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Chicago Tribune September 23, 2007 Chicago Tribune Article Powder Kegs Seen Across Middle East From Iran to Israel, fuses abound By Liz Sly, Tribune foreign correspondent BEIRUT--Israeli jets strike a mysterious Syrian target, fueling speculation that Syria is joining Iran in the quest to acquire nuclear weapons. Another anti-Syrian politician is assassinated in Lebanon. The U.S. detains another Iranian in Iraq. And all the while a frenzied arms race is gathering pace, with countries from Iran to Libya racing to spend billions on sophisticated new weaponry. Although the Bush administration insists a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would risk triggering a region-wide conflagration, many in this region fear such a war could happen anyway. "The sky over the region seems heavy with the clouds of war," warned the independent Lebanese daily Al-Akbar in a recent editorial. The dangers were illustrated by the Israeli air strike earlier this month against a mystery Syrian target, the details of which have not been confirmed. Unusually, Israeli officials have refused to comment on the raid, leaving Syria to offer its version of events: that the jets were spotted over Syrian territory, that Syrian anti-aircraft gunners opened fire on them, and that in their haste to escape, the jets jettisoned missiles on an empty field. That version has been given little credence in the Arab world and in Washington. Some reports have suggested the jets struck weapons destined for Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement, others that the planes hit a fledgling nuclear facility being supplied by North Korea. Citing anonymous U.S. officials, The Washington Post reported Friday that Israel and the U.S. had shared intelligence before the strike about the presence of North Korean nuclear experts in Syria. Nerves set on edge Few analysts doubt that the target was significant. "It was an act of outright aggression against a state, and you don't do that over something simple," said Timur Goksel, a veteran of the UN force in southern Lebanon who now lectures in conflict studies in Beirut. The incident has set nerves on edge in this region, where memories of the war unleashed in Lebanon last summer by Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers are still fresh. "We're living under a volcano, and this volcano might last forever. But there's a good possibility it will erupt for a very simple reason, and that it could escalate into a major conflict," said Mustafa Alani, director of security studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. The center has just completed a study on the chances of a regional war, he said. It concluded that the chances of what Alani called "an accidental war" that would escalate to include the U.S. and Iran were "high." "There are a number of flash points that make us believe an accidental war is likely," he said. Among those are the Persian Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian warships patrol in close proximity; Iraq, where the U.S. accuses Iran of supporting Shiite militias; the elevated tensions between Israel and Syria; the possibility that Israel will launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities; and Lebanon, which has been thrown into further turmoil by the assassination of an anti-Syrian legislator on the eve of a presidential election. In some ways, there already is a proxy war in the region, with conflicts between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, between Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq and the tensions in Lebanon all falling within the context of the broader struggle for influence between the U.S. and Iran. "The other point of view is that we are already at war," said John Pike of the Washington-based GlobalSecurity.org. Concerns that the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq before the country's problems are resolved are encouraging an arms spending spree by Arab nations. The U.S. is planning arms sales in excess of $50 billion to the region over the next 10 years, including $30 billion destined for Israel and more than $20 billion to Saudi Arabia and other gulf nations. Saudi Arabia announced the additional purchase of $8 billion worth of British Typhoon fighter jets. The Syrians are reportedly sealing a $900 million deal to buy upgraded anti-missile systems from Russia. At a military parade in Tehran on Saturday, Iran unveiled a long-range missile capable of hitting Israel. Days earlier, Iran warned that it is ready to retaliate if Israel attacks Iran. Sending a message The Israeli strike on Syria may nonetheless have diminished the chances of an imminent confrontation by reminding everyone in the region who is the dominant military power, according to Goksel. Syria's muted response to the raid has underscored that it is in no position to wage war against Israel's superior force, he said. The strike also sent a message to Iran that Israel is capable of striking at will. Goksel, like many others in the region, thinks a rerun of last summer's war is likely. In that conflict, Israel failed to eliminate Hezbollah as a threat to Israel's northern border. Both sides now say they have recovered their deterrent capacities. Hezbollah is embroiled in Lebanon's domestic political turmoil and almost certainly has no wish right now to provoke another confrontation, said Hilal Khashan, a political scientist at the American University of Beirut. But the next war could be much bigger, perhaps involving Syria, the main transshipment point for Iran's military supplies to Hezbollah. "Israel ... failed to conclude the last war on its terms," he said. "The next time, it has to win convincingly." Paradoxically, the tensions crackling across the region may sustain a balance of peace, if only because so many players are so acutely aware of the risks of war, said David Hartwell, Middle East editor for Jane's Country Risks. "At the moment there's certainly enough distrust that little incidents could be misconstrued and escalate," Hartwell said. "But there's also enough acknowledgment in the region that any kind of conflict is in no one's interests. Though, he added, "that doesn't mean it won't happen."

