qwamqwamqwam

Submission Statement

Part of the reason indigenous production is so attractive to countries is that once an assembly line shuts down, it can take significant investment to reopen. Workers develop best practices and optimizations to make their tasks more efficient, many of which are lost when they move on to other positions or retire. At best, losing that knowledge can result in slower production. At worst, a critical unwritten rule can be the difference between a part working or failing. This article provides a good example of the effort required to restart a production line.

Marcus Weisgerber is the global business editor for Defense One, where he writes about the intersection of business and national security.

Raytheon has called in retired engineers to teach its employees how to build the Stinger missiles heavily used by Ukraine’s military—using blueprints drawn up during the Carter administration.

It’s the latest example of a private company working to ramp up production of a now-in-demand weapon that the Pentagon hasn’t purchased in decades.

“Stinger's been out of production for 20 years, and all of a sudden in the first 48 hours [of the war], it's the star of the show and everybody wants more,” Wes Kremer, the president of RTX’s Raytheon division, said during an interview last week at the Paris Air Show.

When the U.S. Army placed an order for 1,700 Stingers in May 2022, the Pentagon said the missiles wouldn’t be delivered until 2026. Kremer said it will take about 30 months for Stingers to start rolling off of the production line largely because of the time it takes to set up the factory and train its employees.

On top of that, the electronics used in the missile are obsolete, said RTX CEO Greg Hayes.

“We're redesigning circuit cards [and] redesigning some of the componentry,” Hayes told Defense One in a June 14 interview. “That just takes a long time.”

While engineers these days often tout 3D printing and automation as a way to speed up the manufacturing process, that’s not possible with the Stinger—because doing so would not only mean redesigning the weapon, but also undergoing a lengthy weapon certification process.

“You'd have to redesign the entire seeker in order to automate it,” Kremer said.

That means they must build the weapons the same way they were built four decades ago: including installing the missile’s nose cone by hand.

There’s more to this article than the clickbaity headline, I really recommend reading through it.

Woof. With a 250M dollar budget(aka ~500-650M breakeven), this movie is going to struggle to make even its budget back.

Submission Statement

The shift towards UAVs as wing"men" for pilots was mentioned in a previous submission. Now, the UK seems to be trending in the same direction, looking to add catapult capabilities and a suite of unmanned aircraft to its carrier complement.

Frankly, this seems a bit like a waste, especially when the Prince of Wales remains stranded in drydock with a constantly slipping date for its return to service and dogged by rumors that it is being stripped for parts to sustain its sister ship, the HMS Queen Elizabeth. It's hard to imagine that a handful of bespoke drones(that will likely be competing with F-35Bs for limited hangar space) outweigh the additional capabilities that would be granted by sustaining an additional STOVL carrier. Perhaps the MOD anticipates a sustained surge in funding due to the war in Ukraine, but I'm skeptical of that as well. As the course of the war becomes increasingly well-defined, the risks to the UK will become easier for politicians to brush aside. Any increased funding will have to go toward rebuilding stockpiles before it can be splurged on pricey upgrades.

Richard Scott is a well-known U.K.-based writer on the Royal Navy and other naval forces worldwide.

The U.K. Royal Navy is studying the introduction of aircraft launch and recovery systems onboard its two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers to “open up” the flight deck to a broader range of crewed and uncrewed air systems.

Speaking at the Defence Leaders’ Combined Naval Event 2023 conference in Farnborough on May 24, U.K. Royal Marine Col. Phil Kelly, the head of carrier strike and maritime aviation within the Royal Navy’s Develop Directorate, outlined a plan to retrofit the arresting gear and assisted launch equipment as part of a broader Future Maritime Aviation Force (FMAF) vision. FMAF is a multi-strand program exploring the widespread fielding of uncrewed aviation across the surface fleet, with a specific focus on future carrier aviation.

In its current configuration, the Queen Elizabeth-class flight deck arrangement – with a 12.5 degree ski-ramp fitted forward and a vertical recovery deck offset to port – has been shaped by the operation and support of a single fixed-wing aircraft type: the F-35B Lightning II short takeoff vertical landing Joint Strike Fighter. No assisted launch or arresting machinery is installed.

According to Col Kelly, one strand of FMAF – known as Project Ark Royal – is exploring options for the phased introduction of aircraft launch and recovery equipment to enable the operation of high-performance uncrewed strike and support systems, and potentially fixed-wing crewed aircraft.

