On Operational Leadership

By Milan Vego

April 01, 2015

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There were commanders-in-chiefs who could not have led a cavalry regiment with distinction and cavalry commanders who could have led armies.

—Carl von Clausewitz

Success of any military organization depends on the experience and good judgment of its leaders. Ideally, all commanders should have a high level of professional education and training in addition to some critically important character traits. Moreover, the higher the level of command, the more important it is that commanders and staff meet these requirements. Wars are not won or lost at the tactical level but at the operational and strategic levels. Hence, it is critically important that operational commanders are selected based solely on their proven or potential warfighting abilities and not their political connections or management skills. Operational commanders are not managers but should be first and foremost warfighters.

What the ISIS Campaign Teaches Us About the Future of War

BY PETER W. SINGER

APRIL 16, 2015

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Winning today's fights still means reaching an actual victory, focusing on changing players, and heeding history.

It has now been over 250 days since U.S. forces began air strikes on the Islamic State, or ISIS,. U.S. warplanes have conducted 2,893 air strikes that have hit 5,314 targets ranging from 1,425 buildings to 58 boats, according to the most recentU.S. Central Command figures for Operation Inherent Resolve. The cost has reached roughly $8.5 million per day, summing just under $2.5 billion so far.

History is written by the victors, it is said, and this conflict is certainly far from over. But surely some lessons of battle can be learned in the midst of war. For example, by the 250th day mark of World War I, it was clear that trench warfare had changed the flow of battle and new technologies like the machine gun and submarine would play a bigger role than expected. Or 250 days into the Iraq War, it was clear the U.S. quick takeover of Iraq had devolved into a painful insurgency that was more than a few “small pockets” of “dead-enders,” as infamously claimed by former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld.

Artillery: The End Of History For The Big Guns

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April 16, 2015: Since the end of the Cold War in 1991 the U.S. Army has drastically reorganized and reduced its artillery force. At the end of the Cold War most artillery was conventional “tube” artillery. That meant towed 105mm, 155mm, 203mm howitzers and self-propelled 155mm howitzers. The MLRS, a 16 tube 227mm unguided rockets was just entering service when the Cold War ended. In the 1990s it became obvious that smart bombs (JDAM) first used in the 1991 Gulf War, were more effective than artillery and that led to a major shift away from using artillery. By 2004 over 40 tube artillery battalions had been disbanded.

Another major change in 2004 was the introduction of the GMLRS (GPS guided MLRS) rocket. Like the unguided version, the GMLRS are packaged and used in containers (pods) holding six rockets each. Since then over 2,000 GMLRS rockets have been fired in combat. GMLRS rockets cost about $100,000 each and have been very successful. That has meant even less work for tube artillery, which had dominated the battlefield since the 17th century.

A Reality Check One Veteran’s Views on Driving Positive Change

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This is not Bryan Shaw. It is not Anna Granville, either. Just some random person saluting who doesn’t need a disclaimer. 

The following post was written by guest author Bryan Shaw, a former active duty officer. He currently lives in Austin, Texas where he works for Dell as a Senior Marketing Manager. The views contained within this post are his own.

I left the US Army in 2009 as a Captain with exactly four years of service. At the earliest possible opportunity, I submitted my Release from Active Duty(REFRAD) paperwork. Why? I didn’t want to be in the Army anymore. That was my graceful exit.

Recently, Anna Granville posted the four reasons why she is leaving the Navy. Unfortunately, I fear that this approach perilously straddles the fine line between wanting to drive positive change and complaining.

To be clear, these are discussions we need to have. But it is time for a reality check on the issues and on how we try to solve them.

6 Smart Habits Of The US Military’s Most Successful Commanders

Crispin Burke

April 17, 2015

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Great generals have life lessons for both soldiers and civilians.

We need a few good men and women with leadership experience — and what better leadership school than the U.S. military? Among the major professions, the military stands alone in that it forces its members to be leaders, granting them ever-mounting responsibility throughout their careers. And with over 5,000 years of recorded military history, there are plenty of leadership lessons to choose from.

Here are six leadership lessons that’ll help you whether you’re on the battlefield or in the board room.

