War, the military, COIN and stuff

Violence Along the Arizona Border

Last night, just north of Nogales, Ariz., Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was shot and killed after coming in contact with several suspicious men near Rio Rico, Ariz.  Four suspects have been taken into custody while another is still at large, according to the Customs and Border Patrol.

Back in September I had the chance to spend a day with Border Patrol agents around Nogales, doing a story both on what they contend with on a daily basis, as well as how they use sensing technologies to help them do their jobs.

The area around Nogales is part of the Tucson Sector, which is the most active alone the entire border. Covering only 262 mi. of border, the sector still managed to account for 1 million lb. of marijuana seized in Fiscal 2010, and 203,000 illegal border crossers detained. Tucson also has the distinction of being the test bed for the Homeland Security Department’s huge and controversial SBInet program, part of its larger Secure Border Initiative. SBI was initiated in 2005 to add fencing, paved and graded roads and install SBInet technologies such as radar, sensors, cameras and other communications gear along the border.

Five years on, and $800 million later, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered a freeze on the program pending a top-to-bottom review. At the time, nine towers in the Tucson Sector had been completed, and by late October six more were conducting limited operations in the Ajo Sector. Still, the agents on the ground loved the gear, which gives them real-time access to radar and camera feeds, and increases both their safety, as well as their response time.

Read the whole thing at ARES

Navy, Marines Game Out Their Future

U.S. Navy delivering humanitarian supplies ashore in Colombia. (Pic: Paul McLeary)

With the Marine Corps leadership itching to get “expeditionary” again and start placing their Marines back on U.S. Naval vessels after a decade fighting in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan, the sea services are starting from square one.

On December 11, the Navy and Marine Corps kicked off Bold Alligator, a simulation that marks the largest joint fleet simulated amphibious exercise in the last 10 years. Brig. Gen. Christopher S. Owens of the II Marine Expeditionary Force, the Marine component of Exercise Bold Alligator, said in a conference call last week that while it's the first brigade-level amphibious exercise in quite some time, “it's also a first step in our revitalization of our amphibious proficiency with larger or brigade-size units” after a decade of kicking sand.

The synthetic exercise—a real, physical exercise is planned for 2012—will be run out of Norfolk from two amphibious assault ships, the USS Bataan and USS Iwo Jima, and will simulate a “hybrid threat environment where U.S. forces have been requested by friendly nations to help bring a measure of security and stability to the area,” Owens said. “With one nation, we'll support their fight against an externally-supported insurgency and repel foreign invaders from within their borders; at the same time, in a neighboring country, we will likely conduct a noncombatant evacuation operation of U.S. citizens in the midst of sectarian violence that is related to the more conventional conflict next door.”

Read the rest at ARES...

Tough Cuts: Marines Have Choices to Make

In the December issue of DTI, Kimberly Johnson, Mike Fabey and I have a story about some of the USMC's big ticket programs, and the challenges they'll face in staying afloat in the upcoming budget squeeze:

Many in and out of the Pentagon thought the EFV was on its way to the junk heap by mid-2010. Gates had the program in his sights and no one was sure what kind of support Amos would lend. Like other programs that have been decades in development, the EFV became a target for defense industry reformers who questioned the relevance of equipment they say is more suited to warfare from another era.

For example, it is designed to carry a large enough gun to engage hostile armored vehicles but not—in its basic form—to withstand large mines or improvised explosive devices.

The kind of amphibious assault landings for which the EFV was initially designed no longer make sense, critics added. But Amos presents a new idea of what constitutes an amphibious landing. In his first planning guidance, released in October, he cites global disasters in Haiti and Pakistan that required the deployment of 5,000 Marines from seven amphibious ships. Amos also made clear in his guidance that he was for anything that bolstered the Marines’ expeditionary capabilities.

“The Marine Corps is America’s expeditionary force in readiness,” he wrote in the guidance, which mentions “expeditionary” 15 times. “To a Marine, the term ‘expeditionary’ is more than a slogan; it is our state of mind. It drives the way we organize our forces, how we train and what kind of equipment we buy.” The defining expeditionary tool now is the EFV.

Read the whole thing here.

