fishing boat, leaving two missing.

The collision on Feb. 19 came as Japan steps up security to ensure safety during July's summit of the Group of Eight major industrial countries, to be held in the northern resort town of Tokyo.

"Japan's security cannot be ensured if an Aegis-equipped destroyer fails to avert a collision with a fishing boat," the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said in an editorial.

Curious how this happened. Being a Navy brat, I've heard my fair share of sea tales. Most USN surface warfare officers will tell you that the "pucker factor" shoots up when you're steering a Navy ship within 5 or 6 miles of another vessel. Granted, we accidentally surfaced a nuclear attack submarine underneath a Japanese fishing boat a few years back, but that was a bit different, what with the whole no "eyes on" element.

But of course it does! Almost every engineer who looked at the problem knew it was eminently possible to design an anti-ballistic missile system, once high-speed computers and miniaturized seekers were developed (not to brag, but I wrote something to that effect back in 1986). A ballistic missile (or a decaying satellite) is a very predictable object; it acts in accordance with basic laws of physics, so that, after tracking it briefly, one can extrapolate its state vectors and predict where it will be in space at any point in time. After that, it's equally easy to figure out where in space to aim your interceptor missiles. The trick comes in the end game, when small errors can result in significant miss distances. That is why, during the 1950s and 60s, U.S. and Soviet ABM systems relied on nuclear warheads. By the 1980s, miss distances had come down to the point that we could either use high explosive warheads throwing out large numbers of high velocity fragments, or, better still, use a "hit-to-kill" approach. Now, we have gotten to the point that hitting the bullseye at a combined velocity of more than 15,000 mph is becoming routine.

The difficulties of the missile defense problem have always been more operational than technical. We don't have to deal with one incoming warhead in isolation, but more likely with several to many coming in simultaneously and aimed at different places. That means detecting multiple objects, classifying them as threats, allocating missiles to each object, generating a fire control solution, launching the missiles, guiding them to the target, evaluating the end game, and re-engaging any targets that were missed. That takes a lot of computing power and RF bandwidth--but we can do it now, at least for small-to-medium sized attacks.

In the past, the main problem was the impossibility of defeating a large-scale attack by the USSR. Not only did the Soviets have so many missiles that at least some would get through, but most of them carried multiple warheads, so that we were dealing with tens of thousands of reentry vehicles. And the Soviets could have made the problem more difficult by deploying decoys (known as "Penetration Aids" or "PENAIDS") to further confuse the radar picture. While individually it is rather easy to discriminate between a PENAID and a live warhead (unless you want to make your PENAID almost as complex, expensive, and heavy as a real warhead), collectively they act like grit in the machine, slowing down defensive response times. The Soviets also experimented with "Maneuvering Reentry Vehicles" (MARVs) which could alter their course in flight, greatly complicating the defensive problem. Fortunately, MARVS were both heavy (cutting into missile payloads) and exorbitantly expensive. Still, on the balance, when dealing with a superpower adversary with a large missile force, the cost balance weighed heavily in favor of the attacker.

Today, of course, our potential adversaries have just a minuscule fraction of the Soviet Union's ballistic missile capability. And, with their smaller economic and technical bases, they certainly don't have the wherewithal to deploy thousands of missiles with multiple warheads and complex PENAIDS, so a relatively modest missile defense system can deter attack by small and medium-sized nuclear powers, or defeat an accidental launch or deliberate attack by a suicidal rogue state. It's a very worthwhile investment, on par with buying fire insurance for your house.

The recent successes of the Aegis/Standard III system have implications beyond forces afloat. Both the SPY-1 radar system and the Mk.41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) from which the Standard III missile is fired, are self-contained units. There is nothing that says they must be deployed aboard ships--they could just as easily be emplaced on land. Indeed, travelers up the Jersey Turnpike are familiar with the "Cruiser in the Cornfield"--the Lockheed Martin Aegis testbed at Moorestown, NJ. One could easily build similar facilities in Allied countries, connect them by fiber-optic link to a battery of Mk.41 VLS that could be buried in hardened concrete pits, and voila! Instant ABM system, capable of taking down short-to-intermediate range ballistic missiles. This would have a significant effect of extending U.S. deterrence to threatened friendly countries such as South Korea, Japan, Iraq, Israel (and, dare I say it?) Taiwan. It would go a long way to preventing nuclear intimidation by countries such as Iran and North Korea, and prevent the decoupling of the U.S. from its regional allies in times of crisis.

The fruits of missile defense:

The USS Lake Erie, armed with an SM-3 missile designed to knock down incoming missiles—not orbiting satellites—launched the attack at 10:26 p.m. EST, according to the Pentagon. It hit the satellite about three minutes later as the spacecraft traveled in polar orbit at more than 17,000 mph.

Because the satellite was orbiting at a relatively low altitude at the time it was hit by the missile, debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately, the Pentagon statement said.

"Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days," it said.

The use of the Navy missile amounted to an unprecedented use of components of the Pentagon's missile defense system, designed to shoot down hostile ballistic missiles in flight—not kill satellites.

The operation was so extraordinary, with such intense international publicity and political ramifications, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates—not a military commander—was to make the final decision to pull the trigger.

This is a major success for the Missile Defense Agency, the successor to Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and it's going to be a tough pill for the program's critics to swallow. There have been two recent, successful tests of the missile defense system. In September 2007, the agency killed a dummy missile over the Pacific using one of its Ground Based Interceptors stationed in Alaska. General Renuart used the occasion to declare "that we have all of the pieces in place that, if the nation needed to, we could respond." There are up to 24 interceptors already deployed. And then in December the Japanese Navy knocked down a medium-range missile using the same, American SM-3 missile that was used in yesterday's strike.

Despite this good run, critics have effectively diminished the achievement by charging that the tests were rigged. This time was different. The administration bet big, and if the operation had failed, the program would have suffered a major, and possibly fatal, setback. Instead the bet paid off. It is the greatest PR boost the program could have gotten short of actually striking down a North Korean missile inbound to Hollywood.

The system will now be an easier sell to allies, and it should be a cudgel for Republicans in the fall. The "rogue" satellite cost more than a billion dollars. One suspects its destruction will be of greater value to this country than any mission it could have performed as a functioning spy satellite.

Check out the Danger Room for complete coverage of the operation. They've been all over it.

There's a lot of interesting debate in the blogosphere about the future of the Air Force. In particular, my lefty friend Robert Farley has inspired a number of exchanges on the direction the service should take. I don't agree with hardly anything he says, but he always makes an interesting case. Today he argues in favor of F-35 instead of F-22.

It's unclear why we need the F-22 now in the numbers that the Air Force wants. It's also unclear why procurement right now should favor the Air Force instead of the Army. The F-35 seems to me to be a much preferable option; it has ground attack and air superiority capability, it's being developed with a number of other countries, and it has variants that the United States Navy and several foreign navies want.

See Noonan's argument in favor of more F-22 below. As far as F-35 vs. F-22, there are good points to be made in favor of each. F-22 is a real airplane, with a production line and a fixed, if excessive, cost. F-35 is a concept, with an industrial base so large it likely could not be killed no matter what problems it faces or what its eventual cost (it is now nearly two-thirds the cost of an F-22, and rising). But F-35 is the only viable option for keeping America's allies dependent on American aircraft (as opposed to Russian, Swedish, or Euro birds). It's also going to have a ground attack capability that the F-22 does not currently have, as well as all types of promised efficiencies in maintenance and scale (believe it when you see it). Which is a long way of saying that there is room for interested parties to have a serious, substantive debate. And it looks like the Atlantic's Matt Yglesias will not be participating:

Instead of finding a cost-effective solution to the problem of aging F-15s -- like building new, somewhat upgraded F-15s -- the Air Force decided to design an impractically expensive new air superiority fighter. Having done so, the country now can't afford these planes in the quantity the Air Force deems desirable. It'd be as if the NYPD first insisted that in the future it would only buy cars from Lexus and then wound up puzzled as to why they didn't have enough cars.

No, it's not like that at all. The "problem" isn't aging F-15s, though that has made the issue more urgent, and it isn't that the Air Force is just angling for some shiny new whips. The problem is China, and F-22 has become an important part of this country's strategy for deterring a conflict in the Pacific, just as it was intended to deter the Russians when it was first designed at the end of the Cold War. Farley likes to hate on the Air Force, but at least one senses in his work some appreciation for the complexity of the challenges the service now faces.

John Noonan is quite right about the threat that the military bureaucracy poses to the long-term security of the United States. The situation he describe with regard to the 5th SFG in 2001 still pertains today, only the problem is more pernicious and extends well down into the chain of command. I have a friend whose son, now back from his fourth deployment to Afghanistan with the 75th Rangers, describes precisely the kind of burdensome bureaucratic regulation described by Kaplan, which Paul Fussell (in his book Wartime) so aptly described as "chickenshit":

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige... insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so called -- instead of horse -- or bull -- or elephant shit -- because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously. Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.

One reason for the ubiquity of chickenshit in the modern U.S. military is the excessively high proportion of officers to enlisted men. In most armies, there are about seven officers to 100 enlisted men, or an officer-to-enlisted ratio of 7 percent (as low as 5 percent in the German army of World War II). In the U.S. Army today, that ratio stands at more than 15 percent (19 percent by some calculations).

This very high proportion of officers resulted from a deliberate decision made after World War II regarding future Army mobilization. Post-war analysis revealed that it was actually easier for the Army to raise new divisions from scratch using draftees, than it was to shake out National Guard divisions and bring them up to wartime standards (due to the prevalence at the time for state governors to use the Guard for patronage appointments, often of superannuated or incompetent officers, as well as the poor physical condition and training of Guard soldiers). Army planners believed that, if adequate officer cadres were available, the Army could actually mobilize faster by circumventing the National Guard and simply raising new divisions. Thus, in the wake of World War II, as the Army shrank back to its peacetime size, twice as many officers were retained on active service as were actually needed.

As Edward N. Luttwak pointed out in his 1985 book The Pentagon and the Art of War, this would not have been a problem had the Army merely placed the surplus officers on half pay, effectively keeping them "on the shelf" in case of need. But the Army instead kept these men on active duty, and therefore had to find gainful employment for them. Since, in the peacetime Army, there were not nearly enough legitimate command and staff positions for all the officers, new positions had to be created, for which new functions had to be devised. Thus, the military bureaucracy began to expand, especially with the proliferation of research and development (R&D) commands and liaison offices, the expansion of staff billets, and the invention of new duties basically intended to make work for the underemployed. At the same time, the Army recognized that these essentially bureaucratic positions did not prepare officers for combat command, so there arose an insistence on frequent rotation between staff, administrative, technical and line positions, ranging between 12 and 24 months. Officers had to "get their tickets punched" by serving in the widest range of positions in order to qualify for promotion (this is sometimes called the "Merit Badge Syndrome"). Officers passed over for promotion were normally required to retire (the "Up or Out" principle).

Slate explains "why the Air Force doesn’t need more F-22s":

On Feb. 13, according to today's issue of Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, Gen. Bruce Carlson, chief of the Air Force's materiel command, told a group of reporters, "We think that [187 planes] is the wrong number" and that the Air Force would find some way to build 380 before the program's done. He joked that 380 is a "compromise," since the original plan calls for 381.

Gen. Carlson's rationale for this expansion: "Most people say in the future there will be a China element to whatever we do." In plainer words: He says we need more than twice as many F-22s than the secretary of defense says we need because of the future military threat from China.

Two things should be noted about this claim. First, by the Pentagon's own measure, the Chinese military has a long way to go before it constitutes a threat to U.S. forces. Second, even if it does become a threat, it's not at all clear that the F-22 would be the best weapon to deal with it.

Disagree. The Raptor--poor, misunderstood soul that it is--isn't so much a means of winning a war against Red China as it is a tool for preventing one. China's subsidization of Russia's advanced defense sector has allowed the two nations to develop (and field) some particularly nasty fighter aircraft. With U.S. forces spread thin, allowing for Chinese air superiority over the straits of Taiwan would be bad news bears. Airpower is the cornerstone of our strategy to win any state v. state conflict; if China believes that we're no longer capable of controlling the air (or the sea), our strategy collapses, and we're up the Yangtze without a paddle.

Feel free to insert a "if you want peace, prepare for war" quote at your leisure.

The Raptor is expensive, true. It's a Cold War relic, also true. But if we're serious about fighting small wars, and remaining strong against peer competitors, we're going to need advanced platforms like the F-22. It's the "two-militaries" solution that's slowly evolving in the post-Rumsfeld Pentagon, a plan that hinges on modernizing the "geriatric" Air Force.

Normally I wouldn't throw such an enormous block quote out at the masses, but today I'm firing for effect.

Dear Ministry of Defense Bureaucrats,

It is worth remembering that on 6th June 1940 the evacuation from Dunkirk of the BEF had finished two days earlier, with the bulk of their equipment being left on the beaches behind them. On D-Day, 6th June 1944, only 4 years later, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy (American forces - 73,000.) on 6th June 1940. Ninety-five per cent of these soldiers had been civilians with no military training, experience or even any great desire to be soldiers.

11,590 aircraft were available to support the landings. On D-Day, Allied aircraft flew 14,674 sorties. All of these aircraft had been built in less than four years. Ninety per cent of their pilots had never flown in an airplane, much less piloted one, before Dunkirk and ninety-five per cent of the mechanics and other ground support personnel who maintained their engines and other systems had never set foot on an airfield.

Operation Neptune, the naval support operation for the Overlord landings, involved huge naval forces, including 6939 vessels: 1213 naval combat ships, 4126 landing ships and landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. Some 195,700 personnel were assigned to Operation Neptune - 112,824 of these were British, Nearly two thirds of the ships were from the Royal Navy. 70 – something % of those ships had been built since June 1940. Ninety percent of the seamen and eighty per cent of the officers manning those vessels of war had never crewed more than a rowboat before June 1940.

A pipeline was laid under the ocean to carry fuel and lubricants to the allied forces. Two pre-fabricated harbors had been designed, built and towed through one of the most treacherous bodies of water in the world and installed on the Channel coast of France while under enemy fire.

All of this, and more, done in four years. All of it done without electronic computers. All of it done without fax machines, without cell phones, without voice mail, all of it done with manual typewriters and mechanical calculators and reams of paper and legions of men and women filing and stamping and checking and rechecking and working as if their lives depended on it. As if!

And today, with all our wealth and technology, you, Ministry of Defence bureaucrats, tell us we cannot produce 12, count them, TWELVE Chinook support helicopters vitally needed by our forces in Afghanistan...

Nice to see that someone on that island is fed up with MoD's misappropriations and Labour's all-around neglectful towards Her Majesty's Armed Forces.

Sounds familiar right? Bureaucrats, folks, our own worst enemy.

John Noonan makes some very interesting and important points in his recent piece, "An Irregular Challenge." The Air Force does need to evaluate its role in low intensity conflict and must make the necessary investments to support that mission. John is also right in stating that the Air Force has yet to do that in a meaningful way:

"This is the accepted doctrine in Air Force circles. If you want to fight small, you've got to go big. Bulk up the force so that it can dominate peer/near-peer, and *poof* through the magic of air supremacy, we'll automatically be postured to effectively prosecute irregular wars. The problem, however, is that F-22 Raptors are not optimal IW platforms. Nor are Joint Strike Fighters, or B-1 bombers, or even older F-15s and F-16s"

And:

"I think what freaks Air Force types out about small wars talk (and equipping the force with short range slow-movers) is that they fear they'll go back to the days of subservience to the Army (shoot here, fly here). Zoomies are a proud bunch, and they take a certain satisfaction in the fact that they're our first line of defense against heavy hitters like Russia and China."

The problem for the Air Force, however, is that beyond some very secondary support function, it doesn't have much of a legitimate role in low intensity conflict (LIC). Airpower is about firepower. Firepower is almost irrelevant to low intensity conflict. Go to the AFA Daily Update, and look at the little box at the bottom, where it gives the daily number of sorties in Iraq by type. The vast majority are transport or tanker, with ISR and CAS/Armed Recon way back in the pack (and overall, the sortie rate is insignificant). When it comes to wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, the main role of the Air Force is trucking company, moving men and materiel from place to place. It can help, to a limited extent, by providing persistent surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, but systems like J-STARS, the U-2, or tactical reconnaissance aircraft can't really contribute much when the targets blend so well into the background.

As I wrote in an earlier article, the main role of the Air Force is, and must remain, deterring and if necessary, defeating any emergent peer competitor (read China). That's going to require significant numbers of the most advanced fighter, attack and sensor aircraft, complete with the most sophisticated air-launched weapons. The qualitative margin of the U.S. over the PLAAF is constantly diminishing as the Chinese acquire more top-of-the-line Russian aircraft and missiles, link them with state-of-the-art command and control systems, and begin learning how to use them. Yes, the U.S. will retain the edge in pilot quality for the foreseeable future, but the Chinese are constantly learning and improving, and there is only so much that pilot skill can do to redress numerical and performance inferiority. So, from my perspective, the Air Force does need its full complement of F-22s (particularly if we're not going to be able to bring back all the F-15s); on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, I'm not so sure--with the cost differential less than 33 percent between the "high end" F-22 and the "low end" F-35, I think I would prefer to have more F-22s and provide them with air-to-ground capability (it is always easier to transition from air-to-air to air-to-ground than vice versa).

I've long felt that--after several decades of maintaining a peacetime military--Pentagon bureaucracy has become as great of a threat to our Armed Forces as terrorists or insurgents. Looking for a related reference, I stumbled upon a section of Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts that I think most succinctly illustrates the inherent harm in sustaining bloated headquarters and command staffs. Speaking on the 5th Special Forces Group and their amazing successes in Afghanistan, Kaplan writes:

The relationship between 5th Group and the highest levels of Pentagon officialdom had, in those precious, historic weeks of autumn 2001, evinced the flat bureaucratic hierarchy which distinguished not only al-Qaeda but also the most innovative global corporations… The captains and team sergeants of 5th Group’s A-Teams did not communicate to the top brass through a yawning, vertical chain of command. No, they weren’t even given specific instructions. They were just told to link up with the indigs (in this case the Northern Alliance) and help them defeat the Taliban. And to figure the details out as they went along. The result was the empowerment of master sergeants to call in B-52 strikes. The 5th Special Forces Group was no longer a small part of a massive defense bureaucracy. It had become a veritable corporate spin-off, commissioned to do a specific job its very own way, in a manner of a top consultant. The upshot was that con-ops (concepts of operation) were approved orally within minutes, whereas now in Afghanistan, two years later, it took three days of paperwork, with bureaucratic layers of lieutenant colonels and other senior officers delaying operations and diluting them of risk, so when attacks on suspect compounds finally took place, they often turned up dry holes.