The Best Presentations Are Tailored to the Audience

APRIL 17, 2015

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When preparing a presentation, we all remember to think about the basics: what you want to say, the data you need to back it up, any visuals that might help. But what about the people you’re presenting to? The following excerpt from the book Presentations will help you better understand your audience and cater your message to their needs.

The better you understand your audience’s goals and concerns, the more likely you are to achieve your objective and your desired outcomes. And the better able you will be to measure those successes.

The audience, not the presenter, is the heart of any presentation. To figure out what makes it tick, answer these questions:

1. How big will the group be? Who will be absent? Are you expecting 5, 15, or 50 people? The size of the audience affects the type of presentation you’ll give and the resources you’ll need. Keep track of which people can’t attend. Absent stakeholders are stakeholders nonetheless; you’ll want to follow up with them afterward.

10 Extraordinary Quotes About War From WWII Correspondent Ernie Pyle

Corey Adwar

April 17, 2015

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These insightful quotes contain enduring truths about war and what it means to be on the front lines, from the perspective of the common G.I.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ernie Pyle spent his last years embedded with troops in Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, and Japanese-held islands of the Pacific, writing columns detailing the lives of the common World War II soldier six times a week for newspapers across the country.

Pyle was a household name for reporting on the lowest ranking grunts fighting under atrocious conditions, as well as the underappreciated support troops performing vital and technical tasks in the rear. He gained tremendous respect among his subjects by joining them in battle and partaking in their misery. To Pyle, every anonymous G.I. had a hilarious or horrifying anecdote worth sharing with the civilians on the homefront. He even published the full addresses of each interviewee as a shout-out to their small hometowns and proud families and neighbors.

The Technology Company Fighting Terrorism With Millennials

James W. Weirick

April 14, 2015

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Palantir Technologies is a Silicon Valley company solving the information needs of the U.S. government. 

For diehard fans of The Lord of the Rings series, “Palantir” is a familiar word. The Palantíri are the smooth dark spheres used by Saruman and others as seeing stones to communicate in Middle-earth.

Palantir Technologies, Inc. took its name from these fabled seeing stones. In 2003, it was founded by former cofounder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, with the mission to apply software similar to PayPal’s fraud-recognition systems “to solve the world’s hardest problems while simultaneously protecting individual liberty.” Palantir was originally funded, partially, through the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture-capital arm In-Q-Tel.

An Army brigadier general recommends 10 military books for military leaders

BY THOMAS E. RICKS

APRIL 2, 2015

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On to Berlin, James Gavin… combat leadership while transforming a force

Prisoner’s Dilemma, William Poundstone… understanding opponent behavior and asymmetrical attack through game theory

The Transformation of War, Martin Van Creveld… evolution of Clausewitizian warfare to the transnational actors of today

Leading with Honor, Lee Ellis… timeless leadership lessons from Vietnam prisoner of war

Patriots: The Men who Started the American Revolution, A.J. Langguth… to know where you’re going you must know where you started

Fiasco, Tom Ricks… replaces Richard Gabriel’s Military Incompetence as a must read for critical self analysis and improving U.S. military operations

The End of History and The Last Man, Francis Fukuyama… philosophical understanding of the underlying machinations of global geopolitics

The Death of British Air Power?

By David Axe

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The U.K. Ministry of Defense has released an accounting of all the aircraft in Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and British Army service — and the overall tallyis tiny … and getting tinier.

As of March this year, the air forces of the United Kingdom possess no more than 362 combat-ready warplanes and drones plus 249 helicopters — a mere 611 military aircraft.

Britain’s air force, navy and army together have another 93 planes and copters that are in deep maintenance or rework plus 18 that are in storage. None of these 111 aircraft are immediately available for combat.

A Message From Mattis

BY WILLIAM KRISTOL

APR 18, 2015

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A must-read, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal opinion pages: Remarks from earlier this week in San Francisco by retired four-star Marine Corps general James Mattis to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here are excerpts:

Our country gives hope to millions around the world, and you—who knew that at one time your job was to fight well—kept that hope alive. By your service you made clear your choice about what kind of world we want for our children: The world of violent jihadist terrorists, or one defined by Abraham Lincoln when he advised us to listen to our better angels?....

