Musings about above-ground sovereignty

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(This is totally not based on research about the actual legal situation; mere thoughts.)

Airspace sovereignty is an interesting and unsatisfactory topic for most countries. Almost no country in the world can police its airspace well. Even countries with an air force and supersonic fighters usually don't have some on station 24/7. It's much more common to have at least two planes on 15 minute readiness; that's (up to) 15 minutes till take-off. This means two air crews (and some ground crew) are in readiness rooms, and run to the aircraft if there's an alert, prepare take-off, taxi to the runway and take-off with the control tower's permission. 

15 minutes is almost enough for an airliner to cross Germany from east to west. Hijackers would need only about two minutes to take over a cockpit and ram an airliner into a nuclear power plant on some routes, of course.

NATO's air policing over the Baltics is quite symbolic as well. Violations of Tallinn's (Estonian capital) air space could not be countered timely without a sortie every time a Russian aircraft flies over the international waters of the Gulf of Finland. NATO might try to do exactly this, but this could be countered by desensitizing flights over international waters every hour or so until the air policing flight isn't responding any more. Real world air policing simply doesn't meet high expectations.

There is nevertheless an almost universally respected recognized national sovereignty over the airspace, rarely restricted by UNSC-authorised no-fly zones or violated by aggressive countries.

Exoatmospheric vehicles (satellites) on the other hand are not considered to be subject to this kind of sovereignty. 

Finally, there's a third kind of vehicles, and they keep causing occasional troubles: Ballistic and quasiballistic missiles (example; North Korean missile tests). In some cases, even gunshots could overfly a country entirely. This category includes vehicles (rockets) which propel exoatmospheric vehicles into orbit.

I would like to describe these three groups as

(a) Object which stay above ground due to lift (lighter than air, wing effect, rotor effect or soaring).

(b) Objects which stay above ground not due to lift, but due to kinetic energy (satellite orbital mechanics).

(c) No-reuse objects which fly supersonic, but for no more than a few minutes at most.

Category (a) is well-established, and there's no need for changes. We know the concept of sovereignty and its extension up to and including the Stratosphere. The practical problem is how to enforce it.

Most of category (b) couldn't be used by mankind without a universal right of passage. Non-geostationary satellites depend on the permission to fly over basically any country. It's in their kinematic nature. There's thus no point in restricting vehicle movements in the thermosphere or exosphere. They have to be commons for all of mankind in order to be usable without conflicts.

Category (c) is the trickiest. I suppose this should have mixed rules.

Countries may need to make use of quite long-range missiles in legitimate defence preparations (such as prototype or readiness/decay tests). These tests should be done in a manner which guarantees the least irritations, though. This means the missile should preferably be fired over international waters or over countries which gave permission. Only if neither is possible should a missile flight over a non-agreeing country be legitimate, but even then a prior announcement a while ahead should be required.
Launch over a non-consenting country should be illegal if an alternative launch from a ship in international waters or from a friendly country is possible.*

My idea is that a sensible, working set of rules should be agreed on and then be published. Missile launches should not be used for provocation (without UNSC having a well-defined offence that it can sanction) and legitimate launches should no longer be exploited for scaremongering (since their legal and legitimate nature would be written and published already).

Above-ground overflights of countries with manned or unmanned vehicles should be arranged in a way that threatens peace the least and still respects sovereignty as much as possible within this objective. The arrangement should also be practical and allow much non-aggressive utilization of flight.

There is really no good reason why incidents such as missile flight tests should be allowed to cause major irritations. It should neither be left without sanction if they are used to provoke nor should hysterical reactions and accusations be considered legitimate.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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The great irony of imperialism

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The original idea of imperialism and colonialism was that additional provinces/colonies equal greater wealth.

This has always been quite questionable because that wealth is difficult to transport and a mere illusion if it's far away. The transportation costs were prohibitive for long-distance transportation of everyday goods right up to the 18th century.

