War, the military, COIN and stuff

Is Future Combat Systems Actually Making Progress?

At the Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment (JEFX) in this past April, run by the Air Force Global Cyberspace Integration Center, some critical technologies for the Army’s Future Combat Systems program were put to the test. According to Army FCS spokesman Paul Mehney, the initial tests—which sought to put FCS’s networking technologies through their paces, proved successful overall.

“Our role was to provide the ground maneuver network portion,” Mehney says, noting that the Army was able to take its “Build 1” software—which is part of the communications software that will allow FCS to communicate across the network—and use it to move images and data from sensors, whether they were unmanned aerial vehicles or ground sensors, to Air Force assets, which then allowed the Air Force to conduct fire missions based on near real-time intelligence from Unattended Ground Sensors operated by the Army. 

(The Build 1 software is scheduled to go live during FCS’s Spinout 1 in the 2011 time frame.)

While the Army and Air Force can obviously already communicate with one another, historically there has been no real way to move images over the network between the two services, or if it is done in special circumstances it’s not necessarily in real time. But the tests in April allowed the Army’s network and combat developers to take a look at how the FCS network can be used in future applications where there’s a call for a joint fire mission. According to Mehney, “it also allowed our combat developers and engineers to take a look at that Build 1 network and limited Build 2 which is ongoing right now, to take lessons learned at JEFX to say “OK, how can we better manipulate development of the network for joint missions?””

Read the rest at Defense Technology International ...

Canada going for it....

Yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he’s launching a plan to more than double his country’s defense budget over the next two decades—to about C$30 billion ($30 billion) a year. As part of this, The Great White North will also increase its overall troop numbers to from 65,000 to 70,000 regular soldiers and go from 24,000 to 30,000 reservists, for an increase of 11,000 troops overall.

Much of this money will go toward replacing the country’s aging fleets of vehicles, ships and fighters:

Six of the military's core fleets, including destroyers, frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, fixed-wing and rescue aircraft, fighter aircraft and land combat vehicles, will need to be replaced over the next 20 years, Harper said. That's in addition to new and upgraded equipment purchases already announced, according to the prime minister.

Canada plans to acquire 65 fighter jets to replace its aging fleet of CF-18 planes, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said at the same press conference, according to Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for Harper.

The Vancouver Sun reports that “part of the plan will be the immediate allocation of money to buy six medium-lift helicopters to support troops in Afghanistan. The government is also purchasing 100 Leopard tanks, armoured vehicles and devices to protect troops from roadside bombs.”

Read the rest at Defense Technology International

Two new posts

Over at ARES:

Armed Services Committee Vs. Contractors: 

There's another little tidbit in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the 2009 defense authorization bill that will surely stir up debate. The Committee included two provisions in the bill related to civilian contractors working for the military. According to the Army Times, the provisions are:

One, effective when the bill is signed, would prohibit contract employees from performing “inherently governmental” security operations, including situations involving combat or extremely hazardous duties. The second would prohibit contract employees from conducting interrogations of detainees during or after hostilities.

Good luck getting those two past the House version of the bill and the White House...

 

FCS Lives to Fight Another Day : 

It’s nothing to get too excited about—indeed, the real fight is yet to come—but the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday finished up its work on the fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill, and as part of the package, gave the green light to the Army's $3.9 billion request for the Future Combat Systems program.

The Great Man theory of history

Aden Hashi Ayro, one of Al Qaeda’s top agents in East Africa and the leader of the Islamist comeback and the leader of the Islamist comeback in , was killed Thursday morning by an American airstrike, according to Somali officials.

Mr. Ayro was one of the most feared and notorious figures in Somalia, a short, wispy man believed to be in his 30s who had gone from lowly car washer to top terrorist suspect blamed for a string of atrocities, including ripping up an Italian graveyard, killing a female BBC journalist and planning suicide attacks all across Somalia.

Somalia officials said his death could be a key turning point in defeating the Islamists, who have seized several towns in recent weeks, and in bringing peace to the country.

“This will definitely weaken the Shebab,” said Mohamed Aden, consul for Somalia’s embassy in Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya, who confirmed the developments. “This will help with reconciliation. You can’t imagine how many Somalis are saying, ‘Yes, this is the one.’ The reaction is so good.

That's from the New York Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman this morning. I can’t say I know much about Ayro, but one thing sticks out in the above passage—the claim that his death will weaken the Islamist militia in Somalia. Seems that we’ve heard this line before…like back in 2006 when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by American Special Forces in Iraq.

Like Ayro, lots of people got excited that Zarqawi’s death would bring al Qaeda in Iraq to its knees, which is a fundamental misreading of the nature of cell-based groups like al Qaeda, where leadership is dispersed, and whose members rely more on a shared set of beliefs to keep them going, rather than the leadership of one man. Back when Zarqawi was killed, the Washington Post crowed that “The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could mark a turning point for al-Qaeda and the global jihadist movement...” The Hertiage Foundation chimed in that Zarwaqi’s death was “a major turning point in the war on terrorism. The course of history is shaped by major events, and this is one of them. The elimination of one of the world’s most brutal, barbaric terrorists will be a huge blow to al-Qaeda and its murderous cohorts…” 

And we all know how those predictions turned out. 

So while Somali government officials can claim victory, I’m more apt to believe the words of a guy who speaks toward the end of Gettleman’s piece: Mohammed Uluso, a leader of the

Ayr clan, of which Ayo was a member. Uluso doesn’t think that Ayo’s death will have much of an effect on the Somali Islamic movement, saying, according to Gettleman, "that he thinks the Shebab isn’t done yet, since many young Somalis see the Shebab as a “heroic cause” because it stands up to the Americans.

“The Shebab won’t just disappear,” Mr. Uluso said.