No Rest For A Cold Warrior The legendary U-2 spy planes are busier than ever as they head toward a phaseout By Kevin Whitelaw Flying at over 70,000 feet above sea level, a lone pilot of an American U-2 spy plane scoured the rugged Afghan mountains near the southern city of Kandahar during a classified mission in mid-September. While the plane's high-tech camera was sending back detailed photographs of the Taliban strongholds below, coalition soldiers operating in the area got embroiled in a firefight with insurgents. The U-2, which flies too high to be heard or seen on the ground, was dispatched to relay images of the battle, locate any targets, and identify possible escape routes—all in close to real time. Soon after, the plane headed up to eastern Afghanistan to sweep the area for any electronic communications between Taliban fighters. The U-2's sensor picked up several suspect transmissions, and the plane was sent to take high-resolution images of possible targets. After nine hours over Afghanistan, the U-2 returned home to its base at a secret location in southwest Asia. This mission, typical of the almost daily flights over Afghanistan and Iraq, is vastly different from the U-2's maiden mission 51 years ago. In that first operational flight on June 20, 1956, pilot Carl Overstreet flew a carefully planned route behind the Iron Curtain to provide valuable glimpses of military targets inside Czechoslovakia and Poland. It took more than two days for the film to be developed and delivered to analysts in Washington. Workhorse. Implausibly enough, the gliderlike U-2, whose mere existence was once one of America's most prized secrets, has been adapted to the age of al Qaeda and has emerged as an indispensable workhorse in the skies today. In just the past two years, the number of U-2 missions flown has increased by 20 percent, taking its operational pace to an all-time record. "It's busier than ever," says George Zielsdorff, the U-2 program director for Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor that built the original plane in a mere nine months under a CIA contract. In fact, demand for the plane's sophisticated set of cameras and eavesdropping equipment is so high that some are questioning the U.S. Air Force's plan to retire the legendary aircraft in the coming years. Military planners are eager to bring on the U-2's successor—an unmanned high-altitude plane called the Global Hawk. But there is one problem: A version of the Global Hawk drone that can match the U-2's capabilities is still at least two years away from deployment. Even with the U.S. intelligence community's array of spy satellites, surveillance aircraft, and other reconnaissance tools, the U-2 still boasts unique capabilities that fill a crucial gap. While satellites steadily orbit the globe on a predictable schedule, providing only momentary glimpses of any particular scene, the U-2 can fly over a target area for hours—a trait referred to as "persistence" by Air Force strategists. "We're talking now about a strategic environment where you're not so much tracking large army formations or hard targets, but you're talking about individuals and a network," says Col. Charles Bartlett, director of the Air Force's unmanned aerial systems task force. "To do that effectively, you need to have persistence, and you need to build patterns of behavior." While the better-known Predator drone can provide similar coverage when the weather is decent, it can be audible from the ground, unlike the higher-flying U-2. In its first life, the U-2 was a straightforward reconnaissance plane, offering revolutionary peeks inside forbidden places like the Soviet Union and Communist China. Former CIA Director George Tenet once called the U-2 one of "the CIA's greatest intelligence achievements." It was still cloaked in secrecy when it made 24 daring flights over the Soviet Union from 1956 to 1960, helping to shatter alarming myths that Moscow was building significantly more missiles and bombers than the U.S. military. The danger became all too real in 1960 when the Soviets fired a missile that exploded just behind a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers, who was captured by the Soviets after he parachuted to the ground. The incident turned into a prime-time Cold War drama, and the CIA was forced to end its flights over the Soviet Union. Powers was, after a show trial, later returned to the United States in a prisoner exchange. The U-2 took center stage again in 1962, when a flight's photographs detected Soviet long-range missiles in Cuba, sparking the Cuban missile crisis. Two years later, after China's first nuclear test, U-2 missions took air samples to assess the aftermath. "It had probably some of the most strategic impact of any aviation operation ever," says Tom Ehrhard, an Air Force veteran now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "We never bought enough of them." U-2s have also flown over most of the conflict zones in recent years, including Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. The U-2s flying today are not, of course, identical to the ones flying in the late 1950s. The body of the plane has been updated and enlarged, and its classified sensors are so advanced that they use a combination of seven different bands of visual and infrared imagery to produce images that look almost exactly like photographs, whether in the dark or through thick smoke, dust storms, or heavy cloud cover. They "can even see through camouflage," says Dick Wientzen, who managed the development of the sensors for Goodrich Corp. "They are good at looking at differences between man-made and natural objects." This technology is used regularly over Iraq, for example, to detect improvised explosive devices placed along major roads. Challenging ride. One thing, however, has not changed. The U-2 is still legendary in the Air Force for being one of the most difficult planes to fly—and to land. To survive at 70,000 feet, pilots wear a pressurized spacesuit. They have to breathe pure oxygen for an hour before takeoff to stave off decompression sickness (better known to deep-sea divers as the bends). Landing a U-2 is even more challenging, because the pilot must stall the plane only a few feet above the runway. As the U-2 comes in for a landing, a sports car races behind it to relay the plane's altitude to the pilot, whose field of vision is limited by the cumbersome pressure suit. "It's like riding on the handles of a bicycle backwards and trying to steer, because the tail wheel moves, not the nose wheel," says Samuel Ryals, a formerU-2 pilot who now is the director of research and development at Goodrich. U-2 missions are also very dangerous. At least 34 pilots have been killed over the years, most recently in 2005 on a mission over Afghanistan. For decades, officials have explored replacing the pilot with a drone that could navigate remotely from the ground. Early models of the Global Hawk, which flies as high as 65,000 feet, currently perform operations over Afghanistan and Iraq, and more powerful versions are in the test phase. Northrop Grumman, which is developing the plane, insists that the time has come when there is no longer any trade-off in removing a human pilot from the cockpit. "If we have this other technology, why are we still stuffing guys into spacesuits for 12 hours and having them eat baby food and pee down their leg?" says Ed Walby, a former U-2 pilot now in charge of business development for the Global Hawk program at Northrop. "Why would you put people in harm's way if you don't have to?" The Air Force is salivating over the Global Hawk because it can remain in the air for more than 30 hours at a stretch, well beyond the 12-hour limit of the manned U-2. Air Force planners envision a U-2 phaseout sometime around 2012 or 2013 as new, more powerful Global Hawks go into service. But some in Congress are concerned the Air Force is moving too fast, given the heavy reliance on the U-2 today. (During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, the venerable plane supplied 88 percent of all battlefield imagery.) Even though the last U-2 was built in 1989, they all have newer engines and cockpits and theoretically would be capable of flying through 2050. The House of Representatives recently passed an intelligence authorization bill that would restrict the Pentagon's ability to phase out the U-2. "The bottom line is that we cannot afford to retire the U-2 until we make sure we have another aircraft to fulfill the same mission," says Rep. Wally Herger, the California Republican who represents the district containing Beale Air Force Base, which is home to both the U-2s and the Global Hawks. The Air Force insists that the schedule for phasing out the U-2 is flexible, depending largely on how well the new- generation Global Hawk planes perform in tests. But the U-2 is expensive to operate, and Pentagon budget officials are eager to free up money for more Global Hawks. Today, there are 28 U-2s flying active missions from bases in California, Cyprus, and South Korea and near Iraq. "The Air Force is being very deliberate about taking the U-2 out of the inventory," says Bartlett. "We're not going to do it prematurely, but there are fiscal realities." Special abilities. There are also some unique U-2 capabilities that could be lost in the transition to Global Hawk. The U-2 can carry a wide-angle film camera that provides very detailed photographs that are unclassified and can be shared widely. It is still used frequently to assess the damage from natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina. The camera has also been used for three decades as a formal part of the verification provisions of the 1977 Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. The U-2 flies weekly over the Sinai and provides both sides with images to monitor the border areas. Another key advantage is the U-2's superior "standoff" ability that enables it to peer deep inside a hostile country such as North Korea while flying outside its border. Still, the Global Hawk replacement is coming along quickly. The newer versions of the plane will carry eavesdropping equipment similar to that on the U-2 and are scheduled to deploy to bases in Europe and Asia starting in 2009 or 2010. Some in Congress continue to complain about delays and cost overruns. But much of the added cost comes from the decision to turn the Global Hawk, built originally as an experimental plane, into the U-2's successor. The Global Hawk has become very expensive, reportedly costing more than $120 million per plane, including its new sensors. Says Northrop's Walby: "We are inventing things we didn't know you could make." For the elite fraternity of U-2 pilots, the switch to an unmanned replacement will be a bittersweet one. Just inside the U-2 operations building at Beale Air Force Base, there is a poster with a close-up photo of a U-2 pilot in his spacesuit. The caption reads: "The Ultimate Computer." With the Global Hawk, pilots will no longer be risking their lives, but U-2 flyboys remain strongly attached to the plane they refer to as the "Dragon Lady." They describe flying it as a mystical experience in which pilots learn to read the plane's vibrations and other sensations. "You gotta be able to fight the dragon before you can dance with the lady," says Bob Ray, who logged 1,400 hours in the U-2. He is one of just over 800 pilots who have ever flown the U-2 in an operational mission. There are, says Ray, "more people with Super Bowl rings than have flown the U-2."

Price Tag For Navy's New Aircraft Carrier On The Rise, GAO Says By Jon W. Glass, The Virginian-Pilot The next-generation aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, under design at shipbuilder Northrop Grumman Newport News, faces "substantial risk" of cost overruns that could complicate the Navy's plan to increase its fleet, a federal report scheduled for release Monday says. The Government Accountability Office, a watchdog for Congress, said that this "likely" cost growth "may force the Navy to sacrifice" other vessels in its 30-year plan to grow the fleet to 313 ships from the current 279, according to Bloomberg News. The business news service first reported the GAO's findings and quoted from the 41-page report. The GAO said that delays in testing new key technologies - including a dual-band radar and systems for launching and landing fighter jets - could lengthen the carrier's construction time and drive up costs, Bloomberg reported. Those conclusions echo testimony the GAO gave in late July during a congressional panel's hearing on the Navy's shipbuilding program. A spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., the member of the House Armed Services Committee who requested the report, confirmed the GAO's findings. The report "indicates it's highly unlikely" that the Ford, the first of a new class of nuclear-powered carriers, will meet the Navy's budget or construction schedule, said Lisa Wright, Bartlett's press secretary. In a statement Friday, Bartlett said the GAO revealed that "the development of three critical technologies has been delayed to such an extent" that the Ford "must experience 100 percent success" during construction to meet the Navy's current $10.5 billion procurement budget. The Navy has struggled to contain shipbuilding costs, and first-of-class ships in four of the service's current programs have experienced cost creep, including the littoral combat ship, the LPD-17 amphibious warship, the DDG 1000 destroyer and the Virginia-class attack submarine. Northrop Grumman Newport News shares construction of those subs with General Dynamics' Electric Boat. The price tag of the George H.W. Bush - the 10th and last of the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers - has grown by $847 million, or 17 percent, over its initial budget. It is now under construction at the Newport News shipyard and scheduled for delivery next year. At the July hearing, the Congressional Budget Office said the Ford carrier, known as CVN-78, could cost at least $1 billion more than the Navy has budgeted. "In this budget environment, that's going to be a difficult sell," Bartlett said Friday. He raised the possibility of revisiting the idea of building a larger number of smaller carriers, which "might provide more value" to the Navy than a few "supercarriers." The Navy said Friday that it would not comment on the GAO's report until it is officially released. However, Capt. Michael Schwartz, program manager of the Ford carrier program, said the service believes its can acquire the Ford under its current budget. "The risks in the program relating to development of new technologies are clearly defined and being managed," Schwartz said in a statement. The purchase of materials and the design and advance construction work at the Newport News shipyard "are meeting expectations for cost performance," he said. While the new technologies going on the Ford have posed "challenges," shipyard spokeswoman Jennifer Dellapenta said in a statement that "we are confident that in the end, we will be successful in incorporating them on CVN-78." With the Ford's computer-assisted design now about 74 percent complete, the Navy expects to award a contract to begin full-scale construction in spring 2008. Completion is scheduled for 2015. The Ford is the first of three new carriers in a $35 billion program to replace the carrier Enterprise, the Navy's first nuclear-powered carrier, and the Nimitz-class fleet. The new Ford class is designed with a host of high-tech improvements, including an ability to launch more aircraft combat sorties and to operate with several hundred fewer crew members. Two of the improvements that have faced delays cited by the GAO are an electromagnetic aircraft launch system, which replaces steam-driven catapults, and a new aircraft arresting system. They are being built by San Diego-based General Atomics. Raytheon Co. is making the new dual-band radar that also has faced delays. Bloomberg News reported that officials with those two companies expressed confidence that technical flaws and delays outlined by the GAO are being solved and won't affect the Ford's delivery schedule.