He gets to that point at the end of his column, titled "Getting the Military Out of the Nuclear Business." The bulk of the piece isn't so much dedicated to defending the title as it is Arkin clumsily fumbling around the findings of an Air Force Blue Ribbon commission. An example:

While all the focus has been on the dual mission of aircraft and bombers to maintain nuclear deterrent and conventional war-fighting capabilities, even in the case of the nuclear-only land-based missile force, the service is struggling to maintain expertise. According to an internal Air Force report, the problem in the land-based missile force is that officers who are assigned to the Minuteman wings are also assigned to strictly conventional weapons and space-related jobs, diluting their nuclear competency.

Wrong. Air Force missileers spend all four years of their "missile tour" focused on ICBMs--space and conventional weapons play absolutely no role. After that initial assignment, missileers have traditionally moved on to either a space assignment, an ICBM instructor or missile flight test officer at Vandenberg AFB, or go on to Air Force weapons school.

What the panel is suggesting is that because ICBM launch officers have little interaction with the actual missiles (they sit in underground missile alert facilities miles from the "sorties"), the missileer career path should be modified to include a tour as a missile maintenance officer. There is no "diluting" in ICBMs, though I've heard from some bomber pilots who lament their split conventional/nuclear strike duties.

Arkin stumbles along:

In a way, the Air Force's nuclear workforce crisis mirrors that Army's own recruiting crisis: No doubt there are many who are in uniform because they are patriotic and desire to serve the country, but for many who serve in the military, it is increasingly an occupation, one hampered by the fact that the national pool and commitment is lacking.

Wrong again. In 2007, the Air Force had to cut 20 some missile officers at the lieutenant and captain level because they were overmanned in the field. In fact, a quick phone call to Air Force Personnel Command confirms that current 13S (ICBM) manning levels are "optimal." And there's never been a shortage of young men and women willing to fly bombers. There's no Army recruiting "crisis," either.

Now my favorite part. After incorrectly interpreting the report, and drawing a false conclusion based on what seems to be little or no research, Arkin decides that nukes either need to be handed over to the Department of Energy (which retains non-military control of nuclear weapons) or outsourced:

I've been remiss in linking to one of my favorite gee-whiz websites, Maps of War. What makes the site so absorbing is their evolutionary approach to cartography.

Instead of focusing on a single map of a single battle, MoW tracks ideologies and political movements as they rise and fall over the course of history. The result is a thoroughly edifying interactive experience.

I'm sharing with you one of the more interesting maps, American Leadership and War, which tracks war casualties in relation to political leadership over the course of U.S. history.

You can view other maps here.

Goldfarb and I thought it might be the Super Tucano or Texan, but it's looking like the A-67 Dragon might be filling those new COIN squadrons that General Comer was talking about (Comer works on the A-67 project, so grain of salt and all that). Here's some useful stats:

• Can achieve 11 hours of loiter on target on internal fuel and air speeds ranging from 85 to 370 knots
• No hydraulic systems
• Armor-protected engine and cockpit
• Self-sealing tanks, fire-blocking foam
• Protected routing of cables, lines and push tubes
• Designed to withstand small arms fire
• Whole aircraft ballistic parachute recovery system

Emphasis seems to be on simplicity and cost, which I dig. And I notice that many of the survivability features are also found on the A-10 Warthog, a tough-as-nails close air support platform that's survived the loss of wings, engines, hydraulics, you name it. One other note, I have no idea what to make of the "whole aircraft ballistic parachute recovery system," as it's a distinctly unappealing prospect to find yourself slowly drifting down towards a nest of heavily armed insurgents while stuck in ceramic/metal coffin.

Something that struck me as I was reading over the US Aircraft Corporations press kit: this airframe fits perfectly into the irregular warfare equation. It's cheap, easy to export, perfect for Iraq and Afghanistan's budding air forces, and--because we'll be fielding the aircraft ourselves--will have the necessary logistics support lines between the U.S. and client nations.

A simple, cheap, and effective solution from the Air Force--never though I'd see the day.

An F-18 escorts a Russian bomber near the Nimitz.

It's almost becoming routine again, isn't it?

U.S. fighter planes intercepted two Russian bombers flying unusually close to an American aircraft carrier in the western Pacific during the weekend, The Associated Press has learned.

A U.S. military official says that one Russian Tupolev 95 buzzed the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at a low altitude of about 2,000 feet, while another bomber circled about 50 nautical miles out. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because the reports on the flights were classified as secret.

The bombers were intercepted by a flight of four F-18 Hornets a few hundred miles from the Nimitz. Fun fact though, we used to intercept the same ancient Bear bombers with some of our first generation jet fighters, just to give you an idea of how long the United States and Russia have been playing this game. Though these incidents do make it somewhat easier to understand why the Air Force is clamoring so loudly for more F-22 Raptors: Russia currently flies 232 bombers, most of them supersonic Backfires. That's enough to give even the most strident Raptor critics pause.

Bloggers are all over the Berkeley City Council, which is now facing a serious backlash to its disgusting comments and policies toward the United States Marine Corps. Check out Michelle Malkin and Ace of Spades in particular. One Code Pink organizer who complains to the Los Angeles Times that "the right-wing groups are trying to make this into an issue of whether you are for or against the Marines. It's not about that." Excerpts from the debate among city council members over the Marine presence in the city would seem to indicate otherwise.

Lost amidst the debate, and the move by Harry Reid to shield Berkeley from Congressional action until they could retract their policy, is this fact: Berkeley isn't about to change anything:

While softening the language of the declaration, the new proposal does not retract three related items approved by the council, Wozniak said. One calls for residents to impede the work of any military recruiting station in the city. Another asks the city attorney to investigate whether the Marine Corps violates a city law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. A third provides Code Pink with the parking place outside the recruitment center and issues the group a sound permit for its protests.

So in other words, the City Council retracts the inflammatory comments they approved about the Marine Corps, but they still intend to drive them out of the city. It would not change the city's policy of encouraging interference with Corps' recruitment; it would not affect the initiative to lump the recruitment office along with porn shops in city zoning regulations.

Ultimately not even Harry Reid can protect the People's Republic of Berkeley from itself, but Reid too will pay a price in the form of his falling approval ratings back in Nevada. And if the City Council doesn't dramatically revise the city policy when it meets tonight, Congressional Republicans will have all the ammunition they need to go after the city more aggressively.

There's been much hand-wringing in the Pentagon over the Air Force's role in this new war. As I've said before, the Air Force has about a dozen secondary (and no primary) missions, and is still struggling to find its niche in the military's new small wars and soft power movements. Writing in the Armed Forces Journal, General Richard Comer searches for the answer to the Air Force's woes:

Last summer, I was in the Pentagon talking with an Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) official about the Quadrennial Defense Review mention of a DoD "road map" for irregular warfare. The official, one of those working on the road map, told me that at the beginning of their process, each service was asked to detail what of their force structure was applicable to IW and what additions in force structure might be necessary in the future. The Air Force's answer came back that everything in the Air Force was applicable. When questioned, the Air Force representative explained that the real need was to procure and structure forces for the "peer or near-peer competitor" of the U.S., and those forces needed for that major war would always be applicable to anything else. The OSD official said the Air Force felt that "the Air Force's funding priorities are 180 F-22s, or 200 F-22s, or 400 F-22s."

Right. This is the accepted doctrine in Air Force circles. If you want to fight small, you've got to go big. Bulk up the force so that it can dominate peer/near-peer, and *poof* through the magic of air supremacy, we'll automatically be postured to effectively prosecute irregular wars. The problem, however, is that F-22 Raptors are not optimal IW platforms. Nor are Joint Strike Fighters, or B-1 bombers, or even older F-15s and F-16s.

Slowly though, the Air Force is coming around:

Since my visit to OSD early last summer, the Air Force has displayed forward and broad thinking, at least beginning to come to grips with irregular warfare. The Air Force Doctrine Center in August published its Doctrine Document 2-3 on "Irregular Warfare." Proactively, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) recommended to the Air Staff that the service should create a new irregular warfare wing. This wing would be made up of four squadrons of turboprop aircraft for manned ISR, light strike, medium airlift and heavy airlift, along with a fifth squadron flying helicopters. Additionally, out of the old Joint IED Defeat Office, the Air Staff has created an office for Irregular Warfare Requirements which will hold discussions on the needs of the Air Force to act effectively in the IW arena. It's a beginning and it promises some lively discussions of the Air Force's future.

I think what freaks Air Force types out about small wars talk (and equipping the force with short range slow-movers) is that they fear they'll go back to the days of subservience to the Army (shoot here, fly here). Zoomies are a proud bunch, and they take a certain satisfaction in the fact that they're our first line of defense against heavy hitters like Russia and China. But, as Comer pointed out, this is the new arena where all components of our Armed Forces now have to fight. Good on the Air Force for recognizing that.

According to the Air Force Association Daily Report, the Air Force is now briefing non-U.S. operators of the F-15C/D Eagle concerning the structural failures that have grounded a large portion of the fleet since December:

Briefing the Eagle Allies: Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley will visit with representatives of Saudi Arabia’s defense forces tomorrow to discuss what USAF has learned about structural problems with the F-15A-D fleet. The Saudi air force flies about 170 F-15s, of which some 98 are of the same vintage as the Air Force Eagles suffering from stress fatigue and longeron problems (in fact, some were provided right out of the USAF inventory to bolster Saudi defenses before the first Gulf War). Moseley is not expected to offer much more than a status report, however. USAF has grounded 162 F-15s due to the problems, which caused an F-15C to break apart in midair in November. Nine of those have been found to have cracks. A “get well plan” has not yet been made definite, but USAF officials say at least some of the aircraft will be retired rather than fixed.

As far as can be determined, none of the other Eagle operators have grounded their forces. Most of their aircraft are newer than those in USAF service, and with the exception of the Israeli and Japanese aircraft, have fewer flight hours. The Israeli and Japanese aircraft have all been extensively modified (most Japanese F-15s were actually built in Japan by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries), which may mitigate any structural weaknesses in the forward longerons. If the problem were widespread, it would create considerable vulnerabilities for the U.S. and its allies in two critical and volatile regions.

On the plus side, tests have revealed cracks in only nine of 162 affected USAF Eagles, which means that at some point the fleet should be cleared to fly again. It is doubtful that USAF will bother to repair the damaged aircraft, but rather will probably reinforce the longerons in the remaining aircraft as a precautionary measure. As noted elsewhere, USAF had always planned to retain a "golden fleet" of some 180 F-15C/Ds as a backstop to its planned force of 381 F-22 Raptors. Operating in an air defense capacity over the Continental United States and friendly airspace, the Eagle, when provided with much of the avionic and sensor technology being installed on the F-22, can perform the interceptor/air superiority mission almost as well as the vaunted stealth fighter, at a fraction of the cost. This then frees the available Raptors for operations over "Indian Territory" (hostile airspace), where its stealth, supercruise capacity, and thrust vector controls will provide a decisive edge over advanced air defense missiles such as the S-300PMU and Su-30 Flanker, both of which are entering the Chinese inventory. With Venesuelan president Hugo Chavez expressing an interest in spending some of his oil revenue on these advanced weapons, we may face an increasing threat level within our own hemisphere as well.

However, the Bush administration has capped F-22 production at 181 aircraft, which is insufficient to meet the threat posed by advanced fighters and air defenses in Asia, the Middle East, and even our own backyard. The Eagle force is aging much faster than anticipated, replacement is inevitable, and the Raptor will be the only available option for the next president.

The Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is to be the cornerstone of a revitalized surface fleet (if the Navy can ever get the thing built at a reasonable price). The Navy's next generation destroyer, the DDG-1000, is also built to "dominate the littoral." This is because the Pentagon is betting that future Naval conflicts are likely to be fought in the littoral, rather than in the open ocean. But apparently the Navy can't train in the littoral:

A federal judge yesterday said White House officials cannot override her order requiring the Navy to take special precautions to protect whales and dolphins from sonar used during its training off Southern California....

If allowed to stand, the waiver would have exempted the Navy drills from Cooper's restrictions. Among other steps, the judge ordered the Navy last month to not transmit sonar within 12 miles of California's coastline and to shut down the sonar whenever marine mammals are spotted within 2,200 yards.

If a war breaks out, maybe the Chinese will also agree not to use sonar near the coast or when whales are around. Short of that, this has the effect of endangering the lives of American sailors. So what's this really about (besides the fact that environmentalists care more about the whales than humans)?

“The court has affirmed that we do not live under an imperial presidency,” Joel Reynolds, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said yesterday. “The Navy doesn't need to harm whales to train effectively with sonar.”

I don't believe a lawyer for the NRDC is qualified to determine what is necessary for effective naval training. I'd prefer to leave that decision to the Navy, and my imperial president.

Looks like the two firms fighting for a new Air Force tanker contract are taking off the gloves:

With the Air Force ready to award a rich contract for a new fleet of tanker planes, the two bidders -- The Boeing Co. and a team of Northrop Grumman Corp. and Airbus parent EADS -- are engaged in guerrilla marketing.

Pentagon rules limit communications between the bidders and the Defense Department officials who will select a winner, once the companies submitted their final bids Jan. 3.

The companies get around this restriction by sending blast e-mails to reporters and trade journals widely read by Air Force officials and by advertising in specialty publications, on buses and subways and local radio stations.

It's guerrilla marketing for the contract that could top $100 billion, making it potentially one of the largest defense programs in Pentagon history. The Air Force is scheduled to award the contract as soon as the end of this month.

I'm putting my money down on Boeing's KC-767, though there are a few respected aviation wonks who think the Air Force will go with the Airbus KC-30. That's a guess based more on the fact that we would have been flying KC-767s years ago had the government not tanked (har, no pun) the 767 leasing plan than it is a comparison of the capabilities of the two airframes. Plus, Japan and Italy are already buying the things, with Britain also showing strong interest.

Either way, I'm just glad this long, painful KC-X soap opera is finally coming to a close. The whole sordid affair has been marked by Congressional controversy, corruption scandals, and a thoroughly confusing "aircraft leasing" plan, all while the USAF was flying 50 year old KC-135s. Time to get these birds in the fight (or at least close to it).

A couple of things to note about the new defense budget, which comes in at $500 billion and change. The New York Times says:

If it is approved in full, annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II.

This is misleading--annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, has hovered around $400 billion for most of the Cold War, and the current budget does not appear larger than what was spent during the Korean War unless one includes the supplemental funding for the wars. Here's a chart:

From MIT Center for International Studies.

A more useful metric is the percentage of GDP allotted to defense spending, and at roughly 4 percent, the military budget is well below the average during the Cold War. Even in the 1980s, when the country was nominally at peace, spending hovered around 6 percent of GDP. We are fighting the war on terrorism on the cheap, and compared to earlier wars, we spend next to nothing on the war in Iraq. If anything, people should be outraged that this country devotes so little money to the war effort...which may be why not a single candidate for president, even among the Dems, is calling for a reduction in defense spending. We're fighting on a shoe-string budget.

From NRO.

Another F-15 Eagle crashes:

HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AFPN) -- A Hawaii Air National Guard pilot safely ejected from his F-15D model aircraft over the Pacific Ocean at approximately 1:37 p.m. about 60 miles south of the Honolulu International Airport.

The pilot was picked up by the U. S. Coast Guard at 2:15 p.m.

The pilot was conducting routine training. The F-15 belongs to the 199th Fighter Squadron, 154th Wing of the Hawaii Air National Guard. The accident will be under investigation.

It's just been raining Eagles lately.

Could have been pilot error, but with most of the F-15 force grounded after the 131FW's incident, it sounds like another age related maintenance accident.

HT: Defense Tech

Artist’s conception of 2018 bomber by Erik Simonsen.

Rival defense companies join forces to build next generation bomber:

Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the two largest defense contractors in the U.S., have agreed to form a joint team to compete against Northrop Grumman for the U.S. Air Force's next-generation long-range bomber, the companies announced Friday.

The Air Force is expected to announce late in 2009 its precise requirements for a new bomber that it wants by 2018....

Air Force officials have publicly indicated that they will likely want a manned, subsonic bomber with about 2,000 miles unrefueled combat radius and bomb payload capacity of between 14,000 and 28,000 pounds.

The aircraft would be expected to fly for the first time around 2016.

Yeah, but how much would it cost? The B-2 Spirit is the most advanced bomber ever constructed, but we could only afford 21 airframes. If this new bomber is to replace the ancient B-52 and, presumably, the B-1B, simply buying a single squadron of the things won't be enough. If the Air Force follows the recent defense acquisition trend, it will anticipate buying 50-60 next generation bombers and maybe come out with two dozen once the assembly line closes (see the Littoral Combat Ship and F-22).

I'm no acquisitions wonk, but the idea of two defense companies building one bomber sounds twice as expensive.

Goldfarb already linked this article from General William Caldwell on "changing organizational culture," but it's worth revisiting:

The technology of the Twenty-first Century – the “new media” – has made it possible for virtually anyone to have immediate access to an audience of millions around the world and to be somewhat anonymous. This technology has enabled and empowered the rise of a new enemy. This enemy is not constrained by the borders of a nation or the International Laws of War. The new media allows them to decentralize their command and control and disperse their elements around the globe. They stay loosely connected by an ideology, send cryptic messages across websites and via e-mail and recruit new members using the same new media technologies.

Responding to this challenge requires changes in our approach to warfare. The one thing we can change now does not require resources – just a change in attitudes and the organizational culture in our Army. Recent experiences in Iraq illustrate how important it is to address cultural change and also how very difficult it is to change culture: After MNF-I broke through the bureaucratic red-tape and was able to start posting on YouTube, MNF-I videos from Iraq were among the top ten videos viewed on YouTube for weeks after their posting. These videos included gun tape videos showing the awesome power the US military can bring to bear. Using YouTube – part of the new media – proved to be an extremely effective tool in countering an adaptive enemy.

