Quotulatiousness

February 15, 2012

More speculation that Canada might be reconsidering the F-35 fighter purchase

Filed under: Australia, Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

In the National Post, John Ivison reports on a new tender for UAVs and wonders if it may herald a reconsideration of the government’s announced F-35 purchase.

Sources said the Department of National Defence is preparing to tender a contract for around six remotely piloted vehicles such as the MQ-9 Reaper, which the U.S. Defence Department estimates cost around $30-million each. A spokesman for DND dismissed the suggestion that armed drones could replace the F-35s, or augment a reduced number of aircraft, as speculation.

The Canadian military has previously leased drones from Israel and the CU-170 Herons flew reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan. But the Herons were never armed and a move to fit munitions on to any unmanned aircraft would inevitably draw criticism from opposition parties. When the idea was raised two years ago, then New Democrat defence critic Jack Harris dismissed it as “morally repugnant” and “robot warfare.”

In 2009, it was mentioned that Canada had been using Heron UAVs for about a year (long enough that Australian troops were in Canada to train on the equipment at that time). Of course, you can’t (currently or in the near future) completely replace manned fighters with UAVs, but UAV capabilities have grown substantially and they can now accomplish many missions that used to require manned aircraft. (See the comments on this article for some useful discussion on that topic.)

The F-35 should be (once all the development and manufacturing issues have been worked out) a very impressive combat aircraft. Here’s a graphic showing the kind of armament the F-35 will be able to use. The problem for Canada and other countries intending to purchase the F-35 is that costs are rising uncomfortably fast:

However, delays and cost overruns to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 strike fighter jet are causing headaches in many NATO capitals. Peter MacKay, the Defence Minister, admitted Tuesday that “the program has not been without problems in timelines and cost estimates.”

He said the government remains committed to giving the air force “the best opportunity for mission success” but refused to confirm that the government still intends to buy 65 F-35s.

In Question Period, the Prime Minister said that there is a budget for the F35s and “the government will operate within that budget.”

The problem for the Tories is that the cost of the planes is likely to rise considerably from the estimated $75-million per plane. Buying 65 jets would burst the $9-billion budget allocated for the F-35 purchase.

The U.S. Defence Department estimates the cost of each F-35 at $195-million this year. The Pentagon said Monday it intends to reduce spending on the F-35s next year and delay future spending because of the soaring costs and technological problems.

Some countries are opting to buy some F/A-18F Super Hornets as a stopgap until the F-35 is mature (Australia, for example, ordered 24 aircraft at a reported cost of A$6.6 billion).

No story about military equipment purchases is complete without considering the fact that the government thinks of it as an economic development program nearly as much as a military purchase. In spite of the remarkably poor economic justification, it has political benefits that easily dazzle parliamentarians and local newspaper editors (in the regions that benefit from the spending, anyway).

The Harper government has argued consistently one reason to stay in the F-35 program is the industrial benefits that have accrued to some Canadian companies. However, one industry insider said more work would likely flow from an order for a less expensive jet from Boeing or Saab. The government is set to unveil a comprehensive review of the Canadian aerospace industry, led by former Industry Minister David Emerson. If his review were to encompass the F-35 purchase, it could provide the Tories with the perfect cover to cancel a program that is turning into a political millstone.

Also in the National Post, Matt Gurney points out that it’s not just the NATO allies getting concerned about the F-35 program:

Ottawa is said to be considering equipping the Air Force with armed drones as part of an effort to replace the aging CF-18 fighter jets. The original plan was to replace them with 65 F-35s, but that problem has been beset by cost overruns and production delays. While the Harper government has remained resolutely behind the F-35 purchase, news has emerged out of Washington that the United States is beginning to cancel or delay orders for the advanced stealth fighter jets. This is a game-changer — it’s one thing for Italy or Israel to get cold feet, but if America pulls the plug on the program, the entire calculus of the F-35′s economics could change rapidly. And not in Canada’s favour.

He also points out that it’s no longer safe to assume that your UAV will perform as expected once your opponent reaches a certain level of technical sophistication:

Last December, Iran announced that it had shot down a U.S. RQ-170 drone over its territory. There was nothing new about that, and nor was it particularly alarming — an advantage of using drones for reconnaissance is that if the enemy does blow one up, you don’t necessarily need to respond with a retaliatory strike, as would be far more likely if a pilot (with a family and an elected representative and a Facebook page) was killed or captured. It also helps avoid a repetition of the awkward Gary Francis Powers incident of the Cold War, where an American spyplane pilot was shot down over the Soviet Union. When America denied the flight had ever occurred, the Soviets displayed a very much alive Powers to the media, humiliating the United States. Having a drone blown out of the sky isn’t nearly as complex. You just build another drone.