Rest assured that by your service, you sent a necessary message to the world and especially to those maniacs who thought by hurting us that they could scare us.

No granite monuments, regardless of how grandly built, can take the place of your raw example of courage, when in your youth you answered your country’s call. When you looked past the hot political rhetoric. When you voluntarily left behind life’s well-lit avenues. When you signed that blank check to the American people payable with your lives. And, most important, when you made a full personal commitment even while, for over a dozen years, the country’s political leadership had difficulty defining our national level of commitment.

In the captain's seat - Putting Indian aeronautics on the international stage

Brijesh D. Jayal

April 20 , 2015

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There is something about the procurement of fighter aircraft from Western commercial sources that generates interest far greater than perhaps the sum of its economic or strategic content. The entire spectacle of open tendering, nail-biting selection followed by endless negotiations, all played out in the public arena, resembles a soap opera more than the very serious business of dealing with a strategic weapon system for war fighting. In the heated debate that has followed the latest announcement by the prime minister regarding Rafale, the sanest voice has been that of the raksha mantri when he said that such strategic systems should not be "open tendering and lowest bid" affairs, but of agreements between national governments.

We have, since 1962, procured and licence-produced Soviet and Russian fighter aircraft in hundreds so that the Indian Air Force's inventory today is predominantly Russian. 

Reimagining the triangle

By C Raja Mohan

April 20, 2015 

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Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan this week presents a paradox. He is likely to unveil massive plans for the expansion of economic and strategic partnership between the two countries during the visit, as well as highlight the emerging vulnerabilities of a relationship that has long been celebrated as “higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the Indian Ocean and sweeter than honey”. Xi’s travel to Islamabad, coming three weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China, raises interesting questions about New Delhi’s changing approach towards Beijing.

During his two-day trip to Pakistan, Xi is expected to launch infrastructure projects worth more than $40 billion.

Fifth Column: Clarity on Kashmir

By Tavleen Singh 

April 19, 2015 

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You know, I know and every Pakistani I know also knows that there is never going to be ‘azadi’ for Kashmir. Nobody seriously believes that there will be another redrawing of India’s borders. So it is time that this becomes the fundamental principle of a new policy to deal with our oldest political problem. Prime Minister Modi has the best chance of finding a permanent solution, since Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and he must seize the chance. Atalji tried but failed because instead of a fresh start he chose to adopt the same Kashmir policy that successive Congress governments followed since 1947. This was a crucial mistake.

Prime Minister Modi has indicated that he is not burdened by past Congress mistakes and that he is ready for a new beginning. Otherwise the BJP would not be part of a government led by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. Before writing this piece, I had a chat with BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, one of the architects of the Common Minimum Programme.

India's New Transatlantic Push

By Dhruva Jaishankar

April 17, 2015

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WASHINGTON - Diplomatically speaking, it has been a busy first year in power for India's prime minister, Narendra Modi. In addition to hosting the leaders of the United States, China, and Russia, he has embarked upon state visits to India's major democratic partners - including Japan, the United States, and Australia - and attended multilateral summits in Brazil, Nepal, Australia, and Myanmar.

Over the past week, Modi undertook an unconventional transatlantic tour to France, Germany, and Canada. This constituted his first visit to Europe as prime minister and a common theme was implicit in that all three countries are G7 members, and as such, advanced, industrialized democracies. While Modi has received some criticism at home for his foreign trips, the flurry of diplomatic activity in his first year as prime minister indicates his clear desire to position India as an active international actor. Modi's multifaceted agenda on his latest set of visits also conformed to what is now a familiar pattern of international engagement. Broadly speaking, his transatlantic tour over the past week served five important purposes.

The first was to seek investment and technological partnerships with the goal of rapidly developing India's economy. This objective is at the centerpiece of Modi's domestic agenda and political platform. While poverty levels in India have fallen dramatically since the early 1990s, the country is still home to the largest number of the world's poor. The opportunity for growth is now immense given India's political stability, market size, and low wages.

The Sensible, Risky Option

GERSHOM GORENBERG

APRIL 15, 2015

The Iran deal is a gamble, but the best one available. 

In this picture released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with a group of religious performers in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 9, 2015. 