“We are looking to move from STOVL to STOL [short takeoff and landing], then to STOBAR [short takeoff but arrested recovery] and then to CATOBAR [catapult-assisted takeoff but arrested recovery]. We are looking at a demonstrable progression that spreads out the financial cost and incrementally improves capability,” Kelly said.

The first step would be to increase the available length for the unassisted launch of uncrewed air systems.

“This November we will [launch] a Mojave [STOL] aircraft off the angle of the flight deck off the U.S. east coast,” said Col Kelly. “This aircraft can take off in 300 feet of runway, so enough for the trial, [but] we have already undertaken design work to add sponsons and make a full run of 700 feet available.”

The next stage would be to introduce a recovery system into the Queen Elizabeth design. The large fixed-wing UAS envisaged under FMAF – a persistent capability known as Vixen – is expected to depend on some form of arrestment for recovery.

A final step would be to add an assisted launch system. “Adding catapults would allow us to operate the heaviest aircraft you can imagine,” Kelly said.

USNI News understands that various assisted launch and recovery system options have already been reviewed under Project Ark Royal. These include the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear equipment delivered by General Atomics for the U.S. Navy’s Ford-class aircraft carriers, and the U.K.’s own Electro Magnetic Kinetic Induction Technology demonstrator, developed by GE Power Conversion.

The FMAF plan remains pre-decisional at this stage. The U.K. is continuing to explore capabilities, undertake experimentation and gather evidence in order to inform its next Integrated Review in 2025.

Submission Statement

From the Wikipedia article on mission command: Mission command, also referred to as mission-type tactics, is a style of military command, which is derived from the Prussian-pioneered mission-type tactics doctrine, combines centralized intent with decentralized execution subsidiarity, and promotes freedom and speed of action, and initiative within defined constraints. Subordinates, understanding the commander's intentions, their own missions, and the context of those missions, are told what effect they are to achieve and the reason that it needs to be achieved.

While in theory this form of command is widely adopted by Western militaries in practice political objectives and commanding officers' own tendency to micromanage often end up constraining subordinates to narrow courses of action. This article details a particularly salient case where the opposite occurred. NORDBAT2 was able to flaunt political constraints to carry out what it saw as the overarching mandate, contrasting with other UN forces at the time. This is an entertaining read that encapsulates the promise(and perils) of mission command.

Tony Ingesson is currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lund University. His research is primarily focused on the political impact of tactical-decision-making and organizational cultures. He has previously served in the Swedish Army, Air Force and Navy.

In late 1993, a reinforced Swedish-Danish-Norwegian mechanized battalion (Nordbat 2) deployed to Bosnia as part of an ongoing UN peacekeeping mission, known as UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force).[1] The battalion was under Swedish command, and with the exception of a Danish tank company and a Norwegian helicopter detachment, was comprised of Swedish former conscripts, led by active-duty officers. The former conscripts had volunteered to return from civilian life to serve in a professional capacity. These Swedish troops, coming from a nation that had not experienced war for almost 200 years, faced a rigid UN bureaucracy, an unclear mandate, and the UN-imposed rules of engagement bordered on the absurd.[2] However, the Swedes had one thing the others didn't: a culture of mission command that had grown and developed for decades.

To the surprise of many, even in Sweden, Nordbat 2 quickly established a reputation as one of the most trigger-happy UN units in Bosnia. The troops and officers from some of the least belligerent nations in the world turned out to be quite adept at both using force and playing the odds in a high-stakes political game. This article outlines how a well-entrenched culture of mission command enabled Nordbat 2 to take on completely new and unexpected situations with remarkable results. While this culture of mission command turned out to be a potent force multiplier and an exceptionally effective strategic asset, it also had another side: Nordbat 2 on multiple occasions utterly disregarded orders from its highest political authorities, to the frustration of the Swedish government.

In "The Language of Mission Command and the Necessity of an Historical Approach," Jörg Muth argues that the U.S. Army needs to understand the culture of mission command in order to implement it.[3] This article provides a brief case study of the tactical and strategic impact of one such culture. While the events described here occurred over twenty years ago, they are as relevant as ever to further our understanding of the strategic role of leadership culture in mission command.

The most essential component of mission command is trust. As long as political leaders can trust the local commander to make the right choices, mission command can be an incredibly powerful force multiplier. Even though Nordbat 2's first battalion commanders were very unpopular with the Swedish government for their refusal to take orders from home, they were nevertheless greeted as heroes upon their return and remain viewed so to this day. This meant the Swedish government did not have to deal with the political fallout of the otherwise failed UN mission. The Dutch government, for example, was hard-pressed by public opinion after the massacre at Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. In 2002, the entire Dutch government was forced to resign over Srebrenica, after a detailed report blaming the government for the failure was released to the public.