The Roman profits off controlling England were mostly restricted to a flow of metals. This flow was probably beneficial for the emperor, but not for free; wealthy men living in England were most likely getting paid for it. The empire had on the other hand to maintain and mobilise armies in order to fend off the Celtic neighbours.

Another example is the Spanish experience in the New World.The initial costs were small and a lot of gold and silver booty was carried home. That was the raiding part; the colonialism looked different.

Few New World goods other than silver were really valuable enough for transportation to Europe. Soon, the balance of colonialism for Spain looked like

* loss of enterprising men, ships, crews, ruler's attention to Europe

* gain of silver shipments

The silver had little intrinsic value. It was important for money (coins), cutlery, dinnerware and mirrors mostly. Spain was able to import wares from other European countries and to pay foreign mercenaries with its silver coins.

The net European wealth gain from Spanish colonialism was probably close to zero, though: More silver did not mean more wealth because it's really just money.

Money has the illusion (and ruler -or state-given guarantee) of being useful as payment for natural goods. The reason for its existence is in part the fact that it's easier to transport money than goods. More money in itself doesn't mean more wealth to a nation or continent; the larger quantity of money is still used for the same role - all payments. The more silver was transported to Europe, the lesser its purchasing power because an ever larger quantity of silver was used for a quite stagnant real goods trade. The amount of wares (and mercenaries, artists) that Spain could import from other European countries every year with its colonial silver dropped year by year.

Spain took severe economic damage in the 16th century because of a neglect of domestic economic development and reforms. It turned out to be a rather mediocre country in the 17th century. The control of most of South America and Central America did not turn Spain into a truly prosperous country.

Spain kept importing mostly silver from its colonies; the few other volume imports were paid for with equal volume of exports. Silver = money = illusion. One could say that colonialism was at that time only about the import of illusions and luxury goods such as sugar.

Maritime trade did intensify later on (especially since the early 19th century) and more goods were traded between homeland and colonies. Repeat; traded. The Europeans who emigrated into colonies did expect proper payment with European goods for their work. The end result was from a European perspective an intensified trade. There were few advantages to Europeans from exploitation of indigenous people because those advantages were largely soaked up by the colonists.

In the end, colonialism and imperialism were stupid. The classical Greeks and the Portuguese were right with their approach of colonies in form of emigrant trading cities and trading posts.

It's interesting with this in mind when one looks at all the wars that were waged over colonial "interests" during the 16th to 19th centuries.

The great irony of all this is of course that imperialism and colonialism became politically unsustainable at the time when the transport of low value goods had finally become affordable!

S O

P.S.: I wrote this years ago, decided to release it with minor tweaks after all instead of having it wasted in the non-public list of drafts.

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Warsaw Summit Communiqué

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Here is NATO's Warsaw Summit Communiqué.

Keep in mind such texts are usually prepared by bureaucrats and 2nd rank politicians ahead of the meeting, and modified on the meeting only slightly. Almost certainly no politician who was on photo ops on the meeting read the entire communiqué.

There's much BS and some outright lies in the communiqué, but I'm sure those parts will largely go unchallenged. One example of an outright lie is that the 'one multinational battalion per Baltic state and Poland' were called "robust". I would design a multinational battalion if I wanted to design a non-robust battalion. This beats even an Arab or African battalion.

Another lie is "We will ensure that the NATO Command Structure remains robust and agile". That's newspeak "agile", of course.

The communiqué that's of greatest interest to me* is this one, though:

33. (...) The Defence Investment Pledge we agreed at the Wales Summit is an important step in this direction and today we reaffirm its importance.  Through this Pledge we agreed to reverse the trend of declining defence budgets, to make the most effective use of our funds, and to further a more balanced sharing of the costs and responsibilities. 
34. Since Wales, we have turned a corner.  Collectively, Allies’ defence expenditures have increased in 2016 for the first time since 2009.  In just two years, a majority of Allies have halted or reversed declines in defence spending in real terms.  Today, five Allies meet the NATO guideline to spend a minimum of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product on defence.  Ten Allies meet the NATO guideline to spend more than 20% of their defence budgets on major equipment, including related Research & Development. (...)