"There are only bad options. It's about finding the best one."

"You don't have a better bad idea than this?"

"This is the best bad idea we have, sir."

That snippet of dialogue is from the film Argo, set just after the Iranian revolution in 1979. It's the scene in which CIA Director Stansfield Turner is listening to the out-of-any-box scheme of two CIA men for smuggling six American diplomats out of Teheran. Turner is sensible. Since this is the best bad plan available, he approves it. Risky as it is, it even turns out to be a good plan.

Thirty-six years later, the same script would be appropriate for calmly discussing the framework agreement with Iran on limiting its nuclear program. Calm, though, has been in short supply. Since before the agreement was announced, before they knew what it would say, Republican politicians have been ranting against it. They, in turn, are singing back-up to the lead ranter, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose stream of press statements describe the accord as roughly the worst thing since the surrender of France in 1940. 

Suicide Bomber Kills Dozens at Bank in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

KHALID ALOKOZAY and ROD NORDLAND

April 18, 2015

Dozens Killed in Suicide Bombing at Bank in Eastern Afghanistan

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber attacked a crowd of people waiting to collect their pay at a bank here on Saturday, killing 33 and wounding at least 50 in the bloodiest such attack so far this year, officials said. All of the victims were civilians, according to the police.

The blast was one of three separate explosions heard in quick succession in this eastern city around 8 a.m. Saturday, the police said.

Unusually, the Taliban spokesman for eastern Afghanistan, Zabiullah Mujahid, disavowed the bank attack soon after it happened, denying in three different languages on Twitter that the insurgents had been behind it. “We condemn/deny involvement,” Mr. Mujahid wrote.

In 2011, the Taliban claimed responsibility for an even deadlier attack on the same branch of Kabul Bank in Jalalabad, in which seven suicide attackers killed 38 bank customers, also on a payday. Many Afghans collect their salaries directly from banks as a safeguard against the country’s rampant corruption.

Whatever happened to Obama’s pivot to Asia?

By Fareed Zakaria 

April 16

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The Obama administration’s foreign policy energies are fully engaged in the Middle East — negotiating the Iran deal, sending Special Operations forces into Iraq, supporting Saudi airstrikes in Yemen, working with the Syrian rebels. Whatever happened to the pivot to Asia? 

Remember, the basic argument behind the pivot was that the United States was overinvested in the Middle East, a crisis-prone region of dwindling importance to the U.S. national interest. Asia, on the other hand, is the future. Of the four largest economies, three are in Asia, if measured by purchasing-power parity. As Singapore’s late leader Lee Kuan Yew often told me, “America will remain the world’s dominant power in the 21st century only if it is the dominant Pacific power.” 

And yet the United States is up to its neck once more in the Middle Eastern morass. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry spend little time in Asia. Few new initiatives have been announced. Despite the deal on “fast-track” authority, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that was at the heart of the pivot, faces congressional opposition, mostly from the president’s own party. The administration lobbied hard to get its closest allies to spurn China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, only to be rebuffed by everyone — even Britain. 

North Korea's Master Plan to Crush South Korea in Battle

Robert Farley

April 18, 2015

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/north-koreas-master-plan-crush-south-korea-battle-12667

"We can hardly rule out that political circumstances might shift such that North Korea becomes desperate enough to launch an attack."

The most intense period of fighting in Korea ended some 62 years ago, but the divide across the Peninsula remains the world’s most visible legacy of the Cold War. While the Republic of Korea (ROK) has become economically successful and democratic, North Korea has become a punchline. 

Nevertheless, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has continued to increase the sophistication of its ballistic missiles, has developed nuclear weapons, and maintains the world’s largest garrison state. Pyongyang has also made clear that it isn’t afraid to provoke Seoul (and Seoul’s biggest supporter, the United States) with aggressive moves such as the sinking of the corvette Cheonan, and the bombardment of South Korean islands.

The general peace on the peninsula has more or less held since the 1950s. Still, while North Korea’s power has declined substantially relative to that of South Korea, the idea that Pyongyang might come to the conclusion that war could solve its problems still worries U.S. and South Korean planners. 