While unrestrained mission command can be an effective tool, it also requires that political leadership relinquishes a significant degree of control. Thus, to be effectively harnessed in complex operational environments, the culture of mission command is one that has to be understood and to some extent shared by the civilian leadership as well as the military. This approach is clearly not without risk, but in a life-and-death scenario the basic rule of mission command remains relevant: it is better to make a mistake than to do nothing at all.

The buzz around this is crazy. 80M is lowballing imo.

I’m trying this out on a purely experimental basis. Please strive to keep your discussions focused, courteous, and credible. Links to combat footage without significant further analysis will be removed. That sort of footage should be posted to [email protected].

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Submission Statement

This 45 minute interview of two senior officers synthesizes some of their takeaways from a NATO meeting regarding lessons learned from Ukraine. Takeaways include:

-Air superiority is key to choking off logistics and ensuring fast victory. Russia failed to achieve this air superiority because of a lack of joint operations and failure to evolve beyond its platforms. Russia's air force's sum was less than its parts.

-Air access--use of air assets strategically in a contested environment for maximum effect.

-Building broad-based counter-A2AD capabilities in NATO is a major priority. Want to avoid brutal artillery slog like in Ukraine.

-Private space power is making access to space cheaper and more important than ever. Starlink has been critical for Ukrainian efforts, but other space capabilities have been important as well. Space is likely to grow more contested--it's key to develop defensive and offensive capabilities in this area. Commercial satellite imaging has democratized access and understanding of the war like never before.

-Low-end munitions(eg drones) + networking blur the line between unmanned systems and precision weapons.

-Collaborative Combat Aircraft will work with F-35s, including those of NATO partners. Idea is still being finalized, may include countermeasures, weapons load, sensors, etc. while being more expendable than a manned aircraft.

-Russians may see their cruise and ballistic missiles as an asymmetric advantage at the moment. A more complex air environment overall demands a more layered approach. Ex: unexpected resurgence of gun-based AD.

-Deeper magazine depths are critical, perhaps more important than being at the absolute cutting edge. Quantity gives leeway in being able to use capabilities more freely.

-Information sharing is another priority. US went from sharing 30 points of interest a month with NATO partners to sharing 3,000 a month with a stroke of a pen. More to be done in other areas, like F-35 info sharing.

-Dispersal of units is getting more focus. The rise of precision munitions means that aircraft must be dispersed across multiple airbases. Locations are changed to remain inside of the enemy's decision cycle.

This is a podcast, if you are looking for a similar resource in text form, I highly recommend RUSI's article "The Russian Air War and Ukrainian Requirements for Air Defence".

This episode comes to you from Ramstein Air Base, where Ryan spoke with Gen. James Hecker of the U.S. Air Force and Air Marshall Johnny Stringer of the Royal Air Force about what we can learn from airpower and spacepower almost a year and a half into the war in Ukraine.

Submission Statement

Russian society has historically failed at reintegrating veterans from their wars of expansion. This article lays out the ways in which the Russian healthcare system is failing veterans of the Ukraine War with trauma or injuries, and the possible long-term impacts of their inability to do so. There are also a few notes on the exact dynamics of Russia's partial mobilization which I had not known before, including that soldiers cannot be discharged are death, retirement, imprisonment, or medical discharge. In other words, contract soldiers whose deadlines for service have expired are being forced to fight on, which cannot be good for morale.

The author notes an interesting line taken by Russian propaganda by tying their service to WW2 imagery. This kind of framing is likely to be ineffective, given that many of those currently returning from the frontlines are former prisoners now terrorizing their communities. I would not be surprised if the negative connotations spread from these prisoners become the dominant stereotype of Russian veterans as a whole, further exacerbating the negative social effects described.

Dara Massicot is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Before joining RAND, she served as a senior analyst for Russian military capabilities at the Department of Defense.

Much attention in recent months has focused on Russia's faltering military offensive and staggering casualties in Ukraine. But there are other problems, largely unnoticed outside Russia, lurking for the country's armed forces and society more broadly. Russia's wartime military-personnel policies, instituted last September, temporarily prohibit active-duty and mobilized soldiers from leaving service. Russia faces a crisis in military retention and a larger social crisis of veteran mental-health disorders when these restrictions are lifted. Just as the terms “Afghan Syndrome” and “Chechen Syndrome” emerged to describe the plight of Russian veterans who lacked support and struggled to adapt to civilian life after those conflicts, it is only a matter of time before “Ukraine Syndrome” grips Russia, as thousands of veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other conditions return home.

