Category Archives: defense policy

US Missile Defense

Posted on by
Reply

The New York Times reported a few days ago that Russia appears to have violated a 1987 treaty banning the test, production, even possession, of medium-range missiles by testing a new ground-launched cruise-missile.

It seems that Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance Rose Gottemoeller advised NATO of the tests and that the Russian testing program actually began flight tests in 2008 (keep that timing in mind), but for all that, the Obama administration has declined to protest officially or to take meaningful action in response to this threat to the security of our allies and so to our own security.

We shouldn’t be surprised at this latest demonstration of Obama’s timidity on the world stage.  This is the same President who surrendered to the Russians on the question of placing a missile defense capacity in Poland and the Czech Republic—a defense system designed specifically to intercept short- and medium-range missiles and wholly incapable of handling ICBMs.  With the Russian medium-range missile flight testing having begun just a few months earlier, their vociferous objections to a missile defense system capable of defending, oh, say, Europe becomes much more understandable.

This is also the same president that has gutted DoD’s missile defense system R&D and deployment anywhere.

Now this.  What did Obama really expect, though?  He’s neither stupid, ignorant, nor naïve.

Stop the Nonsense

Posted on by
Reply

…and leave.  This government cannot be trusted (and, no, this time I’m not talking about the Obama administration).

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has demanded that the United States must cease military operations and airstrikes, as well as resume peace talks with the Taliban, before he signs a security deal to keep some US troops in Afghanistan beyond this year.

Never mind that this is another move on Karzai’s part to renege on an agreement to which he agreed last fall and which the Loya Jirga insisted he sign promptly.

Never mind that the Taliban are terrorists who harbored al Qaeda and who have not at all changed their terrorist ways.

Never mind that our only purpose for having a military presence in Afghanistan under the Bush Doctrine (mission creep since notwithstanding) is to burn the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Enough.  It’s time to have done with Hamid Karzai and his government.  Return only as needed under the Bush Doctrine, and with no mission creep.

China and “Partnership”

Posted on by
Reply

Sun Guoxiang, Ambassador and New York Consul General for the People’s Republic of China had some remarks about Chinese-American partnership.  I have some thoughts on those remarks.

Over the past three decades, both countries have learned that it is always better to engage in dialogue rather than confrontation, cooperation rather than containment, and deal with each other as partners rather than rivals.

When will the PRC actually act in accordance with this…learning?  Today, the PRC is confronting Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia with land and sea grabs in the South and East China Seas, despite having no legitimate claims, cynically manufacturing, instead, “claims” on the basis of ancient maps that showed that Chinese sailors had sailed there sometime.  On that premise, should Portugal assert its claim to suzerainty over the Philippines on the basis of Magellan’s having sailed there some time ago?  Of course not; it’s a facially specious claim.

Further, the PRC actively is confounding our efforts to prevent a terrorist state from getting nuclear weapons and confounding our efforts to get northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program under control and stood down.  The only purpose in this is to demonstrate the PRC’s ability to face us, with the added fillip that when Iran obtains nuclear weapons, those weapons will be turned against our allies and against us—extending the PRC’s military reach without the military expenditures.

This is not partnership.  The PRC is doing this to confront nearby nations and to provoke us.  And to seize the territory and the resources within those Seas.  And to arm the most aggressive and dangerous of our enemies.

[A]t the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, comprehensive economic and social reforms were presented that will boost China’s economic development and provide even more opportunities for China-U.S. cooperation.

These “reforms” still demand PRC companies to be majority parties in joint ventures with foreign companies, retain PRC government…influence…in foreign business ventures, lack intellectual property protections while demanding technology transfers.  And the “reforms” do nothing to stem the Chinese tide of technology and intellectual property theft, and they do nothing to halt the economic cyberwar the PRC is waging against our allies and against us.

Partnership, indeed.

Does Nobody in this Administration Care?

Posted on by
Reply

In the days running up to the 9/11/2012 terrorist attack on our Benghazi consulate, we now know the following:

  • no attack aircraft were placed on high alert on Sept 11
  • the closest F-16 fighter planes to any of the trouble spots in North Africa were unarmed and in Aviano, Italy
  • the closest air refuellers were positioned 10 hours away in Great Britain
  • no AC-130 gunships were within a 10-hour flight to Libya
  • the commander’s in-extremis force, which included a unit of 23 special operators who are used at the commander’s discretion, were training in Croatia that day. They did not make it to a staging base in Sigonella, Italy, for another 19 hours after the attack began

Northern Africa had been an active trouble area with civil wars in progress or just dying down for the prior couple of years.  The US had—and has—facilities, assets, personnel, friends, allies, and potential allies in the area for far longer than that.  Yet we chose to take no heads-up action in preparation for a major anti-US anniversary regarding an area of the world likely to…celebrate…that anniversary?  The in-extremis force’s posture could be laid off to bad luck; such units need to train intensively, and they need to do it in realistic arenas.  Maybe their training could have been rescheduled around such an anniversary, though.  Regardless, there is no excuse for the rest of the non-preparation.

Even more troubling, however, are these:

  • Neither [AFRICOM Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region Commander, Col George] Bristol, nor his chief military officer on the ground in Tripoli that night, LtCol Sean Gibson, was ever interviewed by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB)
  • DoD did not conduct its own internal after-action review separate from the ARB

Why not?  Isn’t anyone in this administration the least bit interested in finding out, and understanding, what happened and how to anticipate future such occurrences?

Or is it that they won’t ask the questions because they don’t want to hear, or are afraid of, the answers?

Why Are We Abandoning the High Ground?

Posted on by
Reply

China’s first lunar rover has successfully separated from the probe that carried it into space has and made its first track upon the surface of the moon, Chinese state media reported Sunday.

Here’s the rub:

The soft landing—the term for a landing in which neither the spacecraft nor its equipment is damaged—was the first on the moon by any nation in 37 years

And not only was it not done by us, it was done by a nation with clear enmity toward us and toward our friends and allies.  Moreover, the People’s Republic of China is making no bones about its future plans for the moon.  They’re planning a sample return mission in their present Chang’e series as soon as 2017 and an astronaut landing after 2020.

The US’ space program?  Well, we don’t have much of one, and none at all where the moon is concerned.  We send the occasional robot off to Mars (those are spectacular missions, doing important science, to be sure), but that’s about it.  American astronauts have to thumb rides to the space station on Russian rockets.  American private companies are (finally!) figuring out how to send supply missions all the way to the space station.  That’s about it.

As for the moon, we got nothing.

Never mind that the back side of the moon is an excellent platform for exploring space.  Never mind that the regolith on the moon—all that moon “soil”—is rich in rocket fuel (it’s loaded with oxygen and aluminum, each a key ingredient).  Or that producing that rocket fuel on the moon and loading it into rockets there considerably cheapens exploration of the rest of the solar system, since all that mass doesn’t have to be carried uphill out of Earth’s gravity.

Never mind that the moon is militarily useful high ground: rocks dropped from there impact Earth’s surface with force of nuclear bombs, and by destroying our launch facilities, any rock throwers will be able to deny us access to space entirely.  Other weapons launched from the moon will be able to destroy our satellites with impunity, which with no launch facilities, we’ll be unable to replace.

But we’re ceding all of that to the PRC.