A love couple enters a restaurant and the waiter greets them. He says "Last time I brought you food and wine for 40 € from the kitchen, from now on I shall bring you food and wine worth 50 € per visit." The love couple is like "What the - are you nuts? We spend our money as we please!"

The NATO summit was a waiters' conference where they agreed that higher spending is in order.
They completely ignored (again) that none of them have the authority to pass the budget. Some ministers and heads of government sure are members of their national parliament, but their voice is but one of hundreds there, and thus of little power according to their constitutions. 

For it's the legislative branch that's authorising budgets in all NATO member countries. The only pledge to increase military spending that would be of interest (though likely still on-binding) would be a pledge of the national parliaments. Then again, they change after elections, and as a principle parliaments shall not restrict the budgetary freedom of action of successor parliaments much.

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There nevertheless is a trend towards increased military spending in Europe, save for the most indebted countries.

I don't think this is necessary at all. We could instead cut off useless parts of military power, useless interventions, slim down HQs and cancel inefficient redundant development and procurement projects. Then we would have the numbers of personnel and equipment coupled with the training expenses in the right places - and would be more than ready for the actually still low probability challenge in the East. Russia still has very few ground forces in its Western Military District, and as long as this remains true we won't need more than rather modest (ground) forces capable of intervening in Lithuania within days. 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

* related: 2014/11/nato-summits-and-spending-pledges.html

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Decision by attrition or decision by manoeuvre

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As I mentioned earlier:

Indirect fires (mostly artillery) are the main killer (80-95% of ground combat KIA), tanks are the main enabler for rapid manoeuvres in harms way and infantry is and will be the force of choice when difficult terrain and short lines of sight favour it.

Now one might ask whether I would seek decision by attrition or decision by manoeuvre.

I suppose the answer depends a lot on the geography. The more geographically constricted the friendly and the more cohesive the opposing forces are, the more attrition will tend to decide the outcome.

Attrition may on the other hand be understood as an enabler for manoeuvre (battlefield shaping). A manoeuvre battlegroup may be able to get into an advantageous position and succeed with a surprising manoeuvre based on the attrition success that the opposing manoeuvre force became less mobile after having its bridgelayers blow up, for example. More likely, heavy casualties during scouting and advance guard movements may make the hostile manoeuvre battlegroups timid, predictable and less secured - thus enabling their defeat by less inhibited battlegroups.

Attrition may also make manoeuvre in harms way possible in the first place, such as by defeating a timely detected ambush position with an artillery mission.

"Attrition vs. manoeuvre" is one of the old if not ancient debates, much older than the "wheels vs. tracks" debate and much older than its 1980's '2nd generation warfare and 3rd generation warfare' incarnation.

Manoeuvre has one extremely tempting promise, though: It would - if done really, really right - end a defensive war without loss of sovereignty within the shortest possible time or with the smallest possible losses.

The British Empire/Commonwealth defeated the Italians in Libya not by First World War-style artillery battles, but by manoeuvre. The Italian prisoners of war alone outnumbered the Allies' dead and wounded more than 70:1. The Italian dead and wounded did so "only" by less than 10:1. No cannonade between European forces has ever achieved anything similar, while several other campaigns that were coined by manoeuvre did.

The same ground forces that inevitably are needed for decisive manoeuvre (the tanks) are the embodiment of military aggression in Europe. At the same time they're necessary ingredients of the only course of action that allows for a quick and not very bloody end to a hot conflict in Europe (without sacrificing sovereignty for peace).

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: On the other hand, such lopsided results are typically achieved if one party is vastly superior in quality (the Italians had much inferior heavy weapons and AFVs and only partial motorisation). A one-sided cannonade would yield lopsided casualties statistics as well.