Somewhat of interest after recent amphibious assault discussion. Global Security The Opposed Amphibious Assault Dilemma CSC 1992 SUBJECT AREA Warfighting EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Title: The Opposed Amphibious Assault Dilemma Author: Major D. L. Brush, United States Marine Corps Thesis: This last is the situation that existed during Desert Storm and is the crux of the problem how to successfully eliminate continuing deficiencies to ensure the Marine Corps retains the ability to conduct an opposed amphibious assault. Background: The Marine Corps is charged to maintain the nation's ability to project forces across a hostile beach. During Desert Storm the opportunity presented itself to conduct the first truly opposed amphibious assault since WWII and Korea. When the amphibious assault did not take place, accolades were given to the operational planners for utilizing the Amphibious Task Force as a grand deception. In reality, though, the Navy/ Marine Corps team lacked the equipment, training and tactics needed to successfully assault the Kuwaiti coast without risking tremendous losses in men and equipment. If the Marine Corps is to regain the capability to conduct a forcible entry across a foreign beach, a dedicated effort must be made to develop and acquire equipment, train leaders and troops, and revise the tactics and doctrine. Recommendation: The Navy/Marine Corps team must reassess its equipment, training and tactics if it is going to be able to conduct amphibious assaults against defended beaches in the future. THE OPPOSED AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT DILEMMA Outline Thesis: This last is the situation that existed during Desert Storm and is the crux of the problem; how to successfully eliminate continuing deficiencies to ensure the Marine Corps retains the capability to conduct an opposed amphibious assault. I. Desert Storm Background A. Defining the threat B. Use as a deception C. Reality strikes home II. Finding the Solution A. Who is at fault B. Allocation of resources 1. People 2. Funding III. Providing the answers A. Required equipment 1. Detection 2. Breaching 3. Proofing 4. Marking B. Training the forces C. Developing tactics and doctrine THE OPPOSED AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT DILEMMA The assault to liberate the nation of Kuwait is one during which new tactics and equipment played a critical role. The deceptions, the actual assault to breach through and the maneuver around the extensive multiple-obstacle barriers the Iraqi's emplaced across the Kuwaiti desert and into Iraq, are being canonized by instructors and tacticians at Army and Marine Corps schools. Indeed, the ease with which the breaching teams rapidly cleared paths through the estimated two million mines, thousand miles of barbed wire, and numerous oil-filled, anti-tank ditches was truly amazing. In fact, the speed at which the coalition forces entered into Kuwait eliminated the requirement for Marines to conduct an amphibious assault in support of the ground offensive, or did it? Just the threat of the amphibious task force steaming off the Kuwaiti coast was enough to hold several Iraqi divisions in place and keep them from reinforcing those defending along the barriers. This was the classic example of the use of a deception to support the main attack, or was it? The aftermath of Desert Storm has provided many accolades to those who planned the demonstration of Marine and Navy amphibious forces off the Kuwaiti coastline. This deception' plan occupied the attention of several Iraqi divisions during the initial stages of the ground offensive as the threat of a flank attack by amphibious means became one the Iraqi's could not ignore. In fact, the anticipated threat of a coalition amphibious assault caused the Iraqi military leaders to direct the construction of barrier systems along the entire Kuwaiti coast and to reinforce the already formidable Al Faw peninsula in Iraq. These barrier systems consisted of both land and water mines, barbed wire, and steel and concrete anti-vehicle/anti-landing craft obstacles. In light of these barriers it was decided that the amphibious assault could not have been accomplished without a significant loss of men and equipment. That estimated cost, in and of itself, was staggering enough to exclude this option from the CINC's inventory of capabilities. Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, commander of U.S. Marine Corps forces during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, recently stated, "An amphibious assault was not undertaken because of the mines . . . . We need to solve this problem." (3: 12) While Navy spokesmen have made the following statement: The Navy admits its biggest weakness during Desert Storm was a lack of ships and aircraft to sweep mines from shallow waters, a lack that could have led to heavy Marine casualties in an amphibious assault . . . . A joint Navy-Marine Corps planning staff is being formed to look at other means of handling the threat that Navy mine clearance forces "were inadequate to counter," during the Persian Gulf war, according to the lessons learned report. (9:7) Why has the proud heritage of the WWII island-hopping campaign in the Pacific been allowed to deteriorate to such a dismal state? The obvious answer to the Kuwaiti dilemma is to conduct the amphibious assault where the enemy is not. This is an unopposed landing and one which emerging tactics, "Over-the-Horizon" assaults and "Maneuver-from-the-Sea", and new items of equipment, such as the Landing Craft Air Cushioned (LCAC) and the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV), address. The unopposed landing is the one which all commanders certainly strive for and one which our emerging technology may indeed allow to happen under most circumstances. (4: 36-40) Unfortunately, the tactical situation or simple geographics may dictate that one cannot move to where the enemy is not. This, then, is the contingency that must be planned for. The corollary to an unopposed landing is an opposed landing. A landing may be opposed by a dedicated force, obstacles placed in the water approaches to the beach, obstacles placed on the beach itself or any combination of the three. This last is the situation that existed during Desert Storm and is the crux of the problem; how to successfully eliminate continuing deficiencies to ensure the Marine Corps retains the ability to conduct an opposed amphibious assault. The lack of an effective opposed amphibious capability lies on the shoulders of the Navy and the Marine Corps, both of whom are tasked to provide both forward-deployed and CONUS based forces that are capable of conducting both quick and deliberate amphibious operations. These forces, of course must have the doctrine, tactics, techniques, procedures, and equipment to be successful. One of the primary responsibilities assigned to the Marine Corps in the United States Codes Title 10 is: The Marine Corps shall develop, in conjunction with the Army and the Air Force, those phases of amphibious operations that pertain to the tactics, techniques, and equipment used by amphibious forces. (2: 3-6) From DOD Directive 5100.1 comes guidance for both the Navy and Marine Corps concerning amphibious warfare: Develop, in coordination with the other military services, the doctrines, procedures, and equipment of naval forces for amphibious operations, and the doctrines, and procedures for joint amphibious operations. (2:3-7) The solution to the countermine/counter-obstacle warfare deficiency is simply people and resources. The allocation of sufficient people will include those to conduct the research and development that leads to new equipment and tactics and to the development of training exercises that encompasses countermine/counter-obstacle operations in conjunction with an amphibious assault. The allocation of resources would have to include the fencing, or identifying and isolating, tens of millions of dollars exclusively for research and development, procurement and the new training exercises in this area. Of course, money does not remain fenced long unless there is a high enough priority placed on the effort by both services and that priority is transmitted up the chain-of-command to the comptrollers and requirements personnel at the DOD level. The following questions were asked at a 31 January 1991 SASC hearing concerning the lack of countermine equipment in the Marine Corps' final fiscal year 92 budget submission. The responses were provided by the Program Manager, Engineer Systems of the Marine Corps Research, Acquisition and Development Command, now the Marine Corps Systems Command. (8:4) Question: Does the Marine Corps have all the breaching equipment it needs? Answer: The answer is NO. Question: Why hasn't more money been spent on such programs? Answer: Recent budget limitations (particularly the POM '92 program) have limited the application of development and procurement resources in a number of key Marine Corps areas, countermine/counter-obstacle being one. A number of Countermine system initiatives did not make the final cut in an extremely competitive and fiscally limited POM process. The creation of a joint Navy and Marine office to address the countermine/counter-obstacle deficiency is the first step toward a realistic solution. This office is to be located under the Navy's operations department to allow it the capability to force the issues of purchasing of minesweeping ships, altering the use of and missions for SEALs, changing joint training exercises, providing the focus of the research, development and procurement process and recommending revisions to blue-water and green-water tactics and doctrine. The Marine Corps is providing existing land countermine/counter-obstacle systems, for possible exploitation as surf zone clearance systems, as well as a fresh look at the tactics and doctrine of an amphibious landing from the 'green' side. The protection of funding is key to any new look this problem is going to receive. An example of funding cuts affecting programs is the one just experienced by two detection programs. Until last year, both the Navy and the Marine Corps were developing systems utilizing laser technology to detect objects under the water. The Marine Corps program, AMDAS, was performing fairly in the surf zone, 10 feet and shallower, under very turbid conditions. It showed promise in both turbid fresh water and for surface laid mines on the beach. The Navy system, Magic Lantern, was showing promise in the deeper waters, 40 feet and deeper. The Navy decided to bring both programs under joint management so as to benefit from the best of both programs. Congress felt that two laser detection systems for water were one too many and directed one be terminated. Ultimately, a new program was established under the new name of MDLT that is having trouble in the turbid waters of the surf zone. (5:2-43) Both the Navy and the Marine Corps have to support this office with sufficient funding, and defend that funding, to complete the testing of existing programs. Hopefully, the joint office will be able to readdress the above example and reinstate the original programs that showed promise in two distinct environments. The ability to detect mines and other obstacles is the key for landing across a beach with a minimum of obstacles. The intent of the equipment being developed in existing programs, AMDAS/MAGIC LANTERN/MDLT, is to be able to recognize land and water mines both on and beneath the surface from a stand-off measured in hundreds of meters to miles. It is anticipated these systems will be mounted on jet aircraft and will provide the Amphibious Task Force (ATF) commander with a real-time picture of the proposed landing sites. Other programs include new hand-held sonars and delivery vehicles for SEAL teams, a new class of mine counter-measures ship and a sacrificial, air-cushioned vehicle that would carry magnetic and acoustic signature duplicators to fool the mines. The United States would do well to follow the lead of recent British experiment using an air-cushioned craft as a primary mine counter-measures vehicle. The British recognized the hovercraft's agility, speed and ability to outrun and survive the water-plume caused by a mine detonating in as shallow as 30 feet of water. (7:107-113) As one answer to the breaching problem, a new look should be given to the decades-old, M58/M59 linear demolition charge that has proven exponentially more effective in the water than on land. Testing accomplished in the late 1970's, against inert mines and pressure gauges, demonstrated successfully the line charge's ability against simple pressure-fuzed landmines. (10) Recent testing against modern blast-resistant fuzed landmines, accomplished during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, also proved successful. To date the line charge has not been tested against sea mines. Additional testing needs to be planned and carried out to validate the exact capabilities of line charge against modern land and water mines. In a recent exploitation of a foreign counter-mine system, it was found that the exploited system, though very similar to the M58/M59 series line charge, was substantially more effective against modern mines. This increased effectiveness was attributed, in part, to the composition of the explosive fill of the system. While the M58/M59 is a C-4 plastic explosive derivative, the foreign system had a plastic explosive base with other chemicals mixed in. The chemical composition of the foreign system is not new, in fact has been known for decades, but was never applied to the U. S. system. Continued testing should validate this explosive for use in the M58/M59 and may provide the short to mid-term solution that will fill the gap until newer technology is proven and procured. Proofing the paths breached through the minefield/obstacle is, perhaps, the hardest and yet most critical task. Proofing must be accomplished immediately following the breach and must include some method of marking the path. On land the most successful proofing systems are those that physically remove any remaining mines from the breached path. This procedure may prove to have application on the beach, or very shallow surf zone, by a vehicle similar to an amphibious assault vehicle that has both the ability to swim to the beach and yet the weight to be an effective earthmover. A current program for the AAVP7A1 utilizes a full-width rake, mounted to the front of the P7, that is capable of sifting through 6 to 8 inches of sand once the P7's tracks touch down, generally in about 3 feet of water. Systems that are being tested for the area from 3 feet and deeper include rake-like devices towed by air-cushioned craft and the air-cushioned craft previously mentioned that will trick mines fuzed with magnetic or acoustic sensors. (5: 2-45) Whichever system, or systems is selected, it must be capable of rapidly performing its mission during the assault. Maintaining the momentum of the attack is extremely important in establishing overwhelming combat power ashore as quickly as possible. This could be accomplished by both the application of a device that would trick mines into detonating, towed by a small air-cushioned craft, as well as the use of a rake-like device mounted on the front of the USMC amphibious assault vehicle. Marking the proofed path is a task that has yet to be addressed adequately on land. Water presents a more dynamic and fluid environment in which to mark a specific path. Research programs are investigating the use of buoys as visual indicators and beacons to mark the centerline of the path that the newer position-locating devices may home in on. Sufficient quantities of these countermine devices will have to be procured, in spite of shrinking budget dollars, to provide the redundancy required for equipment used in countermine operations. That is, the equipment must be realized to be the sacrificial items required to protect the main force. Countermine equipment cannot be bought under the same auspices as a truck, it will not last 20 years in a realistic training environment. Additionally, a continuous effort must be made to acquire numbers of the existing, and evolving, threat mines, both land and water. These threat in should be used extensively in the research and development validation process and, when inserted in training scenarios. Training countermine/counter-obstacle operations must begin with the individual sailor and marine, during their initial specialty training, and should culminate in annual, Navy/Marine fleet exercises. Individual training begins with recognition, characteristics and handling of individual mines, using some of the threat mines procured for the research and development, and builds to employment of the emerging detection, learn and proofing systems. As the training approaches system employment, training areas must be made available that will allow fluid training exercises to be conducted. Currently, the only training area that allows the detonation of linear demolition charges from the water is on San Clemente Island, off the California coast. Training areas must be developed that will provide the opportunity to conduct the detection, breaching and proofing phases of the amphibious assault on a continuing basis. Included in these training exercises should be the employment of training mines similar to the MILES system used by land forces. Finally, annual Navy/Marine fleet training exercises must include the ship-to-shore countermine evolution if the services are to become proficient in these operations. Realistic situations and the inability to artificially bypass the mined area will provide a recognition of the difficulty of this phase of the amphibious assault and will lead to the refinement of the tactics and doctrine used. Presently, the tactics and doctrine used to support the ship-to-shore movement come directly from the successes of WW II. The doctrine establishing the requirements for cleared lanes to support a landing were developed utilizing slow and awkward landing craft. Modern landing craft employ state-of-the-art position-locating devices that are accurate to 10 meters and transit to the beach quickly, as compared to those used forty years ago. The modern landing craft will allow a reduction in the size of the lane that must be clear. This reduction will lead to less area that must be swept for mines, less area that must be breached and proofed and ultimately less equipment and explosives that would have to be procured and employed. Tactics and doctrine assigning responsibilities for the countermine operations must be reassessed. By present doctrine, SEALs must clear the entire path to the beach up to, and including, the high water mark. Recent talk has also included the landing zone for the air cushioned landing- craft (LCAC) in the SEALs' area of responsibility. They are neither equipped nor manned to provide this service beyond the start of the surf zone, or 10 feet of water depth. Clearly, the responsibility to clear through the surf zone and across the beach must transition to the Marine Corps. This transition for the surf zone and beach areas must be done responsibly. New and innovative ideas are required, but they must also have reality injected into them. Tactics and doctrine being developed at the Marine Corps' Warfighting Center call for a heli-borne lift of engineers to an area beyond the beach in the final hours of darkness before the local dawn. The engineers are accompanied by infantry for local security. Carried in by helicopter with the engineers are line charges and light bulldozers. In the three or so hours until dawn, the engineers must assemble the bulldozers, attach armor-plating to the outside of the bulldozer, breach a 50 yard wide path to the water, wide enough for an LCAC, and then begin launching line charges into the water. The clearance of the area required to offload an LCAC on the beach must occur after the surf zone is cleared. (11) This new tactic is said to support the second Department of the Navy Amphibious Lift Study (DON Lift 2) in which the Marine Corps signed up to assaulting the beach in LCAC' s. However, the study also gave the Marine Corps 90 minutes to build combat power ashore before being subject to a major counterassault. This does not quite match with what can only be light heli-borne forces and an allowable time to breach to the water of three hours. Again, it seems, the studies are being used to justify a particular program rather than lending credence to ideas that are supportable by all key players. Without the capability to conduct amphibious landings across defended beaches the Marine Corps becomes just a hollow force tied to the maritime preposition program. The Corps will be able to project forces only into benign ports or beaches. If the long range planners can foresee a requirement, no matter how remote, to conduct a forcible entry into a country via the amphibious assault, then those planners must provide adequately for that eventuality. There are many parts to the opposed amphibious assault. Each part is critical and builds on the next. Each service must be provided with the necessary equipment, training and doctrine required to accomplish this mission. It truly must evolve from the joint arena or it will continue to suffer from both a lack of exposure and a lack of funding, both of which are crucial to the ultimate solution of this deficiency that was brought out so well during Desert Storm. Secretary of Defense Cheney, when receiving Desert Storm after action reports, and prior to the compilation of the Title V report to Congress, reinforced the seriousness of the Southwest Asia mine problem by viewing it as one of the most critical deficiencies to surface during the war.(1) BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Brush, Maj. Danny L. "Countermine/ Counterobstacle Ops (Land) USMC." Brief for the Secretary of Defense. Washington, D.C. Department of Defense, 1991. 2. FMFM 1-2. The Role of the Marine Corps in the National Defense. Quantico, VA: Combat Development Center, 1991 3. Holitzer, Robert. "U.S. Navy Will Overhaul , Expand Efforts to Combat Mine Warfare." Defense News 2 December 1991: 12. 4. Lind, William S. Maneuver Warfare Handbook. 1985: 36-40. 5. Mines, Minelaying, and Countermine Requirements for the Mid-term Period. Final Draft Report. Quantico, VA: MAGTF Warfighting Center, 1992. 6. Mission Area Strategy- Amphibious Warfare. Quantico, VA: MAGTF Warfighting Center, 1990. 7. Moore, Captain John RN. Jane's Naval Review. 1986: 107113. 8. "PM Engineer Responses to 31 Jan 91 SACS Hearing at which MGEN Miller was a Witness." Quantico, VA: MCRDAC, 1991. 9. Steigman, David S. "Sweeping mines from shallow seas." Navy Times 30 March 1992 10. Underwater Explosive Performance of the M58A1 Linear Demolition Charge for Shallow Water Mine Clearance Panama City, FL: aval Costal Systems Center, 1978. 11. Wilks , LtCol Rick. "Counterobstacle Initiatives Update." Quantico, VA: Command and Staff College, 1992.