Appropriately enough, Caldwell posted the article on an excellent blog dedicated to insurgencies and low-level conflicts, the Small Wars Journal. He even followed unofficial milblogging protocol by assigning himself a blogging handle: Frontier 6.

The Department of Defense is split into two basic camps on military blogging. One camp believes that in-theater blogging is too serious of an OPSEC risk, arguing that our enemies and their sympathizers can gain access to troop movements, deployment schedules, base defenses, etc., by reading military blogs. The reaction is to try and keep their finger in the information dike by banning sites like YouTube, Myspace, and Blogspot, separating soldiers from the New Media's common tools.

The other camp, of which General Caldwell and General Petraeus are members, views blogs as a tool that can be used to the military's advantage. In an age where the United States finds itself engaged in a variety of smaller wars and counterinsurgencies, conflicts that will be won or lost in the halls of Congress instead of on the battlefield, Caldwell views the intensely personal war-stories flooding the internet as critical to the war effort, helping to sustain the American public's stomach for a protracted fight. They're also critical in fighting our media saavy enemy, who use contacts in global news outlets to widely and rapidly communicate their message of jihad to the world. Caldwell argues that:

Aviation Week reports:

Boeing is touting an even newer version of its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet that, paired with an advanced sixth-generation fighter in the works at the company, would give customers what Boeing deems a better package of capabilities than Lockheed Martin's combination of the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The idea is that customers could buy 4.5 generation Super Hornets (perhaps 4.75 generation with the planned extra forward stealth and extra range of Block 3 aircraft) and then switch to a new, sixth generation faster than if they bought the fifth generation Joint Strike Fighter. To be available circa 2024, the sixth generation aircraft would feature a combat radius of more than 1,000 miles and stealth against a much wider spectrum of radars.

The Joint Strike Fighter isn't a done deal, and the leadership at the Pentagon seems dead set against buying anymore F-22s beyond the four they just ordered to keep the production line open past 2011. If Boeing can put something together that would offer a real leap beyond JSF--it isn't so far fetched that they could divide and conquer.

That's the thinking behind this much-discussed op-ed on the value of F-22:

There are, of course, two wars going on, and the F-22 has yet to fly a single sortie over the skies of Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor has the Air Force announced any intention of sending the F-22 to either theater.

The Air Force is quite right to keep the F-22 as far as possible from either conflict. The airplane is irrelevant to both, and were it to appear in those skies, it almost certainly would set U.S. and allied forces back.

Not only would it impose an unwanted burden on the already overstretched support forces in the region, but its primary mission -- shooting down enemy aircraft -- has no meaning in 21st-century warfare.

Bill Sweetman's response is priceless:

I'm sure you'd have found people saying much the same thing about the 20th century, in 1908.

"I say, Carruthers, some dashed American chappies think they've invented a fwying machine! Like to see that go up against our cavalwy! Haw! Haw!"

Stars & Stripes reports that Tennessee Rep. Lincoln Davis is pushing to ban gambling at U.S. military bases overseas:

Davis, a Democrat, is behind a new congressional push to ban gambling at overseas military bases because of what he feels is its inherently addictive nature. The Southern Baptist admits that he opposes gambling on moral grounds, but insists that's not the issue behind his latest efforts.

"We've got research to show that 30,000 of our troops may be pathological gamblers, and we ought to be ashamed that we're adding to that," he said.

So they can be trusted with nuclear weapons but not with a roll of quarters? Davis does go on to say that this is more about government endorsing gambling than anything else, but it's not like they don't have a lottery in his home state. And while it doesn't seem like a terribly good idea to have slots on base (the article says the military operates some 5,400 machines around the world), soldiers are going to gamble, and the government really has no business acting in loco parentis. It's bad enough that the troops aren't able to have a beer in a combat zone, but at least there's a rationale for that restriction. This is just the nanny state extending its control into the military.

And we've seen it before, most recently when a coalition of anti-porn groups pushed for stricter enforcement of the Military Honor and Decency Act of 1996, which was supposed to ban the sale of skin mags at on-base stores. The move was widely ridiculed, and an unscientific poll from Military.com shows why--people want our troops to be treated like adults.

Davis does make one good point though. Officials warn that the machines are an important source of revenue (estimated at $130 million), financing internet access, youth sports, and renovations at morale and welfare centers. Davis rightly says it's "ludicrous" that soldiers have to pay for such things themselves. Perhaps we could redirect those funds towards free beer and porn for the troops.

Blogger Former Spook wrote:

...the Thanksgiving intercept may have been an inadvertent gift from the Russians. The Air Force will use the mission as proof of an escalating threat, that must be met by state-of-the-art fighters like the F-22.

True. But we returned the favor. The Russians got what was presumably their first close-up inspection of the F-22. So while a Bear-Raptor aerial tango was inevitable, the timing of the resurgent bomber flights (coming around the same time as the F-22s deployment to Elmendorf) appears calculated.

Aside, but somewhat related: The Russians are currently developing a fifth-generation fighter, unofficially dubbed the "Raptor Killer." No doubt the Bear crew and the MiG's production team were talking shortly after the Thanksgiving intercept.

We've been beating up the New York Times a bit over their report earlier this week of the first death of a U.S. soldier in an MRAP, the heavily-armored vehicles that offer increased protection against IEDs. See here, here, and here for background, but the problem with the Times report is that several soldiers had been killed, prior to this incident, in BAE's RG-31 MRAP and also in Force Protection's Buffalo MRAP.

The apparent contradiction stems from the fact that MNF-I, the source for the story, now claims that the BAE RG-31 is not an MRAP, causing considerable confusion here and at BAE, which clearly labels the truck as an MRAP on its website (requests for information from the company provided no further explanation). Stars & Stripes attempts to clarify:

“This is the first death resulting from an IED attack on an MRAP,” said Rear Adm. Greg Smith, a spokesman for Multi-National Force-Iraq, in a statement Tuesday.

However, servicemembers have been killed in older versions of MRAP vehicles before Saturday, said Michael Aldrich of Force Protection Industries, which makes MRAP vehicles.

In November 2006, three servicemembers were killed in an older version of an MRAP vehicle known as the Buffalo, and in the summer 2007, two servicemembers were killed when a Joint EOD Rapid Response Vehicle was hit by an explosively formed penetrator, Aldrich said Tuesday.

In May 2007, the Defense Department stood up an MRAP task force to send newer versions of the MRAP vehicle downrange as quickly as possible. Since then, 1,463 MRAP vehicles have been delivered to U.S. troops in Iraq, as of Jan. 16.

So anyone killed in an "old" version of MRAP, i.e. those delivered before June of last year, is not being counted by MNF-I? This seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction. I am told that later models of the RG-31 do have thicker side armor to provide greater protection, but apparently MNF-I does not consider any version of RG-31 to be an MRAP (see Update:x2 here).

Now a friend sends along this tidbit:

On page 53 of the 23 January 2008 Balcony Brief delivered to the Chief of Staff of the Army, it was noted that 50 + RG31 MK5 MRAPs were on their way from South Africa from Kuwait. ON the PAO page it noted the leading Army story was "First MRAP Death."

And of course, when the Army reports to Congress on the status of the high-profile program, it does include all MRAP vehicles in its tally. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren told Congress in November that "by the end of April 2008, we project that we will have fielded almost 4,100 MRAPs." It's all very confusing.

This from from Defense Industry Daily, a trade magazine that doesn't normally take potshots at the Times and has no ideological axe to grind:

In fairness, the rest of the New York Times article is better than the title. Nevertheless, that title raises legitimate questions about the NY Times' journalistic practices. Especially coming as it does on the heels of their recent article "War Torn: Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles", which portrays US veterans as damaged and dangerous despite a murder rate that's actually considerably lower than the rate for equivalent US population as a whole. That NY Times article has also been sharply questioned by local papers who went out and did substantive research instead.

The New York Times' standards for reporting on the US military and the defense industry have become a legitimate news issue of their own, and a deserving subject of coverage. As DID's archives will attest, there are certainly more than enough legitimate controversies and debates in the USA that revolve around military procurement programs. There is no need to make them up.

The report also notes persistent and "persuasive" arguments against the Times's claim that this was "the first death resulting from an I.E.D. attack on an MRAP." We've been arguing the point all week, and have offered what I think is incontrovertible evidence that this is a bogus claim.

The Times needs to print a correction.

Bloomberg reports:

Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and former deputy secretary of defense who was instrumental in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003, has been named chairman of a panel that advises the State Department on arms-control issues.

Wolfowitz, now a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, will head Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's International Security Advisory Board, the State Department said yesterday in a statement.

"The ISAB provides the Department of State with a source of independent insight, advice, and innovation on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation, political-military issues, and international security and related aspects of public diplomacy," the State Department said.

At a time when Rice has all but abandoned the Bush doctrine, it is a bit curious that Wolfowitz would find himself appointed to this position. Which begs the question, whose idea was this? Somebody's making trouble, and we like it.

HT: ArmsControlWonk

And we can thank global warming for the chance to right one of the great accidents of history--that Canada didn't end up as part of the Union. This according to a new report by the Oxford Research Group on the threat to international security posed by climate change:

Climate change-related issues also have the potential to cause international legal disputes as the world map is redrawn. As coastlines retreat due to erosion and flooding, then maritime borders and the associated exclusive economic zones might also have to change, as a country’s ocean territory is legally determined by its land territory. Another possibility is that the evacuation or even physical disappearance of low-lying small island states – such as Tuvalu in the South Pacific – could result in challenges to sovereignty as the current qualifications defining the existence of a state include a permanent population and a defined territory.

Further disputes might also be expected as ice melting opens up viable shipping routes through the Arctic – for example the Northwest Passage, where there are already military tensions between Canada and the United States.

Yes, those simmering military tensions in the Beaufort Sea may erupt into unrestrained conflict at any moment. And in case this analysis doesn't entice you to read the report in its entirety, the authors have conveniently boiled down their assessment of the situation into this simple flow chart:

A world with civil unrest, intercommunal violence, and international instability? Can you imagine?

A report from the Guardian:

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

While this looks and reads like a thinly veiled threat to WMD-equipped rogue regimes, it isn't. Military commanders don't play those games, politicians do. Rather, this appears to be a blueprint for reinvigorating the floundering alliance--one that seeks to prop up an externally weak system on the shoulders of a muscular nuclear strategy. And it's coming from representatives of NATO nations that actually do have that heavy-fisted nuclear hammer at their disposal: France, Germany, the Netherlands, US, and UK. Three have nukes to use, though many often forget that the Dutch and Germans (and others) still borrow B61 nuclear bombs from the United States under the nuclear weapons sharing agreement.

Which is nice of us, I think.

The document also proposes a number of reforms to NATO's decision making structure, and if you're as frustrated with NATO's performance in Afghanistan as I am, you'll like 'em all. Among them are a change to majority voting, rather than the current consensus process that gives each national government a veto; the abolition of national caveats in NATO operations; excluding non-participating nations from making decisions about NATO operations; and authorizing the use of force without UN approval.

But before you start imagining NATO armies swarming into the Helmand, keep in mind that these are only recommendations. Convincing the collective governments of NATO to allow their Armed Force to play is a sizable hurdle to overcome. Remember these are the types that won't let their boys fight after dusk and think that "snow days" apply to combat ops. So revitalizing the alliance is one thing. Talking them into using nuclear weapons preemptively?

I'll believe it when I see it.

The New York Times reported today an attack on the MRAP, or Mine Resistant Armored Vehicle, resulted in the first death of a U.S. soldier inside the vehicle. This is categorically false. Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed in an IED attack in Ramadi and Karmah in early 2007, and other soldiers were killed in MRAPs in 2006.

Earlier today I forwarded the article to my friend, Captain Eric Coulson, who is currently serving his second consecutive tour in Iraq (voluntarily). Before moving to Tallil Air Base, Captain Coulson commanded a company of Army engineers dedicated to route clearance in and between Ramadi and Fallujah, and outlying areas like Karmah during the end of 2006 and throughout 2007. Captain Coulson’s company from Task Force Badger cleared some of the toughest roads in Iraq.

In February 2007, Captain Coulson’s Badgers lost three soldiers in a complex deep-buried IED ambush. His troops were clearing the roads to facilitate the rescue of a helicopter downed by an al Qaeda anti-aircraft team.

Captain Coulson posted about the inaccurate New York Times report at his blog, Badgers Forward.

The New York Times gets it wrong. Corporal Stephen Shannon of Company C, 397th Engineer (Task Force Pathfinder) was killed in Ramadi in January 2007 while riding in an RG-31 and of course Sergeant James Holtom, Sergeant Ross Clevenger, and Private First Class Ray Werner of Company A, 321st Engineer (Task Force Pathfinder) were killed 8 February 2007 while riding in an RG31. A Soldier form the unit we replaced had a Soldier killed while riding in an RG31 in July of 2006 and there have been several incidents of Soldiers getting killed while riding in Buffaloes.

Captain Coulson said either the New York Times failed to do its research, or the Marines failed to report on the Army casualties:

There are two possibilities (1) crummy research on the part of the New York Times or (2) lack of information at the MNF-I Press Center. The reason I was never able to post articles like this one is the MNF-W deemed our mission too sensitive to have press riding along. Of course they let Bill Roggio do it and it was going on else where in theater as demonstrated by the above article, so I have other thoughts I why they would not let the press ride with us. MNF-W might never have let MNF-I know that people had been killed in MRAPs.

The record should stand corrected.

The Danger Room notes two other minor screw-ups in the Times piece.

Max Boot reacts to yesterday's New York Times story that raised the possibility of General Petraeus taking over as Supreme Allied Commander Europe:

Would it have made sense to replace Eisenhower in early 1945 or Grant in early 1865? Only someone who thinks the answer to those questions is “yes” would be in favor of replacing David Petraeus as the senior commander in Iraq anytime soon.

It's a bit of an exaggeration--our enemies in Iraq are hardly on the brink of unconditional surrender--but the point stands. Here's Boot's recommendation:

It would make more sense to send Petraeus to Central Command, replacing the unimpressive Admiral Fox Fallon, and thereby allowing Petraeus to stay involved in the command loop not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan as well. As for his replacement in Iraq, who better than Odierno, after he has a chance to rest and recharge his batteries stateside? That would keep the winning team together.

That would seem to make a lot more sense.

That's the rumor at the Pentagon according to the New York Times:

The Pentagon is considering Gen. David H. Petraeus for the top NATO command later this year, a move that would give the general, the top American commander in Iraq, a high-level post during the next administration but that has raised concerns about the practice of rotating war commanders....

Some experts, however, say General Petraeus’s departure would jeopardize American efforts in Iraq, especially since the No. 2 officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, is scheduled to complete his tour and leave Iraq in mid-February.

General Petraeus “should stay at least through this year,” said Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We really need military continuity in command during this period in which we can find out whether we can transition from tactical victory to some form of political accommodation.

“We have in Petraeus and Crocker the first effective civil-military partners we have had in this war,” Mr. Cordesman added, referring to Ryan C. Crocker, the United States ambassador in Baghdad. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., General Petraeus’s predecessor, served nearly three years in the top Iraq job before becoming Army chief of staff.

Why would we rotate Petraeus out of Iraq before January 20, 2009? He's had remarkable success as the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Cordesman's emphasis on the effective collaboration between Petraeus and Crocker is another compelling reason for the administration to resist any change to the current arrangement.

One would think that 'don't fix it if it ain't broke' is the best maxim to apply in evaluating the command structure in Iraq.

This from Jim Webb last week:

Echoing comments Tuesday by the Navy's top officer, Adm. Gary Roughead, Webb called for increasing the size of the Navy's fleet beyond its current target of 313 vessels and strengthening maintenance and modernization projects by encouraging more free-market competition among contractors.

"Three hundred thirteen can't do it, I can't see, in the long run," Webb said. "We're building one (submarine) per year and the Chinese are building three per year. We need a strategy based on the United States being a maritime nation, and the United States should be a sea power."

With a current fleet of 280 ships, and only 109 under way, the Navy's fleet, Webb said, is at a 90-year low. During his tenure as Secretary of the Navy, Webb said he oversaw a fleet of 568 ships.

"Simply stated, we are decommissioning Navy ships faster than we are building them," he said. "It is imperative that we reverse this steady slide in shipbuilding."

Gene Taylor, the Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services projection forces subcommittee, has repeatedly called for an increase in the size of the fleet. When the Democrats first took back the House, Taylor explained his priorities as "Shipbuilding, shipbuilding. Getting the numbers of the fleet up....Numbers do matter.”

Getting the numbers of the fleet up would be a really impressive accomplishment for a Congress that's accomplished next to nothing. As Ed Morrissey notes today, the Democratic advantage on the generic Congressional ballot has narrowed significantly, down to just 5 points in favor of the Dems (the first time in six months that the lead hasn't been in the double digits). Much of the problem seems to be with independents. One suspects that a major shipbuilding program would be immensely popular among independent voters, and it would allow the Dems to appear strong on defense without alienating their base further on the issue of Iraq. It seems like a win-win.

Via Op-For, a killer ad from the Royal Marines:

I received this yesterday from a Lt. Col. in the California National Guard:

Hi John-

I'm one of those a$$hole battalion commanders mentioned in "The Army's Other Crisis."

Speaking only for myself, from talking to my guys - National Guard cav troopers - it's pretty clear that the main retention issues are that people either are tired of being away from their families and civilian lives or simply want to move on to something else. Being in the Army is, well, hard - it was hard when I was active and it's hard now (Remember the "one weekend a month, two weeks a year" National Guard? None of my guys with under six years does!).

I'm still rebuilding my law firm after my deployment of 2004-06. A small group - the military - is carrying the weight for the whole country. You get tired. But most keep going (I get a good number of guys off active duty into my squadron, where they can keep serving).