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Political and military deterrence

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I have an (intuitive?) aversion against the fashionable 'symbolic' policies such as sending a Patriot battery to Turkey, Israel, wherever - or a company/battalion to the Baltic region. This goes beyond my more specific aversion and criticism of tripwire forces or considerations about the stupidity of multinational formations.

The fashion is going wild these days, so it's overdue to look at it with more clarity and less of a tunnel vision. I will ignore the "We're doing something, stop bugger us" and the "politicians playing with their toys" aspects of such minimal deployments in this blog post.

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I see two different kinds of deterrence that matter in this context:

(1) Political action as deterrence

This is what politicians feel competent at. Political deterrence rests on the assumption that political resolve to defend is the big lever to maintain peace.

This is actually somewhat founded in history. Back in 1939 Hitler dared to attack Poland (already, instead of later) because he did not believe the French or British would declare war on Germany for it. He was half-right only; the French and British did not declare war on the Soviet Union for the exact same offence a few days later.

The link that failed in the chain that was tasked to preserve the peace was thus the persuasiveness of French and British top politicians, who had indeed changed their course from appeasement to an arms racing final spurt (if not war preparations) but a few months earlier.

The symbolic policies may be interpreted as efforts to be persuasive enough; politicians playing their game instead of delegating deterrence. It takes Russian creativity to see an invasion threat in four patchwork battalions, so one can semi-plausibly claim that such minimal and symbolic deployments are non-aggressive. It's also more civilised than "strong man" speeches and mannerisms.

They're also rather cheap and can thus be agreed-on by a few top politicians on the fly. 

(2) Military ability as deterrence

What would happen if politicians are persuasive in their resolve to defend, but their stick is little and brittle? Such as an army that cannot deploy in force and in time to matter, and has but two days worth of ammunition only and hardly any reserve personnel pool anyway?

This is where military deterrence steps in:

A military that was defined, funded and built well may - if not kept too secret - convince a potential aggressor that an aggression would enter a land of suffering and embarrassments beginning on day two. Reserves would be large enough to not only keep this up unbearably long, but the defending alliance would also have the resources to escalate into entirely different theatres of war, potentially ruining the aggressors 'achievements' and influence in altogether different countries.

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I suppose that in much of Europe - Germany (and actually Russia) included - politicians favour their own game greatly over doing the political oversight required to 'get the military right' for deterrence and defence. They favour not only intervention games, but whenever there's an opportunity they prefer the political game of minimal deployments instead of having much interest in the adequacy of the stick as a whole.

There are more obvious motivations driving the nonsense (and I hinted at them above), but the key appears to be that most politicians in NATO Europe and especially Germany have lived through times of peace in Europe and their withered repertoire for deterrence simply doesn't come close to the potential because they stick to a small and predictable tool set.

Thus we deter aggression with a huge, inefficient bulk of forces and flimsy tripwire forces instead of with an efficient, purpose-oriented and elegant force AND top politicians who are persuasive in communicating that forceful instant defence in the event of aggression would be self-evident.

I am most likely naturally pre-disposed to their way of deterrence because I am too much under influence of having read too much about history.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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[blog] topics incoming

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Incoming are some more blog posts, especially "Political and military deterrence", "Decision by attrition or decision by manoeuvre" (both scheduled already), another one commenting on the NATO summit and I may finish some about warfare under oppressing ECM and "Musings about above-ground sovereignty" (unless I find a better title for it after all).

July is thus on track to become a more productive D&F month, despite the nice weather. I actually wrote three blog posts in a single night recently.

I actually have about 30 unpublished draft texts, but they are unpublished because they're not worth being published - and most seem to be abandoned for good.

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By the way; the German milblogosphere is almost extinct. I didn't put much effort in researching, but there's simply not enough flesh to write a new blog post about German milblogs as I used to since there are even fewer such blogs active than in the past years. We're mostly down to augengeradeaus.net regarding attendance, which is 95% news about German or NATO military affairs and 5% fillers. It's being run by a professional journalist from a political weekly magazine, though.