Navy, General Dynamics to discuss LCS next week Staff writer - Staff writer Posted : Friday Sep 21, 2007 9:19:13 EDT The Navy and General Dynamics are expected to meet next week to discuss the Littoral Combat Ship program. GD spokesman Kendall Pease confirmed the Navy had asked for the meeting but provided no further details, other than to say a specific date had not been set. Other sources, however, said the meeting was to discuss slowing construction on LCS 4, the second ship GD is building at its Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Ala. A construction contract for the yet-to-be named ship was awarded in December, before cost growth on the first ship being built by Lockheed Martin, GD’s competitor in the LCS program, caused a work stoppage in January on what would have been Lockheed’s second ship. The Navy canceled completion of Lockheed’s LCS 3 in April. Sources said the Navy is trying to avoid reimbursing GD should LCS 4 suffer a similar fate. Under federal regulations, the Navy is working with Lockheed to pay back the company for some of the costs it incurred on LCS 3. The service is restructuring its construction contracts for the LCS vessels to enact more stringent standards and compel its contractors to meet cost projections. The LCS program has been rocked all year by problems with its acquisition strategy, which was originally intended to provide $220 million ships requiring two-year building times. The Navy plans to buy a total of 55 LCS ships to give it a new capability to fight in coastal waters. But a series of design, production and management problems drove the cost of Lockheed’s first LCS to nearly $400 million, Navy officials have said, and the ship, named USS Freedom, now isn’t expected to be delivered until the spring of 2008, a year behind schedule. That’s about the time GD’s first ship, the USS Independence, is expected to be delivered. Congress has repeatedly expressed its unhappiness with the Navy’s management of the LCS program and the service’s ability to properly estimate and control costs. In the most drastic proposal to date, the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee last week recommended buying neither of the two ships the Navy is asking for in 2008 and forcing the service to choose between one of the two designs before the end of next year, after a short trials period. The Navy would prefer to build several more LCS ships — the exact number is under review — before choosing one design in 2010. Find Navy Times article here.