If North Korea faced a situation in which it determined that war was the only solution, how might it seek to crush the ROK, and deter the United States and Japan?

Revelations on China’s Maritime Modernization

By Andrew S. Erickson

April 16, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/revelations-on-chinas-maritime-modernization/

The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence offers a wealth of new information on the PLA Navy. 

To its first unclassified report on China’s navy in six years, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) has just added sophisticated posters detailing Chinese ships and aircraft, equipment, and leadership structure. ONI’s main document, “The PLA Navy: New Capabilities and Missions for the 21st Century,” already offers a cornucopia of new insights and highly vetted data points. But it is with the supplementary reference materials that the Suitland, MD-based agency is going where no publicly released U.S. government report has ever gone before. This article reviews key findings from ONI’s latest set of publications and assesses their significance.

Unprecedented Offerings

Perhaps most exciting, for the first time ever, ONI is making available publicly 148 carefully labeled silhouettesand 89 photos of China’s myriad People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and maritime law enforcement ships and aircraft. This enables systematic open source analysis to a degree simply impossible before.

A leadership structure chart with details on the top thirty-one individuals in the PLAN’s chain of command completes the highly informative set. It offers both grades and ranks, highlights leaders’ distinguishing characteristics, acknowledges frankly where key data remain ambiguous or unavailable, and even offers projections concerning future career progression (or lack thereof). It describes such vital bodies as the all-important Navy Party Standing Committee, or “Navy Politburo,” the PLAN’s senior-most decision-making organ.

Behind China’s Cool Response to Hillary’s 2016 Announcement

By Kevin Wang

April 18, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/chinas-cool-response-to-hillarys-2016-announcement/

Chinese have mixed feelings about the possibility of a Hillary Clinton presidency. 

Hillary Clinton’s widely anticipated announcement of her second presidential run on Sunday came also as no surprise to a vigilant China, which has long been on the lookout for America’s next commander-in-chief.

Offering a cool reaction to Clinton’s announcement, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei said Monday in Beijing that the 2016 presidential elections are an internal affair, implying that China has no stake or particular interest in it. Instead, he went on to emphasize that maintaining a healthy relationship suits the fundamental interests of both the American and Chinese people and helps protect peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific and the world.

But behind the official indifference suggested by this canned response are serious doubts shared by the Chinese government and some Chinese scholars about America’s former top diplomat, whose stance they say has been too antagonistic to China.

An 'All Weather' Encounter: China's Xi Jinping Heads to Pakistan

By Ankit Panda

April 18, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/an-all-weather-encounter-chinas-xi-jinping-heads-to-pakistan/

Chinese President Xi Jinping will head to Pakistan next week. What’s on the agenda? 

After plenty of ambiguity, we’ve now heard confirmation from both Islamabad and Beijing that Chinese President Xi Jinping will indeed be traveling to Pakistan next week for a long-awaited state visit. The visit was originally supposed to take place last fall, when Xi toured South Asia (visiting India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives), but was postponed amid nationwide anti-government protests in Pakistan. Xi’s visit to Pakistan will last two days and then he will head to Indonesia to attend the Asian-African Summit and commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference.

The agenda for Xi’s meetings with Pakistan’s top leadership — including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, President Mamnoon Hussain, and possibly Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif (no relation to the prime minister) — will be packed. What we know about the impending visit’s agenda primarily comes from the Pakistani side — the Chinese foreign ministry and state media have been relatively muted about the visit, only officially announcing it on Friday. Pakistan, meanwhile, has spread word that the crown jewel of Xi’s visit to Pakistan this year will be a series of agreements on financing Pakistani infrastructure projects, in energy, transportation, and communications. Pakistani officials estimate that China will commit $46 billion to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (the name for this collection of projects). China’s former ambassador to Pakistan recently corroborated these reports to Xinhua, noting that ”the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will be high on the agenda” during Xi’s visit.

US Tries to Get Japan, South Korea to Put the Past Behind Them

By Shannon Tiezzi

April 18, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/us-tries-to-get-japan-south-korea-to-put-the-past-behind-them/

The U.S. hosts trilateral talks in an attempt to further cooperation between its two allies. 