Nachtwei, a retired politician, may be noteworthy as well, though I have little interest in his security policy news blogging. 

The Vergessene Kriege blog about small wars and Third World conflict is quite active as well (though likely with few visitors) and even turned into a 'competitor' to myself by including mass surveillance concerns as a topic (rarely). It looks like a blog a stereotypical pacifist or development aid worker would be interested in.

Some activity appears to have moved from classic blogs to facebook pages, but I don't keep an eye on facebook.

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edit: I'd like to add about my blog;

I'm somewhat disappointed by my readers. There's lots of opposition, lots of disagreement - but I keep finding old errors of mine (such as a typo "20" instead of "200" that totally changed the meaning) in 3-5 years old posts and comments of mine and nobody pointed them out. In fact, I keep finding more mistakes of my own than get pointed out.

This is very disappointing. With all those disagreeing comments I expect the audience to at least point out the obvious and most severe mistakes of mine!

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Antimilitaristic blogging

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To everyone who mistakes my interest in getting the military right with militarism:

It's the opposite, it's antimilitaristic and pacifistic.

The more we get the military right the less we need to spend for it, and the less we need of it (for defence)!

The more we show off that we got the military right the less we need to spend for it, and the less we need of it (for deterrence)!

Germany is in 2nd line now; it's close enough to the Eastern NATO (and EU) frontier to bear the burden of 2nd responder status (effective defence aid to Lithuania and Poland within a week) and far enough from any even only semi-plausible aggressor (there's none) that it could in fact leave NATO.

To leave NATO would break NATO's Eastern Europe security logistically, but it wouldn't free us of our obligations from the EU treaty.

Article 42:

7. If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States. (...)

Germany isn't going to leave the EU anytime soon, so the only realistic path to minimise the German military budget and the size of the German military in the medium term is in my opinion 'to get the military right'.

Besides, I wouldn't mind getting rid of an entire (German) armed service because I'm convinced that "getting the military right" doesn't require the existence of this armed service.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: This was not inspired or provoked by any actual feedback. It's merely a description about the framework for all of this. More is here.

2nd P.S.:  I might add that being in favour of collective deterrence and collective defence is actually antimilitaristic as well, since the deterrence and defence needs are distributed on more shoulders in an alliance and thus smaller for us as long as we're allied. Alliance membership is thus a necessary ingredient for minimised military spending and activity once a certain need for deterrence and defence is recognised at all. The widespread perception of NATO as escalating demands or need for military spending comes from its perversion into an intervention club during the 1990's and the involved politicians' and bureaucrats' demands for more funds to play with. An exemplary collective deterrence and defence-only alliance would ceteris paribus guide to smaller military budgets than the members would have without membership.

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If John McCain was No.44 ...

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... the United States would likely have

- perpetuated the war participation in Iraq with ten thousands of American troops there till today
- done and sustained a bigger "surge" in Afghanistan
- invaded Libya
- entered ground war in Syria
- escalated the Ukraine conflict to a major proxy war
- developed the civil war in Yemen into a proxy war instead of sitting it out largely
- spent an additional USD 1-5 trillion on the military for almost no benefit (incl. discounted long-term costs)
- suffered an additional 1,000-6,000 KIA

I do not see any benefits in warmonger policies.

On the other hand, the torturers MIGHT have been sent to jail. This is a capital letters "might" because those who bear the most responsibility were GWB and Cheney, and it's questionable whether they would have been prosecuted under a (R) POTUS.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Hawkish wannabe politician generals

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Western Generals have acquired a reputation for being rather anti-war than pro-war, knowing about the horrors of warfare. This is contrary to the warmonger caricatures from the Cold War.

There are exceptions, though.

