Category Archives: defense policy

Airpower

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We are, sort of, using airpower to support the resistance effort against Daesh in Iraq. I say “sort of” here for a different reason than just that it’s desultorily applied, with a low rate of application. My “sort of” stems from one reason why that rate is so low.

…a bureaucracy that does not allow for quick decision-making. One Navy F-18 pilot who has flown missions against ISIS voiced his frustration to Fox News, saying: “There were times I had groups of ISIS fighters in my sights, but couldn’t get clearance to engage.”

And

Sources close to the air war against ISIS told Fox News that strike missions take, on average, just under an hour, from a pilot requesting permission to strike an ISIS target to a weapon leaving the wing.

And here’s the problem confessed, even though the man plainly does not understand what he’s said:

A spokesman for the US Air Force’s Central Command pushed back: “We refute the idea that close air support strikes take ‘an hour on average.’ Depending on the how complex the target environment is, a strike could take place in less than 10 minutes or it could take much longer.”

Ten minutes for a pilot on scene to get permission to strike. And, as the…spokesman…said, it could take much longer.

Ten minutes for a pilot on scene, who already has his rules of engagement, his limitations on collateral damage, his mission briefing, and targets lined up, to get permission to strike those targets.

Does this administration trust these pilots, trust their judgment, or does it not? If this administration does trust, the pilots need to be allowed to strike, not orbit the area asking for permission and waiting—and waiting—to get it.

A lot can happen in those interminable 10 minutes, and a lot more can happen in that hour. The targets can complete their mission, killing innocents or initiating their own attack on their own targets. The targets can leave the zone, or they can disperse. They can spread themselves among innocents, thereby running the risk of collateral damage above allowed limits for our pilots’ mission. The pilots’ fuel could be consumed in the wait before that permission arrives.

Our pilots should take off with permission to engage. We should be applying air power, not playing bureaucratic games.

PRC Aggression

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Beijing on Tuesday defended its building work in the Spratlys, saying the activity was comparable to construction of homes and roads on the mainland. “From the perspective of sovereignty, there is absolutely no difference,” Senior Colonel Yang Yujun, spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry, said at a news briefing.

To an extent, that’s a true statement. However internally logical Yang’s remark is, though, it proceeds from a false premise: there is no PRC sovereignty over the Spratlys, or anywhere else in the South (or East) China Sea. The grab here is naked aggression.

The Iraqi “Army”

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Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Iraqi’s pseudo-defense of Ramadi, that the Iraqi army hasn’t the will to fight.

The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact they vastly outnumbered the opposing force and yet they failed to fight and withdrew from the site… We can give them training, we can give them equipment. We obviously can’t give them the will to fight.

They cut and ran, abandoning that American-supplied equipment, small arms and vehicles among it, to the Daesh and abandoning the city and its remaining residents to those terrorists.

Hakim al Zamili, of the Iraqi Parliament’s Sadrist movement (you remember al Sadr) and chairman of the Security and Defense Committee, objected to that characterization.

The Iraqi army and police did have the will to fight [the] IS group in Ramadi, but these forces lack good equipment, weapons, and aerial support.

No, Hakim, Carter was being generous. Your Iraqi “army” is an insult to armies everywhere; in Ramadi they were stinking cowards who ran away. They wouldn’t fight to defend themselves, or their fellow soldiers, not even their families somewhere else. Here was the fight, and they shrank from it.

The reason they lacked “good equipment, weapons” is because they, once again, abandoned them and left them for the Daesh. Air support? As an American general said in an earlier war, they don’t need air support; they need to fight. The Daesh had no air support, they needed no air support for their inferior numbers to run your “army” out of the city.

No, it’s time for the US to stop using the Iraq Army Transfer Facility to arm and equip Daesh. We should, instead, arm and train—directly—the Kurds and the Sunni and Shiite militias. These are the ones who have the heart to fight, these are the ones who have the skill to fight, these are the ones who have an actual track record of success against the Daesh.

Redirecting our arms and training also would give us an opportunity to turn the Shiite militias away from Iran.

Timidity of Smart Diplomacy

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Motorboat Skipper and Guy Who Sits In the Secretary of State’s Chair John Kerry is demonstrating it.

This is what People’s Republic of China Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Saturday about the PRC’s occupation of the South China Sea and its construction on some of the islands of the Spratly Islands group:

The determination of the Chinese side to safeguard our own sovereignty and territorial integrity is as firm as a rock and it is unshakable. It is the demand of our people on our government as well as a legitimate right of ours.

This is Kerry’s response:

I urged China through Foreign Minister Wang to take actions that will join with everybody in helping to reduce tensions and increase the prospect of a diplomatic solution[.]

Yeah, that’ll show them. The PRC will be packing up and leaving by the end of the week. Sure.

Help, or Watch?

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Unfortunately, we already know which President Barack Obama will select, as he’s made clear in another venue.

The cause for concern this time is the economic strait in which Ukraine finds itself.

The contraction in Ukraine’s economy accelerated to 17.6% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the State Statistics Service said Friday, hammered by a conflict with Russia-backed separatists in its eastern industrial heartland that has slashed industrial output.

Obama—and Europe, to be fair—have already refused to supply Ukraine with the wherewithal to defend itself militarily against Russia’s invasion and support of the rebels in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Indeed, his Secretary of State already has surrendered both areas to Russian occupation with his offer to lift economic sanctions against Russia if only they will agree to go no further.

If we—or the Europeans, but they seem even more timid than our own administration—don’t start providing serious economic aid to the Ukrainians, Russia won’t need further military advances in order to gain control over all of Ukraine. Ukraine’s economic collapse will hand what’s left of the nation to the Russians without any further ado.

Instead, we should be arming the Ukrainians and ratcheting up the sanctions on Russia, driving the Russians into economic collapse. It’s anybody’s guess, though, whether Ukraine can hold out for another year and a half at which point we might have a more responsible and capable White House.