On Friday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted his Japanese and South Korean counterparts for trilateral talks in Washington, D.C. Vice Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki represented Japan and Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yong attended on behalf of South Korea.

Trilateral cooperation has been strained of late, due to tensions between South Korea and Japan over historical issues. Washington has taken every opportunity to nudge its two allies closer together, however. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has yet to hold a formal bilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but U.S. President Barack Obama successfully pushed for the two to meet on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit last year.

U.S. officials have been encouraged by some recent signs of a thaw in South Korea-Japan relations, such as theresumption of bilateral security talks at a “two-plus-two” meeting held on Tuesday. Washington would welcome closer relations between it two most important Asian allies.

China's PLA Military Ready To Fight A Modern War: State Report

By Michelle FlorCruz

April 15 2015 

http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-pla-military-ready-fight-modern-war-state-report-1883932

Soldiers from China's People's Liberation Army march ahead of the opening session of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at Tiananmen Sqaure in Beijing, March 3, 2015. China will ramp up its defense spending by about 10 percent in 2015, bringing its total military budget to nearly $145 billion. Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon

This Story Has Been Updated.

China’s military has been growing at an exponential rate, expanding in manpower, hardware and global presence. After several years of advancement, China’s military says it is in a place to fight a modern war against Japan -- as long as the U.S. doesn’t intervene.

China’s People’s Liberation Army has yet to be tested, leading many China watchers and critics skeptical of China’s real combat readiness, with many viewing China’s military prowess mostly as hype. “Overall, the PLA has made impressive strides in its ability to perform its assigned missions, including advances in capabilities designed to counter U.S. military intervention in a crisis or conflict in the region,” a 2015 report by Rand Corp. said. “But it still faces a number of serious challenges.”

“Many analysts believe that the PLA does not stand a chance against the mighty U.S. military for a series of reasons, ranging from poor training to lack of war experience,” China’s official military news portal,China Military Online, wrote. “Such estimate [sic] might be true, but it might also truly underestimate the fighting power of the PLA.”

Reading Chinese Nuclear Deterrence

BY LT. COL. PAUL DARLING

April 7, 2015

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Throughout the Cold War, China remained secondary to the Soviet Union in American strategy and thinking. Ironically, the Asia-Pacific region was where the Cold War got the hottest in places like Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and was home to a relatively minor nuclear power, China, which often proved the most antagonistic to American interests. Now, after the Soviet Union devolved into a weakened Russian Republic, the rise of Chinese power has caused the United States to “rebalance” to the Asia Pacific region and toward China in particular. Ignored the first time around, understanding and responding to Chinese nuclear strategy are vital aspects of the “Asia pivot.”

It would be comforting to simply assume that the nuclear policies successful in deterring a major war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union will apply again to China. While communism provides a façade of similarity, advancing technologies and cultural differences demand that this assumption be re-examined and challenged. Successful deterrence is a communicative art that, in the nuclear arena especially, defies simplistic solutions. America must take an approach based upon a new, specific examination of Chinese policy.

China Escalates Its Intelligence Collection Activities Against Taiwan

Chang Kuo-wei 

April 18, 2015

China steps up spying activities against Taiwan

China appears to be stepping up spying activities against Taiwan, partly for the purpose of causing the US to have second thoughts about transferring military technology to the island, lest they be stolen and passed on to China via Chinese spies, warned Lin Chong-bin, former vice minister of national defense.

Speaking at a forum held by the Center for Asian Policy, National Tsing Hua University, on April 16, Lin pointed to the arrest last year of Chinese spy Zhen Xiaojiang, who is a former officer of China’s People’s Liberalization Army, an unprecedented phenomenon attesting to the intensified spying activities of China against Taiwan. This is also one of rare arrests of native Chinese spies by Taiwan, as opposed to most cases involving Taiwanese people recruited by China to do the job.

Lin added that some Western observers have urged Washington to be cautious in transferring military technology to Taiwan, since they may end up in the hands of China’s PLA.

Lin discussed the employment of non-conventional means by the PLA in its attacks on Taiwan. Physical attacks, said Lin, against Taiwan would lead to undesirable consequences, including heavy casualties of civilians, which would arouse widespread animosity among Taiwanese people against Communist China, and destruction of infrastructural facilities.