This shows (once again) two things in my opinion:

(1) Warmonger generals need to be humiliated, fired and isolated ASAP, so no others will follow their steps in the future. Their protégées and direct subordinates at the staff need to be investigated and if tainted be ditched as well.

(2) Generals (and admirals) in the United States have become much too political. There's this assertion that the U.S. military is apolitical, though it's widely known that the majority of those troops who do vote prefers a certain party, following the demographics (above proportional recruiting of white Southern males).

Many flag rank officers are all but apolitical when it comes to budgeting for their service or to activities in the overseas regional commands / NATO. All-too often officers behave as if they were ambassadors or even some kind of foreign ministry state secretary stationed abroad.

I strongly advise against perpetuating this. It's a much smaller evil to leave diplomacy to politicians.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Theses on future air war, future air forces

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These are the theses that I published (or implied) over the last nine years.

(1) Missiles such as Iskander, LORA et cetera can and should substitute and complement strike by combat aviation, particularly early in a conflict. They require much lower operating costs due to no flying hours required for training. At the same time they don't serve the officer corps' interests well because they're not 'sexy' like fighters and missile units require few officers.

(2) MEADS is overpriced nonsense. The IRIS-T-SL addition is actually interesting, but I greatly favoured the SAMP/T area air defence system (with by now substantial missile defence capability) as it could have been bought military off-the shelf after its introduction by France and Italy. VL MICA could have complemented it the way IRIS-T SL is a short(er) range missile component in MEADS.

MEADS has a ridiculous program cost: batteries planned for purchase ratio.

The CAMM ground variant may become another alternative if we regain senses and finally cancel MEADS after all.

(3) Air power will compete with ground forces for airlift capacity, particularly early on in an unplanned hot conflict. It will also be very busy with its counterpart and ground-based air defences early on, and likely possess little ability to decisively affect ground operations in the first days or weeks. I think air power fanbois such as British folks who point at the theoretical load carrying capacity of 18 Brimstones under a Typhoon - theoretically enough to wipe out a tank company - would be very disappointed if modern combat aircraft were ever used in the anti-tank role against a great power's army.

6x3 Brimstone missiles under a Typhoon

Actual airbases in German: Path dependency rules!

(4) The German Luftwaffe isn't a necessity for NATO or EU or even only Germany, but -if done well- it can be useful because it would be (a) barely at a safe distance to survive a  surprise attack and (b) barely still close enough to the Eastern frontier to help Poland and Lithuania from German airbases. The usefulness of airbases and auxiliary airfields in Eastern Germany is much higher than the West German ones'.

(5) It's still up for debate whether the next fighter generation will be manned, unmanned or optionally manned, but this is missing much of future air war anyway (in my opinion). Traditional air war is about growing aircraft flying high and fast, while in future much of the air war may or will be about small, low-flying and short-ranged drones that may even mimic birds. Thousands of these could be unleashed into an area for attack and/or reconnaissance. It's not apparent that ground forces have adapted to this with appropriate changes in battlefield air defences, but it's astonishing to me how Western air forces appear to ignore the entire possibility and thus cede this probably more decisive air power element to the ground forces. Current fighter types and designs certainly don't incorporate counters; the missiles in use cost 10-100x as much as a small drone needs to cost.

(6) Air combat will consume a terribly high quantity of expensive missiles. The kill probability will be terrible (AMRAAM has a 50% pk track record, and that was gained in very advantageous situations). We may need more than 30 air combat missiles in stocks to kill a single top quality fighter, which means we should purchase 40+ missiles per air combat kill expected to be necessary. Foreign powers that shall be deterred are likely aware of this, and they're likely aware that such munitions purchases have a low priority in air forces that stare on aircraft quantities and where the officer corps in control doesn't benefit from higher ammunition stocks directly.

(7) It should be obvious once again by now, but let's spell it out: I think of air forces as bureaucracies. The caste in control is the officer corps. The junior officers are typically fine, but beginning approx. at Lt.Col. the officer corps begins to follow the descriptions of the principal-agent problem when it comes to resources.