Marines Sending in the Tanks

There has been some skepticism over the Marine Corps’ decision to send a company of M1 Abrams tanks to join the battle in southern Afghanistan, but the use of tanks in a counterinsurgency in general, and in Afghanistan in particular, is hardly new.

In Afghanistan, the Canadians and the Danes have used their tanks to great effect--and Canadian Army Maj. Trevor Cadieu has written a detailed acocunt on how tanks became an integral part of the Canadian fight in Kandahar—the place U.S. Marines are fighting now. In December 2006, the Canadians deployed a squadron of Leopard C2 tanks to Kandahar, and he Major writes that “after deploying forward… the tank squadron and armoured engineers featured prominently in all major combat operations undertaken by the Canadian BG… Since May 2007, the tank squadron has fought almost constantly alongside Canadian and Afghan infantry in close combat with the Taliban.”

The Canadians say that they’ve found so much success in Afghanistan with the German-made Leopard tank that they completely revised plans for the structure of their ground forces. In 2001, the Canadians decided not to replace their aging fleet of Leopard I tanks—the plan was to simply ride them until they died and then transition to a lighter force structure using the Stryker-like LAV infantry carriers as their heaviest piece of equipment. It wasn’t long before the heavy fighting and the toll that powerful roadside bombs Canadian troops encountered in southern Afghanistan changed this calculus, however, prompting the Ottawa government to kick off a “crash program” to buy surplus German and Dutch Leopard II tanks, which began arriving in Afghanistan in 2008.

Please  read the rest of this post over at ARES

The Navy's Submarine Problem

My colleague Mike Fabey had a piece up yesterday about a new Congressional Research Service report that lays out some inconvenient facts about the future of the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet.

In short, the Navy doesn’t seem to have figured out a way to align its stated need for 48 submarines with its build schedule for new Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), or its yearly shipbuilding budget.

The Navy’s so-called 30-year shipbuilding plan, as updated for Fiscal 2009 and earlier years, showed the SSN force recovering to 48 boats by the early 2030s, the CRS pointed out. But the latest update indicated that benchmark may not be made after all. “The Navy’s new Fiscal 2011 30-year (fiscal years 2011-2040) plan shows the SSN remaining below 48 boats through 2040. The change is due to a reduction in planned SSN procurements,” CRS reported. “The Fiscal 2009 plan included procurement of 53 SSNs over 30 years, while the Fiscal 2011 plan includes procurement of 44 SSNs over 30 years.”

The reduction in SSN procurements in the Fiscal 2011 plan, the CRS reported, may be due in large part to the planned procurement of 12 next-generation SSBNs (nuclear-powered strategic ballistic-missile submarines) in Fiscal 2019-2033. “The Fiscal 2009 plan did not account for the cost of these 12 SSBNs, while the Fiscal 2011 does, apparently causing reductions in planned procurement rates for SSNs and other types of ships during that period,” the CRS reported.

Read the rest at ARES...

Rising Powers, and American 'Declinist' Paranoia

In coming years, the United States will most likely come to rely on “non-traditional” allies and partners such as India and Brazil to cemenet its regional influence as domestic defense budgets shrink and global economic power becomes more diffuse. So says Eric Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Bush administration, who presented a new CSBA report yesterday titled Understanding America’s Contested Primacy (PDF!)--a look at whether or not the United States is facing a period of decline.

His answer? Despite many obvious fiscal challenges like heavy domestic entitlement spending, the global economic downturn, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is in no real danger of seeing its global primacy slip any time in the near future. Americans have been worrying about decline since the Puritans fretted the decay of the shining city on the hill, Edelman said, adding that concerns over eroding American primacy have come about every decade or so since the end of the Second World War.

Starting with the Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons and the launch of Sputnik and continuing through the fallout from the Vietnam war, the recessions of the late 70s and 80s, talk of the end of the nation state in the late 90s, all the way to the “declinism” talk of today surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rise of economic centers in India, China and Brazil, the theme has been the same: decline is right around the corner.

Edelman finds this kind of talk wanting. Besides, if you think things are rough here, he says, you should take a look at the other guys.....