Unmanned 'Killer Robots': A New Weapon in the US Navy's Future Arsenal?

By Franz-Stefan Gady

April 17, 2015

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The US Navy moves unmanned drones to the top of its priorities. 

This week, U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced that he will streamline the navy’s efforts to keep up with advances in unmanned technology by appointing a new Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Unmanned Systems, who will bring “together all the many stakeholders and operators who are currently working on this technology.”

“Additionally, the Navy Staff will add a new office for unmanned in the N-9, the N-Code for Warfare Systems, so that all aspects of unmanned – in all domains – over, on and under the sea and coming from the sea to operate on land – will be coordinated and championed,” the secretary noted.

As as Breaking Defense reported today, this may help the U.S. military’s push to acquire genuine autonomously operating weapon systems. Breaking Defense’s Sydney Freedberg Jr. muses:

Imagine a swarm of buzzing, scuttling or swimming robots that are smaller but smarter. While a human has to fly the Predator by remote control, these systems would make decisions and coordinate themselves without constant human supervision — perhaps without any contact at all.

How ISIS Plans to Destroy Israel

by Bridget Johnson

April 16, 2015

http://pjmedia.com/blog/how-isis-plans-to-destroy-israel/

A new Islamic State e-book outlines strategy that includes a Begin prophecy, 3-D printing, IED drones, and Edward Snowden. 

The Islamic State laid out its plans for carving a path to Israel and overcoming the Jewish state’s defenses, from working with establish jihadists in the region to hoping for impassioned geeky converts like Edward Snowden.

The new 150-page book distributed on file sharing sites this week follows other titles in the ISIS series including an e-book on how the jihadists plan to sack Rome.

The title has been expected for months, and declares that the “beginning of the end of Israel” will happen in 2022 — two years after they plan to take Rome.

“Many Christians have been misguided by their priests over the centuries into thinking that if they do not support the Jewish people – blindly, they will earn the wrath of Allah (God),” the book states. “This increases the support group of the Jewish State of Israel even more in the world.” Repeating centuries of blood libel, the book questions why modern Judaism is “imitating the Satanic culture.” The Star of David is referred to as “a symbol of sorcery.”

U.S. Warplanes Hit ISIS in Iraq and Syria With 21 Airstrikes

April 17, 2015 

U.S., Allies Target Islamic State With 21 Air Strikes: Statement 

WASHINGTON — The United States and its allies have launched 21 air strikes targeting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria since early Thursday, the Combined Joint Task Force leading the operations said on Friday. 

The coalition staged 13 of the strikes across Iraq, including two near Ramadi that according to the task force hit a unit of Islamic State fighters and destroyed a heavy machine gun, a vehicle and an excavator. Other strikes hit near Mosul, Falluja and Sinjar, among other cities, it said. 

In Syria, eight strikes staged near al Hasaka and Kobani hit five units of Islamic State militants and destroyed various fighting positions and vehicles, the statement said. 

The New Zealand Dollar’s Big Moment

By Helen Clark

April 18, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/the-new-zealand-dollars-big-moment/

Buoyed by a strong economy, the Kiwi approaches a historic parity.

New Zealanders visiting Australia have long struggled with the currency conversation rate. This may be a thing of the past, given that the New Zealand dollar is now, for the first time in decades, trading almost at parity with the Aussie dollar. At the time of writing one New Zealand dollar was buying A$0.99.

The ascendancy of the New Zealand dollar is largely the reflection of a strong local economy. And should Australia’s Reserve Bank cut interest rates in May, the Kiwi dollar may well reach and hold parity with the Aussie. That is something that has not happened since the currencies were floated – in 1983 for Australia and 1984 for New Zealand.

The upside for New Zealanders is a cheaper trip to Australia and a happy feeling that they have not just caught up with, but actually surpassed, the larger nation. “It sends a strong signal to Kiwis that after years of falling behind the big guy across the ditch we are catching up,” wrote Corin Dann on the TVNZ website. It’s good news for the government too, as despite some economic concerns – regional performance disparities and an Auckland property bubble – the New Zealand dollar is strong and the ruling National Party can take credit for it.