October 2009
1 post
September 2009
9 posts
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Bizarre Friday: SR-71
SR-71 Blackbird Darkstar Charlie: Denver Center, Darkstar Charlie. Request FL600.
Denver Center ARTCC: Darkstar Charlie, Denver Center, cleared for FL600 if you can do that high...
SR-71 Blackbird Darkstar Charlie: Affirmative, Denver Center. Beginning descent to FL600.
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Somalia? We don't need no Somalian pirates, we've...
This is good enough for another Bizarre Friday. While everyone is caught up in the Somalian piracy story, few have taken notice of our local, home-brewed maritime chaos around the Maltese-flagged but Russian-crewed cargo vessel M/V Arctic Sea. The Arctic Sea set out from Jakobstad, Finland, on 23 July with a stated cargo of wood, and headed towards the Algerian pot of Bejaia - until Stuff...
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Detainee operations in Afghanistan, 2005-06
Small Wars Journal has an article by Luke Coffey on detainee operations in COIN. It’s a ‘lessons learned’ paper from Afghanistan, 2005-2006, and makes some interesting points (okay, they’re interesting to me probably more than to you, as I’m writing on the subject at the moment). Coffey writes:
Even though counterinsurgency operations do not stop at the gates of a...
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When's normal not normal?
Answer: when it’s not supposed to be normal. In the Mojave Desert, it rains less than ten inches a year. Rainfall is pretty rare to begin with, extensive rain is virtually unseen. I suppose we can all say the Mojave Desert is abnormally dry. In Cardiff, Wales, which is where I am at the moment, it rains quite a lot, about once every couple of days, but not unusually much. Let’s say it...
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Mushroom clouds are nice, let's have some more -...
As they say in less restrained climates: you just can’t make this shit up. And indeed it’s real: nuclear scientist Arkadi Brich, who worked on the Soviet nuclear project sixty years ago, says nukes are actually quite pretty, and let’s have more tests anyway:
‘The day of the first test should be considered a national day of celebration,’ he told RIA Novosti.
...
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Proxy wars are here again
So long, glad times?
In his recent column in Foreign Policy, Robert Haddick argues that the Yemen conflict might be a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran:
The current round of fighting, now into its second week, is the sixth uprising in this area since 2004.
What raises the profile of this development are accusations of foreign intervention in the conflict. The Yemeni government has...
August 2009
23 posts
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The sightless leading the blind
The African Union’s mission to Somalia has always struck me as peculiar at best and highly problematic at worst. With no clear mandate and objectives, paid for by Washington (and not that terribly well), with not much in terms of military equipment, no peace to enforce and coming from no particularly strong peacekeeping traditions (African militaries tended to be more adept at making war...
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The new COIN guidance
On 2 July, Gen McChrystal released a revised Tactical Directive for the ISAF. There is a somewhat meager press release containing some cuttings here. Abu Muqawama did what ISAF should have done and posted the whole thing on Scribd. Given the fact that population-centric warfare is not just about their population, but also about the domestic population of the COIN force keeping its commitment to...
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Enlisting the tribes and the Anbar model
The Anbar model is catching on. Following the success of the Anbar Awakening movement against AQI, which took up arms and joined the Coalition in the fight, the idea seems to emerge that local tribal stakeholders should be co-opted to fight the war in Afghanistan. Dan Green in Special Warfare (reproduced on SWJ) comments:
Afghanistan’s tribes must forcefully confront the insurgency and not be...
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Great moments in military marketing, vol.1
Lockheed designs light tactical vehicle, Lockheed invites journalists… light tactical vehicle flips over with journalist:
After the interviews, reporters were invited to take the vehicle for a test drive on the cross-country track. News 10 Now reporter Neil St. Clair was third to go behind the driver seat, with one of our photographers in the passenger seat and a Lockheed Martin test driver...
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Meet the new Taliban boss, same as the old Taliban...
For starters, the Taliban jungle telegraph seems to confirm that the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, has gone down in a UAV strike (if one more commentator calls a strike by a UAV a Predator strike, I will go postal), and news have even reached the Associated Press. In comes dashing new Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, a Johnny Depp lookalike with a pancake hat. And a lot of...
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There's a method to every madness - analysing the...
Anyone following insurgencies and terrorism for long enough ought, by now, have lots all sense of wonder and astonishment at just about anything and concluded that this is one mad world peopled by a lot of mad people. True so - and yet, sometimes something crazy enough to astonish the most seasoned pros - never mind COIN rookies like me - turns up. Such is the bizarre story of the Gaza Emirate.