Lost At Sea By Robert D. Kaplan THE ultimate strategic effect of the Iraq war has been to hasten the arrival of the Asian Century. While the American government has been occupied in Mesopotamia, and our European allies continue to starve their defense programs, Asian militaries — in particular those of China, India, Japan and South Korea — have been quietly modernizing and in some cases enlarging. Asian dynamism is now military as well as economic. The military trend that is hiding in plain sight is the loss of the Pacific Ocean as an American lake after 60 years of near-total dominance. A few years down the road, according to the security analysts at the private policy group Strategic Forecasting, Americans will not to the same extent be the prime deliverers of disaster relief in a place like the Indonesian archipelago, as we were in 2005. Our ships will share the waters (and the prestige) with new “big decks” from Australia, Japan and South Korea. Then there is China, whose production and acquisition of submarines is now five times that of America’s. Many military analysts feel it is mounting a quantitative advantage in naval technology that could erode our qualitative one. Yet the Chinese have been buying smart rather than across the board. In addition to submarines, Beijing has focused on naval mines, ballistic missiles that can hit moving objects at sea, and technology that blocks G.P.S. satellites. The goal is “sea denial”: dissuading American carrier strike groups from closing in on the Asian mainland wherever and whenever we like. Such dissuasion is the subtle, high-tech end of military asymmetry, as opposed to the crude, low-tech end that we’ve seen with homemade bombs in Iraq. Whether or not China ever has a motive to challenge America, it will increasingly have the capacity to do so. Certainly, the billions of dollars spent on Iraq (a war I supported) would not have gone for the expensive new air, naval and space systems necessary to retain our relative edge against a future peer competitor like China. But some of it would have. China’s military expansion, with a defense budget growing by double digits for the 19th consecutive year, is part of a broader, regional trend. Russia — a Pacific as well as a European nation, we should remember — is right behind the United States and China as the world’s biggest military spender. Japan, with 119 warships, including 20 diesel-electric submarines, boasts a naval force nearly three times larger than Britain’s. (It is soon to be four times larger: 13 to 19 of Britain’s 44 remaining large ships are set to be mothballed by the Labor government.) India’s Navy could be the third-largest in the world in a few years as it becomes more active throughout the Indian Ocean, from the Mozambique Channel to the Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia. South Korea, Singapore and Pakistan all spend higher percentages of their gross domestic products on defense than do Britain and France — which are by far Europe’s most serious military-minded nations. The twin trends of a rising Asia and a politically crumbling Middle East will most likely lead to a naval emphasis on the Indian Ocean and its surrounding seas, the sites of the “brown water” choke points of world commerce — the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the Bab el Mandeb at the mouth of the Red Sea, and Malacca. These narrow bodies of water will become increasingly susceptible to terrorism, even as they become more and more clogged with tankers bringing Middle Eastern oil to the growing middle classes of India and China. The surrounding seas will then become home territory to Indian and Chinese warships, protecting their own tanker routes. To wit, China is giving Pakistan $200 million to build a deep-water port at Gwadar, just 390 nautical miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Beijing is also trying to work with the military junta in Myanmar to create another deep-water port on the Bay of Bengal. It has even hinted at financing a canal across the 30-mile Isthmus of Kra in Thailand that would open a new connection between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Oddly enough, the Pacific, as an organizing principle in world military affairs, will also encroach upon Africa. It’s no secret that a major reason for the Pentagon’s decision to establish its new Africa Command is to contain and keep an eye on China’s growing web of development projects across the sub-Saharan regions. Still, measuring budgets, deployments, and sea and air “platforms” does not quite indicate just how much the ground is shifting beneath our feet. Military power rests substantially on the willingness to use it: perhaps less so in war than in peacetime as a means of leverage and coercion. That, in turn, requires a vigorous nationalism — something that is far more noticeable right now in Asia than in parts of an increasingly post-national West. As the Yale political scientist Paul Bracken notes in his book “Fire in the East: The Rise of Asian Military Power and the Second Nuclear Age,” the Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese have great pride in possessing nuclear weapons, unlike the Western powers that seem almost ashamed of needing them. Likewise, the right to produce nuclear arms is something that unites Iranians, regardless of their views of the clerical regime. Mending relations with Europe is only a partial answer to America’s problems in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, since Europe itself continues to turn away from military power. This trend was quickened by the Iraq war, which has helped legitimize nascent European pacifism. People in countries like Germany, Italy and Spain see their own militaries not so much as soldiers but as civil servants in uniform: there for soft peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. Meanwhile, Asia is marked by rivalries that encourage traditional arms races. Despite warming economic ties between Japan and China, and between Japan and South Korea, the Japanese and Chinese have fought wars of words over possession of the Senkaku (or, as the Chinese have it, Diaoyutai) Islands in the East China Sea; just as Japanese and South Koreans have over possession of the Takeshima Islands (Tokdo Islands to the Koreans) in the Sea of Japan. These are classic territorial disputes, stirring deep emotions of the sorts that often led to war in early modern Europe. Despite these tensions, the United States should also be concerned about the alternative possibility of a China-Japan entente. Some of China’s recent diplomatic approaches to Japan have been couched in a new tone of respect and camaraderie, as it attempts to tame Japan’s push toward rearmament and thus to reduce the regional influence of the United States. Asia’s military-economic vigor is the product of united political, economic and military elites. In Asia, politics often does stop at the water’s edge. In a post-George W. Bush America, if we do not find a way to agree on basic precepts, Iraq may indeed turn out to have been the event that signaled our military decline. Preventing that will require continued high military expenditures combined with an unrelenting multilateralism of a sort we have not pursued since the 1990s. In the vast oceanic spaces bordering the Pacific and Indian Oceans, air, sea and space power will be paramount both as means of deterrence and of guarding the sea lanes. A global power at peace still requires a navy and an air force deployed as far forward as possible. That costs money. Even with the gargantuan cost of Iraq, our defense budget is still under 5 percent of our gross domestic product, low by historical standards. Furthermore, the very vitality of nation-states in the Pacific and Indian Oceans will take us back to an older world of traditional statecraft, in which we will need to tirelessly leverage allies and seek cooperation from competitors. Thus we should take advantage of the rising risk of terrorism and piracy in order to draw the Chinese and Indian Navies into joint patrols of choke points and tanker routes. Still, we should be careful about leveraging Japan and India too overtly against China. The Japanese continue to be distrusted throughout Asia, particularly in the Korean Peninsula, because of the horrors of World War II. As for India, as a number of policy experts leaders there told me on a recent visit: India will remain non-aligned, with a tilt toward the United States. But any official alliance would compromise India’s own shaky relationship with China. Subtlety must be a keystone to our policy. We have to draw China in, not gang up against it. Because we remain the only major player in the Pacific and Indian Oceans without territorial ambitions or disputes with its neighbors, indispensability, rather than dominance, must be our goal. That, continuing deep into the 21st century, would be a stirring achievement. Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic and a visiting professor at the United States Naval Academy, is the author of “Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea and on the Ground.”