After several days, however, it became clear that there was more to the story than we had first been led to believe. Iran hadn’t shot down the drone at all. It had done something much worse — it had hacked the drone, and seized control of it. Iranian ground controllers, having assumed command of the drone, were able to successfully land it in their territory as a prize. Now, one of the most advanced pieces of spy technology in the United States’ military inventory, loaded with all sorts of high-tech monitoring and communications gear, is being reverse-engineered by a hostile regime. Worse: You can be certain that Iran will have no qualms about sharing access with whatever it learns, or perhaps even the drone itself, with Chinese and Russian engineers. Just a small way of saying thanks for all the missiles and UN vetoes Iran’s friends have provided over the years. (Early consideration of sending in U.S. commandos to blow up the drone, or destroying it from afar with an airstrike, were rejected for fear of triggering an all-out war and because U.S. officials hoped that Iran wouldn’t know what to do with the technology — but the Russians and Chinese will likely have no such problems.)

Update: Kelly McParland on the luck of Stephen Harper:

Stephen Harper is one lucky politician.

Here he is, stuck with a bad decision to buy a bunch of fighter planes the country can’t afford and might not need, a decision he has defended so many times there is now no way out save through an admission of error and embarrassing public climbdown. Which, knowing our Prime Minister, we can safely predict would happen just about the time the last polar ice cap melts away.

Then along comes a solution with his name on it, all wrapped up in pretty ribbon and accompanied by a “get out of embarrassment free” pass. Once again you can picture Bob Rae lying awake in bed at night, cursing softly and muttering “How does the *!@*%$-ing son-of-a-#%&% do it?”

Mr. Harper’s gift, which arrived, appropriately enough, on St. Valentines Day, comes in the form of further evidence that other would-be buyers of the F-35 fighter jet are heading for the exits. Italy chopped its order by 30% this week, Britain says it won’t make up its mind until 2015, Turkey has reduced its order by 50% and Australia is having doubts. On Monday the Pentagon said it’s delaying its own purchase of 179 of the planes by five years to save $15 billion and allow yet more time for testing. Let’s repeat that: The U.S., which is building the plane and marketing it like crazy to any ally that will listen, says the plane isn’t ready yet and it can’t afford the thing itself.

December 7, 2011

Greek army reduces from 30 to 19 brigades

Filed under: Europe, Greece, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:15

Strategy Page lists the initial impact on the Greek armed forces due to the financial squeeze:

The current financial crisis in Greece has led to enormous cutbacks in government spending. The military has not been exempt. This year alone, the defense budget will be cut about a third. Over the next two years, the reduced budget will be cut another 15 percent. The army will lose 11 of its 30 brigades, but the air force has disbanded one of 16 squadrons, but kept the aircraft in service by moving them to surviving squadrons. The navy has retired some older patrol boats.

The army is apparently coping by disbanding many reserve units and retiring older tanks and equipment. There won’t be much new equipment purchased for the next few years, at least. Training will also be cut, because operating vehicles, aircraft and ships for these exercises is expensive. The reduction of training will decrease the combat capabilities of the troops. But the government does not want to dismiss lots of the 156.000 active duty troops. That will just increase the already high (approaching 20 percent) unemployment rate. It’s never a good idea to have a lot of professional soldiers among the unemployed.

October 6, 2011

Britain suffered higher proportional casualties than the US in Afghanistan

Filed under: Asia, Britain, Cancon, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:04

A brief item from Strategy Page on the relative casualties suffered by the major allied combatants over the course of the Afghanistan campaign:

In ten years of combat in Afghanistan, some 2,700 foreign troops have died. Most (67 percent) were American. The next two nations in terms of combat losses were Britain (14.1 percent) and Canada (5.8 percent). Adjusted for population size, Britain suffered five percent more combat deaths than the United States. On the same basis, Canada suffered about 80 percent as many deaths as the United States.