I'm less convinced that this is a case of a generation of agile, thinkers being repressed by a generation of mindless, nitpicking fossils. As a 20-year LTC, I guess I'm right between those two alleged factions. I don't see it - at least anymore. I mean, when I was a lieutenant, I was certain that only I had the vision, that only I really cared about Soldiers, that my superiors were stodgy, hidebound desk jockies who didn't know anything about the real world. The same was true when I was a captain. About the time I made major, I started to see that perhaps my bosses had concerns that extended a bit farther than the little platoons I led or the companies I commanded.

That isn't to say there aren't careerist jerks who would shaft their subordinates to get ahead. There are, and they make good people go just like inspirational leaders make people stay. It's just I don't think that's the rule rather than the exception.

Oh, and as for the young officer who was complaining about being chewed out after a patrol for not having his men in their safety glasses - maybe if he did his job and had his guys in their protective gear his battalion commander wouldn't have to. Part of this job is sometimes being a jerk - if you measure success by your popularity, maybe being an Army officer isn't for you. For my part, I'll be the a$$hole squadron commander whose guys can all still see.

Swift and deadly!

Our commenter notes that he speaks only for himself and not the California Guard, the Army, or anyone else.

Our "clear vision for the future" post of the day comes courtesy of the United States Navy.

CNO says Littoral Combat Ship will be the "workhorse" of the Navy:

"The Navy has a gap we need to fill in the littoral and that is what LCS is going to do for us," [Admiral Gary] Roughead said. "This ship is perfectly suited to operate near the shore and to engage in Maritime Security Operations that will ensure the free-flow of commerce and resources around the world. I predict that the LCS is going to be a workhorse in the United States Navy."

Roughead has said before that he is "very committed" to LCS, but late last year:

The US Navy (USN) has announced that it has cancelled LCS 4, the fourth Littoral Combat Ship, stating that it "could not reach agreement on the terms of a modified contract" with shipbuilder General Dynamics.

For more on the Pentagon's procurement problems, see "Chicken Little is Right" in this week's issue.

I can't say I really understand the USNA's annual plebe scramble to the top of a towering, lard-slicked granite monument, as the idea of a squirming man-pile of greasy midshipmen seems to validate all of those inter-service stereotypes about the Navy.

But, having crawled belly down through a field of mud and cow patties as part of another venerable military college's freshman recognition ceremony, I know how important these rituals are to cadets. We lost our treasured mud-hill event to institutional bureaucracy a few years back, now it looks like the military's new movement of safety fetishists are setting their sights on Annapolis' time-honored tradition:

In the name of safety, the U.S. Naval Academy is considering an overhaul of one of its most bizarre traditions: the annual ritual in which a thousand first-year midshipmen struggle to conquer a 21-foot granite obelisk coated with 200 pounds of lard.

The Herndon Climb has occupied a hallowed place in Naval Academy tradition for decades. For members of the plebe class, the climb represents what a former midshipman called "our final exam of all finals." The starter gun fires, and the plebes, working together, race to replace a blue-rimmed sailor's cap, known as a "dixie cup," with a midshipman's cap.

The scene is unforgettable to those who watch, as the sweating, grunting, red-faced midshipmen at the bottom, their arms linked, support a human pyramid surging to the top of the monument. The pyramid often collapses, but the plebes invariably make it to the top whether it takes them minutes or hours.

But at the ever-changing academy, the climb may be going the way of the sailing ship and the smoothbore cannon.

"Similar to how our Navy looks at all traditions in the Fleet, we are evaluating the Herndon Monument Climb to ensure the event remains a valid part of our heritage but it is conducted with professionalism, respect, and most important, safety in mind," the academy's public affairs office said in a statement.

It is unclear what changes might be imposed. This year's climb is scheduled for 9 a.m. May 15.

Kind of hard to instill your midshipmen with a warrior spirit when you deem simple team-building exercises too hazardous to their health. And though this seems small, it's just another notch in the bedpost of the obsessive safety movement rampant in the Air Force, Army, and Navy (Marines are the exception, I think). The tragedy inherent in this seemingly innocuous move by the Naval Academy is that it quietly engenders a sort of risk-averse mentality in young officer candidates, a mindset that is ultimately harmful to their development from pimply-faced high school kids into the fierce warfighters that we need them to be.

Best quote on this comes at the end of the Post article:

Herbert McMillan, a 1980 graduate who became an airline pilot and Annapolis politician, also opposes a change.

"We're going to send these guys to war but they can't climb a monument because they might get hurt? Come on," he said. "It just seems like a solution in search of a problem."

Noonan has an excellent post below on the retention crisis in the Army ( I think "crisis" might overstate it a bit, but no doubt a serious and pressing problem), which was most recently highlighted by the announcement that COIN expert Lt. Col. John Nagl would be leaving the service to work at a left of center think tank in Washington.

But today I came across an interesting piece on China's ballistic missile force and was amused by this tidbit about China's own retention crisis, which has been one notable downside of the rapid economic growth in that country:

With the development of the market economy the SAF units, which were mostly stationed in remote mountainous regions in the past, have become the most unstable combat forces in the PLA. There are frequent instances of servicemen seeking early release from the military to transfer to local civilian positions, or even deserting their posts. Because of this, the newly established SAF missile brigades are located in small cities where well-equipped military camps and barracks have been constructed.

Of course, the Chinese have a fairly large labor pool to draw on, and while we are trying to increase end strength, they are trying to cut the fat off their own armed forces. But it's clear that retaining highly-skilled people is a struggle for our competitors as well, perhaps even more so. And for our enemies, like al Qaeda--well, not that you'd ever hear about it, but I'm sure a lot of their best people (the ones that haven't been eliminated by our best people) have decided to take their talents elsewhere over the last few years.

Prior to its first deployment (currently underway), there was much hand wringing in the defense community as to whether or not the MV-22 Osprey would be worth it's weight in blood. After a long, tragic history of crashing and burning, DAILY STANDARD regular Christian Lowe is reporting that Marines just don't like the Osprey . . . they love it.

I'm putting together a longer story about my day and interviews I had with crew, maintainers and commanders with the squadron, but here are my preliminary impressions.

You ride one, you'll never want to go back to anything else. Period.

It just so happened that my flight from Fallujah to al Asad was on an Osprey. I was jammed in there with about ten other pax, their gear and a box full of supplies they call "tri-walls" for their three-ply cardboard construction. The guy next to me was a SEAL who's working here training Iraqi army troops. It was his first time on an Osprey.

Shouting over the engine noise, I asked him what he thought. He beamed a huge smile and gave a hardy thumbs up. Then he told me...

"I've ridden on CH-53s about five times before...it takes forEVER," he shouted as we sped across the blackened desert. That three-engined beast is really the only thing comparable in this AO to the Osprey (the Army's
CH-47 is a good comparison too) but the MV-22 blows the Super Stallion out of the water in this medium lift role.

Because the Osprey claimed so many lives in testing, there are some folks who -- understandably -- will never trust the MV-22. I'm a fan myself, simply because of Osprey's remarkable speed. In places like Iraq or Afghanistan, where the enemy is scattered over vast areas, the ability to quickly zip in and out of LZs is critical. While there's no scientific formula here, I suspect that the lives the Osprey will save with the limited exposure granted by rapid infil/exfil time will make up for the lives it took during trials.

Or so I hope.

Is retention. In December's Washington Monthly, Andrew Tilghman tries to find out why:

In Philadelphia, I met Zeke Austin, a twenty-eight-year-old former captain at Fort Hood, Texas, who left the Army after five years to look for a private-sector job. Austin first explained that he quit because his fiancé was finishing medical school and couldn't find a residency program in an Army town. Suddenly, he veered into a scathing critique of his commanders' preoccupation with institutional process. "Rather than focus on important stuff, they focus on PowerPoint slides. They'd have me up all night to make one slide a little prettier," he said. "After a while, you start to think, What am I doing over here?"

In Houston, I met an officer who had taken the rare step of leaving only eight years before he was due to retire. When I inquired why, he described a generation of senior leaders who gained experience in the relative calm of the 1980s, and seemed most comfortable in Iraq behind a desk. "What did these guys ever do? Go to Panama?" said the captain, who now makes more than $100,000 as a logistics manager for a petrochemical services company. "All they know how to do is train. So you're out in a firefight and they're complaining because you're not wearing eye protection. The colonel says 'Why don't you have your knee pads on?' and you're like, 'Shut the f&%# up, I've got a guy bleeding over here.' That has a lot to do with it."

Over the Christmas holiday, I visited my old stomping grounds -- the Virginia Military Institute -- for a wedding. Both bride and groom were Army intelligence officers, so attendance was overwhelmingly military. In discussion at the reception, I encountered precisely the same complaints as illustrated by Tilghman: peacetime Army careerists are driving away a whole generation of flexible, agile thinkers that are desperately needed right now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another comrade, an Army infantry officer with two tours in Iraq under his belt, described the exact same nit picky nonsense as Tilghman: "We'd come back from a 26 hour patrol only to be met by some a$$hole battalion commander who was dressing down my guys for not wearing eye protection. How am I supposed to respond to that?" My friend is a talented officer, smart, athletic, and the survivor of a harsh VMI system that weeds out roughly half of its original matriculates. But he's become frustrated with a leadership that focuses on processes instead of results. He'll be out the door the minute his service commitment expires.

Like any big bureaucracy, the Army is slow to adapt. They've made some astounding progress over the past year, both institutionally and in Iraq. But retention is, and will continue to be, one of Big Army's toughest battles.

HT: Haft of the Spear

Hot off the presses, the USAF just released the much anticipated (though clumsily named) Roadmap to the Future. I'm including the link to the Air Force's press release, though I won't bother quoting from it, as the Zoomies are notorious for churning out awful canned statements that do nothing but rehash their core values and principles of warfighting. So you don't have to wade through that drivel, the Roadmap's core function is to announce the bed down plans for all of the Air Force's future weapon systems.

Here is the link to the actual plan as set forth by Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Mosley. There weren't a whole lot of surprises, though I did surmise that the AF isn't anticipating any further BRAC realignments. There's even a long term plan for Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota, which was a breath away from being dismantled under Rumsfeld in 2005. Nice to see that we plan to house our next generation bomber at four of the five major bomber bases (Whiteman will continue to fly the B-2, presumably), as the proud Air Force bomber community took a terrible hit during the Clinton years.

Also interesting, while the Air Force does intend to fly the C-27 Spartan, it will be limited to National Guard units spread across the country. On first glance, that didn't make much sense to me, as the Spartan is deigned for inter-theater airlift, not long term hauls from the mainland United States. But, with the Air Force constantly deploying their Guard and Reserve units as part of the Future Total Force integration plan, I gather that there's a method to the madness.

I'm curious to see how this plan will be affected by the election. Most of the candidates in the Republican field want to breathe new life into the Air Force by infusing more cash and resources. If the GOP wins, I'm betting that Roadmap will expand to include more aircraft housed at more bases.

If a Democrat wins, the Air Force might have to tone down their plans a bit.

The flyaway cost of any aircraft is dependent upon the number procured in any given fiscal year, because the facilitization costs are amortized over the number of airframes. So, if DoD tells the builder to facilitize to build 40 per year, and you only build 20, all those costs are divided over half as many airframes, and the flyaway cost rises proportionally. I remember in the 1980s when the Navy was procuring just one or two EA-6B Prowlers per year, the cost per aircraft exceeded $150 million--in then-year dollars! And that, for a pretty mundane airplane that had been in production for twenty years.

As to whether one F-22 is worth three or more F-35s, that depends on what you want them to do. Certainly, if I had my druthers, I would have bought only F-15s--they could do all the jobs of the F-16, and do them better over a longer range. In some missions, one F-15 is worth (easily) three F-16s--and in some cases, no comparison is possible, because the F-16 just can't do the job (e.g., low-level deep penetration in all weather). Can the F-35 do the air-to-air mission as well as the F-22? Probably not. Can the F-22 do the air-to-mud mission of the F-35? Probably (after a little tinkering). The fact is, though, that nobody could afford all F-15s in the 1980s, and nobody can afford all F-22s today. That's why we have the hi-lo mix.

Quantity has a quality of its own. But the F-35 is no bargain, either, and we're still not sure what the flyaway cost of the various versions will be. To be the low end of the hi-lo mix, the JSF would have to come in at something less than 50 percent the cost of the F-22, otherwise you don't get much in the way of numerical leverage from the program.

Michael Yon's Dragon Skin armor.

Kathryn Jean Lopez posted this extract of an e-mail from mil-blogger Michael Yon:

This is what I think of Dragon Skin. I don't want to see American soldiers wearing this body armor. It's inferior to and heavier than alternatives. I spent about $4,000 for mine and just put it on Ebay starting bid: $1. I'll be happy to get $2 back from it. When I go back to Iraq in a couple weeks, I will not be wearing Dragon Skin.

The controversy over body armor is largely manufactured and is impeding the fielding of better body armor.

Yon has a point about the "manufactured controversy"--the existing Interceptor Body Armor provides excellent protection at a reasonable price, and it is now universally available to all U.S. military personnel in a combat area (not merely to combat troops, as was the case at the beginning of the war in Iraq). And there has been no "conspiracy" to keep allegedly better armor (such as Dragon Skin) out of the hands of U.S. soldiers and Marines.

But for all its virtues, Interceptor is not perfect. No military system of any sort ever is, since all require tradeoffs and compromises among competing and in some cases antithetical requirements. Body armor is no different, so the real issue is whether there is room for improvement, what the costs of those improvements would be, and whether the benefits outweigh the costs. For example, we could devise body armor that provides absolute protection for the entire body against the entire range of (reasonable) threats, but it would be so massive and heavy as to prevent the soldier from moving freely. We could design armor that provides total freedom of movement, but it would not protect the soldier against the full range of threats.

To understand the body armor issue, you have to know a bit about the threat, the technology, and the tactical requirements of the infantry soldier. I spent about four years reviewing body armor technology and the body armor market as part of a litigation against a major defense contractor.

Basically, all current body armor (with the notable exception of Dragon Skin) works the same way: there is an outer tactical vest (OTV) consisting of Kevlar or a similar material such as Dyneema or SpectraShield, which stops low-velocity bullets and fragments through the bending and breaking of multiple plies of the fabric in the OTV. These are good against pistol rounds and grenade and artillery fragments, but they have trouble stopping more powerful rounds fired from assault rifles, high-power rifles, and machine guns. Thus, the vests have pockets into which are inserted ceramic "small arms protective inserts" (SAPIs).

A SAPI is nothing more than an over-engineered dinner plate made from a high-tech ceramic (silicon carbide or boron carbide) backed by several layers of compressed Spectra or Dyneema fabric (which is polyethelene, and looks like plastic). When a bullet passes through the OTV and hits the plate, the force of impact shatters the plate and absorbs the energy of the bullet; the bullet and any residue of the plate is stopped in the backing material. Because the breaking of the plate destroys its structural integrity, the ability of the SAPI to stop a second hit is considerably less than for the first hit, the third hit is less than for the second hit, etc. The current standard in the U.S. military, applied to the Enhanced SAPI (E-SAPI) is two rounds required, three rounds desired. This is not a tactical requirement, it is one based on what industry could deliver.

Optimally, an insert should be able to absorb seven or eight rounds without losing its integrity--but that is not possible with existing plate technology. It should also be mentioned that the plates are really quite fragile, and prone to breaking in the course of ordinary handling. Microscopic cracks detectable only with X-ray or acoustic inspection degrade the performance of the plates and render them questionable at best. The U.S. has to replace about 2/3 of its plate inventory every year because of breakage, and the Israel Defense Force found 30 percent of its SAPIs to be damaged even when sitting in storage and never issued to the field.

We've had a lot of coverage here of the problems with the Air Force's F-15 fleet, which has left has many as 40 percent of the service's front line fighters permanently grounded. In light of these problems, the Air Force is pushing for more funding for F-22, a program which is nearing the end of its production and will be shut down unless new orders are placed. The Fort-Worth Star-Telegram reports:

Maj. Gen. Jeff Riemer, program executive officer for the F-22 who also participated in the interview, said the Air Force has several cost scenarios for extending Raptor production.

The current production rate of 20 a year means that building 198 more aircraft would cost about $40 billion and keep the production line open until 2019. But boosting production to 32 annually, he said, would be more efficient, reducing the cost to about $35 billion, and production would last until 2016.

I'm not particularly good at math, but I believe that works out to roughly $200 million per aircraft at 20 a year and roughly $180 million per aircraft at 40 a year. Which is a lot more money than the Air Force was talking about prior to the problems with F-15. In an article for Air Force Print News last year, Maj. Gen. Richard B.H. Lewis, Air Force executive officer for the F-22 program, offered a much lower figure:

But the reality is, if the Air Force wanted to buy just one more jet, it would cost the taxpayer less than half that amount. The current cost for a single copy of an F-22 stands at about $137 million. And that number has dropped by 23 percent since Lot 3 procurement, General Lewis said.

"The cost of the airplane is going down," he said. "And the next 100 aircraft, if I am allowed to buy another 100 aircraft ... the average fly-away cost would be $116 million per airplane."

How did the cost go up $80 million per aircraft--50 percent--in just one year? I've been as big a proponent of extending F-22 as anyone, but at $200 million each, the F-22 would have to have more value to the Air Force than roughly 3.3 Joint Strike Fighters. Does anyone think the F-22 is worth that much?

Hong Kong
Americans tend to read the South China Post over their morning coffee when visiting Hong Kong. Yesterday’s paper carried an unhappy story: a mainland cargo ship sank in high waves off Western Taiwan, leaving 12 seaman missing.

There is no question the sea is a harsh mistress. Bad things happen frequently in open waters--particularly to cargo containers. Sometimes the ship sinks. More often, containers get dropped over the side. Or crushed. Or pilfered.

Increasingly, containers are inspected--especially those ones identified under the Container Security Initiative. A post-9/11 program, CSI uses computers to analyze shipping and intelligence data and identify “high risk” cargo for inspection before the containers are put on ships bound for the United States.

All of the potential container mishaps--as well as the CSI inspections--are bad news when viewed from a terrorist’s perspective. With all the things that can go wrong with shipping cargo (and we haven’t even talked about unforeseen delays and misdeliveries) only an unthinking terrorist would consider using a shipping container as a poor man’s missile or a pipeline for smuggling essential contraband into the United States.