I agree whole heartedly. Enjoyed the read during lunch today. Brad, the passages about the RAF airfield interdiction raids reminded me of our H4 discussion a year or so ago.

Hi David, Rules are always open to interpretation. The classifications that I listed yesterday are what I believe to be the extent that the rules allow for. On the other side of the coin, I could see where careful analysis of the provide more information. I suppose that if crew could match the sounds to a particular type of ship, they could extrapolate the speed and a relative distance. I have no idea if it would be enough for a fire control solution. I'd play it your way and see if the results are believable? Are you playing again someone or solo? I game mostly solo, so if I can agree with a result as believable, I go with it. There's no harm.

Hi David, There is already the Passive Sonar Classification process. See 4.4.8. Depending upon your classification roll, and in addition to the target bearing, it is possible through classification to narrow down your target to whether the target is Ship/Sub, Ship/Sub/Propulsion type/Nationality, Ship/Sub/Torpedo, or No Data.

Set up and played through a very small scale engagement tonight. 4x LCAC's landed a USMC Light Armored Reconnaissance Company reinforced with 1x LAR-AT (TOW-2), and 1x LAR-M (81mm mortar). The mission was to move inland gain contact with enemy forces. Prevent enemy motorized reinforcements from interferring with the landing beach. LAR moves inland and "stumbles" into an enemy BTR-90 company in a defensive coil. The enemy had won that turn's initiative, thus being in reserve fire mode, fires at the lead LAR platoon (at 1000m) with no effect. LAR returns with ineffectual fire. Turn 2, with USMC initiative, LAV-25's manuever while two platoons of BTR-90 are destroyed by a combination of 25mm chain guns and ATGM's. The 3rd BTR-90 platoon breaks and withdraws its full movement allowance of 12". Turn 3, with OPFOR initiative (sets reserve fire). OPFOR set in on high ground observes movement to its front and flank. Distance is too far for effective fire. USMC base of fire, both LAV-AT and LAV-M are both ineffective. Turn 4, with OPFOR initiative (sets reserve fire again). OPFOR passes to USMC who continues to attempt flanking maneuver. OPFOR fires without effect. ATGM's and 25mmchain gus again take their toll, this time destroying one BTR platoon. End of turn morale check finds the second BTR company suppressed. Turn 5, OPFOR again wins initiative and withdraws from their hilltop position, at 1/2 speed due to suppression. Funs little battle. Also ran a mock run with an AH-1W firing one of its mavericks but rolled a 10 - automatic miss.

Hi David, I posted a modified form of your question over on AdmiraltyTrilogy Yahoo group and received a response from Dave Schueler on how he handles your described situation - I sure that he would not mind sharing it for the good of the community. "I've placed my answers after your questions below: > Assuming that the target has been tracked long and successfully enough for the shooter to have a good/fair TMA Solution, > and a submarine commander deciding to attack the target with "modern" guided torpedoes. Is the player required to > declare an enabling point, basically a SWAG, or can he fire the "guided" torpedoes in a spread as "straight runners"? For good solutions I usually let the player just plot 'Intercept' and move the torpedoes toward the target. You could extend that to fair solutions too. But for poor and BOL shots, I usually make the player give the torpedo a specific course. I do ask for an enabling point, since the player should have an idea of how far away the target is and the target may move inside the enable range. You could fire a spread of guided torpedoes to give a better chance of hitting the target and I think that a lot of players do that, putting some overlap between the torpedo shots. > Is there such a thing as a Torpedo BOL? It seems like quite a crap shoot, although wasn't this type of passive detection > and engagement not unheard of in previous conflicts involving submarine attacks? You can fire a torpedo BOL, as is shown by the modifier on the TMA solution chart. This is often what is done as a 'snapshot' down the bearing of an incoming torpedo by submarines and surface ships. With a straight-running torpedo spread, I would use a plotting mechanism similar to what I described in the previous question, where the player would plot 'intercept' for the spread for good/fair solutions and have them plot a course for poor/BOL shots. I hope that helps out."