All three of these nations had their troops in the south (Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where most of the heroin came from) or along the southeast border (mainly Pakistan’s North Waziristan area, long a sanctuary for Islamic terror groups). There were a few other NATO nations, plus Australia, that had small contingents in the south, but most NATO nations put their troops in more peaceful north, with orders to stay out of trouble and avoid casualties.

September 14, 2011

The risk of terrorism doesn’t justify current US military spending

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:15

August 31, 2011

O’Neill: Winston Smith is working overtime in NATO’s “Ministry of Truth”

Filed under: Africa, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

I guess you could say that Brendan O’Neill wasn’t a fan of the NATO intervention in Libya:

Not since Winston Smith found himself in the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, rewriting old newspaper articles on behalf of Big Brother, has there been such an overnight perversion of history as there has been in relation to NATO’s intervention in Libya. Now that the rebels have taken Tripoli, NATO’s bombing campaign is being presented to us as an adroit intervention, which was designed to achieve precisely the glorious scenes we’re watching on our TV screens. In truth, it was an incoherent act of clueless militarism, which is only now being repackaged, in true Minitrue fashion, as an initiative that ‘played an indispensable role in the liberation of Tripoli’.

Normally it takes a few years for history to be rewritten; with Libya it happened in days. No sooner had rebel soldiers arrived at Gaddafi’s compound than the NATO campaign launched in March was being rewritten as a cogent assault. Commentators desperate to resuscitate the idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’, and NATO leaders determined to crib some benefits from their Libya venture, took to their lecterns to tell us that their aims had been achieved and they had ‘salvaged the principle of liberal interventionism from the geopolitical dustbin’. In order to sustain these bizarre claims, they’ve had to put the real truth about NATO’s campaign into a memory hole and invent a whole new ‘truth’.

Over the past few days every aspect of NATO’s bombing campaign has been, as Winston Smith might put it, ‘falsified’. Since everybody now seems to have forgotten the events of just five months ago, it is worth reminding ourselves of the true character of NATO’s intervention in Libya. It was incoherent from the get-go, overseen by a continually fraying and deeply divided Western ‘alliance’ and with no serious war aim beyond being seen to bomb an evil dictator. It was cowardly, where all alliance members wanted to appear to be Doing Something while actually doing as little as possible. This was especially true of the US, which stayed firmly on the backseat of the anti-Gaddafi alliance. And it was reckless, revealing that military action detached from strategy, unanchored by end goals, can easily spin out of control.

August 8, 2011

Reduce US military spending by reducing US military responsibilities

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:28

June 6, 2011

Further extending the powers of the “Imperial Presidency”

Filed under: Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:51

All that’s left is to start posting proscription lists and calling him “Father of his country” and getting his Secret Service detail to carry fasces1:

Let’s leave aside whether your position on bombing Libya while leading NATO from behind has anything to do with hawk or dove status. You don’t need to be the real Bob Taft or Bob Dole to start muttering about “Democrat wars.”

It’s a sad day for the Republic when insisting that the president actually, you know, get an authorization of force as kinda sorta suggested by the Constitution is seen as akin to open rebellion or creating a fifth column. What is this, Star Wars? Rome? As Tim Cavanaugh and that other super-peacenik outfit, the Washington Times, point out, between Kucinich’s and Boehner’s all-too-timid requests, three-quarters of the House of Representatives have expressed dissatisfaction when it comes to how Obama is deploying troops. The only real question is when Congress is going to take the advice of good ol’ Sharron Angle and man up already and start playing its actual role as a counterweight to an imperial presidency that has never served the nation any good.

1 The fasces were bundles of rods wrapped around an axe carried by Roman lictors who accompanied magistrates in Republican Rome. They represented the ability of the magistrate to dispense low justice (the rods, symbolizing corporal punishment) and high justice (the axe for capital punishment). The symbol was adopted by other nations and political movements after the fall of the empire.

April 25, 2011

Taliban tunnellers re-enact the “Great Escape”

Filed under: Asia, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

This is going to hurt:

The Taliban has staged a jail-break from a high security prison in Afghanistan, freeing 541 prisoners through a network of tunnels that took five months to dig.

In scenes reminiscent of war film The Great Escape, insurgents constructed a 1,050-foot (320m) route into Sarposa Prison, in Kandahar.

Diggers finally broke through into the site last night and hundreds of prisoners, including around 100 Taliban commanders — streamed through the tunnel to freedom over four-and-a-half hours.