Yes, ordinary criminals sometimes smuggle stuff in containers--everything from fake Gucci to hard drugs. But that’s because they have so much product and such large profit margins they don’t care if they lose half to Customs or storms at sea.

So if smuggling weapons in containers is such a bad idea, and if CSI works pretty well, and it is getting better all the time, why did Congress last year require inspection of all containers bound for the United States--an unworkable mandate that is likely to cost the global economy billions? Maybe they didn’t think it through as thoroughly as terrorist do. Or maybe they were playing politics--looking for bumper stickers to win votes rather than real security to fight terrorism.

The Miami Herald reports:

The Navy is considering restoring the Fourth Fleet in the Atlantic Ocean, a bureaucratic change that would raise the prominence of Pentagon maritime activities in Latin America and Caribbean.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the disclosure during a visit to the Southern Command on Monday - calling it "a great idea" that "as far as I know is moving forward."

The move would bring no new vessels to the region but would put Southcom on par administratively with other Pentagon outposts that have large budgets and bigger muscle. For example, the Central Command operates the Fifth Fleet in the Middle East.

It would also restore an institution that sent U.S. Navy warships into southern waters in search of Nazi U-boats. The Navy created the Fourth Fleet in 1943 to hunt submarines in the South Atlantic during World War II.

There won't be any new ships for this reborn fleet, but there is a rationale, and I don't think it's quite as vague as what the Navy's making it out to be. Defense News quoted Admiral Roughead as saying the reorganization "would enable us to more effectively carry out the maritime strategy," (the WWS spoke with Roughead about that new maritime strategy late last year) and the Herald quotes Frank Mora, professor of national security strategy at the National War College: "It gives the Navy a bigger profile in the region . . . It sends a message to the region that you are important at a time when there is a sense that we don't care."

All these things are true, but I expect the Fourth Fleet will do exactly as it once did during the Second World War: hunt subs in the Caribbean and, to a lesser extent, the South Atlantic. Only this time the enemy won't be Nazi U-Boats, but Russian Kilos operated by the Venezuelan Navy. Last summer there were numerous reports that Venezuela was planning to purchase anywhere between five and nine of the boats from Moscow in a deal valued at between $1 and $2 billion depending on the final numbers.

This is the most likely explanation for why the Navy would revive a fleet after a nearly 60 year hiatus. The Coast Guard is capable of handling the current interdiction mission in the Caribbean. And while the Navy may want to engage more extensively with the Brazilians, who now operate an aircraft carrier purchased from the French in 2000, Venezuela is is the only potential threat to shipping in the region. As one expert told me, if Chavez gets his own sub fleet "it would turn the Caribbean into a Venezuelan lake." You have to figure that the U.S. Navy is thinking the same thing.

Looking at the Air Force decision to ground a significant portion of its F-15 fleet, it's important to keep in mind that it was always part of the USAF's long-term plan to retain a "golden fleet" of about 185 F-15C/Ds that would supplement its original requirement of 380+ F-22s. These birds would receive a lot of lateral technology upgrades from the F-22 program. While the F-22 is supreme on the enemy's side of the forward edge of battle area (FEBA), over friendly territory, the F-15 has a lot to recommend it, including a potentially larger missile payload. So, I could see how with the retirement of about 200-300 F-15s, the Air Force would be ideally positioned to reinstate its original fighter roadmap.

It will be interesting to see whether, in light of increased Russian excursions over the North Sea, the RAF decides to retain its Tornado F.2s even after acquiring the Eurofighter Typhoon. When it comes to long-range intercept and beyond visual range capability, the Tornado has it all over the Eurofighter. And with the final block of upgrades, it finally becomes the fighter it should have been from the beginning.

Part of it, at least. And that leaves an enormous gap in our air to air coverage--something on the order of nearly 200 air supremacy fighters. Granted, there's no serious air threat at the moment, but one wonders how potential adversaries will react to this snafu. Here's the report:

The Air Force is likely to order dozens of its F-15 fighter jets permanently grounded because of critical structural flaws, significantly reducing the number of planes available to protect the United States, officials said Tuesday.

After one of the fighters broke apart during a simulated dogfight in November, Air Force officials grounded the entire F-15 fleet, nearly 700 planes, fearing such a defect. The newest versions of the fighter jets were allowed to resume flying shortly afterward, but 440 of the older model F-15s have remained out of service.

The Air Force plans to allow about 260 of the remaining grounded planes to return to duty today. About 180 will remain idle because of suspected structural flaws.

"Many of them may never fly again," said a senior Air Force officer. The officer, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity because results of the investigation were not to be made public until today.

Received this email today from an inquiring mind:

John,
You may have seen that the Air Force has semi-permanently grounded half of its F15 Eagle fleet. Do you think that Russia will step up their long range bomber flights to see how much this has hurt the US Air Force? This sounds particularly [sic] bad, and Vladmir Putin's Russia has been very eager to assert itself on the world military stage. I wonder if they try to embarrass us or probe us like the Iranian navy did earlier this week.

Me: No (and I don't think Iran "embarrassed" us, either). If Russia is smart they'll keep their Tupolevs in their own airspace. The last thing they want to do right now is give Congress a reason to buy another 200 Raptors. The F-22 scares the bejeebus out of Russia and China, and the two are working feverishly to develop some sort of aircraft that can match it.

I think the million billion dollar question is whether or not the Air Force is going all drama-queen on us and overstating the seriousness of the F15's structural flaws, kind of like how an NBA player will deliberately fly backwards after a light shoulder check so he can draw a charging foul. The Air Force wants more Raptors, that's no secret. So what better way to state your case--that the fleet is too old to be effective--than to prematurely retire the bulk of your interceptor force?

The counterpoint to that theory lies in the Air Force's risk-averse nature. In the three decades or so since they've taken serious casualties (Vietnam), the USAF has developed an unnatural fetish for safety. Mountains of paperwork accumulate if an Airman falls off of a ladder and sprains an ankle, so God knows how badly an F-15 falling apart in midair rattled the Air Force leadership. Easy as it may be to smell a sinister F-22 acquisition plot here, I highly doubt the Air Force would significantly degrade America's defenses simply to add a few more fighters to the inventory.

For more on the F-15's structural problems, see Stuart Koehl's analysis here.

GovernmentExecutive.com reports that surging oil prices are hitting the military hard:

The military spent $11.6 billion on petroleum in 2007, up from $7.8 billion in 2005, although the services purchased roughly the same amount of fuel -- 132 million barrels -- both years. The standard price in 2005 was $1.34 a gallon.

The Air Force is DESC's largest customer. Its planes burn 7.1 million gallons of fuel a day. Half of every dollar DESC earns comes from the Air Force, versus 28 cents from the Navy and just 12 cents from the Army.

A DESC fact book noted that the Air Force bought $6.1 billion worth of fuel in 2006. Figures supplied by the Air Force indicate that every $10 rise in the price of a barrel of oil increases the service's operating costs by $610 million a year.

According to a report produced last year by LMI Government Consulting, the military uses nearly 60,000 barrels of oil a day to support combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Overall, though, combat operations have only slightly increased the amount of oil the military buys. Prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military bought 110 million barrels of oil annually from DESC.

Anyone who follows this stuff won't be surprised at all by these numbers. In fact, at $4 billion, the increase strikes me as surprisingly small. But, as they say, a billion here, a billion there... I do think these numbers are likely to fall a bit going forward, if only gradually. After reading this, I'm not so sure that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. At least the market doesn't seem to think that this will go on forever.

Also, the military is gradually shifting towards "greener" technologies like hybrid engines for its vehicles, and synthetic fuels for its aircraft. This has nothing to do with environmental stewardship--though the Pentagon often tries to spin it that way--but rather the cost of gasoline, and the risks of getting it to the people who need it. (The Army is likely to get on with such a transition long before the Air Force.) Driving gas trucks around Iraq is dangerous and expensive, but more hybrids will reduce the demand for such services. In Afghanistan, the cost of gas is even more extreme, and when helicopters are required to fly the stuff to remote locations, the price can spike to several hundred dollars a gallon. Hybrids will also provide more electric output for the sophisticated electronics that are now packed into every Humvee. As it is now, military vehicles are starved for electricity.

On the whole though, I feel like I'm paying twice as much at the pump as I was in 2005, so if the military is only paying 60 percent more, maybe that's not so bad. But for the crowd that's been chanting no war for oil over the past few years, it seems clear that the military is not pursuing a 'kick their ass and take their gas' strategy. Though they are getting the first part down pretty good.

How do they stack up? Or, more specifically, which candidate wants to undo 16 uninterrupted years of cuts to our Armed Forces? All of them, actually (sans weird Ron Paul). An overview of their defense proposals follows, but I think the best prescription comes from Fred Thompson.

All of the candidates seem to recognize that Rumsfeld's lighter force concept has failed and that some sort of revitalization effort is long overdue, but only Thompson properly outlines the scope of the problem and the appropriate fix. Rudy's 10 additional BCTs, 300 ship navy, and force modernization plan is a step in the right direction--it's a strong showing from the mayor. McCain would be an outstanding wartime leader (the best of the lot, in my opinion), but he opted to go with a broad overview instead of specifics. I liked Romney's proposal to trim down the Pentagon bureaucracy but--when describing the details--he sounded like..well, a bureaucrat.

Huckabee surprised me. I had to dig for it, but the governor wants to go back to Reagan-era defense spending, with the Pentagon racking in a full 6 percent of the GDP. Great plan, though I'm unsure he understands what he's saying. We're at 3.9 percent GDP for defense right now, nearly doubling that number without raising taxes sounds like a fool's errand. That makes Fred's plan seem more reasonable and calculated, and Huck sound like he's just throwing money at the problem.

Here are the specifics:

Giuliani on his plan to expand the military:

...[one]voter asked Giuliani what spending he would cut to make up for the increase in the military budget. He explained his plan to trim the federal workforce by not replacing workers who retire and to ask most federal agencies to scale back their budgets.

"It's essentially the same model I followed as mayor of New York City. I increased police, because we had a big crime problem. So I would increase the military, because we have a problem of terrorist threats," he said. "I also increased teachers ... but I reduced everything else."

I've had more than one bourbon fueled debate with liberal colleagues on whether or not you can beat a hostile ideology with increased defense spending. Reagan seemed to think so, though al Qaeda isn't going to bankrupt itself trying to achieve military parity with the United States, which--as my friends point out--is how the Soviet Union imploded. But just because increased defense spending isn't going to work in the exact same way as the Cold War model doesn't mean that it won't work at all.

Conquering territory and holding territory are two different things. Holding ground is what beats insurgencies, but we only have numbers to conquer. Ten additional BCTs could easily change that, particularly in Afghanistan, which is in need of a surge of its own.

Giuliani, Thompson, and McCain all have the right idea with their revitalization plan. Fund the war as if you want to win the war. Otherwise, you'll be condemned to fighting it forever.

Here (you'll have to scroll down). Apparently he's standing by his contention that the United States spends ten times what China does, despite the fact that the director of the organization that compiled the data he's using said "anybody who thinks there's a meaningful number for China's defense budget has not studied it for very long." Also no explanation for his ridiculous claim that America is "the most militarized country in the world by far." But he does quibble with the notion that, as Ramesh said, "We'd expect the police department to have a budget many times that of all the criminals combined, wouldn't we?" Greenwald:

I think that's a fairly accurate summation of the view of those who believe in America as Empire. We are on the side of Good and Right and we enforce the Law in the world. The other countries in the world are the bad criminals that need to be kept in line by us, and it thus only makes sense that we would "have a budget many times that of all the criminals combined" ("all the criminals combined" = "all the other countries in the world").

For a lawyer, that's not a very close reading. I don't think Ramesh was calling all the other countries in the world criminal, as illustrated by the fact that we don't spend "many times" the amount of all the countries in the world combined. Our defense spending is merely "many times" that of the rogue states, criminal regimes, and potential foes this country faces--or at least I hope it is. And I'd like to keep it that way.

America's commitments are global, China's and Russia's are regional. Had we a simple defense requirement like say, Switzerland, we could afford to spend like Switzerland. But America is the backbone of world stability. That's a responsibility that doesn’t come cheap, so simply pointing to a few charts and saying "look at how jingoistic and warlike America is!" grossly oversimplifies the issue.

Greenwald also writes that conservatives advocate maintaining the current order through the force of American arms because we are intent on "saving everyone from all the bad people and bad things that threaten them." This is a classic case of projection: Greenwald seems to think that his opponents are as juvenile as he is.

Yesterday I got a little exercised about this bit of foolishness from Glenn Greenwald.

A couple more points to add. First, Ramesh Ponnuru responded with this:

The analogy isn’t perfect, but: We’d expect the police department to have a budget many times that of all the criminals combined, wouldn’t we? Fire departments spend a lot more fighting arson than arsonists spend. It’s a lot cheaper to break a window than to fix it.

I think it's a darn good analogy. And I think it's precisely what John Pike was driving at in our discussion yesterday. Spending too little will have the effect of encouraging competition, and confrontation. If half a trillion dollars is the annual cost of deterring the Chinese (and doing all the other wonderful things that a powerful military allows), that may be a bargain compared with the costs of a direct confrontation.

Second, a blogger at Cato takes issue with...the fact that I've tried to peg the Chinese military budget in the past?

Thankfully for all of us, Goldfarb called Globalsecurity.org’s John Pike, who was able to inform him that attempting to ascertain the exact level of Chinese military spending is a “fiendishly complex problem…[that] approaches not even being a meaningful question.”

I say thankfully, because Goldfarb must have come to his senses since he last took a crack at Chinese military spending. That time he consulted with the Heritage Foundation’s John Tkacik, who has been touting his argument that China’s military spending is roughly equivalent to U.S. defense spending. For reasons I’ve laid out in detail before here, this is not a serious argument. It’s not clear why Goldfarb has chosen to jettison Tkacik’s figure in favor of Mr. Pike’s caution, but it’s a welcome development. Still, it would be good to know whether Mr. Goldfarb now thinks he was mistaken to tout the absurd figure last March.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but no. You can read that post here. What I wrote was that Tkacik's number "looks like a pretty solid guess." But a guess none the less, and when you're taking a guess about the defense spending of your rivals, it's better to err on the side of caution. Either way, the point is that China's defense spending is difficult to ascertain, and no serious person is proposing that we reduce our defense budget so that it is less that what the rest of the world spends combined--which is what Greenwald seems to be proposing. Our friend at Cato points to this piece in Foreign Policy by Richard Betts, but Betts writes:

Even the Institute for Policy Studies, usually considered to be far to the left of the mainstream, offers a recommendation that would bring the baseline defense budget down by only about $56 billion, or 11 percent, and total military spending down by less than nine percent...The institute's suggested defense budget for 2008 includes trimming or canceling the procurement of F-22, F-35, C-130J, and V-22 aircraft; Virginia-class submarines; and Zumwalt-class destroyers and the funding for the army's Future Combat Systems program, national missile defense, space-based weapons, nuclear systems, research and development, and deployed air force and naval forces. Some of these suggestions may be ill advised (for example, cuts in research and development would not be compatible with shifting toward a mobilization strategy). But implementing even half of the suggestions would cut the baseline budget (not current war spending) by almost six percent.

Marshaling the political will for restraint will be an uphill battle. A starting point might be the slogan "Half a trillion dollars is more than enough."...

So even at the extreme, Betts would not have the United States reduce its budget to less than half a trillion dollars (if I understand correctly, he's only proposing a 6 percent cut, to about $580 billion)--and even then it would be an uphill battle. Because common sense leads most Americans to believe that massive cuts to the defense budget would be penny wise, pound foolish.

Glenn Greenwald has a post up today on military spending. The peg is a new chart on world wide military expenditures released by globalsecurity.org. Greenwald, of course, looks at the numbers and expresses shock and bewilderment at the size of the U.S. defense budget relative to our competitors:

Our military spending exceeds the rest of the world's spending combined, and we spend almost 10 times what the second-place country, China, spends. "Only" about $150 billion of the total U.S. amount is attributable to the two active wars we're fighting, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, even if one wants to excludes those amounts, the basic picture remains the same. Nor do these amounts include the billions of dollars in military aid we give to fund the armies of other countries, such as Israel and Egypt, which alone comprise substantial portions of those countries' defense budgets.

And this gap between us and the rest of the world has widened considerably over the last 10 years. That's true because our own military spending, in absolute terms, has increased wildly during that time...

Greenwald takes at face value the $65 billion figure for China's annual defense spending despite the fact that the number is for 2004 and includes this caveat: "The officially announced figure is $24.6 billion, but actual defense spending more likely ranges from $45 billion to $85 billion for 2004." Still, anyone who is vaguely familiar with Chinese defense spending would know that determining its precise level is, as John Pike, the director of globalsecurity.org told me today, a "fiendishly complex problem...[that] approaches not even being a meaningful question."

Estimates at the globalsecurity.org website from 2003, when the official Chinese budget was just over $22.3 billion, range as high as $140 billion when purchasing power parity (PPP) is taken into account. (For any lefties who have stumbled over here--you know, ones who act like they understand military spending but find themselves flummoxed over terms like "purchasing power parity"--PPP accounts for the fact that goods and services are far cheaper in China than they are here. For example, it costs the Chinese considerably less to house, feed, and pay their soldiers.) For 2008, that number is likely to be significantly higher. But the idea that U.S. defense spending is ten times that of China's is ridiculous on its face--and as Pike said, "the more you study these numbers, the less you understand them...anybody who thinks there's a meaningful number for China's defense budget has not studied it for very long." Which explains why Greenwald thinks he's stumbled upon a meaningful number.

Pike went on:

"If somebody wants to say that the United States is spending ten times as much as China, I don't know what point is being made. We're a superpower, they aren't. And I think we'd like to keep it that way. They are not a military competitor of ours, they have no hope at this point of becoming a military competitor of ours. I think the world is a happier place that we do not face a near peer military competitor like we did with the Soviets. I went through that and it was not a happy time. And if the cost of maintaining a world in which our biggest fear of the Chinese is to be found down at Wal-Mart, if that's our biggest worry about the Chinese, if the cost of doing that is spending half a trillion dollars a year, well I guess we're going to do that, aren't we? That would be my view. It is not a view I've always had, but I've come around to it."