I moved my blaming for poor decisions from the industry profit motive to the principal-agent problem in the bureaucracy (and its political overseers) years ago already.

(8) The public is poorly informed about air power matters because important info isn't communicated (mostly for obvious reasons). We learn how many aircraft of a particular type were purchased and in service, but we rarely learn how many daily sorties they could generate, for example. The difference between two and eight daily sorties changes the utility of the aircraft in question by very much, of course. Higher sorties rates can be generated with aircraft meant for shorter ranges and of more simple technology - that is, aircraft that run against the actual procurement trends.

(9) Many mistakes have been made in procurement by air forces. There's no reason to trust the bureaucracy's expertise in future procurement projects, even though we don't learn about many important variables.

(10) The trend towards using air bases far away (much farther than 500 km) from the targets and the thus exaggerated need for tanker aircraft is worrying. NATO appears to be so lazy that it rather adds a 500 km transit than to move a wing or detachment to a less fully developed but much better located airfield.

(11) Equally disturbing is the obsession about bunker-busting. I suspect that many "bunker buster" munitions are secretly meant to penetrate into reinforced concrete pillars of river bridges to blow them up from the inside, but even this enlargement of target options doesn't really justify the obsession with bunker busting. To penetrate aircraft bunkers on airfields would typically not even require a standard-sized bomb, much less a dedicated bunker penetration warhead as in the Taurus missile.

(12) Western air power military theory and campaign plans/command are utterly unimpressive. Strike choreography has been rather impressive since the 1960's, but the typical answer of air power to problems is still to throw more resources at the problem, to bomb more. I'm utterly unimpressed by supposed stars of air warfare theory, such as Warden whose theory is an utterly useless fig leaf for incompetence campaign ideas. I tried to criticize constructively, of course.

(13) I don't like the assassination-by-drone campaign, but most of the time the country's government appears to have green-lighted it. Cruise missile diplomacy on the other hand is much worse; it's plain arrogance and aggression most of the time.

(14) Western air forces don't need bigger budgets. They should make better use of their budgets, oriented at (collective) defence and deterrence.

(15) Close air support is overrated because it was available in a much bigger ratio to ground forces in contact than this would be the case in Europe. In Europe, individual platoons wouldn't be heard by the air force; maybe individual reinforced battalion battlegroups would be heard. CAS was also exaggerated because air defences haven't distracted and impeded CAS after 1991 any more.

(16) I'm no fan of large airlift capacity. I understand that the Americans need it to deploy past the oceans quickly, but Germany doesn't need any military transport aircraft in my opinion. Most needs can be (and many are being) covered by chartered aviation, some can be eliminated by doctrine and others are merely imagined. The A400M project was an embarrassing de facto subsidy to a most ungrateful (and unexpectedly incompetent) industry.

(17) Long-range radar aircraft (E-3 and E-8 as examples) are impressive, but would likely be pushed back if facing modern Russian technology. Once pushed back by fighters and batteries with long-range missiles, they could look barely or not at all into 'hostile' territory any more, and thus wouldn't play their huge potential roles in attacks and offensive operations on the ground. A possible countermeasure would be supersonic businessjets turned into radar aircraft since these could survive 50-100 km farther forward, but no such businessjets ever seem to reach the prototype stage.

Electronic countermeasures add another big question mark behind the utility of air and ground surveillance radar aircraft.

(18) Maybe - contrary to Brimstone fanboyism et cetera - tactical air support of the future (CAS) will primarily be about detecting and identifying targets for ground forces' artillery that grew very much in range and precision during the last 20 years. This means that the old (since early 80's) Brevel/KZO or Aquila approach for an artillery spotter drone may still prove to be the way to go.

(19) Airspace deconfliction has gotten out of hand.

A list of 15 earlier theses is here.

More can be found if you use the "air force" label on the left.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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