They were met by a fleet of cars which whisked them away to freedom. The breakout was completed at around 3.30am.

March 27, 2011

QotD: One-minute Imperialism

Filed under: Africa, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:17

It is the height of recklessness, a kind of blasé barbarism, to start a war without knowing what the war is for. We are witnessing the transformation of Libya into a giant laboratory for a zany, unpredictable experiment to see what happens when you mix Tomahawk missiles with a volatile Arab uprising. It makes even the ill-considered debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan look like the height of rationality in comparison.

The made-up nature of the war, its speedy and brainless cobbling together by Western leaders keen to make a quick point by firing a few hundred missiles at Gaddafi, explains why the so-called Western alliance is so spectacularly flimsy. This must be the most shortlived alliance in human history. It lasted about 24 hours — at a push 36 hours — before Washington announced that it would ‘tone down’ its involvement and agitate for NATO to take over. Perhaps keen to satisfy the needs of the 24-hour rolling news agenda, America has just overseen the world’s first-ever outburst of 24-hour imperialism.

Brendan O’Neill, “The most shortlived alliance in human history”, Spiked!, 2011-03-22

March 25, 2011

Libya operations do not support UK’s recent defence decisions

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

Lewis Page is doing an analysis of the current British involvement in Libya. He points out that many of the recent decisions by the British government are not being proven by the actual pattern of combat:

Recent combat operations by British and allied forces in Libya are beginning to tell us a lot: not so much about the future of Libya, which remains up for grabs, but about the tools one actually needs for fighting real-world wars against real-world enemy armed forces.

The vast bulk of our own armed forces are set up, equipped and focused on this type of mission — rather than the hugely more common one of battling guerillas and insurgents, as seen in Afghanistan — so the Libyan operations of the last week are very important to us at a time of shrinking budgets and worldwide turbulence. Libya is telling us how well the Coalition government did in its recent Strategic Defence and Security Review — and bluntly, it is showing that the Review was a fiasco.

Mr. Page has not been a fan of the Eurofighter, and sees the initial stages of the Libyan campaign as proving the investment is so much wasted money:

. . . highly advanced specialist air-to-air combat capability has not been necessary here. The RAF has rushed Eurofighter Typhoons to Italy — they were the first British aircraft to arrive there, in fact — but they are pure air-to-air planes at the moment (the RAF doesn’t expect to have them properly ready for use as bombers until 2018). The odds are that they will not fire a shot — and if they do it will be to swat down some rusty old MiG flown by a suicidal pilot. For this job, much cheaper fighters would have been more than adequate: say American F-18s or F-16s, or even our previous embarrassing Tornado F3, now retired.

So, point one: buying the Eurofighter remains a stupid idea on our part.

Canada’s F-18 aircraft have seen more combat in Libyan airspace than the RAF’s Eurofighters, because the F-18 has a ground-attack capability.

On the other hand, Mr. Page rejoiced at the overdue decision to scrap the Nimrod, but the ancient-but-terribly-expensive aircraft appear to have a valid role to play in Libya:

Point two: electronic warfare and AWACS planes are useful, even against the minor regimes who we might genuinely fight in the real world. The decision to keep both in the recent UK Defence Review was sensible (the Nimrod R1 Elint planes were marked for the bin — and have been temporarily been reprieved for duty in the Libyan situation — but replacement “Rivet Joint” aircraft are on order).

The use of the Tornado aircraft for very long range attacks seems like a waste of time and resources:

We are told in official announcements that some 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles were used in the initial strike at the weekend, launched from US and British warships and submarines off the Libyan coast. We are also told that “a number” of Storm Shadow shorter-ranged cruise missiles were launched from Tornado bombers. The Tornadoes had flown 3,000 miles from Kent Norfolk to do so, requiring the aid of repeated air-to-air refuelling assistance both on the way out and on the way back.

We can be pretty sure what the unspecified number of Storm Shadows was, as the Tornado can carry only one Storm Shadow into combat and we are told that a total of four Tornadoes have been assigned to Operation ELLAMY, the British contribution to the Libyan fighting. Some accounts suggest that in fact only three Storm Shadows were fired in the initial long-range Tornado raid.

[. . .]

Our lesson from a shooting war against a national air force — the first we have fought since 1982 — is that you don’t suppress enemy air defences of the sort you actually meet in the real world with deep penetration bombers and clever air-launched weapons (far less with stealth planes). You do it with AWACS and Elint planes and Tomahawks launched from the sea.