Please read the rest over at ARES...

Navy's Adm. Roughead on Tour

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead has been out and about this week with an ambitious agenda talking up everything from cutting $28 billion in budgetary bloat over the next five years, to adding 32 new ships to the Navy’s inventory by 2024, to using more biofuels, to doubling down on unmanned assets.

It has taken the sea service some time to rebound after being publicly shamed by Secretary of Defense Gates last spring, when he told a roomful of Naval officers and journalists that “you don’t necessarily need a billion-dollar guided missile destroyer to chase down and deal with a bunch of teenage pirates wielding AK-47s and RPGs,” and called into question the need for eleven carrier groups. But Roughead is back, and a few days after talking up the possibilities that the concept of offshore balancing holds for giving the Navy more of a role in future conflicts, and laying out plans for a “greener” more energy efficient service in the near future, the Admiral has released his CNO Guidance for 2011.

The guidance states that “we will emphasize the affordable production of multi-mission ships and aircraft, [and] capabilities required not desired.” In other words, we’re not just doing this because we can. But when it comes to shipbuilding, the numbers don’t necessarily look great. As ARES noted recently, the Navy’s shipbuilding plan can only be pulled off successfully if all of the planned Littoral Combat Ships and Joint High Speed Vessels are able to be constructed on time and within certain budgetary constraints. The two variants are set to account for about 25 percent of the Navy’s planned 313-ship fleet, and the success of the LCS program in particular is hardly a done deal.

Read the rest at ARES......

 

 

Think Tank Steel Cage Match

There’s a fight brewing between two groups of rival Washington think tanks with the first punches having been thrown yesterday, with predictably tepid results.

In this corner we have the Defending Defense Project, which brings together fellow conservative ideological travelers AEI, the Heritage Foundation, and the Foreign Policy Initiative, for the purpose of pushing for larger defense budgets. “Since the end of the Cold War,” a document released yesterday states, “administrations of both political parties have underfunded the military, first harvesting a “peace dividend” by reducing the size of the force and then repeatedly postponing investments needed to replace worn out equipment and preserve the technological advantages that have been a traditional source of American strength.”

During the document’s rollout yesterday on Capitol Hill, Thomas Donnelly of AEI initially sought to portray the group as being uninterested in politics, but followed up by explaining how the document is actually meant to have its impact “after November” when presumably more republicans are in Congress. Donnelly was joined in a panel discussion by Mackenzie Eaglen of the Heritage Foundation and Gary J. Schmitt of AEI moderated by Rachel Hoff of the Foreign Policy Initiative.

The slim, 9-page document the group released yesterday is notable mostly for just how uninspiring it is. It says that the U.S. military has a “global reach and responsibilities” that must be funded to the hilt; it claims at Secretary gates’ cost cutting initiatives “are estimable goals, [but] they will not solve the problems created by almost two decades of underfunding the military,” and that projected defense budgets “cannot close this gap.” Startlingly, the group calls a “myth” the contention that “The United States should not be “the world’s policeman,” since the security the world gets from U.S. defense spending is “an amazing bargain.” The group also called for a defense budget that has a floor of 4 percent of GDP during the panel. It is notable that their presentation calls for more money, more troops, and more equipment, but nowhere do they mention spending smarter, as opposed to simply spending more.

In all, it’s a nice, bland, summation of many conservative arguments over defense spending. But nothing more.

On the other side of the budget battle we have a slightly more diverse group (by that I mean mostly left-leaning with a dash of libertarian, though with some non-partisan members) calling itself the Project on Defense Alternatives, whose Sustainable Defense Task Force includes the New America Foundation; Center for American Progress; Center for Defense Information; Cato Institute; Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; and the Stimson Center. The group hit back with a press release yesterday afternoon, slamming the Defending Defense Project while claiming, “the United States can safely trim nearly $1 trillion from the Pentagon’s budget in the next 10 years without adversely impacting our nation's military capability.”

These are just the opening thrusts and parries, of course, in a larger fight over the size and shape of the future force. The real fight starts after November, especially if Republicans pick up a sizeable chunk of seats in Congress. Game on.