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One badass way to do economic warfare
DefenseNews reports Russia tries to bankrupt the Indian naval war chest:
When Russia gave India a retired Soviet aircraft carrier five years ago, New Delhi was delighted - little realizing the vessel would turn into a costly white elephant. Russia, India’s longtime weapons supplier, said in 2004 it would give the country the 44,570-ton “Admiral Gorshkov” as a gift, provided Delhi...
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UAV season!
It’s the summer/early autumn of love… and of UAVs. We’ve finally gotten ourselves around to go through the UAV Flight Plan issued by the USAF - so for the next four weeks, we’ll be holding UAV Mondays. I bet y’all are delighted ;)
WTF? HAL9000 wasn’t in the Acquisitions list!
So, will HAL9000 take over our Predators? We shall see.
The Flight Plan...
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How not to treat 'terps
The Registan blog has a great article on mistreatment of interpreters (‘terps):
Earlier this year, I was going out on a patrol through central Afghanistan with some colleagues. We were hitching a ride with the local PRT. As is normal, the night before the patrol, we all gathered near the PRT operations center for a briefing on what to encounter. The colonel running the PRT saw us cultural...
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COIN Center Virtual Brownbag, 26 August
The US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center will be holding a virtual brownbag (which I used to imagine as a lot of nerds in front of their computers tucking into Chinese and talking with full mouths, but is in fact a good way to interact with people a huge distance away and decrease the analytical flaws that arise from having all your opinions come in from the same limited area) on...
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John Boyd fights the zombies!
The week’s funny news was a study by the University of Ottawa modeling… the undead. Yup. Whatcha gonna do when they come for you (or, rather, your brain and intestines)?
Not too much good, the study says:
An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the...
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Bees and Spiders
It may well be that when Brian L. Steed’s Bees and Spiders came out, I did not notice, and I am now banging on about something that has been discussed over and over. Nonetheless, it’s something that bears talking about, even if it is repetition.
In my opinion, Steed gets it absolutely right in identifying the difference in the Arab and Western outlook on operating. His experiences...
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Международный авиационно-космический салон!
…or, if you can’t read Cyrillic: it’s MAKS time, during which a lot of people nostalgic for Soviet Air Power or excited to see MiGs take off without sparking a minor international crisis congregate at Zhukovskiy Field near Moscow.
In which we casual observers get what used to be called a Spinning Bow Tie Extravaganza.
Sukhoi announced that the PAK FA (jeez, they’re just...
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War is boring - now in comic form!
It probably needs mentioning that we’re great fans of War is Boring here. WiB is an amazing blog, run by guys who, as the blog says, ‘go to war so they won’t have to’ (and some actually do that without a rifle!!!). Now, WiB is available in comic form, drawn by Matt Bors and depicting WiB’s David Axe’s adventures as a war correspondent from Lebanon to the...
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Missile Defence Wednesday!
MD Wednesday brings you the scoop on missile defence every other Wednesday. This week, the Centre Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments’ assessment of the FY10 defense budget request is the hot potato - insofar as it concerns MD.
The Pentagon’s austerity binge in the MD area has led to the cancellation of the Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) and the second aircraft carrying the...
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How To Meet Robots and Alienate People?
Offiziere.ch reports (via War Is Boring, my favourite warblog):
Like all branches of the U.S. military, the Marine Corps has invested heavily in unmanned systems in recent years. When the Marines spearheaded the drive through southern Iraq six years ago, they owned just a handful of 20-year-old Pioneer Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Today, the Marines operate newer Shadow UAVs at the division level,...
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SLOTD #1: Hearts and minds goes both ways
Slotted! SLOTD stands for ‘strategic lesson of the day’. It highlights interesting current developments which have a strategic lesson element. What should the next SLOTD be on? It’s up to you!
The Helmand Blog reports a statement made by Gov. Gulab Mangal, governor of Helmand Province, Afghanistan (via @MediaOps, whom you really should follow):
Once again, we in Helmand...
Patterns of Conflict
Patterns of Conflict was an immensely influential briefing by strategist extraordinaire Col John Boyd (available here), from December 1986. Regarded as the dominant part of his three-briefing set known as the Discourse on Winning and Losing, it laid out a number of influential ideas, first and foremost the three dimensions - moral - mental - physical - of conflict. Its question was simple, yet...