And speaking of the sea . . . what about the Royal Navy contribution to the Libya campaign?

Don’t we just wish we had a carrier off Libya now? Shame we scrapped ours just months ago. Nice work, Mr Cameron

There can be little doubt that the Harrier would also have been better for Libya. The Harrier fleet actually had more aircraft modernised to drop the latest smart weaponry — it was a superior battlefield strike plane — and it was cheaper to run. Best of all, it could operate from our also-recently-axed pocket aircraft carriers right off the coast and thus reach the theatre of action in minutes rather than hours. France and the USA both have carriers operating off the Libyan coast right now, but our foolish decisions in the recent review have left us on the sidelines.

Mr. Page still thinks the Royal Navy got royally shafted by the RAF:

Point four: The decisions taken over many years to whittle down the Harrier force to the point where it was barely viable – and then finally axe it in the Review — were totally wrong. Instead the Tornado should have been scrapped. Our present-day fleet of more than 130 of these cripplingly expensive-to-run, slow, lumbering low-altitude jets, assisted by similarly costly tanker planes, has offered us an utterly pathetic capability to deliver three or four dodgy missiles into Libya and a minimalist air support capability thereafter.

Even by the time of the Review, when the Harrier fleet was down to an almost unviable 44 jets, it would have made more sense to keep them, scrap the Tornado and buy or lease some nice cheap F-18s from America to bulk up our strike forces somewhat. The RAF should be ashamed of itself for manipulating the Prime Minister into keeping Tornado; heads should roll.

Is it too late to save the Ark Royal and Invincible? Yes:

To make the situation even more pathetic:

Once, this would have been a sight to strike fear into the hearts of any enemy fleet, a vivid portrait of the naval clout of this island nation.

But, today, these are two ghost ships. This depressing photograph taken yesterday is merely a reminder of the current state of the Royal Navy. Until recently, Britain had three aircraft carriers. The latest round of defence cuts means we have just one carrier — HMS Illustrious — and no planes on board. It only does choppers these days.

Invincible is bound for the Middle East. But Colonel Gaddafi need have no fears about this gallant old warhorse. In a few days’ time she will be off the coast of Libya but she won’t be stopping. She’ll be pressing straight on for Turkey where she is due to be cut up — or ‘recycled’ as an MoD spokesman insisted yesterday.

Back to Mr. Page’s conclusions (not that there should be any surprises based on the examples I’ve included):

Summing up, the lesson of Libya is that the recent Defence Review was, indeed, a dismal failure. RAF empire-preservation saddled us with the useless Tornado at the cost of our carrier capability. The army insisted on preserving pointless tanks and big guns and as a result we are not pulling our weight in Helmand — a war we more or less unilaterally started in 2005 — and we have no option to intervene on the ground in Libya seriously.

The navy made no real effort to help matters. It might have managed to preserve a carrier capability by making concessions on its pointless frigate flotilla, but this it refused to do.

[. . .]

But the chance to change things is not gone yet. So badly fudged were the Strategic Defence and Security Review’s figures that more reorganisation remains on the cards; in effect, a review of the Review is now very likely. The chance is still there to scrap the cripplingly expensive Tornado and Eurofighter altogether and replace them with cheap, excellent F-18s — so getting our carrier capability back in just a few years, as well. When the F-35C actually becomes affordable at last around 2025 we can buy some — by that point its Stealth and other new technologies might actually be becoming relevant for wars that might really happen, along the lines of Libya.

March 17, 2011

AWACS in Libyan airspace

Filed under: Africa, France, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:21

Strategy Page reports on the use of AWACS resources over the north African country:

A week after NATO began sending its AWACS aircraft to monitor aircraft activity over northern Libya, it’s been decided to have these radar aircraft monitor that airspace 24/7. The AWACS can fly over international waters and still monitor air activity several hundred kilometers into Libya. This may become crucial if a no-fly zone is established over the Libyan coastal area (where most of the population lives). AWACS can spot Libyan aircraft taking off, and call in fighters to deal with that problem before the Libyan warplanes can get very far.