Indefinite deployment and inadequate rest and rotation, due to a shortage of soldiers, mean that Russian soldiers endure prolonged exposure to combat stress, which intensifies feelings of resentment and helplessness. When these restrictions are lifted, and they will have to be eventually, the army could face large-scale resignations among officers and other professional soldiers, including those whose contracts expired while fighting in Ukraine. The mood among Russian troops in Ukraine is not easy to gauge, but anecdotal evidence—from social media, intercepted phone calls to families, officer accounts, and other sources—suggests that many are likely to resign as soon as it becomes possible.

Russian forces have sustained more casualties in the past 16 months than in a decade of war in Afghanistan in the 1980s or two campaigns in Chechnya in the 1990s. Casualty estimates vary, from official Russian numbers from late last year (just under 6,000 killed in action), to more than 23,000 confirmed military funerals, according to the BBC and Mediazona, to Western military estimates of 40,000–60,000 killed in action with 100,000–140,000 wounded. The higher estimates are staggering figures, with enormous implications for the future of Russian military power and for Russian society.

The Russian medical system is already straining, even though most Russian soldiers are still deployed. Many hospitals are overwhelmed with the wounded. Some of those experiencing severe psychological trauma are discharged untreated.

Spending money on prosthetic limbs and psychiatrists is one thing, creating the right environment for treating PTSD quite another. Russian law was recently changed to criminalize statements seen as discrediting the armed forces. This could discourage returning troops from discussing their wartime traumas candidly, impeding their recovery. Russian authorities are using second-world-war iconography to cast veterans as heroes or liberators, but it is unclear if these efforts will lead to less social alienation than that experienced on their return by soldiers who fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Symptoms of untreated combat trauma include increased risk of criminal behavior, substance abuse, domestic violence, and problems at work. These issues will be felt all across Russia when the soldiers return home. The domestic prestige of the armed forces, badly dented in the wake of those earlier conflicts, will once again be at risk.

Submission Statement

There's been a lot of discussion about Prigozhin's abortive uprising--probably too much if we're honest. However, I found this article by Alexander Burns still worth sharing. the article is a high-level contextualization of Prigozhin's coup and a comparison of its current state to possible historical analogs. Before reading this article I had been falling into the trap of comparing Prigozhin's rebellion to Soviet political machinations, or to the tsardom that preceded the USSR. However, I was convinced by the historian's argument that the rebellion bore more resemblance to feudal-era coups, and that's the comparison I think I'll lean toward in the future. The aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace in particular I think is very relevant here, especially given recent reporting that the criminal case against Prigozhin has not been dropped.

Alexander S. Burns is an assistant professor of history at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, studying the American Continental Army’s connection to European militaries. His edited volume, The Changing Face of Old Regime Warfare: Essays in Honour of Christopher Duffy, was published in 2022. You can follow him @KKriegeBlog.

Part of what held our attention stemmed from surprise. How could Putin’s Russia, a state famously run prioritizing loyalty over competence, be facing a coup? My doctoral advisor, Professor Katherine B. Aaslestad, had the answer. Before her passing in 2021, she constantly reminded her lecture halls and graduate seminars: “Regimes that choose war rarely achieve their goals at the outset. War has a way of changing the situation. War takes on a life of its own.” She most frequently said this in the context of the wars of the French Revolution, but it is the case across military history. While Spartan King Archidamus and Athenian Pericles reluctantly led Sparta and Athens into the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC, neither was alive in 404 when the war ended. The political landscape had been totally reshaped by war, reshaping each side’s goals and objectives with it. We can observe a similar change in Russia today.

Despite all of the possible parallels in Russian history, I believe that the most interesting parallel to the current situation is the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion during Henry VIII’s reign in England.

In October of 1536, Catholic believers in the North of England rose in revolt against the church reforms of Henry VIII. Although their motivations were economic and religious, important similarities between these peasants and Prigozhin exist. They called their rebellion the Pilgrimage of Grace, trying to disguise it as a military movement. They insisted that their grievances lay not with the actions of the king, but with “persons of low birth and small reputation” who were, they claimed, advising him poorly.