Greenwald also uses the mid-1990s as some kind of benchmark for military spending in an effort to show that "the explosion in our military spending over the last 10 years has far outpaced the rest of the world." I'm not sure what the point here is either. Defense spending was cut dramatically after the Cold War--and then we found ourselves at war. It stands to reason that defense spending would rise dramatically. From this, though, Greenwald deduces that "We're the most militarized country in the world by far." That's asinine, and prompts one to wonder whether Greenwald knows what "militarized" means. (Hint: Greenwald would be putting his considerable talents to use for the Department of Defense if this statement were true.)

Greenwald's larger point is that the defense budget should be a bigger issue in the campaign, and he complains that instead there is a broad, bipartisan consensus that defense spending should continue to rise. The more sober candidates argue only over how much and how fast. Greenwald laments that "Those who try to [propose major cuts] are quickly and widely dismissed as fringe, insane, angry, deranged 'crazies.'" Not at all Glenn, they just don't understand the issues. And they shouldn't pretend to.

WWS pal Stephen Trimble has an entertaining post up at his always entertaining blog, The DEW Line. It seems that just a few weeks ago the Pentagon quietly released the supercruise speed of the F-22:

The US Air Force appears to have declassified the supercruise speed for the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor. The air force’s fact sheet previously listed the F-22’s speed as “Mach 2+”. But the fact file’s speed listing was updated in October 2007 to read “1,140 miles per hour (Mach 1.72); supercruise at altitude”. This clearly means that the USAF has clarified the F-22’s supercruise speed, but the still-classified maximum speed is presumably still somewhere in the region of Mach 2.5.

Trimble catches some other interesting changes to the "fact files" maintained by the military. If you're an aviation geek, you'll enjoy the read.

National Defense reports:

The Marine Corps and the Army have decided to curtail their orders for mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, ostensibly because they foresee fewer roadside bomb attacks in Iraq. But there are other reasons, such as the impracticality of operating these vehicles off-road and in urban areas. A Marine Corps official says the 60,000 to 80,000-pound vehicles create significant logistics impediments that would make them hard to deploy, not just to Iraq, but to almost any other war zone.

“Seventy-two percent of the world’s bridges cannot hold the MRAP,” says Brig. Gen. Ronald Johnson, assistant deputy commander for plans, policies and operations. Transporting the vehicles to combat zones also is tough for Marines because the trucks cannot fit aboard the amphibious ships that carry Marine equipment and supplies. “You can’t put an MRAP on a maritime pre-positioning force ship,” Johnson says.

The need for the vehicles has diminished greatly over the last six months, but should that trend be reversed, the MRAP will clearly remain a problematic solution to the IED problem. And it seems clear that the Pentagon has doubts as to whether the vehicles will have any relevance outside of, or after, Iraq. But I'm sure Joe Biden has already thought long and hard about these issues and is prepared to show the military why they've got it wrong.

Just posted at Michael Yon's website is a superb memo from retired General Barry McCaffrey on the state of affairs in Iraq. You won't find a more honest assessment that better summarizes what went right and what went wrong in 2007. Read the whole thing here.

While the focus of the memo is justly centered on the Iraqi theater of the war, I found that McCaffrey's frustration with the current state of the U.S. Armed Forces was more effective in addressing the roots of our problems in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bottom line up front, the military is inadequately equipped, under funded, over tasked, and simply too small to meet America's global commitments. While there exists a growing movement in the Pentagon to undo 16 years of uninterrupted budget and manning cuts to the Armed Forces, McCaffrey is the highest ranking officer (retired or active duty) to properly communicate the seriousness of the situation. Here are his specifics:

The Army needs more BCTs:

An active counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq could probably succeed in the coming decade with twenty-five US Brigade Combat Teams. (Afghanistan probably needs two more US combat brigades for a total of four in the coming 15 year campaign to create an operational state--given more robust NATO Forces and ROE). We can probably sustain a force in Iraq indefinitely (given adequate funding) of some 10+ brigades. However, the US Army is starting to unravel.

Jane's has the scoop on the Army's new iPod-based tactical aid:

Elements of the US Army's 10th Mountain Division are deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan equipped with new one-way translation devices based on video models of the Apple iPod personal entertainment system.

Called Vcommunicator Mobile, the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems are being provided by Vcom3D (Orlando, Florida). The company is delivering the devices under contract to the US Army Program Executive Office for Simulation Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI).

In April 2007 the 10th Mountain Division submitted an Urgent Need Statement to PEO STRI for a one-way language translation device.

The resulting 'sources sought' announcement noted: "10th Mountain Division units have a requirement for a multifunctional, multimedia language and culture learning device. The identified system must provide one-way translation and cultural knowledge for both the Iraqi Arabic and Iraqi Kurdish languages. Primary use for the device will be at the squad/team/individual level allowing small unit leaders the ability to provide directions and guidance to the local populace during the conduct of operations.

DAILY STANDARD contributor Christian Lowe caught a glimpse of the new kit at a trade show last fall. On the tactical advantage:

You’re at a checkpoint and you need the Iraqi to get out of the vehicle and open the trunk. Scroll the iPod wheel over to “Vehicle Checkpoint” mission library and it’ll show a list of phrases: “peace be upon you;” “we need to search your vehicle;” “turn off your car;” “open the door;” etc. The iPod will show the words in phonetics and in Arabic so you can try the phrase yourself or show it to an Iraqi to read.

Useful, but kind of a let down. I pictured 10th Mountain boys melting insurgent faces with Whitesnake tracks, not an Arabic speak and spell.

Photo Courtesy of Defense Tech.

WWS pal and frequent DAILY STANDARD contributor Christian Lowe had an excellent piece on the M4 Carbine at Military.com on Wednesday. The crux of it:

The primary weapon carried by most soldiers into battle in Iraq andAfghanistan performed the worst in a recent series of tests designed to see how it stacked up against three other top carbines in sandy environments.

After firing 6,000 rounds through ten M4s in a dust chamber at the Army's Aberdeen test center in Maryland this fall, the weapons experienced a total of 863 minor stoppages and 19 that would have required the armorer to fix the problem. Stacked up against the M4 during the side-by-side tests were two other weapons popular with special operations forces, including the Heckler and Koch 416 and the FN USA Special Operations Combat Assault Rifle, or Mk16....

"This isn't brain surgery -- a rifle needs to do three things: shoot when you pull the trigger, put bullets where you aim them and deliver enough energy to stop what's attacking you," the staffer told Military.com in an email. "If the M4 can't be depended on to shoot then everything else is irrelevant."

The staffer offered a different perspective of how to view the Army's result. If you look at the numbers, he reasoned, the M4's 882 total stoppages averages out to a jam every 68 rounds. There are about 30 rounds per magazine in the M4.

Lowe also notes "some grumbling about the stopping power of its 5.56mm round." Since Mogadishu, the M4 has been criticized for its lack of stopping power ("Like stabbing a guy with an icepick") which was detailed in Black Hawk Down, among other places. Little known fact: with the exception of the Browning Automatic Rifle and the M1 Garand Rifle, U.S. infantry weapons have uniformly sucked since the end of the First World War. Almost every decent weapon we have or have ever fielded is in fact derivative of some foreign weapon. The M249 SAW, for instance, is a Belgian FN Minimi. The M60 machinegun is a dumbed-down version of the German MG42 (a weapon that was panned by Aberdeen Proving Ground back in 1943--after it had killed about 10,000 American troops in North Africa and Sicily). I don't know what it is, but there is something about the Army's small arms development process that promotes mediocrity.

The British MoD reports that the MQ-9 Reaper has taken to the air in Afghanistan:

The RAF's first Reaper Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Britain's most sophisticated unmanned surveillance system, has taken to the air in Afghanistan. Although there are only 3 of them, and they are yet to be armed. The Reaper UAVs were purchased as an MOD urgent operational requirement to provide an all-weather, persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) capability 24 hours a day over a wide geographical spread.

Reaper will give troops on all operations a better picture of activity on the ground. The first British Reaper arrived in Afghanistan in early October, just 15 months after the initial requirement was received.

Apparently the RAF is fielding three MQ-9s in Afghanistan, with--presumably--more on the way. That doesn't sound like a whole lot, but keep in mind that the USAF only has nine in their inventory right now. Interesting that the RAF's press release emphasized the Reaper's ISTAR capabilities instead of its killing power. MoD made it sound like nothing more than the next evolution of Predator drones, instead of a new UAV class that emphasizes destructive power over surveillance functions.

When the Brits eventually do arm their new toy, it will be able to shoulder a 3800lb ordnance load (eight hellfires and two PGMs) on four external hardpoints. That, coupled with the Reaper's impressive battlespace loitering ability, makes the MQ-9 an excellent close air support platform. The RAF is making the smart move here by deploying it early on.

Israeli Air Force to Lockheed: Hurry it up:

Israel plans to keep its aerial domination of the Middle East intact, and that includes buying Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, accelerating its first deliveries, and deciding whose advanced equipment will be packed into the stealthy strike aircraft.

A senior Israeli air force (IAF) official says those major areas of concern appear to be on the right track because of an "understanding" with the U.S. officials. Washington's representatives are more ambiguous, saying that there has been no official change to Israel's F-35 program.

"The plan is that we will get the F-35 as soon as it's possible," the senior IAF official says. He says the service will end up with more than 100 F-35s, but he would not confirm the size of the purchase or that Israel is asking that the initial delivery date be accelerated by two years to 2012. The IAF wants the JSF "the minute it is available."

"Israel has a unique requirement, it doesn't operate in a coalition, [and it has a] different kind of strategic relationship" with the U.S. than the other F-35 partners," says Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin's vice president and general manager for the F-35. However, he says the overseas release of the first export aircraft will be no sooner than 2014.

Another "unique requirement" is that Israel has to penetrate integrated air defenses without the advantage of stealth technology. Stealth is the primary reason that the USAF has made Russian-built IADs their bit&* these past two decades. The air defenses that the United States overcame in Serbia and Iraq are similar to the ones fielded by Israel's enemies. While the IAF is skilled enough to pull off gee-whiz raids like Operation Orchard with bulky Strike Eagles, they have to beat radar coverage with sophisticated hacks or Wild Weasel missions. The JSF, with its shortcomings noted, fits the IAF's profile perfectly: slip in, break stuff, slip out.

Somewhat surprising though, is how hot the IAF is for these news birds. Israel has always been first in line for the latest American jets, but this time around their rhetoric sounds awfully urgent. The easy answer is that they want a stealth asset capable of sneaking into the hell that is the airspace surrounding Iran's nuclear facilities. But their requested timeline of 2012 for the first deliveries doesn't sync up with Mossad warnings that Iran could have the bomb by 2010. They might be giving Iran some wiggle room on the estimate, they might be worried that Russia closed the radar loophole that they exploited during Orchard, or they may just be sick of their F-15s and F-16s.

Motives aside, it will be most interesting to see what new tricks the always innovative IAF will pull off with the stealth advantage.

Bill Sweetman has a post over at Ares on the roll out of the F-35B, the STOVL (short takeoff, vertical landing) variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. But, according to Sweetman, after nearly 50 years of effort to produce a STOVL fighter that could fly supersonic, It's like Ricky Watters said--for who? For what?

But the world has changed and so has the STOVL fighter - because nobody, back then, expected that it would be the size of an F-4. Also, some realism has entered the calculations.

Going off-base with an F-35B is probably not too practical: it takes at least one CH-47 to deliver enough fuel for one sortie, and I would really question whether the jet would be stealthy after one landing on anything except clean, FOD-free concrete. Anti-access threats are different today: in expeditionary warfare, the attack's more likely to be aimed at troops and accommodation than at the runway.

The USAF flirted with the idea of a STOL or STOVL F-35B a few years ago, but is no longer interested. It may have occurred to them that the day when an F-35B can perform a vertical landing in Kabul (5900 feet) with a useful payload is a few engine upgrades away.

Go read the whole thing for yourself, but I've never found the rationale for STOVL very convincing. The Marines want to be able to operate from remote bases close to the battle, but a first-class Navy ought to be able to seize and build landing strips, position aircraft carriers, refuel in mid-air, etc., so as to obviate the need for STOVL. Our allies, the British and the Italians specifically, operate small carriers that rely on STOVL aircraft. So it makes a lot of sense as an export. But the added cost in R&D is substantial, and it has long since become a serious drag on an already expensive program.

If the Marines ever get into a situation where they are dependent on STOVL for close air support, we will have already lost the battle.

From an excellent Washington Post piece on the durability of F-16, Loren Thompson says:

"Lockheed's most potent competitor in the fighter business is Lockheed."

The piece is worth reading, and I certainly don't discount the argument that F-16 might, in the long-run, offer more bang for the buck than F-35. Stephen Trimble notes concern from America's allies about the limitations of F-35, and the only advocate of F-35 that the Post quotes, other than Thompson, is Bruce Lemkin, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs, who spends most of his time trying to sell F-35.

Still, Thompson's close relationship with Lockheed aside, I think he's right to say that "In the future, [F-16] won't be survivable in Serbia much less China." We did lose an F-117 in Serbia, and the GWOT hasn't seen the Air Force challenged by any kind of sophisticated air defense systems, so it's hard to know just how much progress our aspiring peer competitors have made since the bombing campaign against Serbia. But, if the Israeli raid into Syria is any indication, maybe F-16 has a long life still ahead of it. And Lockheed's struggle to get F-35 flying again isn't inspiring confidence in cost projections that have already started into a death spiral.

The good news for Lockheed: The USAF fleet of F-15s is still grounded, making it ever more likely that the Pentagon will gain Congressional support for a new order of F-22s.

Robert D. Kaplan has an excellent piece in the current issue of the American Interest examining what is necessary to maintain a "first-class, professional military"--and why it is that Europe's armies are in such a wretched state:

European civilians take little pride in their standing armies; in America, however, civilians still do. Iraq, in this respect, has not been like Vietnam. While Americans may have turned against the Iraq war, they have not turned against the troops there. If anything, in recent years, they have grown more appreciative of them. The upshot is that America has a first-class, professional military that is respected even if it is not reflective of society.

But to see that America’s circumstances are not as bad as those of the European Union is not the point. The point is to remember what we have forgotten. A military will not continue to fight and fight well for a society that could be losing faith in itself, even if that society doffs its cap now and again to its warrior class.

There's a lot more in Kaplan's piece--it's a must read--but another bit that catches my eye is this powerful defense of patriotism:

Now, patriotism, we have heard, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. It can be that when patriotism is misappropriated by those who have little loyalty to place, and who therefore lack any accountability for their words or their views. It is easy, after all, to be in favor of this or that cause, or against some other ones, if one has no real stake in the outcome. But while some patriots are scoundrels, the vast majority are more trustworthy than those who are not, precisely because they do accept a stake in outcomes. And they do so most often because patriotism overlaps with what, for lack of a better phrase, is a kind of moral hardiness, by which I mean an attitude of serious engagement concerning right and wrong behavior.

That patriotism even needs to be defended is much the point of Kaplan's piece, but it should be noted that Kaplan's definition of patriotism is an inclusive one--it can be applied to those U.S. soldiers guarding detainees at Gitmo just as easily as the torture hysterics who would paint them as war criminals. But Kaplan isn't arguing for or against any particular policy, only that Americans need to remain engaged with the world and prepared to fight for what it believes. Go read the whole thing.

HT: Instapundit

Bill Sweetman reports at Aviation Week's Ares blog that the U.S. Air Force has, at last, declared the F-22 combat ready:

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I covered a Society of Automotive Engineers aerospace conference in Anaheim. It was the first public occasion where industry and air force people talked about the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF), and it was pretty clear where the requirement was headed: supersonic cruise, stealth and a primary air-to-air mission.

That was TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. I wrote up the story on a manual typewriter, and if I remember rightly I took the copy to a Western Union office where an operator sent it as a wire message.

So it's taken a while. And Sweetman points to the F-16 as a counterpoint, an aircraft that went quickly from design to full-scale production, and which, as Stuart Koehl noted here earlier today, has since become an Air Force workhorse and a dominant player in the export market. (For anyone interested in why the F-16 was such a success, it's worth checking out the excellent book Boyd.)

The F-16 was a far less ambitious project than F-22, and there was nothing really revolutionary about it. It was simply built to be a pure air-to-air fighter, with less emphasis on new technology than on aerodynamics. But the F-22 is revolutionary. Still, it's disconcerting that the project has taken so long to become combat ready, and that even as it has entered service it has been plagued by embarrassing problems. Which is why I'm curious to see how the the Air Force's push for a new bomber by 2018 turns out. With no money in the budget for the project next year, the Air Force still seems confident it can develop a system using existing technologies in that relatively short time frame. The 2018 bomber is supposed to be a temporary measure until the service can begin work in earnest on the 2037 bomber, but as one expert told Defense News:

“I don’t believe in Santa Claus and I don’t believe in the 2037 bomber,” she said. “It’s a mythical beast. It’s just not there. I don’t know why the Air Force even talks about it.”

That's because the 2037 bomber, like the F-22 25 years ago, will be built with technologies that don't yet exist. If the service can build the 2018 bomber in a short time frame and using existing technologies, perhaps they'll end up with a real prize like the F-16--both affordable and effective.

The Dassault Mirage F.1.

Last week Reuben Johnson posted a good article on the Rafale, which reveals certain underlying truths about not only the French aerospace industry, but European aerospace generally. The first thing one must remember is Dassault aircraft were never particularly good as compared to comparable American or even British designs. The early Ouragan, Mystere and Super Mystere were all inferior counterparts of the F-86 Sabre and Hawker Hunter, which entered production mainly because of Gaullist political requirements--"La Gloire" required France to compete in the skies with the Anglophones. Yet none of those early Dassault fighters had much export success--Israel being the only major buyer, and then usually acquiring less than one hundred examples of each.

Dassault's reputation was really founded on the Mirage III family of supersonic delta-wing fighters. Yet of the entire first generation of Mach 2 jets (which would include the MiG-21, the F-104 Starfighter, the F-105 Thunderchief and the F-106 Delta Dagger), the Mirage was probably one of the worst, being somewhat underpowered and slow to accelerate, while its delta wing caused it to bleed off speed rapidly in tight turns. With a complex and unreliable fire control system, it was originally armed with the balky and ineffectual Matra 530 air- to-air missile. Yet the Mirage went on to become one of the most successful (from a sales standpoint) fighters of the 1960s and 70s.