PORT BLAIR, Andaman Islands --- India has just concluded its most ambitious naval exercise. Called Exercise Malabar 2007, it included the participation of military vessels and aircraft from the United States, Japan, Australia and Singapore. India's navy is positioning itself to dominate its strategic waters while not trying to make waves with China, its biggest potential blue-water rival in Asia. For modern navies, there is no ship more enviable than the aircraft carrier. It can launch squadrons of attack and support planes into the skies within minutes. Among those watching American fighter jets catapulted above the Bay of Bengal from the USS Kitty Hawk was India's eastern region naval commander in chief, vice admiral R.P. Suthan, who says these were advanced techniques his officers and sailors need to learn. "We also might at some stage operate three carriers, hopefully," he said. "And then we must know how to manage them at sea." India has one aircraft carrier, the Viraat. It is a hand-me-down from the British, and is scheduled to be de-commissioned in 2012. Formerly known as the Hermes, the only jets that can fly off it are the British-made Harriers, which have a very short distance takeoff capability and return to the carrier vertically, like a helicopter. That is a severe limitation for an ambitious navy. India finally has the cash to deploy a variety of aircraft from a carrier in the middle of an ocean. It has ordered a used carrier of that type from the Russians, but delivery has been delayed. India also has plans to build up to two new carriers of its own. On board the Viraat during the Malabar exercise, the commander of the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet, Doug Crowder, said the Indians are well aware that modern aircraft carriers demand significant investment and highly trained personnel to stay combat ready. "Having additional carriers give you the flexibility to move them around. It also means you have got to have more of a force, more training and more aviators. It also gives you the ability to have what I call operational availability," said Crowder. "We struggle with that in our own navy as we have come down from 15 carriers, down to 12, down to 11." India appears eager to build a navy able to dominate the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. This would give India undisputed maritime dominance over neighbor and rival Pakistan. China, meanwhile, is building its own aircraft carriers and increasingly looks intent on asserting its presence in open southern waters. A former U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary, Peter Brookes, says China's ambitions raise concerns in India and in other Asian capitals. "The Chinese are doing a number of things in the Indian Ocean that perhaps are making people wonder about their intentions," said Brookes. "The Japanese, during meetings in Japan between China and Japan, called for greater transparency in terms of China's military intentions and also about China's military budget." Naval commanders who were in the Bay of Bengal stressed the exercise was intended to share tactical knowledge, and tried to avoid comment on strategic implications. "We should not be politically oriented. The relationship between Japan and China is also getting closer and closer," said Yoji Koda, commander-in-chief of Japan's self defense fleet. "And, also, our participation in international cooperation is getting bigger and bigger." But the reasons behind the naval build-ups are not hard to find. Japanese worry about getting drawn in to the fight if China tries to take Taiwan by force. It also is uncomfortable about Sino-Russian naval exercises. India is nervous seeing China construct a port in Pakistan and building ties with Bangladesh, Burma, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Vice admiral R.P. Suthan stresses India's navy has been participating in exercises and training with many countries, not just those viewed as American allies. "We have our own peculiarities here. We have now the 'Look East' policy. We are building bridges of friendship with all the Southeast Asian countries. We have a lot more interaction [with them] going on. And it is open water. I mean that the beauty of oceans. It [our maritime policy] is not restricted by east or west." China and India have also conducted naval exchanges but Indian officers say they have been limited to basic maneuvers at Beijing's request. The last time the U.S. Seventh Fleet was in the Bay of Bengal was in 1971, trying to intimidate India as it fought Pakistan in the war that led to the birth of Bangladesh. The Malabar Exercise shows how much ties between India and the United States have improved. It also shows how far regional cooperation has advanced since then - even as it highlights the risks posed by the growing ambitions of regional powers, from India to China. Find Defense Aerospace article here.

You have to love the speak softly and carry a big stick mentality. The official Israeli silence is golden, while all the talking heads and anonomous sources speculate, they sit there with coy smiles.

Trying to hit a moving target with artillery is problematic. In TacOps, if you have not already, you will get an idea of the movement rates for various types of units, thereby being able to lead them (Not the preferred method). Or integrating suppression so that they do not move outside of you ECR in the turn your artillery salvo lands (friend tank round or ATGM hits will suppress a target unit). I have been badgering MajorH for some time on de-abstracting artillery to allow some real world fire planning such as linear targets, and groups and series of targets. Attack helos such as the cobras as modeled pay divdends in overwatch. Also learn through trial and error the benefits of NOE flight and pop-up attacks. There should be a description in the users guide. In any of the "light forces" scenarios, ATGM's, employing them and keeping them alive, are just about your only hope. Build depth in your position, and do not stay in one place or else you will be plastered by opfor artillery. Shoot and scoot. I have enjoyed TacOps for years. Glad you are now enjoying it.

Hi David, Good question. I'd like to hear the answer for someone a little more familiar with information on torpedoes. Especially since it seems to be the preferred method of operation of a modern sub attack. I think you may be experiencing one of the drawbacks of a passive-only detection. Maybe launching it as a "straight runner" would be best/only chance, as you mention you only have a direction. There's got to be a better way. Have you already established a satisfactory Target Motion Analysis? I hope someone chimes in on your "setting the enabling point question". Pete

Hey now, they had a glorious navy in their day...too bad they are now a tiny landlocked nation.

Tony is well known in these circles as an "Australiophobe" Just a fun swing at Tony.

Find Defensenews video here.

Army records first UAV kills kosborn@defensenews.com - kosborn@defensenews.com Posted : Saturday Sep 15, 2007 7:58:53 EDT When Army scouts in Iraq spotted two men planting a roadside bomb Sept. 1, they called in a nearby Hunter unmanned aircraft, which dropped a laser-guided bomb and killed the two men. “We had the first confirmed use of an Army weaponized UAV,” said Col. Don Hazelwood, project manager for Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems at Redstone Arsenal, Ala. The Army is mounting precision-guided weapons on hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hazelwood said. The MQ-5B Hunter will carry the laser-guided GBU-44/B Viper Strike, a 42-pound glide bomb with a one-yard wingspan that can strike within one meter of its aim point. The Army intends to increase the number of Viper Strike bombs it intends to buy, but declined to give specific numbers, said Tim Owings, the Army’s deputy project manager for UAVs. AGM-114 Hellfire missiles are going on the Warrior AlphaUAV, a prototype version of the MQ-1C Warrior Extended-Range Multi-purpose UAV to be ready by 2009. Eventually, the Warrior may also carry Viper Strikes. Both UAV types will carry laser designators that can be used to guide munitions dropped from UAVs or manned aircraft, said Owings. He said the Army has a human in the loop who decides when to fire a UAV’s weapons. “The ground control stations are like a cockpit which does not need to be in the aircraft. The video goes into the brigade TOC [tactical operations center], so the same rules of engagement that any of our pilots would follow is followed by our pilots in the TOC,” Owings said. The number of UAVs in combat is rising, from about 1,000 last year to 1,350 expected by the end of this year. Flight hours have soared from 60,000 last year to 140,000 so far this year, Hazelwood said. The number of video terminals that display live imagery beamed from UAVs has jumped to 1,000, up from 200 six months ago, he said. They are installed in Stryker vehicles on their way to Iraq, and should be in Apache cockpits by next summer, said Kim Henry, a spokeswoman at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, Ala. “These terminals receive video from any of our platforms. You can see where you are located and see what UAV operators are seeing as well. Now the Apache pilot is able to see before he gets to a target,” Owings said. The terminals allow soldiers to see around corners, over hills and buildings, and into neighboring areas during combat, said one senior Army leader who recently returned from Iraq. He said more surveillance, communications and reconnaissance technologies are changing things. “Now all of our [avionics and sensor] payloads are digital, and that has opened up a whole new bunch of capability,” Hazelwood said. UAVs beam voice communications to convoys as far as 100 kilometers away, Hazelwood said. The Hunter has been improved several times since it made the combat debut for Army UAVs in Kosovo in 1999. The latest model, the 1,940-pound, $2 million MQ-5B, has a bigger fuel tank so it can fly for 21 hours at altitudes up to 15,000 ft, diesel engines, and a modern avionics suite. “Now we have an EOIR [electro-optical infrared] sensor on a ball sitting below the middle of the airplane, that allows soldiers to identify things with great clarity from a great distance away,” said Northrop Grumman engineer Mike Howell. “Right now, they are at 53,000 hours of operation, 20,000 hours of combat in OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom]. They are easy to maintain and they stay in the air,” said David Apt, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman Technical Services. The Army is upgrading its A-model Hunters to the B specification, said Henry, who declined to say how many of each type the Army owns. The Army plans to buy 132 MQ-1C Warriors in the first batch, taking delivery of the first prototype in December and beginning testing in May. Initial production is scheduled for July, with delivery of operational Warriors to the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Ky., in August 2009, the senior Army official said. The Warrior, which will fly 36-hour missions at altitudes up to 25,000 feet, will carry an 800-pound payload, which includes four Hellfire missiles, Hazelwood said. “We like the Hellfire, but we don’t like using it downtown or in built-up areas. It can blow out windows. We are there to not disrupt the population and we are very sensitive to it, so we have to be very sensitive to the munitions we use,” Hazelwood said. “The Viper Strike can still take out the same type of targets but does not have the same explosive effects.” Find Armytimes article here.