Posted at ARES

Book Review: The Iraq Wars and America's Military Revolution

  What constitutes a true military revolution? If you think you already have a pretty good idea, a look through Keith Shimko’s excellent new book The Iraq Wars and America’s Military Revolution may change your mind. The idea of a “revolution in military affairs” (RMA) has taken quite a beating recently given the very public flameout of the Rumsfeld-era Future Combat Systems suite of technologies that would have given the American soldier an almost impossibly perfect situational awareness of the battlefield. That laudable goal collided hea- on with the realities of the relatively low-tech counterinsurgencies that the United States has fought over the past decade, where the enemy both hides among the population and refuses to mass for conventional set-piece battles.  

But Shimko comes not to pile on, rather, he deftly traces the technological and doctrinal history of post-Vietnam American military advances, making the point that RMAs are not only technologically driven, but must also incorporate a rethinking of doctrine and tactics in order to truly succeed as a game changer. Shimko quotes liberally and deeply form some of the brightest minds in military thinking over the past several decades, balancing claims by both pro-RMA advocates as well as those who have tended to deride the idea that precision weapons and new communication technologies have truly changed the face of war. He quotes analyst Jeffrey Cooper as writing that the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs “may mark the closing of that era of warfare dominated by large military forces and equally large scopes of military operations. This RMA may usher in a new period of military contraction and a return to wars fought for limited objectives by valuable forces too precious to waste in mass, attrition-style warfare.” He also cites George and Meredith Friedman, who write that “for the first time in five hundred years, we are about to see a dramatic decrease in the size of land forces, without a decrease in military effectiveness.”  To balance this, Shimko relies heavily on the deep skepticism of Stephen Biddle, who fails to see anything revolutionary in the fire and maneuver that—even combined with precision weapons—marked the initial American foray into Afghanistan, and the large industrial-war style invasion of Iraq.

While an excellent summation of the debates surrounding military modernization and the effects—or potential effects—it may have on the battlefield that have taken place since the Vietnam war, the book nonetheless ends unevenly, with no real conclusion that states where Shimko falls. There are worse things however, and the history lesson leading up to the final pages is well worth the price of admission.

The Next Army After Next

In Afghanistan, 94 percent of American fatalities occur within a mile of the enemy, while over 90 percent of combat deaths occur within 400 meters of the road -- and yet, Maj. Gen Robert Sacales says, the Department of Defense’s research and development arm has all but ignored the needs of the dismounted, small-unit infantryman.

In an angry, at times funny, and certainly opinionated lunch session at Brookings earlier this week, Gen. Scales lambasted the DoD for failing to provide small infantry units with the same protections and technological innoations enjoyed by other service branches, even though  “four out of five combat deaths are suffered by a force that comprises less than four percent of the total uniformed personnel in the DoD.”

Scales wants to see more tactical UAVs that can operate in austere, foul-weather conditions, and better computer-generated simulations and realistic training for soldiers before they deploy. But mostly he is disappointed with the research and development community for failing to give the needs of the infantryman the same thought as that given to airmen and sailors. “The Department of Defense scientific communities have never really made small units a priority for research and development at the national level,” he said, adding that his “greatest disappointment is DARPA. I don’t get it. We have over 6,000 dead Americans and over 34,000 wounded and maimed Americans in our military today, and I don’t know where DARPA is in this...It doesn’t appear as if the realities of the tactical battle have worked its way into the national scientific and technological entities that are out there.”

Scales pointed out the recent documentary on the small unit fight in Afghanistan, Restrepo, and a gripping 60 Minutes story from this past week as prime examples of the lack of innovation in infantry warfare. He noted that the weapons the soldiers use in the film and story (M4 rifles, 120mm mortars, M2 machine guns) were essentially the same that he fought with in Vietnam forty years ago, and that such a lack of innovation is tragic. “I would just like the Secretary of Defense or someone in high authority just to proclaim that dominance on the tactical battlefield is important for the nation,” he pleaded. “I haven’t heard it. I’d like to see those inside the Beltway pledge the human and physical resources necessary to make sue out military is as dominant on the ground as it is today in the air, cyberspace and on the sea.”

...Read the rest posted at ARES...