For that, Dassault can thank the Heyl ha' Avir--the Israeli air force. More or less forced to buy the Mirage III because every other jet was embargoed, they insisted on certain key modifications (most notably the installation of two 30mm DEFA canon and additional fuel tanks), and developed tactics that exploited every strength of the Mirage design and every weakness of its principal opponent, the MiG-21. After the Israeli's astounding victory in the Six Day War, and the record of kills racked up in the subsequent War of Attrition, everybody was lining up to buy Mirages (embargoed by the French, the Israelis themselves reverse-engineered a much-improved version of the Mirage with a U.S. J79 engine, known as the IAI Kfir--some of which were actually purchased by the U.S. for use as aggressor aircraft in the Top Gun program).

Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the French government aggressively assisted Dassault in marketing the plane to all possible customers, including former French colonies, wealthy oil states, and pariah nations such as South Africa, which could not acquire high performance aircraft from either the United States or the Soviet Union.

Dassault even developed a ground attack variant (the Mirage V), which was sold to Libya and a number of Latin American countries. Yet, through it all, the Mirage III/V family remained an under-powered, short-legged, barely adequate fighter. None of that seemed to matter in the aura of Israeli aerial invincibility and French marketing smog.

But by the 1970s, the 1950s-vintage Mirage was growing long in the tooth and losing ground to the U.S. "superfighters", particularly the F-16 Falcon. The swept-wing Mirage F.1, essentially a Mirage III with a conventional wing-tail configuration and better avionics, was purchased by the French Air Force, by a number of former French colonies in Africa, and by South Africa, but in comparison with the Mirage III/V, sales were relatively poor. So Dassault attempted to develop the Mirage III concept using state-of-the-art technology, including revised avionics and "fly-by-wire" electronic controls. The result was the large, twin-engine Mirage 4000, and the single-engine Mirage 2000. The former attracted few potential buyers, and was even rejected by the French Air Force; but the Mirage 2000 became the principal fighter-attack aircraft of the French Air Force (largely replacing the Mirage F.1), and for a number of export customers, including Egypt, India, Peru, Taiwan, Qatar, the UAE, and Greece--but the number sold paled when compared to those of the F-16.

Christian Lowe has an excellent piece on THE DAILY STANDARD today about the MRAP's rapid fall from grace. Under the title "Another Casualty of the Surge," Christian writes:

Finally sober minds are beginning to prevail and the services are finding the courage to push back. Let's say the surge gave them the "breathing room" to take a moment to really examine whether these vehicles fit their battle plans or were, as one defense researcher termed them, just a "million dollar Kleenex."

The WWS hopped on the MRAP bandwagon pretty early on, but by late spring we were already starting to look for the exits as the cost of the program ballooned and Congress made the vehicles into a political sledge hammer with which to beat on the Bush administration. At its high point, Congress was talking of spending upwards of $20 billion on the program, with Joe Biden leading the charge. But now that the surge has vastly reduced American casualties, and Anbar province hasn't seen an American killed by IED in more than three months, these vehicles are rightly being reassessed as a niche tool for ordnance disposal and the clearing of major transportation routes. And while I've debated this issue with a number of folks, in particular Roggio, who seems to think that American troops are pretty eager to get their hands on the things, Michael Yon recently wrote that the troops may be having second thoughts as well:

On a slightly different topic, these new gigantic MRAPs (big bomb-resistant trucks) that are being fielded in Iraq seem to be largely ill-conceived. I do not possess that level of expertise, so I’m not making any recommendation on the MRAPs. But I can say that soldiers in Mosul and Baghdad seem to be viewing the MRAPs with a jaded eye. Yes, the MRAPs are said to offer much greater bomb protection, but given that they seem as tall as a double-decker bus in London, the MRAPs simply cannot travel down many of the roads in Baghdad or Mosul, where they would only rip down power wires like those depicted above.

In any event, there's clearly been a decision within the Pentagon to slow things down a bit, and that seems like the right move to me--although the companies that make these things are reeling. Force Protection, which makes the Buffalo MRAP (pictured in Christian's story), has seen its share price drop 50 percent since Monday.

Kudos to the Pentagon for producing professional-looking news summaries for their own and other websites. Below is a piece on the plans of the Pentagon to issue 100,000 furlough notices next week unless Congress can get its act together and fund the troops:

Only one question: does it have to look so much like Fox news?

The Joint Cargo Aircraft plot thickens:

The Senate has made a case that the Air Force and Army, which have been sharing the C-27J Joint Cargo Aircraft program, should begin to part company on the project.

The Army sought $157 million in Fiscal 2008 for JCA work. Senators, in their 2008 defense authorization bill, refused those funds to the Army and instead voted to hand them over to USAF, along with the Air Force's own requested amount.

The Senate argued it makes more sense for the Air Force-by itself-to take over and manage fixed-wing airlift of this type.

The House version of the authorization bill, however, contained no such provision. The two sides duked it out in a conference in search of a mutually acceptable compromise.

The C-27J Spartan is a small airlifter. The Air Force plans to use it for a variety of active and Air National Guard missions that do not require an aircraft the size of the C-130J. Its list of missions includes transport of small Army forces.

The Army, however, wants to acquire its own fleet of Spartans so as to possess an autonomous airlift capability. These aircraft would replace the Army's old C-12 and C-23 transports, which had very limited range and capability. The airlift provided by these systems has been justified as being "organic" to the Army mission-in effect, a direct adjunct of the land warfare, the Army's principal role.

The Army and Air Force have been squabbling like the Honeymooners over the C-27. The Army claims that it needs the Spartan ASAP, to fulfill the short range airlift mission in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force says that it has more pressing acquisitions needs, and -paraphrasing here- will get around to buying the JCA in a few years.

At the root of the problem is the archaic Key West agreement, which has guided military aircraft procurement for the better part of five decades and badly needs to go away. Defense Tech:

Because of the Key West Agreement, the Army and Air Force shares the air lift function, the Army intra-theater, and the Air Force inter-theater. However, in today's non-linear battlefield, it's difficult to tell where to draw the "theater" line. So when the Army initiated the FCA, the Air Force felt compelled to protect its turf in the air lift business by joining the program, and then delayed the program by dragging its feet on its portion of the joint requirement. I think it was instructive to note that, only after the Army has announced the request for proposal for the FCA, did the Air Force start making noise about its similar requirements, yet did not have its set of requirement ready right away. What was the Air Force rep on the JROC doing? Isn't it his job to tell the Air Force before the Army announces its RFP?

As soldiers move out of their FOBs and into smaller platoon and company sized firebases as part of the surge strategy, one could see the Army's point here. Supplying grunts via tactical airlift is still safer than convoy ops, even with the diminished IED threat. And the existing fleet of C-130s and C-17s is busy enough with inter-theater operations. So if this drama plays out per the Senate's direction, the Army will have to wait a few more years for an aircraft that they need now.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria--unencumbered by such a monster of military bureaucracy--just went ahead and bought five of the damn things last month.

The Los Angeles Times reports today on their own polling under the headline "Bush Loses Ground by Military Families":

Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority concluding the invasion was not worth it, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

The views of the military community, which includes active-duty service members, veterans and their family members, mirror those of the overall adult population, a sign that the strong military endorsement that the administration often pointed to has dwindled in the war's fifth year.

Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush's job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does.

And among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60% say that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost, the same result as all adults surveyed.

A couple of points in response sent along from a friend:

1.) It asks the families “whether the war was worth it.” The relevant question is not revisiting decisions that were made five years ago, but whether now, as 2007 comes to a close, we should continue with a strategy that is working, that has put al-Qaeda on the run, and that has fostered ground-up reconciliation and cooperation in Iraq paving the way for future troop reductions. Most polls show the number of Americans answering yes to that question is growing. The story does not offer this perspective or acknowledge this trend.

2.) The poll found that 60% of families want our troops to come home either right away or within a year (the only other choice was “stay as long as it takes”). There’s a serious omission though, one which would certainly influence the results: that is, under what circumstances they want that to happen. Would they want them to return home with al-Qaeda or Iran in firm control and building terrorist training grounds? Or would they want them to come home after al-Qaeda has been defeated and Iraq has the security it needs to rebuild its battered society and institutions? We all want our soldier to return safely and as soon as possible. When, though, can’t be answered in a vacuum. General Petraeus has outlined the circumstances under which we can begin to reduce our troop levels – and have already begun to do so. These results show how important it is that we continue to define the choices we face and what victory means.

The Dassault Aviation Rafale has had almost a charmed life in the world of fighter aircraft. In the almost quarter century since the aircraft first began its development and then entered into service with the French Armée de l'Air (AdA) no aircraft had been lost until this week.

The Rafale aircraft had taken off on Thursday from the AdA airbase at Saint-Dizier and later crashed in the township of Neuvic, Corrèze, in an uninhabited area. According to the AdA, two aircraft had taken off on a training mission that called for a nighttime head-on intercept at an altitude of 4000 metres. “One of the aircraft successfully completed the training intercept and then went into a dive and plowed straight into the ground,” said a source familiar with the AdA’s investigation. “The speed at which he impacted was so high that there were pieces everywhere on the ground.” The pilot, who was an experienced aviator, did not survive the crash. It is unknown at this time how a pilot could have become disoriented at night at such a high altitude and not have been able to recover before crashing.

The Rafale fighter has long been regarded as one of the most advanced aircraft of its kind. Its flight control system (FCS) is the envy of most other designers and permits the most carefree handling possible. One US pilot who flew the aircraft at Le Bourget pointed out the revolutionary automation that the FCS facilitates. “Coming in for a landing approach there is no need for adjustment of the flap controls--and no controls to adjust them with if you wanted to,” he said. The flaps, canards, and power management controls of the engine are all linked in one of the most sophisticated FCS architectures ever devised.

Dassault had long been famous for its several generations of “Mirage” aircraft, from the Mirage IIIC that had been the workhorse of the Israel Air Force during the 1967 Six-Day War to the latest model, the Mirage 2000-5 MkII that recently ended production. Dassault has manufactured 601 of the Mirage 2000 models, the last of which was delivered to the Hellenic Air Force at a ceremony in Tanagra Air Base in Greece on 23 November.

The Rafale was designed to be the next-generation successor to the Mirage 2000 series, and incorporated a number of new, leading-edge technologies that in some cases were the first of their kind to be on-board a NATO aircraft. It is currently the only military aircraft built by Dassault, but the programme is still profitable and on schedule, which is rare for most military aircraft that call for the introduction of so many new-age systems. Its Thales RBE2 radar is regarded as one of the most advanced in its class and had a unique feature in that its passive array (PESA) antenna can be removed and replaced with an active electronically scanning array (AESA) in one of the easiest and effective upgrades of its kind.

Another impressive aspect of the Rafale is that it was designed from the ground up to be both a land-based and carrier-based aeroplane. Not until more than a decade later when the U.S. armed forces decided to procure the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) would another combat aircraft be developed with both naval and conventional take-off applications as part of the requirement.

As impressive as the aircraft is it has had little success in the export market, sales that the program needs in the long run to keep the production line open. Near-misses in competitions in South Korea and Singapore saw the Rafale muscled out by the US lobby and government-to-government influence that convinced both nations to purchase the Boeing F-15 instead. The Dassault jet also was in line for sale to Saudi Arabia and Morocco, but in both cases the official French arms export agency, the Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (DGA) is regarded as having fumbled the ball at critical moments.

Next week, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will visit Paris--the first such visit from a Libyan head of state to take place in 30 years--and is expected to sign a deal to purchase 10 to 14 Rafales for the Libyan armed forces. Dassault is also involved in a program to upgrade and refurbish the older Mirage F1s that Libya previously had in inventory.

Check aim before you fire, Stanford:

Nearly the entire faculty of Stanford Law School has signed an e-mail to students encouraging those interested in a career in the military to meet recruiters off campus, a move that one Stanford alum argues puts the school at risk of violating the Solomon Amendment....

At issue is an e-mail signed by 80% of the law school faculty, including the dean, Larry Kramer, asking "those students who have a genuine interest in working for the military to contact JAG Corps recruiters directly and to arrange off-campus interviews, rather than express interest in the military's participation in Spring [on campus interviews]."

The e-mail also states that "[b]y meeting with military recruiters off campus, you would permit the law school to keep in force its nondiscrimination policy. More importantly, you would show respect for those of your colleagues whose expression of sexual orientation disqualifies them for military service."

The military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy violates the nondiscrimination policies for job recruiters of nearly all law schools. The Solomon Amendment requires universities to give military recruiters the same access to students as civilian job recruiters or lose federal funding.

The problem with Stanford Law's logic--if you'd like to call it that--is their confusion over who is responsible for Don't Ask, Don't Tell. That's a Congressionally mandated policy, passed during the Clinton years. From the day it was signed into law, the decision over whether or not to admit gays has been out of the Pentagon's hands. The proper arena for this fight is Capitol Hill, so why is Stanford taking it out on the military?

Either they don't understand the dynamics of the policy that they are protesting, or they are knowingly and willingly picking on the little guy: mid-level NCOs who are simply trying to do their jobs.

And to hit this from another angle, Professor Bainbridge of UCLA Law writes:

If you believe the left’s theories about hegemony and hierarchy in education, you’d have to conclude that when the Dean and 80% of the faculty send such an email to students, it sends a signal to those faculty and students who support either the Solomon Amendment and/or “don’t ask, don’t tell” that their views are marginal and illegitimate. It tells students and faculty of the right “what their elders and betters want” and that “they’ve got to kiss ass and toe the line.”

Obviously, I’m not suggesting that faculty should hide their political views under the proverbial bushel (well, duh!). I am suggesting that collective actions by faculty on controversial political issues needs to be undertaken with great care. I’m also suggesting that there is a double standard among many law school faculty who somehow manage to simultaneously bring this sort of pressure on students while embracing the left’s theories of hegemony and power in education.

HT: Powerline

No, not really. From the Air & Space Power Journal:

First, the USAF has operated with some success in COIN environments before but has lost the peculiar capacities associated with COIN following drawdowns or conversions after each conflict. This is an unsurprising result, given the fact that budgets for unused tools are a luxury not easily afforded in any era. But the extended lead times required to essentially relearn COIN each time it becomes necessary have significantly affected the USAF’s ability to effectively contribute early in the fight. Second, we need to change the USAF’s mind-set from fighting COIN to enabling a partner to fight COIN. In the absence of every other alternative, the USAF may actually become the fighter in COIN, but even at that point, the service should adopt the mind-set that it will conduct a holding action while the supported partner spins up its own capacity. As a practical note, the USAF simply does not have the size to function as the air service for every nation it fights alongside, even if it sounds like a good idea (it is not). Winning strategies are conducted by, with, and through the supported partner. Furthermore, barring annihilation options, no substantial history exists to support the idea that any outside power can win an inside war.

Bottom line, the Air Force still can't be bothered with counter-insurgency ops. If they do stand up a wing of COIN birds, it will be to create a logistics infrastructure around the new airframe so that other nations will buy it, employ it, and do the icky ground attack mission so that the Air Force doesn't have to.

I'm starting think that only way to get Blue-suiters serious about the ground attack role is to offer fixed-wing combat aircraft to the Army.

HT: Defense Tech

Update: An interesting response from one of our readers:

I'm afraid you've mised the point of the Air & Space Power Journal article that you critiqued in your blog today.

The article is focused on the fact that airpower is a critical piece of COIN strategy, but that it will always be subordinate in importance to the supported commander - which is almost ALWAYS the US Army or Marine Corps.

In short, the author's point is that airpower CANNOT win the war by itself, which is an awknowlegement that should be heralded by those who mistakenly believe that the AF thinks it is the be-all-end-all service.

Your assertion that the AF doesn't care for the "icky" ground attack mission is simply laughable. Since 9/11, the F-15C and AWACS communities have been (rightly) marginalized as we focus more and more resources to the key COIN missions of ISR and ground attack. We've weaponized ISR platforms like the Predator, revamped the budget to field the Reaper, retrofitted ancient A-10s to carry GPS-guided weapons, etc.

Your implied suggestion that we should create dedicated COIN aircraft is baseless. Any aircraft with an ISR, strike or logistics capability can and is being used for COINOPS. You don't necessarily need new airframes, you simply need to properly use the ones we've got. Do you have any fact-based criticism of the way we've been employing our aircraft? We have more strike aircraft active and available each day in both Iraq and Afghanistan than there are requests for airstrikes.

NOBODY on the ground is complaining that they can't get CAS when they need it.

As an Air Force officer with 30 months in the Middle East (out of my 16 years of service), I'm not sure whether to be insulted or amused by your blog entry today. Your heart is in the right place, but I think you misunderstand both the facts of and the mentality of the Air Force in the conduct of this war.

Respectfully
Lt Col [withheld] USAF

Noonan Responds:
While I agree that the Air Force has moved in the right direction, they still have a long way to go. I've heard a fair share of grumbling from ground pounders about the close air support that the Air Force provides. Either they were not getting the support they needed in a timely fashion, or there were friendly fire issues. Of course it should be mentioned that complaining about the Air Force is a right bestowed on the grunt by the gods themselves--it's what they do--and often times the groaning isn't exactly accurate.

The problem with the Air Force approach to COIN lies in their acquisitions strategy. The price of one F-22 can buy almost a full squadron of Warthogs or Reapers, platforms far more suited to supporting the infantry. Still, I understand the good Colonel's frustration here. Today's Air Force is overtasked and underfunded. Budget cuts have forced them to close base after base, and trim manpower by a whopping 40,000 Airmen. They have to remain strong against a resurgent Russia and occasionally hostile China, while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, maintaining dominance in space, proficiency in global mobility, combat search and rescue, close air support, and dozens of other secondary missions.

Congress owes it to our military to fund all services in a manner commensurate with the wars that they are fighting. But, as long as the Air Force is forced to choose between fighting a hypothetical war against the Chinese or Russians and the actual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, COIN ops should be their number one priority.

In the end though, I think that the Colonel and I can agree that this is a distinction that the Air Force shouldn't have to make.