How about something like the atomic clock that you can put on the HG main page. "We are now 15 minutes from release." Minutes can be added or subtracted based upon feedback/insinuations that you receive from the people in the "know".

NATO Open To Return Of French Military Paris sees time to 'clarify' role By Mark John, Reuters News Agency BRUSSELS — NATO is ready to discuss bringing France back fully into the fold after signals from Paris it may reverse its decision 41 years ago to quit the alliance's military structures, officials said yesterday. President Nicolas Sarkozy set the tone with a keynote foreign-policy speech last month, insisting NATO was no rival to France's ambition of a robust European Union defense capability. Speculation that Paris is ready to reverse the 1966 decision by President Charles de Gaulle to pull out of NATO's integrated military command mounted after Defense Minister Herve Morin said Tuesday it was now time to "clarify" the French NATO role. "Any initiative by France to get more involved and to get back into the integrated military structure could only be welcomed by NATO," alliance spokesman James Appathurai said, stressing any move would have to come from France. "This would be a sovereign decision," said another official. "There will be no decision until someone, and that someone would have to be France, puts it on the table." In a move that has cast a long shadow over France's presence in the trans-Atlantic alliance, Gen. de Gaulle on March 10, 1966, told allies he was pulling personnel out of NATO military headquarters in a row over command arrangements. France had refused to integrate its air defenses into the NATO system or allow the United States to station nuclear arms in France. The dispute triggered the shifting of NATO's headquarters from Paris to its current home in Brussels. France partially reintegrated under President Jacques Chirac in the 1990s, reintroducing some 120 officers to military commands in Belgium and the United States, and taking part in meetings of national defense chiefs and joint NATO exercises. But it remains absent from NATO forums such as the Defense Planning Committee and the Nuclear Planning Group in a way which Mr. Morin said left France punching below its weight in the body. "France is indeed in NATO and is a good pupil," Mr. Morin told a defense event in Toulouse on Tuesday. He noted France's status as a major troop contributor to NATO operations and as one of the few allies who fulfill alliance targets for defense spending. "But we are not getting the full benefit, notably in terms of influence and command posts," he said. Mr. Morin noted possible drawbacks, ranging from the cost to France in supplying more personnel to a potential loss of face internationally if France was no longer perceived as a "stand-alone" military power in its own right. Alliance diplomats note France has just taken the command of the 16,000-strong NATO-led peace force in Kosovo and has in the past played a command role in its larger Afghan peacekeeping operation. France could seek assurances from allies — not just the United States but more Atlanticist countries ranging from Britain to Poland — that efforts to build a proper EU defense capability would not suffer as a result of it rejoining NATO. Concrete steps may have to await publication in March of a wide-ranging "White Book" on French defense sector reform being prepared by a committee under defense analyst Jean-Claude Mallet. Mr. Mallet is tentatively scheduled to visit NATO headquarters for talks with Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Thursday, and alliance diplomats note that the publication of the White Book comes a month before a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania.

U.S. May Sell Weapons To Taiwan WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 (Reuters) — The Pentagon announced tentative plans on Wednesday to sell surplus P-3C Orion submarine-hunting aircraft and air-defense missiles to Taiwan in deals potentially worth more than $2.23 billion, including related gear and services. Taiwan is seeking to buy 12 surplus P-3C maritime patrol aircraft with T-56 turboprop engines, data terminals and a mobile operation command center in a deal that could be worth $1.96 billion, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a notice to Congress. In a separate notice, the agency said it was also tentatively planning to sell Taiwan 144 SM-2 Block 3A Standard missiles to defend against cruise missiles and aircraft threats in a package that could total $272 million. The P-3C is a land-based maritime patrol and submarine warfare aircraft. It is to be replaced in the United States arsenal by the P-6 Multimission maritime aircraft, scheduled to enter service in 2013. As part of the proposed P-3C deal, Taiwan also would get help integrating its intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance network, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon said the proposed sale would be to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, Taiwan’s unofficial embassy. Taiwan’s current patrol aircraft are reaching the end of their usefulness, the Pentagon said. The sale would improve Taiwan’s security and help maintain political stability, military balance and economic progress in the region, the notice to Congress said. Principal contractors for the P-3C Orion deal include Lockheed Martin, Rockwell Collins and Raytheon. The SM-2 missiles, which would supplement those already in Taiwan’s inventory, are for Taiwan’s destroyers. Raytheon would be the prime contractor, according to the Pentagon. The notice of a potential sale is required by law. It does not mean a deal has been concluded. Congress can block such sales but rarely does.

With hope...but then again.

As perhaps an addendum to that, scripted Weather Effects - could the effects be tweaked to represent an electro-magnetic pulse attack or "zone" on/over a particular area rendering equipment, primarily radar in HC from functioning? So Akula's scripted major storm over Taiwan could in fact be an EMP detonation preceding the inevitable PRC attack.

Senate panel cuts 1 of 3 LCS ships, backs FCS By William Matthews - Staff writer Posted : Tuesday Sep 11, 2007 17:59:18 EDT The Senate subcommittee that oversees the U.S. military budget eliminated one of the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships Sept. 11, leaving the program with just two ships. Each remaining vessel is a different design, and the subcommittee said it expects the Navy to pick one as the winner in a contest between Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics to build as many as 55 ships for the Navy. In documents prepared by the subcommittee, senators said the two ships should be delivered to the Navy by next summer and the Navy should evaluate them and decide which one to build in volume by Oct. 1, 2008. The decision by the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee cuts $910 million from the Littoral Combat Ship program for 2008. It also takes back $300 million from the program in 2007 funding. And it adds $75 million for advance procurement funding for a ship in 2009. The Senate subcommittee decision differs from House action on the LCS program. The House cut $571 million from the program for 2008. That difference will have to be resolved in a final version of the military spending bill. Overall, the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee approved defense spending bill worth $559.3 billion. In August, the House approved a $559.6 billion bill. Each house voted to spend less than the $463.1 billion President George W. Bush requested in military funding for fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1. Senators trimmed $1.4 billion from Bush’s request for $99.6 billion in “procurement” funding – the money used to buy new weapons. The House trimmed only $15 million from the president’s request. Senators added $270 million to the $75.4 billion Bush requested for research and development – the part of the budget that pays for developing new weapons. The House added $1.1 billion to the president’s R&D request. Both houses cut about $300 million from the $8.8 billion Bush sought for ballistic missile defense programs. During a brief subcommittee meeting Sept. 11, Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee, announced that his subcommittee’s version of the 2008 Defense Appropriations Act “fully funds FCS,” which he identified as the Army’s highest priority. That decision is at odds with a House vote to cut $406 million from the Army’s request of $3.6 billion for FCS. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the FCS program has become unaffordable. FCS has been priced at $160.7 billion by the Government Accountability Office. In another favor for the Army, the Senate subcommittee keeps alive the armed reconnaissance helicopter by allocating $242.3 million for 16 helicopters. The House voted to cut all funds for buying helicopters, but allowed research and development to continue. Earlier this year, a prototype of the Bell-made helicopter crashed. Then in March, the Army ordered Bell to stop work on the program because it was behind schedule and over budget. The fates of FCS and the helicopter will probably have to be resolved by a conference committee as the House and Senate wrap up work on a final version of the defense spending bill. Despite those and other differences in spending on certain programs, there really is little difference between the spending bill the House passed in August and the one the Senate subcommittee approved Sept. 11, said Christopher Hellman, a defense budget analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. And with a $142 billion war-funding bill and an anticipated request for $40 billion more to pay for the “surge” of troops to Iraq this year, budget numbers are still very fluid, Hellman said. There will be multiple opportunities for lawmakers to secure funding for programs that are not funded in the 2008 Defense Appropriations Act, he said. In all, Bush asked Congress for $647.2 billion in defense spending for 2008. That includes $483.2 billion for regular defense expenses, $141.7 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $17.4 billion for nuclear weapons programs managed by the Energy Department and $5.2 billion in defense-related activities by other agencies. That total will go up if an additional funding request is made to pay for the surge. Find Navy Times article here.