The Libyan rebels resisted calling for a no-fly zone, but recent defeats have changed their minds. The Arab League has also called on the UN to authorize a no-fly zone, and the U.S. has agreed to participate. American and French carriers, plus, possibly, Egyptian fighters, would provide the combat aircraft needed for enforcement. While Libya doesn’t have many flyable warplanes, the few they do get into the air have proved to be powerful weapons against the rebels. In at least three cases, Libyan pilots refused to bomb the rebels. The pilots of two aircraft defected and flew to Malta. The two crew in another fighter-bomber ejected and let their aircraft crash. It’s believed that Libyan dictator is now using mercenary pilots (perhaps from Syria).

March 16, 2011

Japan’s plight distracts the world from Libya

Filed under: Africa, Europe, Media, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:43

As we all feverishly check the media reports for updates on rescue efforts for survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, or even more urgently try to figure out the actual situation in and around the crippled nuclear reactors at Fukushima, it’s a huge boon to Moammar Gadhafi as he works on crushing the rebellion in Cyrenaica:

The megalomaniacal Gadhafi entertains many fantasies. Not so long ago, taking control of Egypt, via assassination or divine acclamation, was among them. Now, as he and his corrupt clique fight for survival, his loyalist and mercenary forces need only take Benghazi and Tobruk.

Crack Tobruk, and the Libyan rebels have three choices: surrender, seek asylum in Egypt or head for the deep southern desert and wage a longshot guerrilla war. Surrender is defeat, followed by mass executions and mass gravesites. Asylum is defeat — as the rebels hole up in Cairo, Gadhafi will launch bloody reprisals against Cyrenaica’s people. As for a guerrilla war waged from the Sahara? Gadhafi will have an air-power advantage. The coastal cities will also provide him with thousands of hostages (the guerrillas’ relatives) to torture and kill.

Rebel options, post-Tobruk, are dreadful. The mass graves outside the cities will be hideous. The long-term strategic implications of a Gadhafi victory are also hideous.

Why can’t NATO or the UN or the G-8 agree to impose a no-fly zone on Libya’s dictator? The Obama administration, whatever its latest rhetoric, has willingly enmeshed itself in a multilateral spider’s web of narrow interests, fear and greed. At some level, Gadhafi serves Russian and Chinese commercial arrangements. Europe fears the appearance of colonialism. The pertinent phrase here is, “Gadhafi is the devil we know.”

Update: George Jonas thinks the crowding-out of Libyan affairs is a boon to Barack Obama’s administration:

The disaster also gives Barack Obama and colleagues some breathing space. Based on past performance, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Instead of talking softly and carrying a big stick, our leaders bluster and carry nothing. By letting Gaddafi know they’ll be merciless to him in a defeat they aren’t lifting a finger to inflict, they’re only telling the strongman that standing firm is his best bet.

When Gaddafi takes their advice, Obama and his mates first cry foul, then develop a sudden urge to examine their fingernails. Having shown themselves to be large of mouth, short of sight and faint of heart, the earthquake in Japan offers them a reprieve.

Can’t they use a reprieve for something constructive? In fairness, at this juncture there isn’t a whole lot anyone can do. Certain problems are solved only by hugs or bear-hugs, and the Middle East isn’t conducive to either. The West’s enemies are too numerous to maul, and who, in God’s name, is there to embrace?

November 4, 2010

The continuing dramedy of the A400M

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, Germany, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

Remember when the opposition were up in arms that Canada wasn’t going to be buying the new A400M for the Canadian Forces? That decision is looking better and better:

Germany has cut its order for A400M transports from 60 to 57. This was in response to demands from the manufacturer for more money. This is not a new problem, but for those who have already ordered the A400M, it’s getting old. The new European military transport, the A400M, is already three years late and billions of dollars over budget. Those who have already placed orders (for 180 aircraft) have been told that the price they thought they were going to pay ($161 million per aircraft) will go up twenty percent. In response, some major buyers said they were considering cancelling their orders. In turn, the manufacturer said that such actions would force the cancellation of the project. With the German reduction of its order, it looks like the A400M will be getting more expensive, to the point where it will be twice what the new C-130J costs. The A400M made its first flight 11 months ago.

[. . .]

During the Cold War, such air transports were very low priority in Europe, because if there was a war, the mighty Red Army of the Soviet Union was going to home deliver it. But now all the action is far away, and the military needs air freight for emergencies and other urgent missions. For that reason, the Russian An-124s get a lot of work from NATO nations. This aircraft can carry up to 130 tons of cargo, as well as outsized and extremely large cargo. The more numerous American C-17 can only carry up to 84 tons, while the new A400M can lift a maximum of 40 tons. The advantage of the two smaller airlifters is the ability to operate from shorter unpaved runways, which makes them less dependable on existing infrastructure. Russia has put the An-124 back into production, partly because of the delays in the A400M project.