Perhaps in an attempt to balance out their criticisms of the war in Iraq and seem 'strong on defense,' Congressional Democrats have spoken a lot about military readiness. Two subcommittee chairs on the House Armed Services Committee recently introduced a resolution to address the impending 'national security crisis:'

“While the Congress has been unable to agree on policy related to Iraq in veto-proof numbers, we should all be able to agree on one thing: the U.S. military constitutes our first and last line of protection – and they are in a world of hurt,” Ortiz said in a joint statement accompanying the resolution.

“Our military’s ground forces are broken by the ongoing operations, particularly in Iraq, and we are watching the making of a full blown national security crisis,” Ortiz added.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO)--who commands more respect among Republicans than perhaps any other Democrat--has made readiness his top priority. John Murtha talks frequently about 'readiness,' even if he's largely trying to use it as a political weapon against the president.

All this talk about readiness makes it ironic that Congressional Democrats are forcing the Pentagon to spend readiness funds to fight the war on terror:

DoD is using its readiness funding, or operations and maintenance accounts, which typically pay for training, supplies, and maintenance of weapons and equipment.

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates requested to shift $3.7 billion from Navy and Air Force payrolls and an $800 million excess in the working capital fund to Army and Marine Corps operations...

“In mid-February, the Army will run out of all of their O&M funding for the entire year, because they will have spent it on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. That will require some fairly significant and harsh actions by the department, specifically the Army. And the Marine Corps is only about a month behind them,” Whitman said.

Military installations soon will have to shut down operations and furlough civilian employees, terminate contracts, and move into what Whitman called a “warm” status.

If you want to get out of a hole, the first rule is stop digging. Democrats claim that readiness is an impeding crisis, yet at the same time require that the Defense Department eat the seed corn. Worse still: they complain that the Pentagon could be spending even more of it than they intend to. Once again: if Congressional Democrats say that they fully intend the Pentagon to spend money to fight the war, why don't they give DoD the money it needs.

The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization has also run out of funds:

“We’re out of (funding) new stuff now; we’re going to have trouble sustaining current contracts after the first of December,” Meigs said...

“What I can’t fund today will not go into the field next summer or next fall,” Meigs said. “It’ll be delayed by the amount of time we wait for funding...”

In Afghanistan, Meigs said, the Taliban are making a full-fledged effort to get back into the game. IED attacks are up, and the number of effective attacks is up as well, he said. The attacks are more lethal, he explained, because soldiers conduct more dismounted patrols in Afghanistan. “A suicide bomber with a vest is more lethal in Afghanistan. It’s easier to get closer to the troops,” he said.

Just remember though: Congressional Democrats may be telling the Pentagon to spend readiness funds to fight the war, and they may have cut off money to fight the number one killer of our troops in Iraq, but they really support the troops.

Robert Farley writes:

For the last two years, we have justified putting a missile defense system in Eastern Europe explicitly around the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. In addition to the extraordinary financial costs, this project has resulted in increased Russian hostility to the United States and to Russia's neighbors. And are we now to believe that this expensive and unpopular system is justified by the need to protect Poland from Iranian ballistic missiles armed with conventional warheads?

First off, I'd hardly concede the premise. Even if the NIE is correct, the report states only that the Iranians have put their nuke program "on hold." The threat could be reconstituted in short order, and missile defense, once halted, cannot. In addition, there's nothing like a clear cut case of cause and effect here. The Russians are hostile for any number of reasons, but vis-à-vis missile defense, surely the Russians don't believe it would offer a threat to their deterrent capability in the short- or even the medium-term. It would be decades before a missile defense system had the capacity to hit hundreds of targets at the same time, discerning real warheads from dummies, etc. And finally, liberals fundamentally misunderstand the effect of deploying a missile defense system--it would decrease the likelihood of conflict, not increase it. Missile defense would provide decision makers with one more option in a world where options are the scarcest commodity.

Imagine the U.S. intelligence community, or more likely their Israeli counterpart, is able to determine with some degree of certainty that the Iranians are mere months away from an operational nuclear capability. Right now, they'd have two options: bomb or do nothing, aka diplomacy. But if those leaders could have some confidence in their ability to shoot down an Iranian missile, wouldn't this strengthen the argument for doing nothing--the argument Farley would most certainly be making. As it is, the American people would likely demand military action, but missile defense would give liberals a fall-back position--'it doesn't matter if they build a nuclear missile, we can shoot it down.' I'm not sure how persuasive that argument would be in practice, but it's a lot more persuasive than 'let's kill missile defense and if the Iranians build a nuclear missile, we'll just do nothing about it.'

Noonan Responds:

The Russians are hostile for any number of reasons, but vis-à-vis missile defense, surely the Russians don't believe it would offer a threat to their deterrent capability in the short- or even the medium-term.

I agree with the rest, but this bit...not so much. Look at it from a nuclear strategy perspective. If a nuclear war were to break out, however unlikely, and we had a massive exchange over the pole, the United States might be capable of knocking out..what? Ten Russian missiles? Logic would dictate that we go after the Satans, the mod 5 ones with ten RVs per sortie, which--if we hit them in their boost phase--gives us the opportunity to knock 100 Russian warheads out of their targeting equation. That’s significant.

The prospect of the United States gaining such an advantage is sure to antagonize the Russians. And it explains why the Russians are reasserting their bomber capabilities.

From the Los Angeles Times, At 61, doctor joins Navy to honor his son:

When Marines came to his door a year ago to tell him that his eldest son had been killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff reacted like any father: with confusion, devastation, then numbness.

Nathan Krissoff was so young, a lover of poetry, a champion athlete, a leader whose maturity and selflessness had impressed fellow Marines.

The father in Krissoff found no resolution to his grief. The physician in him did.

At an age when many people think about retirement, Krissoff decided earlier this year that he would enlist as a doctor. He was 60 years old, decades above the military's preferred demographic....

But his age was a sticking point. His application bogged down in the military bureaucracy. He thought things might be hopeless.

Then, in late August, Krissoff and his wife, Christine, were invited to meet with President Bush after his speech to the American Legion convention in Reno. At the end of the hourlong meeting, Bush asked Krissoff and other relatives of service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan whether there was anything he could do for them. Krissoff mentioned his desire to enlist....

"Suddenly, I got all the support I needed from the bureaucracy to get this done," Hopkins said.

On Nov. 17, Krissoff, now 61, was commissioned a lieutenant commander in the Navy reserves, assigned to the medical corps. Rove sent flowers and a note of congratulations.

Bill Krissoff sailed with us to Alaska aboard the most recent WEEKLY STANDARD cruise. We just wanted to salute him and wish him the best in his new career.

The UK's internal war over defense spending is heating up:

Proposals to slice up to £15bn from the defence budget over the next decade have been drawn up by the Treasury, provoking bitter rows within Whitehall and the cabinet at a time when the military are under enormous pressure to meet commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Proposed cuts include:

Cutting the number of new Astute nuclear powered submarines to be built at Barrow from eight to as few as four.

Canceling orders for the seventh and eighth Type 45 frigate at Portsmouth or diverting the ships from the Royal Navy by selling them to the Malaysian navy

Scrapping the third tranche of Eurofighters if BAE Systems can be persuaded to waive cancellation charges in return for the government diverting the order to Saudi Arabia

Postponing an order for 3,000 new armoured vehicles to be built in Newcastle to replace ageing Land Rovers which are vulnerable to roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While I find the idea of slashing your defense budget while your military is engaged in two theaters of war ridiculous, I will concede that the Eurofighter is a logical cut. It's a Cold War legacy system, and while Russian strategic bomber flights are stepping up, that threat doesn't match up with the planned procurement figures. The RAF can afford to wait for the Joint Strike Fighter.

Cutting the armored vehicles, however, is madness. Britain's current workhorse, the Land Rover, doesn't even offer the same basic level of protection as our unarmored Humvees. With Her Majesty's soldiers dying from IEDs and RPG fire, looking upon upgraded armor as "expendable" defies belief.

Axing two of the planned Type 45 Frigates is also questionable. The planned frigate fleet is already half that of the original number of Type 42s, lending a certain credibility to the argument that the mighty Royal Navy is now nothing more than a coastal defense force.

Labour's grasp of the UK's strategic commitments is dubious, at best. Most of their canned statements on the sad state of the Royal Army and Navy have more to do with the preservation of manufacturing jobs in their districts than with the national defense. They believe that the end of minor policing actions in Northern Ireland and Bosnia can somehow alleviate the stress placed on the military by their obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as absolve them of their responsibility to modernize the force. The strength of Tony Blair's leadership aside, in the decade that Labour has dominated British politics, Her Majesty's Armed Forces have become a sad, hollow shell of their former selves, creating a crisis dire enough for the MoD to admit that the British Navy would struggle simply to "fight a war."

That's a mighty fall for what was once a proud seafaring empire.

From the "Hey we're still relevant!" files comes the Air Force's airpower summary report.

SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Coalition airpower integrated with coalition ground forces in Iraq and the International Security Assistance Force troops in Afghanistan during operations Dec. 1, according to Combined Air and Space Operations Center officials here.

In Afghanistan, an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle employed a guided bomb unit-31 against a bunker in Deh Rawod. Coalition forces were engaging enemy combatants who were using the bunker. The on-scene joint terminal attack controller confirmed the strike was successful.

During the same mission, the aircrew successfully performed a show of force with flares to deter further enemy activities in the area.

An enemy bunker and machine gun positions were struck with GBU-38s dropped from an Air Force B-1B Lancer in Deh Rawod. The strike met the desired affect. The mission was declared a success by the JTAC.

While I'm a bit skeptical of the effect that "dropping flares" has on an enemy that has endured six years of cluster bombs, PGMs, and the United States Marines, the thought of using a B1 bomber in a CAS role never fails to impress me. Close air support was never the aircraft's intended use, so while it might not be the optimal ground support platform. you can't help but to admire the Air Force's adaptability. The F-111, our old medium-range bomber, would have been a superb aircraft for this type of mission (F-111s dropped roughly half the ordinance used in Desert Storm), but we got rid of it in the mid-90s. Shame.

Back to adaptability, I do wish that the AF would demonstrate the same flexibility in their press releases. These robotic airpower summary reports can put even a diehard aircraft junky like myself to sleep. Somewhere along the way, the Air Force developed an obtuse, corporate way of releasing information to the public. They've cleaned up the "bomb them back to the stone age" language of Curtis LeMay, and replaced it with a more politically correct, sanitized methodology. Great way to avoid controversy, but also a great way to avoid readership.

Crazy, alpha-male talk and the F-111. Two legends that the Zoomies should have never parted ways with.

In a superb piece from the Wall Street Journal, Michael M. Phillips illustrates just how profoundly the Army's new COIN evolution has transformed the force.

A natural-born insurgent, Sgt. First Class Jacob Stockdill was brimming with malicious suggestions when a group of American soldiers and Afghan security men sat down last month to plot their own defeat.

"I can put a guy out on a ridge with an AK-47 and have him take a couple of shots," Sgt. Stockdill proposed to fellow students at the Army's new Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy. "The Americans will shoot back with their big guns and disrupt the whole valley.... Being an insurgent would be so easy." Capt. Chris Rowe finished his thought: "All you have to do is not screw up, and, even if you do, you just blame it on the Americans."

Six years into the Afghan war, the Army has decided its troops on the ground still don't understand well enough how to battle the Taliban insurgency. So since the spring, groups of 60 people have been attending intensive, five-day sessions in plywood classrooms in the corner of a U.S. base here, where they learn to think like a Taliban and counterpunch like a politician.

The academy's principal message: The war that began to oust a regime has evolved into a popularity contest where insurgents and counterinsurgents vie for public support and the right to rule. The implicit critique: Many U.S. and allied soldiers still arrive in the country well-trained to kill, but not to persuade.

That soldiers are training to win a "popularity contest" demonstrates the depth of the institutional shift in Army thinking, as the subtle intricacies inherent in both the Afghani and Iraqi insurgencies force the Pentagon to reevaluate even its most elementary of doctrines. Phillips elaborates on the complexity of this new fight:

Col. Najeeb, the Afghan intelligence officer, complained to American classmates that coalition troops sometimes are so nervous about being hit that they mistrust all Afghans, including the security forces. He told of being sent to scout out a village before a coalition sweep. As he left the village on a motorcycle, NATO troops opened fire on him, even though he waved ID proving he is a government agent. He never got close enough to warn the coalition soldiers of the ambush that awaited them in the village, he said.

His classmate Capt. Nick Talbot, a 27-year-old from Washington, D.C., countered with a story about a car bomb in September in Nangarhar Province near Pakistan. U.S. troops arrived to find a man in a police uniform unconscious on the ground. When they did a routine body search for any unseen injuries, they discovered he was wearing a vest filled with explosives. The man woke up, but was unable to detonate the bomb before the soldiers killed him. "It can make you very hesitant to work very closely" with Afghan security forces, Capt. Talbot confessed to Col. Najeeb.

To be sure, Afghanistan is a geopolitical Rubik's Cube. Solving it is going to take time. The same goes for Iraq. But, despite common difficulties, one can't help but to admire the Army's remarkable comfort in adapting itself to the challenges faced in both theaters. Though they have a ways to go, their journey from a clunky, immobile Cold War bureaucracy to an agile, flexible fighting force has been nothing short of amazing.

I've heard rumblings in the defense community that the India was going to start self-manufacturing defense equipment, and buy up what they couldn't produce on their own from the West. I guess injecting your military with legions of cheap Russian goods is a tough habit to break:

Despite Russia's propensity to squeeze more money out of India in ongoing arms contracts, it continues to maintain its stranglehold over the huge market here. India inked yet another massive contract with Russia on Friday, worth a whopping Rs 4,900 crore, to import another 347 T-90S main-battle tanks.

These 347 tanks will be in addition to the 310 T-90S tanks already imported by India, at a cost of over Rs 3,625 crore, under a February 2001 contract. Moreover, the Heavy Vehicles Factory at Avadi has already commenced the planned production of another 1,000 T-90S tanks under transfer of technology from Russia. Defence ministry sources said that while 124 tanks under the new agreement will be imported in "fully-formed condition", the rest 223 will come in "semi-knocked down condition" to be reassembled at Avadi. After payment of the first installment, Russia will supply the first 124 tanks in 29 months, with the rest to follow 11 months later.

While I understand India's proclivity towards Russian hardware, which dates back to their quasi-socialist post-colonial government, I'm a bit surprised that New Delhi isn't taking advantage of its new strategic partnership with the United States. American defense firms are generally more reliable than their Russian counterparts, and in most cases our gear is superior. Ticking off Ivan might be pushing them in the right direction, though.

India's newfound bonhomie with the United States has not gone well with its old friend Russia. Moscow is conveying its displeasure by hiking the price of already delayed defence deals with India. It has not only increased the annual escalation cost of weapon system from 2.55 percent to 5 percent, it is also demanding an additional $1.2 billion to deliver the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov.

India is flying in Red Flag this year, which apparently is the primary catalyst for the Moscow-New Delhi spat. So NATO gets to train its pilots to engage all the latest Russian fighters (largely flown by our enemies), and Moscow reacts by driving India's defense industry right into our waiting hands. Hook, line, sinker, Ivan.

On 2 November 2007, an F-15C Eagle air superiority fighter of the Missouri Air National Guard disintegrated in mid-air, the pilot managing to eject safely from the stricken aircraft. As recounted here on 6 November, the cause of the accident was not immediately apparent, and the entire fleet of F-15s was grounded for precautionary inspections, pending completion of the accident investigation. An astute reader with hands-on experience believed that de-bonding honeycomb structures on the tail and ailerons could be at fault, with potentially grave implications for the airworthiness of the entire F-15 fleet. As it turned out, there were systemic problems, but from an entirely different cause.

The precautionary inspections having failed to reveal any systemic faults in the aircraft, on 21 November the F-15s were cleared to fly once again. According to a message sent by General John D.W. Corley, Commander, Air Combat Command (ACC) to all F-15 pilots and their families:

We evaluated the grounded fleet. First, we focused on the F-15Es. They are the newest F-15s and have been exposed to less stress. They are structurally different than the A-D models. Problems identified during years of A-D model usage were designed "out" of the E-model. Given these differences, and after consultation with Warner Robins ALC and the AIB, we returned the F-15E fleet to flying status following successful inspections.

Next, we concentrated on the remainder of the grounded fleet. The AIB is now focused on the area just aft of the cockpit and slightly forward of the inlets. Warner Robins ALC mandated a thorough inspection and repair of all structural components in this area. I have directed each F-15 aircraft be inspected and cleared before returning to operational status. Today, ACC issued an FCIF and Warner Robins ALC issued an Operational Supplemental Tech Order to further direct and guide your pre-flight and post-flight actions.

However, on 27 November, analysis of the accident investigation revealed what USAF Air Combat Command called "possible fleet-wide airworthiness problems." As detailed in an official ACC press release,

The new findings from the Accident Investigation Board indicate possible fleet-wide airworthiness problems with F-15A/B/C and D aircraft. These findings, based on a metallurgical analysis of the mishap aircraft, have drawn attention to the F-15's upper longerons near the canopy of the aircraft that appear to have cracked and failed. The longerons are major structural components that run along the length and side of the aircraft.

Although the longeron area was covered in general by previous inspections as a result of the Nov. 2 mishap, technical experts with the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Georgia, are recommending a specific inspection technique for the suspect area based on the yesterday's findings.

Manufacturer simulations have indicated a catastrophic failure could result in this particular area. In addition, cracks were discovered along the same longeron area during two recent inspections of F-15C aircraft. These aircraft were immediately grounded based upon the inspection findings and are awaiting further engineering instructions.

To understand the seriousness of this finding, one must understand something of how the F-15 was designed. For ease of manufacturing and maintenance, the aircraft is constructed in seven major subassemblies: the cockpit and forward fuselage; the fuselage center section; the engine compartment and aft fuselage; the wings; and the tail assembly. These are held together with a series of high-strength titanium bolts. This method of construction allows for the rapid maintenance and repair of the aircraft (e.g., a damaged wing can be unbolted and replaced with the wing of another plane), as well as allowing for distributed manufacturing of the subassemblies.