Knowing that it would be difficult to stop the pilgrim army, which numbered in the tens of thousands, Henry VIII’s government chose to negotiate. The pilgrims were promised immunity, that a special parliament would meet and address their grievances, and that the king would agree to their immediate demands until the parliament met. Seizing upon a pretext to abandon this pledge, forces loyal to Henry then suppressed a new uprising and executed around two hundred leaders of the initial rebellion.

There are many similarities between Prigozhin’s uprising and the Pilgrimage. Prigozhin referred to the events of June 23rd to 24th as “марш справедливости” or “the March for Justice,” rather than a coup. He insisted that Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, not Putin, was at fault for the failures and that they deliberately misled Putin. Like the Pilgrimage of Grace rebelling against the “evil councillors” of Henry VIII, Prigozhin cloaked a formidable military effort to destabilize the state in language that suggested loyalty to the monarch. Likewise, once the initial emergency had passed, both Henry VIII and Putin appeared all too eager to change the terms of the deal. Although it initially seemed that Putin might have caved to Prigozhin’s demands for Shoigu’s removal, Putin appeared alongside his defense minister in a meeting on June 26th.

What comes next? I’ve previously argued that Prigozhin reminds me of a Freikorps Inhaber rather than Prince Wallenstein, and his possible fate of Belarussian exile reminds me of the story of Polish Prince Jerzy Marcin Lubomirski, a mercenary commander who had to stay one step ahead of his former employers. So where does this leave us? I’ll admit to being quite surprised by these developments, and echo my comments that historians should be historians, not ersatz policy commentators and predictors. History provides a range of possibilities from which to understand the present, and in history, unlike Putin’s Russia, we know where we are in the story. With that said, although cracks are appearing in the foundation of Putin’s Russia, Prigozhin will be lucky to avoid the fate of Pilgrimage of Grace leaders like Sir Robert Aske, who was hung in chains.

Submission Statement

Though this paper focuses on arms control through the lens of AI-enabled measures, I found it a useful primer on the dynamics of arms control more generally. While I don't believe AI meets the six criteria to be amenable to regulation, I can see a path for certain AI applications to be regulated via treaty. For example, mandates requiring a man-in-the-loop or man-on-the-loop seem to minimally disrupt weapon effectiveness, while greatly limiting the disruptive nature or "horribleness" of autonomous killers.

Paul Scharre is the Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS. He is the award-winning author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Megan Lamberth is a former Associate Fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at CNAS. Her research focuses on U.S. strategy for emerging technologies and the key components of technology competitiveness, such as human capital, R&D investments, and norms building.

Watts identifies six criteria that he argues affect a weapon’s tolerance or resistance to regulation: effectiveness, novelty, deployment, medical compatibility, disruptiveness, and notoriety.11 An effective weapon that provides “unprecedented access” to enemy targets and has the capacity to ensure dominance is historically resistant to regulation. There is a mixed record for regulating novel weapons or military systems throughout history. Countries have pursued regulation of certain new weapons or weapons delivery systems (e.g., aerial bombardment) while also resisting regulation for other novel military systems (e.g., submarines). Weapons that are widely deployed—“integrated into States’ military operations”—tend to be resistant to arms control. Weapons that cause “wounds compatible with existing medical protocols” in military and field hospitals are historically difficult to ban or regulate. Powerful nations have historically tried to regulate or ban weapons that are “socially and militarily disruptive” out of fear that such weapons could upend existing global or domestic power dynamics. Campaigns by civil society groups or widespread disapproval from the public can increase notoriety, making a weapon potentially more susceptible to arms control.12

Whether arms control succeeds or fails depends on both its desirability and its feasibility. The desirability of arms control encompasses states’ calculation of a weapon’s perceived military value versus its perceived horribleness (because it is inhumane, indiscriminate, or disruptive to the social or political order). Thus, desirability of arms control is a function of states’ desire to retain a weapon for their own purposes balanced against their desire to restrain its use by their adversaries.

AI technology poses challenges for arms control for a variety of reasons. AI technology is diffuse, and many of its applications are dual use. As an emerging technology, its full potential has yet to be realized—which may hinder efforts to control it. Verification of any AI arms control agreement would also be challenging; states would likely need to develop methods of ensuring that other states are in compliance to be comfortable with restraining their own capabilities. These hurdles, though significant, are not insurmountable in all instances. Under certain conditions, arms control may be feasible for some military AI applications. Even while states compete in military AI, they should seek opportunities to reduce its risks, including through arms control measures where feasible.

Doubles as a chicken coop when encamped.