October 4, 2010

Winning the media war

Filed under: Asia, Media, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

Strategypage reports on the ongoing struggle by both the Taliban and the NATO/US forces to influence media coverage, both inside Afghanistan and in the outside world:

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have been very successful with the media, mainly because they give the media what they want, or an offer they can’t refuse. The Taliban know that the media loves stories where the underdog prevails, or where the powers-that-be screw up. Put out the right kind of disinformation, and the media will take it and run it as the truth. Or at least something that could, might or ought to be true somewhere.

The Taliban media people know what the Western and regional media want, and this is provided. For example, the Taliban have invented the idea that Western troops are causing most of the civilian deaths in the Taliban effort to regain control of Afghanistan. But the truth, which is published but not emphasized much, is that most of the civilians are killed by the Taliban, and the Western troops have been killing fewer and fewer civilians, even at the risk of more Western casualties. The Taliban regularly use civilians as human shields. Again, the media mentions that, but it’s something for the back pages. The headlines stress what the Taliban wants, mainly that they are winning, even when they are losing.

For a backwards, almost medieval group, the Taliban (or their non-Afghani advisors) have developed a talent for manipulating the international media coverage:

But you don’t have to bribe or threaten Western media. Just package your lies in an acceptable manner, and your message will be delivered. The Taliban are smart enough to constantly recast their press releases to suit the perceived needs of Western and regional media. All they have to do is note what stories editors are running, and work up new stuff with a Taliban angle. Thus while corruption has been an Afghan cultural problem for centuries, the Western media will swallow whole a Taliban press release suggesting that the Taliban are less corrupt (they aren’t) and this more attractive to the average Afghan (not according to opinion polls, or reports from American troops who deal with local Afghans every day.) But in the Western media, you survive by pushing what will sell, not what is actually happening.

October 3, 2010

Pakistan’s self-harming border closure

Filed under: Asia, Economics, Military, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:22

Strategypage shows why Pakistan is doing itself more harm than good on the Afghan border:

After a recent incident where U.S. helicopter gunships crossed into Pakistan, in hot pursuit of Islamic terrorists, and killed three Pakistani soldiers (and a lot more terrorists), Pakistan cut one of the two NATO supply routes that pass through Pakistan. Aside from the fact that the Pakistani soldiers fired on the NATO helicopters (which they often do, even when the choppers are on the Afghan side of the border), the U.S. didn’t have to remind the Pakistanis that such a gesture was self-defeating. The Pakistani government is heavily dependent on American economic and military aid, and more and more of the supplies for foreign troops in Pakistan is coming from non-Pakistani sources. This hurts Pakistani businesses that move, and often provide, the supplies.

At the moment, about half those supplies come through Pakistan. The Pakistanis only closed, for about a day, one of the two main routes. About 30 percent of the supplies come in via Central Asia railroads, and another comes from the Black Sea, via rail to the Afghan border. The remaining 20 percent comes in by air. But some of that may be shifted to the Central Asian route, which is much safer (from bandits, bad roads and the Taliban) than the Pakistan routes.

Pakistan may have helped create conditions that will actually improve the economies of several other countries:

Shipping supplies to Afghanistan via Russian and Central Asian railroads has advantages for the nations it passes through. Russia has an economic interest in this, as more traffic makes it financially attractive for Central Asian nations to invest in upgrading their rail connections to Afghanistan. Tajikistan, for example, is extending its railroad to the Afghan border by building another 145 kilometers of track. Afghanistan itself has no railroads, mainly because there is not enough economic activity in the country to make this worthwhile. Foreign donors have contributed billions of dollars since 2002 to build more paved roads in Afghanistan. Currently, there are 42,000 kilometers of roads there, but only a third are paved. There are few rivers, much less navigable ones, and no access to the sea. The place has long been a logistical nightmare. Most Afghans recognize that roads will make the country more prosperous, by making it economically feasible to export many commodities, and cheaper to bring in, and distribute, foreign goods. Naturally, the Taliban are opposed to all this road building, as it threatens the poverty and ancient customs that Islamic conservatives are so fond of.

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